SUMMARY: Four years ago, 16 holy tombs in Timbuktu, dating back to the 14th century, were demolished in an attack by Islamic militants. In the first-ever war crimes trial for cultural destruction, one of the men involved admitted his guilt and voiced regret at the International Criminal Court. Jeffrey Brown talks with DePaul University's Patty Gerstenblith for more on the challenges of prosecuting these crimes.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):It's a first for the International Criminal Court at The Hague, a trial dealing with the destruction of cultural heritage.
It's over the deliberate wrecking in 2012 of historic earthen buildings and religious shrines in the West African nation of Mali.
Jeffrey Brown has the story. It's part of our ongoing series Culture at Risk.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):Sixty holy tombs dating back to the 14th century, all reduced to rubble in a wave of violence unleashed on Timbuktu by Islamist militants four years ago.
Today, one of those responsible stood in front of the International Criminal Court and admitted his guilt.
AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI, Former Islamist militant (through translator): I regret all the damage that my actions have caused. I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused my home nation, Mali.
JEFFREY BROWN: Prosecutors say Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi directed the destruction of nine mausoleums and damage to a mosque. He'd been recruited to lead a vice squad by a group of Islamist rebels, affiliated with al-Qaida, who seized control of Northern Mali in 2012.
AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI (through translator): I was influenced by a group of deviant people from al-Qaida, and they were able to influence me, to carry me in their evil wave, through actions that affected the whole population.
JEFFREY BROWN:The rebels were eventually driven out by French troops in 2013. The heaps of rubble they left behind have since mostly been rebuilt with help from UNESCO.
In recent years, cultural relics across Northern Africa and the Mideast have been targeted by militant groups, most dramatically by the Islamic State at sites including the ancient cities of Palmyra, Syria, and Nimrud in Iraq. Unlike Mali, those countries are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Mahdi, who, in the plea bargain faces 11 years in prison, today called for an end to such acts.
AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI (through translator): I would like to give a piece of advice to Muslims all over the world, not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good to humanity.
SUMMARY: Extremists armed with guns and grenades stormed a luxury hotel in Bamako, Mali, early Friday morning, shooting dozens. Witnesses said they went room by room, letting guests go if they could recite verses of the Koran. Malian special forces stormed the hotel, freeing hostages and battling the Islamist attackers into the night. Judy Woodruff talks to Rudolph Atallah of the Atlantic Council.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The siege today in the capital city of Mali lasted all day before ending this evening. Islamist gunmen burst into a hotel and seized up to 170 hostages, many of them foreigners. In the end, scores of hostages were rescued or escaped, but the estimates of the dead ranged from 19 to at least 27, plus two attackers.
And the State Department said one American was among those killed.
The attack on the Radisson Blu brought security forces on the run early this morning. Mali’s Defense Ministry said extremists armed with guns and grenades stormed the luxury hotel in Bamako just as guests were beginning their day.
MAN (through interpreter): At this moment, this morning around 7:30, individuals not yet identified, about three or four, we believe, so far, attacked the Radisson Blu hotel. Sadly, there are deaths. People must remain calm.
JUDY WOODRUFF: By some accounts, the attackers carjacked a diplomatic vehicle, drove up to the hotel, and stormed inside. Witnesses said they shouted Islamist slogans and went room by room, asking guests if they could recite verses of the Koran. Those who could were let go.
Early on, the owner of the hotel said the assailants locked in as many as 140 guests and 30 employees. Hours later, Malian special forces stormed the hotel themselves, freeing hostages one floor at a time.
MAN (through interpreter): The soldiers were very professional. They took good care of us. They came to us. They knocked. They said: “It’s the security forces.” And then I looked. It was them. I left the room. They cleared the whole floor.
MAN (through interpreter): I heard gunshots very early in the morning. I thought it was firecrackers and didn’t realize it was a hostage situation. At one point, the Malian forces came to get us. They knocked on our doors and evacuated us in small groups. Thank God we’re safe.
JUDY WOODRUFF: At least six Americans were evacuated during the operation, with U.S. and French special forces assisting the Malians.
A jihadist group previously affiliated with al-Qaida, al-Murabitun, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In Paris, French President Francois Hollande vowed to help the former French colony.
SUMMARY: Authorities in the West African nation of Mali say armed Islamic terrorists killed 19 people in Friday’s attack on a Radisson hotel in the capital city of Bamako. Among the victims were hotel guests from Russia, China, Belgium, Israel -- and one American. Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw joins Megan Thompson via Skype from Ghana with the latest.
A French hostage has been executed in Mali, a man claiming to be a spokesman for al-Qaeda in North Africa has told Mauritania's ANI news agency.
A French foreign office spokesman said on Tuesday that Paris was trying to verify the report of the killing of Philippe Verdon, who was kidnapped in November 2011, adding that "we don't know at the moment" whether it was reliable.
The private Mauritanian news agency reported that someone calling himself Al-Qairawani and claiming to be a spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group told them that the "spy" Verdon had been executed "on March 10 in response to France's intervention in Northern Mali".
"The French President (Francois) Hollande is responsible for the lives of the other French hostages," he warned.
In all 15 French nationals, including Verdon, are being held captive in Africa, with AQIM claiming responsibility for six of the kidnappings.
Refusal to pay ransom
Verdon was seized on the night of November 24, 2011 along with Serge Lazarevic. According to their families the two men had been on a business trip and were kidnapped from their hotel in Hombori, northeast Mali.
The families denied that the two men were mercenaries or secret service agents.
AQIM swiftly claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and in August last year a video showing Verdon describing the "difficult living conditions" was released on a Mauritanian website.
The hostages' families have in recent weeks expressed growing fears for their loved ones in the light of France's military actions in Mali.
Earlier Tuesday, Verdon's father Jean-Pierre Verdon complained that the families were hearing nothing from the French authorities.
"We are in a total fog and it is impossible to live this way," he told RTL radio. "We have no information."
Asked about France's refusal to pay ransoms to kidnappers, Verdon senior replied that the families had no say in such "decisions of state".
Paris deployed forces in Mali on January 11 to help stop al-Qaeda linked fighters who had controlled the north of the country since April 2012 from moving southward and threatening the capital Bamako.
Pockets of resistance
France now has more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Mali, of whom about 1,200 are currently deployed in the northeast, carrying out operations after driving out most of the rebels from the area.
There are still pockets of resistance in areas such as Gao, which have witnessed stray attacks and suicide bombings since the rebels fled.
The French troops in the region are backed up by African forces. Soldiers from Chad, whose experience and training has made them key in the French-led offensive, have also suffered casualties with at least 26 deaths.
On Tuesday the French army announced that 15 rebel fighters had been killed in recent days in the northern Mali region of Gao, with the seizure of a large cache of arms and ammunition.
The AQIM source cited by the Mauritanian news agency refused to confirm reports that top rebels, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abou Zeid had been killed in Mali earlier this month.
France has been carrying out DNA tests to determine whether the rebel leaders are among those killed in recent fighting in Mali.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): There remains a great deal of confusion about the extent of the damage in Timbuktu. What is known is that the city, a United Nations World Heritage Site, is home to more than 200,000 ancient manuscripts and other artifacts, spanning many centuries, stored in small private libraries and a large research center.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro visited Timbuktu 10 years ago for the PBS program "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly."
Here's an excerpt from his report.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's an impoverished town of about 30,000, most of them nomadic traders or subsistence farmers. But Timbuktu is rich in history -- history that contradicts a commonly held impression in the West that sub-Saharan Africa has only oral and no written traditions.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And next: to the West African nation of Mali.
Today, Islamist fighters destroyed a bridge using explosives near the Niger border. Meanwhile, French forces pushed towards the rebel stronghold city of Gao.
But Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News reports that the Malian army is now posing problems for the French military.
LINDSEY HILSUM: The Malian army is on the lookout for jihadis running from French bombing. Soldiers in units fighting further north say the Islamist fighters are well-armed and many of them very young.
In the gendarmerie in Sevare, an officer brought out a 16-year-old he said had been captured near Douentza, a town the jihadis had occupied until last week. The boy said he'd just been looking for work.
ADAMA DRABO, Mali (through translator): They gave us clothes and shoes. We stayed with them, cooking for them. After a few days, one team of mujahedeen went out to fight, but we stayed to cook for the others.
LINDSEY HILSUM: He seemed bewildered. "I never carried a weapon," he said, "and my friend and I ran away when the fighting started."
ADAMA DRABO (through translator): When the mujahedeen left to give food to their colleagues at the checkpoints, we realized that we had to leave. When we were walking, we came face to face with a patrol of the Malian army. They started asking us questions. When they realized that we stayed with the mujahedeens, they took us with them to gendarmerie to find out more about us.
LINDSEY HILSUM: On a barren wasteland across town, a sign that both sides in this war can be cruel, and civilians are the ones who suffer. The well is spattered with blood. The Malian army is said to be responsible. You can just make out a body at the bottom of the pit. The old man showed us a second well.
The French International Federation for Human Rights says, in the last two weeks, Malian soldiers in Sevare have summarily murdered 11 Tuaregs and Arabs, accusing them of being jihadis. At least two bodies have been stuffed down these wells.
The local people took this red earth and put it down the well to stop the body from smelling. This conflict is entering a very dangerous phase. Most of the people I have met so far hate the jihadis. They want to support the Malian army, but if the soldiers behave as badly as their enemies, then what is to stop the people from going to the other side?
The French are only too aware of the problem. Tuaregs and Arabs further north fear reprisals by the Malian army. To them, the jihadis may be the lesser of two evils.
COMMANDER SEBASTIEN, Operation Serval (through translator): Listen, it depends on the will of the local population. They have to choose their fate, whether or not to accept the jihadis. It's hard to fight against a population who is in favor of the jihadis. So the Malian people will decide the future of Mali.
LINDSEY HILSUM: French armor is far superior than that of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, but if the people of Northern Mali fear and hate the Malian troops fighting alongside the French, victory may me hollow and short-lived.
JEFFREY BROWN: The Malian army got a boost from Britain today. Its defense ministry will deploy a spy plane to Mali to help with the military intervention.
It did not require a crystal ball to foresee, as Rendezvous did in our 2013 preview, that Mali would be in the news and that France might be the first to intervene there to counter a perceived terrorist threat to Europe.
Less predictable, however, is the extent to which the French can rely on the support of their European allies now that they have decided to go it alone.
The crisis had been building for the best part of a year since mutinous soldiers staged a coup in Bamako, the Malian capital, last March, and separatist Tuareg tribesmen took the opportunity to seize the north of the country. The tribesmen were quickly pushed aside by radical Islamists, including those behind this week’s hostage-taking in neighboring Algeria.
They were poised to extend their rule this month beyond the two-thirds of the country they already control when the French stepped in at the request of the Bamako government.
As early as last April, Alain Juppé, the then French foreign minister, was warning of the “extremely grave threat” posed by the Qaeda-linked insurgents and their aim of establishing a jihadist regime in northern Mali.
In early September, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was telling readers of the IHT:
If unchecked, the Mali crisis threatens to create an arc of instability extending west into Mauritania and east through Niger, Chad and Sudan to the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, characterized by extended spaces where state authority is weak and pockets of territorial control are exercised by transnational criminals.
So, did the international community, and Europe in particular, react too slowly to the escalating crisis? Or has France acted precipitously in opting for a military solution to contain the threat?
David Rohde writes elsewhere on Rendezvous that regional experts believe the French had to act.
But, as French troops launched ground operations this week in support of local forces, how far are France’s European allies prepared to be sucked into a potential Malian quagmire?
Germany, Denmark and Britain are among European Union partners that have offered logistical support in Mali.
However, as David Cameron, the British prime minister, assured Parliament when he announced the offer of transport aircraft to assist the French mission, there was no question of putting British boots on the ground.
The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is being even more cautious, limiting its assistance to supplying planes to airlift African troops from the regional ECOWAS alliance.
“Under no circumstances does Germany want to become involved in a messy conflict with no clear end in sight,” Germany’s Der Spiegel commented, “particularly not in an election year.”
Germany held out against intervention in Libya in 2011, eventually spearheaded by France and Britain, siding with Russia in a crucial United Nations vote in defiance of its European allies.
Libya underlined the lack of a common foreign policy, let alone a common defense policy, among the 27 European partners who now face a new crisis in North Africa.
Facing recriminations from some in France that it was only its soldiers who were doing the fighting, European foreign ministers agreed on Thursday to speed up the dispatch of more than 200 military personnel to train Malian government forces to confront the Islamists.
But that was an option that had been on the table since October, when European Union officials said the alliance was considering such a move.
The E.U. also stressed that the trainers, due to be deployed by mid-February at the latest, would not be involved in combat operations.
Commenting on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting, Christophe Giltay of Belgium’s RTL broadcaster, said, “More and more French people are asking themselves if the Europeans have really understood the gravity of the situation.”
Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer and Martin Michelot of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States wrote this week that “the glacial pace at which decisions are taken at the national level to support France’s efforts in Mali only underscores the need for European leaders to be willing to discuss common security issues.”
Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, said on Thursday some of France’s partners were “willing to help and support France in every way and they did not rule in or rule out any aspect of that, including military support.”
But, according to the German Marshall Fund experts: “The French military is nevertheless facing the hard reality of acting on its own, with very little support from other European allies.”
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And we turn to the West African nation of Mali, where a war between radical Islamists and government forces has been waged for nearly nine months.
The militants gained control of the north, some two-thirds of the country, last summer and imposed Sharia law. The United States and other Western countries have largely stayed out of the conflict, despite worries of a wider threat to the region.
That all changed Friday when the French government launched air attacks after the fighters took over a village in government-controlled territory.
We begin with this report narrated by Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News.
JONATHAN MILLER: Three jihadist groups now deemed to pose a clear and present danger to the capital, Bamako, and beyond, a threat to Africa and Europe.
COL. PAUL GEZE, French ground commander (through translator): The military units I command will not stay in Bamako, which will be our military base, but will go further north and combat the terrorist groups there, in addition to the airstrikes that we have undertaken in the past two days.
JONATHAN MILLER: The operation already proving heavily dependent on those French airstrikes aimed at destroying capability, disabling, dislodging, and denying sanctuary to the jihadist groups who now occupy an area the size of France.
The Islamists are firing online counter-propaganda salvos. They're targeting Muslims again, they say. "We will destroy them in their dens."
Abd al-Wadoud, leader of al-Qaida in the Islamist Maghreb, posting this message addressed to the president of France and African leaders who support French intervention.
ABD AL-WADOUD, Al-Qaida in the Islamist Maghreb (through translator): I direct my message to those who insist on this oppressive war. If you want peace and security, we welcome that. If you want war, we will fulfill your desire. The great Sahara Desert will be a graveyard for your soldiers.
JONATHAN MILLER: But Francois Hollande, the president of France, has taken a carefully calculated gamble that failure to stop the advancing jihadist forces in their tracks poses an even greater risk: the creation of yet another haven for Islamist insurgents, this time not so far from Europe.
This is a propaganda video filmed by one of the three main jihadi groups, Ansar Dine. A French presidential aide has admitted they're well-trained, well-armed with sophisticated weapons looted from Libya by Tuareg rebels who had been fighting with Gadhafi.
LAURENT FABIUS, French foreign minister (through translator): As far as the direct implication of France is concerned, it's a matter of weeks. After we provide support, we have no intention of staying long-term.
JONATHAN MILLER: The Islamists' destruction of the Sufi Muslim shrines in Timbuktu and their administering Sharia punishments, floggings and public amputations, have scared secular Malians. And they now want urgent help to kick the jihadis out.
Even the Tuareg fighters who started the rebellion only to be overrun by the Islamists themselves say they support French intervention. And now that help has arrived.
SUMMARY: Despite French air strikes, Islamist rebels have gained more control of Mali, a nation rich in minerals and resources. Jeffrey Brown talks to the Atlantic Council's J. Peter Pham and Emira Woods of Institute for Policy Studies about advances by the insurgency to control the West African nation, where democracy has weakened.
Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa is operating terrorist training camps in northern Mali and providing arms, explosives and financing to a militant Islamist organization in northern Nigeria, the top American military commander in Africa said on Monday.
The affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has used the momentum gained since seizing control of the northern part of the impoverished country in March to increase recruiting across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Europe, said the commander, Gen. Carter F. Ham.
General Ham’s assessment is the most detailed and sobering American military analysis so far of the consequences of the Qaeda affiliate and associated extremist groups seizing the northern part of Mali to use as a haven.
“As each day goes by, Al Qaeda and other organizations are strengthening their hold in northern Mali,” General Ham said in remarks at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. “There is a compelling need for the international community, led by Africans, to address that.”
In addition to the risks inside Mali, General Ham also said that members of Boko Haram, an extremist group in northern Nigeria, had traveled to training camps in northern Mali and have most likely received financing and explosives from the Qaeda franchise. “We have seen clear indications of collaboration among the organizations,” he said.
Radical Islamists have turned northern Mali into an enclave for Qaeda militants and for the imposition of harsh Shariah law, which has been used to terrorize the population, particularly women, with amputations, stonings, whippings and other abuses.
The Qaeda North Africa affiliate is now considered one of the best armed and wealthiest of the Qaeda franchises across the world, largely because of millions of dollars gained in kidnapping ransoms, drug proceeds and illicit trafficking in fuel and tobacco, General Ham said.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
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