American Foreign Policy Interests, 32: 242–252, 2010
Copyright # 2010 NCAFP
ISSN: 1080-3920 print=1533-2128 online
DOI: 10.1080/10803920.2010.501224
U.S. Interests in Promoting Security
across the Sahara
J. Peter Pham
Abstract
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Since the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, on the American homeland, the United
States has made security across the Sahara,
from the Mediterranean coast of North Africa
to the resource-rich West African waters of the
Gulf of Guinea, a significant priority. This arti-
cle looks at the current status of the threat posed
by the regional affiliate of Al Qaeda and other
extremist groups in the region both to the states
there and to the broader international com-
munity. Then it explores obstacles to American
efforts to promote a comprehensive counterter-
rorism approach, not least among which is the
decades-old dispute over the Western Sahara,
which continues to drive a wedge between two
of the region’s most influential countries,
Morocco and Algeria. Finally, recommendations
for security cooperation and economic inte-
gration, which would provide a more positive
environment for states across the Sahara and
be consonant with U.S. interests, are offered.
Introduction
In the aftermath of the September 11,
2001, attacks on New York and Washington
by terrorists from Al Qaeda, an organization
operating out of remote Afghanistan, it
became a United States foreign policy impera-
tive to prevent other poorly governed spaces
from being similarly exploited to provide
facilitating environments, recruits, and even
potential targets for similar extremists. As
the 2002 National Security Strategy of the
United States of America noted, ‘‘Weak states
. . . can pose as great a danger to our
national interests as strong states. Poverty
does not make poor people into terrorists
and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institu-
tions, and corruption can make weak states
vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug
cartels within their borders.’’1 Probably
nowhere is this analysis more borne out than
Africa where, as the strategy document went
on to acknowledge, regional conflicts arising
from a variety of causes, including poor
governance, external aggression, competing
claims, internal revolt, and ethnic and
religious tensions, ‘‘lead to the same ends:
failed states, humanitarian disasters, and
ungoverned areas that can become safe
havens for terrorists.’’2
Other considerations—including internal
concerns such as the desire by military plan-
ners to rationalize the bureaucratic organiza-
tion for security cooperation with the nations
of the continent—contributed to the decision.3
Yet there is no denying that both the experience
of terrorism in Africa—including the attacks by
Al Qaeda on the U.S. embassies in Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in
1998, and on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mom-
basa, Kenya, and, simultaneously, on an Israeli
commercial airliner in 2002—and concern over
the potential for an expansion of extremist
activity were factored into the decision to
establish the United States Africa Command
 U.S. Interests in Promoting Security across the Sahara
(AFRICOM) as America’s sixth geographic
combatant command.4
Possibly aside from the Horn of Africa,
where the total collapse of the Somali state in
1991 left a void that has yet to be filled and
where an insurgency spearheaded by a group
with links to Al Qaeda continues to gain ground
against a rather notional ‘‘Transitional Federal
Government’’ incapable of asserting its auth-
ority over more than a few square blocks of the
capital, nowhere else on the continent is the
United States more invested in counterterror-
ism efforts than in the Sahel, the belt connecting
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North Africa and West Africa.5 The region is
strategically important for a number of reasons,
including bridging North Africa and
sub-Saharan Africa, straddling ancient trade
and migration routes. Moreover, the Sahel belt
touches several countries—including Algeria,
Nigeria, and Sudan—with serious security chal-
lenges of their own that could easily spill over
their borders. Finally the region has the poten-
tial to be the source of important natural
resources, both renewable and nonrenewable.6
All of those factors contribute to a heightened
consciousness of the geopolitical significance of
the region, especially when the local affiliate of
Al Qaeda, which has migrated across the Sahara
to emerge in the Sahel, has not only stepped up
its activity there but has put down roots and
established links with traffickers in narcotics
and other contraband. To get a better handle
on this situation, this article will examine both
the current threat and U.S. responses to it
before looking at ways to achieve the U.S. policy
objective of promoting security by fostering
diplomatic cooperation and economic integration
among the states of this region.
The Threat of Terrorism in
the Maghreb and the Sahel
The most prominent, albeit not the only,
terrorist group operating in the region is the
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243
Qaedat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Maghrib al-Islami
(‘‘Al Qaeda [Network] for Jihad in the Islamic
Maghreb,’’ or simply Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM)), originally constituted by
hardcore elements of the Algerian Islamist
terrorist organization, the Salafist Group for
Preaching and Combat (usually known by its
French acronym GSPC, Groupe Salafiste pour
la Prédication et le Combat), which in 2006
formally pledged its allegiance to Osama bin
Laden and was recognized by him, through
Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Al Qaeda’s franchise in
the area. The GSPC itself was founded in the
late 1990s as a splinter of the Armed Islamic
Group, itself a militant offshoot of Algeria’s
main Islamist movement, the Islamic Salvation
Front, which fought a bitter civil war in which
at least 150,000 people were killed after the
Algerian military intervened and voided the
1992 parliamentary elections that the Islamists
were winning.7
While analysts debate whether the
‘‘rebranding’’ of the North African extremists
as Al Qaeda affiliates brought them any
additional material resources, there is no dis-
puting that they have certainly intensified
their activity in recent years, including no
fewer than 900 bombings, shootings, kidnap-
pings, and assassinations directed against dom-
estic and foreign targets in Algeria, Morocco,
Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and
Niger. The attacks have left more than 1,500
people dead and 6,000 others wounded. More-
over, as a leading analyst of the region has
noted, ‘‘What is critical is the realization that
despite the best regional, international, and
transnational efforts, terrorist incidents in the
Maghreb and Sahel are continuing to rise. This
acceleration poses an increasing threat not only
to political and economic reforms in the region
but also to potential U.S. and European targets
likely to be in Al Qaeda’s sights as future
opportunities for attack.’’8
More worrisome than the toll in terms of
victims of AQIM and other extremist groups
operating across the Sahara is the emergence
 244
of new links among those expanding trans-
national terrorist networks and narco-traffickers
in Latin America and other criminal organiza-
tions. For example, in December 2009 the U.S.
attorney for the South District of New York
charged three men from the West African coun-
try of Mali—Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré, and
Idriss Abelrahman—with conspiracy to commit
acts of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to provide
material support to a foreign terrorist organiza-
tion. According to the complaint in the case,
the trio had agreed to transport cocaine through
West and North Africa with the intent of sup-
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porting no fewer than three groups formally
designated by the U.S. State Department as
‘‘foreign terrorist organizations’’: Al Qaeda,
AQIM, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC). The case marked the first
time that associates of Al Qaeda and its fran-
chise in the Maghreb=Sahel regions have been
charged with narco-terrorism offenses in an
American court.9
Emboldened by its alliance with Al Qaeda
and reinvigorated by the new resources
brought in by its criminal activities, not only
is ‘‘it . . . highly probable that [AQIM] will
increase its attempts to attack Western targets
in the region, particularly businesses and
employees associated with the United States
and France,’’ but it is now even likelier to act
on its long-held objective of ‘‘carrying out
attacks in Europe and North America.’’10
U.S. Efforts to Respond to
the Challenge
Even before the establishment of AFRICOM
to integrate American military efforts across
Africa, the United States had undertaken to
build the framework for a regional approach
to a problem that clearly transcended the
notoriously porous borders of the Maghrebi
and Sahelian countries. In late 2002 the State
Department launched the Pan-Sahel Initiative
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J. Peter Pham
(PSI), a modest effort to provide border security
and other counterterrorism assistance to Chad,
Mali, Mauritania, and Niger using personnel
from U.S. Army Special Forces attached to the
Special Operations Command Europe
(SOCEUR). Funding for PSI was modest,
amounting to under $7 million in fiscal year
2004, most of which was spent on training
military units from the four partner countries.
U.S. Marines were also involved with certain
aspects of the training, and Air Force personnel
provided support, including medical and dental
care for members of local units, as well as
neighboring residents. The program’s modest
funding was stretched to provide nonlethal
equipment, including Toyota Land Cruisers,
uniforms, and global positioning system (GPS)
devices for participating military forces.11 As
a follow-up to the PSI, as well as to overcome
what then Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan
called its ‘‘band-aid approach,’’12 the State
Department funded Trans-Sahara Counterter-
rorism Initiative (TSCTI), which was launched
in 2005. TSCTI added Algeria, Nigeria,
Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia to the original
four PSI countries. Funding for TSCTI (which
was renamed the ‘‘Trans-Sahara Counterter-
rorism Program,’’ TSCTP, in late 2007 and sub-
sequently the ‘‘Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism
Partnership’’) increased steadily from $16 mil-
lion in 2005 to $30 million in 2006, with
incremental increases up to $100 million a year
through 2011. TSCTP works with partner
nations to provide training and support, with
an emphasis on preventing terrorism, enhanc-
ing border and aviation security, promoting
democratic governance, and building public
support against extremism.
Military support for TSCTP comes through
Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans-Sahara
(OEF-TS), the regional war on terrorism oper-
ation, responsibility for which devolved to
AFRICOM after its stand-up in 2008. (In
addition to the TSCTP countries, OEF-TS
includes Burkina Faso and Libya.) Moreover,
 U.S. Interests in Promoting Security across the Sahara
the military component, TSCTP, receives
support from other State Department initia-
tives—especially the Antiterrorism Assistance
(ATA) program and the Terrorist Interdiction
Program (TIP)—and other U.S. government
agencies, including the U.S. Agency for
International Development, the Department
of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
What has been achieved in terms of military
interoperability and capacity building was put
on display in May 2010 with a nearly
three-week-long exercise, ‘‘Flintlock 10,’’ which
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involved some 600 U.S. Special Forces person-
nel; 150 European troops from Belgium,
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and
Spain; and 400 African troops from Algeria,
Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania,
Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. Kicked
off in the Burkinabé capital of Ouagadougou,
the exercise consisted of activities and events
in locations in several different countries
throughout the region, including the establish-
ment of a deployed Joint Special Operations
Task Force to conduct real-time coordination
with all participating nations and the creation
of a multinational coordination center that
served as the focal point for information shar-
ing, as well as the planning of synchronized
operations. The center conducted academic
training for all participants, culminating in a
command post exercise involving instruction,
scenario development, and a control group to
enhance the participants’ ability to work collab-
oratively toward solving a shared regional cri-
sis involving illegal activities that disrupt
stability and security. The tactical portion of
Flintlock 10 consisted of small-unit combined
training and activities as well as Medical and
Veterinary Civic Action Programs that pro-
vided the populations in rural areas with
health information and medical care.13
Addressing the poverty and economic mar-
ginalization that can facilitate the radicaliza-
tion of populations, the Millennium Challenge
Corporation has signed ‘‘compacts’’ with a
American Foreign Policy Interests
245
number of countries in the region to fund
specific major programs designated by the aid
recipient and targeted at reducing poverty
and stimulating economic growth as well as
‘‘threshold programs’’ to improve performance
with an eye toward achieving ‘‘compact’’ status.
Currently four OEF-TS countries—Burkina
Faso, Mali, Morocco, and Senegal—benefit
from that program, receiving some $2.2 billion
in millennium challenge funding, and Niger
has been named eligible for ‘‘threshold’’ status.
Obstacles to an Effective
Approach
Despite the tremendous progress that has
been achieved, rivalries among the states in
the region have proven to be significant obsta-
cles to the economic integration and political
cooperation that they sorely need. The Arab
Maghreb Union (AMU), first agreed to by
Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunis-
ia in 1989, was supposed to spur the creation of
an organic regional partnership. However, the
union has fallen victim to longstanding tensions
between Morocco and Algeria, which, according
to one analysis, has exacted a not insignificant
price, both economic and political:
The loss of earnings due to the Arab
Maghreb Union’s failure is on the order
of 2 per cent of average annual GDP
for each country—Algeria, Morocco,
Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. Trade
with other Maghreb countries repre-
sents on average only 2 per cent of
foreign trade for each of these
countries. Although the five countries
possess genuine economic complemen-
tarity, they engage in virtually no trade.
For Tunisia, for example, this might
well result in the failure to create some
20,000 jobs a year. The lack of
integration also puts the brakes on
 246
foreign direct investment in a region of
100 million consumers. This is another
significant loss, on the order of $3 bil-
lion for the region as a whole. The
region also suffers from a real deficit
in terms of telecommunications infra-
structure, which further frustrates
economic advances.
Because they are divided, the
countries of the Maghreb cannot
speak in a common voice in inter-
national negotiations, including as
part of the Euro-Mediterranean
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Dialogue, and cannot defend their
shared interests. The lack of close
cooperation on security issues is also
notable. Although there is no evi-
dence of structural links between the
region’s different radical Islamist
movements, particularly between
Moroccan and Algerian salafi jihad-
ists, some connections have become
evident.14
Were it not so dysfunctional, the AMU
would perhaps be the ideal institution within
which to formulate a regional counterterrorism
strategy. That it is not—and in fact has been
‘‘frozen’’ since 1994—is attributable to a num-
ber of reasons, chief among which is the conflict
between the two regional powers—Morocco and
Algeria—over the Western Sahara.15 As Robert
Godec, principal deputy coordinator for coun-
terterrorism at the U.S. State Department,
observed earlier this year, ‘‘While the Maghreb
governments have had some success in combat-
ing AQIM and terrorism, there remains much
to be done.’’ ‘‘Unfortunately,’’ he added, ‘‘the
lack of resolution of the Western Sahara ques-
tion block[s] the cooperation and integration
the region needs. For the region to achieve real
success, the key differences must be resolved or
at least bridged.’’16
The origins and evolution of this conflict
have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere.17
In short, the sparsely populated, Colorado-sized
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J. Peter Pham
desert territory of Western Sahara has never
been a country of its own. The nomadic tribes
of the region historically owed allegiance to
the rulers of Morocco, Saharan chieftains pay-
ing feudal homage to the Moroccan sovereign
who in turn appointed them civil governors of
their peoples, authorized to collect taxes locally
in his name. In the colonial scramble for Africa,
Spain claimed a protectorate over the area,
although it was able only to make good its pre-
tensions in the early twentieth century with
the help of French air support. Following the
death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, after
barely half a century of colonial occupation, the
Spanish Sahara was abandoned by Madrid in
early 1976. Morocco claimed the territory and
moved to assume control under an agreement
by which Spain relinquished it. Morocco met
armed opposition from a self-styled ‘‘national
liberation’’ movement, the Frente Popular de
Liberación de Saguı́a el Hamra y Rı́o de Oro
(‘‘Popular Front for the Liberation of
Saqiet al-Hamra and Rı́o del Oro,’’ Polisario
Front), who had fought against Spain and was
backed by Algeria’s then Socialist strongman,
Houari Boumediène, and supported by the
Communist bloc. (Even now, despite its dire
economic straits, Cuba continues to provide
training and other assistance to Polisario
cadres.) The result was a bitter guerrilla war
that Morocco largely won by the time the inter-
national community managed to achieve a
cease-fire in 1991. More than 85 percent of
the former Spanish Sahara is behind the ‘‘sand
berm,’’ the defensive shield of sand and stone
barriers erected by Moroccan forces in the
1980s, patrolled by a modest United Nations
peacekeeping force. The rest of the former
Spanish territory is demilitarized and the rem-
nant of the Polisario forces confined to several
isolated ‘‘refugee’’ camps around Tindouf in
Algerian territory where the group’s leadership
carries on the charade of being the
self-proclaimed ‘‘Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic.’’ As the leading analyst of the
Maghreb at the Institut Français des Relations
 U.S. Interests in Promoting Security across the Sahara
Internationales summarized it, ‘‘The Polisario
Front continues to exist thanks to Algeria and
it is a fact that this country has not abandoned
its ambition to dominate the region.’’18 A
veteran American scholar has given this
explanation for the Algerian position:
Diplomats have long asked what
Algeria really wants, since the issue
is not an existential matter for the
government or the state and is at best
(or worst) a matter of pride for the
Algerian army, which has no raison
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d’être outside its rivalry with
Morocco. Others have suggested that
Moroccan ratification of the 1972
border treaty with Algeria, confirmed
by the king in 1981 but not yet by
parliament, might lessen tensions,
although Algeria, which ratified it in
1973, publicly counts the treaty as a
given and discounts any Moroccan
moves. Others have suggested that
what Algeria really wants is an outlet
to the Atlantic, and so Moroccan
assurance of a railway to the coast
for Algerian iron ore from Gara Djibe-
let would help. But in the end, it is not
clear whether any item would catch
the interest of the Algerian regime,
or whether the issue is not of greater
interest unresolved, to tweak Morocco
when useful.19
More ominously, another analyst has sig-
naled the potential risk in reliance on perpetu-
ating this status quo:
This issue was left to fester for over
thirty years, leaving a legacy of bitter-
ness and uncertainty. The Sahrawi
refugees who populate the camps of
Tindouf in Southwestern Algeria have
endured decades of displacement,
misery and hardship. The ceasefire
of 1991 ended their guerilla war
American Foreign Policy Interests
247
against Morocco, but did nothing to
produce the imaginative negotiating
political solution that is required to
end the conflict. The young Sahrawis,
who have grown up being exposed to
the most fervent kind of nationalism,
are growing increasingly disen-
chanted with their leadership’s pas-
sivity and inability to fulfill their
nationalist aspirations. The reported
corruption of the Polisario’s leader-
ship, its clientelistic practices in the
distribution of international aid, and
the monopoly over power by a few
elites since 1976 have also exacer-
bated the tensions within the
camps. . . .
Western policy-makers and
foreign observers have not paid
enough attention to the destabilizing
potential of this growing trend of
radicalization of young Sahrawis.
Many dismiss the likelihood that
the low-intensity conflict between
Morocco and the Polisario might esca-
late and spill over into a dangerous
inter-state conflict between Morocco
and Algeria. For now, Algeria and
Morocco have managed to contain
their sharp differences over the West-
ern Sahara, but there is no guarantee
that this will last forever. After all,
like the recurrent conflagrations in
the relations between Israel and its
Arab neighbors as well as India and
Pakistan demonstrate, ‘‘it was often
a third-party rebellious movement . . .
linked with internal factions on one
side or the other that triggered explo-
sions and dragged the confronting
states beyond their sober policies.’’20
The sequestration—lacking true freedom of
movement and independent access to the UN
high commissioner for refugees or other neutral
humanitarian groups, of tens of thousands of
 248
Saharawi in squalid camps by the Polisario
Front, acting thus with the at least tacit
approval of Algeria, in whose territory the
confinement takes place, in order to create a
constituency for the separatist cause—is not
only a humanitarian tragedy and a serious
violation of international law obligations,
including the Convention on the Status of
Refugees,21 but it is also viewed by many as a
potentially dangerous opening for radicaliza-
tion. Earlier this year, speaking at a conference
in Washington on ‘‘The Dynamics of North
African Terror,’’ Michael Braun, former head
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of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, remarked on the potentially
dangerous tie between the Polisario and AQIM.
According to Braun, in the former’s Tindouf
camps, ‘‘young people aged 16–25 are deprived
of their rights and live in despicable conditions
with no hope for a better tomorrow,’’ while
powerful terrorist organizations like the latter
are expert at finding such vulnerable individ-
uals, thus making sure that the Polisario con-
trolled camps are ‘‘a potential gold mine for
AQIM recruiters.’’22 Evidence has also emerged
over the course of the last year that suggests
that members of the military arm of the Poli-
sario Front have been involved in various illicit
activities often associated with the AQIM-
dominated crime–terror nexus, including sev-
eral fighters who were detained by Mauritan-
ian officials for their involvement in the late
November 2009 kidnapping of three Spanish
aid workers from the Catalan nongovernmental
organization Barcelona Acció Solidària.23
Resolving the Standoff in
the Western Sahara
Thus it is in the interests of the United
States, as well as the parties directly con-
cerned, that a realistic political solution to the
conflict be found. In 2007 Morocco unveiled a
generous plan offering broad autonomy to the
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J. Peter Pham
Western Sahara that included not only
provisions for an elected local administration
for the region consisting of executive, legisla-
tive, and judicial branches but also ideas about
education and justice and the promise that
the additional financial resources needed to
develop the region and its institutions would
be made available to supplement whatever rev-
enues can be raised locally. The only matters
that would remain in the control of Rabat
would be defense, foreign affairs, and the cur-
rency, as well as the religious prerogatives of
the king as ‘‘commander of the faithful.’’24
This proposal certainly meets the require-
ment that in order to be viable and sustainable
over time, whatever solution adopted must
necessarily be founded on the principles of
realism. In his memoirs former UN Secretary
General Javier Pérez de Cuellar, who oversaw
the establishment of a cease-fire between
Morocco and the Polisario Front and set in
motion the deployment of the blue-helmeted
peacekeepers nearly two decades ago, outlined
the contours of a pragmatic framework for
resolving the conflict very much along the lines
of the current Moroccan autonomy plan:
I was never convinced that indepen-
dence promised the best future for
the inhabitants of the Western
Sahara. Their number, however
counted, is less than 150,000, and
aside from its phosphate deposits the
land is poor, offering meager pros-
pects of viability as a separate coun-
try. Such political leadership as
exists is not impressive and in some
cases is not Sahrawi in origin. A
reasonable solution under which the
Western Sahara would be integrated
as an autonomous region in the Mor-
occan state would have spared many
lives and a great deal of money.25
Others have come around to the same con-
clusions. Dutch diplomat Peter van Walsum,
 U.S. Interests in Promoting Security across the Sahara
who served as personal envoy of the UN
secretary general for the Western Sahara from
2005 until 2008, reported to the Security
Council that an independent Saharan state
was ‘‘not a realistic option.’’26 The then U.S.
representative to the Security Council agreed,
telling reporters, ‘‘The best way to move
forward, in our view, the realistic way to move
forward, is to pursue a negotiated solution
resulting in true autonomy under Moroccan
sovereignty.’’27 The autonomy option has like-
wise received support from the French and
Spanish governments28—not surprising given
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not only the historical links between the two
former protectorate powers and Morocco but
also because ‘‘Morocco is not only considered as
a privileged partner of [the European Union],
but also as the most advanced country in the
region with regard to the process of democrati-
zation and consolidation of the rule of law.’’29
Recently U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton reaffirmed that ‘‘there has been
no change in policy’’30 and emphasized that
support for the autonomy initiative is firmly
rooted in American policy as something ‘‘that
originated in the Clinton administration . . . was
reaffirmed in the Bush administration and it
remains the policy of the United States in the
Obama administration.’’31
U.S. leadership in encouraging a resolution
of the conflict would enjoy significant support,
even in the current Congress with its often bit-
ter partisan divisions. In 2009 an unprec-
edented bipartisan majority of the U.S. House
of Representatives—some 233 members,
including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Min-
ority Leader John Boehner, Majority Whip
James Clyburn, Minority Whip Eric Cantor,
Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson,
and Republican Conference Chairman Mike
Pence—sent a bipartisan letter to President
Barack Obama urging support for what they
described as the ‘‘ground-breaking’’ plan for
autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, noting
that it was ‘‘the only feasible option.’’32 A year
later, 54 of the representatives’ counterparts
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249
in the Senate—including Intelligence Commit-
tee Chair Diane Feinstein and ranking member
Kit Bond and Armed Services Committee
Chair Carl Levin and ranking member (and
2008 Republican presidential nominee) John
McCain—sent a letter to Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton urging her to ‘‘make
the resolution of the Western Sahara stalemate
a U.S. foreign policy priority.’’33
What is clear from this account is the recog-
nition that although the conflict over the West-
ern Sahara has gone on too long and exacted
too high a price on all involved, the very last
thing anyone needs is its ‘‘resolution’’ by the cre-
ation of another ‘‘failed state’’—one that is too
small, too poor, and too vulnerable to subversion
by terrorists and other extremists to be permit-
ted in the contemporary international order.
Thus is it clear that the compromise political sol-
ution offered by Morocco to what had hitherto
proven to be one of the most longstanding
territorial disputes in the region is important.
Furthermore, just as it has been in the
interests of the United States and its European
allies to promote a framework for regional
security cooperation, so it is in everyone’s
benefit that they now advance the political
and commercial incentives for economic inte-
gration that alone can consolidate the counter-
terrorism gains. To that end, consideration
should be given to eventual expansion of the
successful U.S.–Morocco Free Trade Agreement
of 2004 to other countries in the region as an
incentive for them to overcome obstacles to
resolving their differences peacefully and defin-
itively. After all, long-term stability across
the Sahara requires sustainable economic
growth and social development, not just better
vigilance against radical ideologies.
Conclusion
In the aftermath of 9=11, the United States
found that it could no longer ignore whole
swathes of Africa like the vast expanses of the
 250
continent’s middle belt where terrorist and
other threats can develop and have emerged.
In the face of such challenges, President
Obama has correctly emphasized that ‘‘our
Africa Command is focused not on establishing
a foothold in the continent but on confronting
these common challenges to advance the secur-
ity of America, Africa, and the world.’’34
Although a great deal of progress has been
made in strengthening the individual and col-
lective capacities of states in the Maghreb and
the Sahel to respond to the security challenges
confronting them, America needs to be more
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proactive in promoting its geopolitical, econ-
omic, and other strategic interests in the region
by facilitating the resolution of conflicts—
preeminent among which is the status of the
Western Sahara—currently hampering inte-
gration and cooperation among the states
involved. The only way that will be achieved
is on the basis of realism. The consequences of
failing to do so, for both the peoples of North
and West Africa as well as Americans and
Europeans, are too terrible to contemplate.
About the Author
National Committee on American Foreign
Policy trustee, senior fellow, and Africa project
director J. Peter Pham is an associate professor
of justice studies, political science, and Africana
studies at James Madison University in Virginia.
Dr. Pham is also vice president of the Association
for the Study of the Middle East and Africa
(ASMEA), an academic organization founded by
Professor Bernard Lewis and representing more
than 900 scholars at more than 300 institutions
around the world, and editor-in-chief of its
flagship Journal of the Middle East and Africa.
Notes
1. The White House, National Security
Strategy of the United States of America
(September 17, 2002).
American Foreign Policy Interests
J. Peter Pham
2. Ibid. Also see J. Peter Pham, ‘‘The New
Strategic Importance of Africa,’’ in The Impact
of 9=11: The Day that Changed Everything?
ed. by Matthew J. Morgan (New York, 2009),
231–244.
3. See J. Peter Pham, ‘‘America’s New
Africa Command: Paradigm Shift or Step Back-
wards?’’ Brown Journal of World Affairs,
vol. 15, no. 1 (Fall=Winter 2008): 257–272; also
see idem, ‘‘Been There, Already Doing That:
America’s Ongoing Security Engagement in
Africa,’’ Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 30,
no. 1 (April 2009): 72–78.
4. See J. Peter Pham, ‘‘AFRICOM: Terror-
ism and Security Challenges in Africa,’’ in U.S.
Strategy in Africa: AFRICOM, Terrorism and
Security Challenges, ed. David J. Francis
(New York, 2010), 64–77; also see idem, ‘‘Next
Front? Evolving U.S.-African Strategic Rela-
tions in the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Beyond.’’
Comparative Strategy, vol. 26, no. 1 (2007):
39–54.
5. See, inter alia, Potomac Institute for
Policy Studies and Conflict Management Pro-
gram at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced International Studies (SAIS),
Why the Maghreb Matters: Threats, Opportu-
nities, and Options for Effective American
Engagement in North Africa (Washington,
2009).
6. See Lawrence Cline, ‘‘Counterterrorism
Strategy in the Sahel,’’ Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, vol. 30, no. 10 (October 2007):
889–899; also see Ricardo Laremont and Hrach
Gregorian, ‘‘Political Islam in West Africa and
the Sahel,’’ Military Review, vol. 86, no. 1
(January–February 2006): 27–36.
7. See Guido Steinberg and Isabelle Were-
fels, ‘‘Between the ‘Near’ and the ‘Far’ Enemy:
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,’’ Mediterra-
nean Politics, vol. 12, no. 3 (2007): 407–413.
8. Yonah Alexander, Maghreb and Sahel
Terrorism: Addressing the Rising Threat from
al-Qaeda and Other Terrorists in North and
West=Central Africa (Arlington, VA, 2009), 9.
 U.S. Interests in Promoting Security across the Sahara
9. See J. Peter Pham, ‘‘Emerging West
African Terror-Drug Nexus Poses Major Secur-
ity Threat,’’ World Defense Review, January 28,
2010, at http://worlddefensereview.com/
pham012810.shtml (accessed May 5, 2010).
10. John M. Nomikos and Aya Burweila,
‘‘Another Frontier to Fight: International
Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism in
North Africa,’’ International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, vol. 22,
no. 1 (2009): 53.
11. See Stephen Ellis, ‘‘Briefing: The
Pan-Sahel Initiative,’’ African Affairs, vol.
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103, no. 412 (July 2004): 459–464.
12. Quoted in Donna Miles, ‘‘New Counter-
terrorism Initiative to Focus on Saharan
Africa,’’ American Forces Press Service, May
16, 2005, at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/
newsarticle.aspx?id=31643 (accessed May 5,
2010).
13. Eric S. Elliott, ‘‘Flintlock 10 Begins in
Burkina Faso,’’ U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs,
at http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=
4364&lang=0 (accessed May 5, 2010).
14. International Crisis Group, Western
Sahara: The Cost of the Conflict, Middle East=
North Africa Report no. 65, June 11, 2007, 18.
15. See Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Claire
Brunel (eds.), Maghreb Regional and Global
Integration: A Dream to Be Fulfilled, Policy
Analyses in International Economics 86
(Washington, 2008); also see Fouad M. Ammor,
‘‘De l’environnement stratégique du Maghreb,’’
in Le Maghreb stratégique, Occasional Paper 14
(Rome, 2006), 11–23.
16. Robert Godec, ‘‘Opportunities and
Challenges for U.S.-Maghreb Cooperation’’
(keynote address, Conference on ‘‘The Dynam-
ics of North African Terror,’’ Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Washing-
ton, D.C., February 16, 2010), at http://csis.
org/event/conference-dynamics-north-african-
terror (accessed May 5, 2010).
17. See J. Peter Pham, ‘‘Not Another Failed
State: Towards a Realistic Solution of the
American Foreign Policy Interests
251
Western Sahara,’’ Journal of the Middle East
and Africa, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 1–24.
18. Khadija Mohsen-Finan, Les défis
sécuritaires au Maghreb (Paris, 2008), 7.
19. I. William Zartman, ‘‘Time for a
Solution in the Western Sahara Conflict,’’ Mid-
dle East Policy, vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 182.
20. Anouar Boukhars, ‘‘Fighting the
Growth of Terrorist Networks in the Maghreb:
Turning Threats into Opportunities,’’ Brook-
ings Doha Center Policy Briefing, December
2009, 9.
21. See Caitlin Dearing, Group Rights and
International Law: A Case Study on the
Saharawi Refugees in Algeria, ed. Jean
AbiNader (Washington: Inter-University
Center for Legal Studies, 2009).
22. Michael Braun, Remarks during Panel
on ‘‘The Expanding Reach of Extremists
Groups in the Maghreb’’ (Center for Strategic
and International Studies, Washington,
D.C., February 16. 2010), at http://csis.org/
event/conference-dynamics-north-african-
terror (accessed May 5, 2010).
23. See Europa Press, ‘‘Tres ex comba-
tientes del Polisario detenidos por presuntos
vı́nculos con Al Qaeda en el Magreb Islámico,’’
January 30, 2010, at http://www.europa-
press.es/internacional/noticia-mauritania-tres-
ex-combatientes-polisario-detenidos-presuntos-
vinculos-qaeda-magreb-islamico-201001301435
34.html (accessed May 5, 2010).
24. Moroccan Initiative for Negotiating an
Autonomy Statute for the Saharan Region,
April 10, 2007, at http://dcusa.themoroccanem-
bassy.com/download/political/Initiativ_ang.pdf
(accessed May 5, 2010).
25. Javier Pérez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for
Peace: A Secretary-General’s Memoirs (New
York, 2006), 352.
26. UN Department of Public Information,
News and Media Division, ‘‘Security Council
Extends Western Sahara Mission until 30 April
2009, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 1813
(2008),’’ April 30, 2008, at http://www.un.org/
 252
News/Press/docs/2008/sc9319.doc.htm (accessed
May 5, 2010).
27. Quoted in Claudia Parsons, ‘‘UN
Council Urges Realism in Western Sahara
Dispute,’’ Reuters, April 30, 2008, at http://www.
reuters.com/article/idUSN30547316 (accessed
May 5, 2010).
28. See Khadija Mohsen-Finan, Trente ans
de conflit au Sahara occidental (Paris, 2008), 3.
29. Karima Benabdallah, ‘‘The Position of
the European Union on the Western Sahara
Conflict,’’ Journal of Contemporary European
Studies, vol. 17, no. 3 (December 2009): 433.
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30. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Remarks with Moroccan Foreign
Minister Taieb Fassi-Fihri, November 2, 2009,
at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/11/
131229.htm (accessed May 5, 2010).
31. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Interview with Fouad Arif of Al-Aloula
American Foreign Policy Interests
J. Peter Pham
Television, November 3, 2009, at http://
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/11/131354.
htm (accessed May 5, 2010).
32. The text of the letter dated April 3, 2007
along with the signatures is available at http://
www.moroccanamericanpolicy.org/Congressional
Letter.pdf (accessed May 5, 2010).
33. See J. Taylor Rushing, ‘‘Bipartisan
Senate Majority Pushing Clinton on Western
Sahara,’’ The Hill, March 18, 2010, at http://
thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/87689-
bipartisan-senate-majority-pushing-clinton-on-
western-sahara (accessed May 5, 2010).
34. The White House, Office of the Spokes-
man, Remarks by the President Barack Obama
to the Ghanaian Parliament, Accra, Ghana,
July 11, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/
the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-
the-Ghanaian-Parliament/ (accessed May 5,
2010).