ABSTRACT
Since early in 2003, the Sahara-Sahel region has become a new front in the global
‘war on terror’. Prior to that time there had almost certainly been no act of terror,
in the conventional meaning of the term,1 anywhere in this vast region of Africa.
And yet, by the end of 2004, senior US military personnel were describing the
Sahara as a ‘Swamp of Terror’, a ‘terrorist infestation’, which, in the words of US
Air Force General Charles F. Wald, deputy commander of US-EUCOM,2 ‘we need
to drain’. According to Stewart M. Powell, who covers the White House and national
security affairs for Hearst Newspapers in Washington, DC, ‘The Sahara . . . is now a magnet for terrorists’.3
