{"id":5383,"date":"2010-05-19T19:26:05","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T23:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2010-05-19T19:26:05","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T23:26:05","slug":"us-military-addressing-al-qaeda%e2%80%99s-expansion-in-western-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5383\/us-military-addressing-al-qaeda%e2%80%99s-expansion-in-western-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Addressing Al-Qaeda\u2019s Expansion in Western Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Holder may be unwilling to identify radical Islam as a driving force behind the recent surge in terror threats to the United States, but American special forces aren\u2019t so hesitant.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/world\/middle-east\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16117126\">The Economist reports<\/a> that the American military is engaging in joint operations in the west African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal to combat the growing presence of \u201cAl-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb\u201d (AQIM).<\/p>\n<p>Tuned-in Americans understand that in places like Somalia, radical Islam has found a fertile breeding ground for creating converts out of oppressed, deprived young men and women disgruntled with their lot in life.\u00a0 It is logical that a place so close to the Middle East, only a short boat ride from Yemen, and so lacking in governance is a training ground for terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>But American intelligence has been keeping an eye on the Sahel for some time.\u00a0 The Sahel is a stretch of grassland that runs just south of the Saharan Desert, through the aforementioned west African countries.\u00a0 It is an area subject to extreme drought and is only sparsely populated by tribal people.\u00a0 Away from the attention of governing authorities, terrorist organizations from countries like Algeria have been able to set up training camps and are attempting to unite a coalition of jihadist organizations that have become increasingly problematic in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Our support goes out to the American servicemen charged with the difficult task of training local forces to combat this growing threat to the security of free people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Holder may be unwilling to identify radical Islam as a driving force behind the recent surge in terror threats to the United States, but American special forces aren\u2019t so hesitant.\u00a0 The Economist reports that the American military is engaging in joint operations in the west African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1298,1297,1055,536],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-africa","tag-al-qaeda","tag-radical-islam","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5386,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions\/5386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}