The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in Africa (review)

The past fifteen years in North Africa have been marked by widespread acts of violence, including the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians (both by armed Islamic extremist groups and by the Algerian military), the murder of foreigners living or working in Algeria, and the kidnapping of European tourists. This purpose of this book is to prove that the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) did not conduct acts of terrorism in the Sahara over the past decade, particularly the kidnapping of European tourists in southern Algeria in 2003. Keenan seeks to establish that acts of terrorism by the GSPC were actually carried out by agents of the Algerian government, with either the knowledge of, or (in Keenan's words) the "collusion" of, the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, Keenan's book is deeply flawed both in terms of the evidence he cites and the inconsistent way he presents his argument. Keenan relies primarily on two types of evidence, both of which are extremely problematic. The first of his main sources of evidence is informants in Algeria and other countries in the region. None of these informants are named, and there is no way to confirm the information he says he obtained from them. This is, of course, an inherent problem in all anthropological research on topics as sensitive as this, and in itself it does not necessarily invalidate this evidence. But it means that we have to take Keenan's word that he obtained this information from reliable informants.

The second of Keenan's main sources of evidence is newspaper articles—nearly all from the Algerian press—and books written by people who say they were involved in the alleged Algerian or Algerian-American conspiracy to, in Keenan's words, "fabricate" acts of terrorism by the GSPC. Keenan himself repeatedly states that Algerian newspapers are closely linked to the Algerian government and are used by the Algerian intelligence services to circulate false or misleading information. And he argues repeatedly that information in these newspapers contradicting his argument is part of the effort by these intelligence agencies to propagate "disinformation." But when it suits his purposes—when the information can be used to support his argument—he cites information uncritically from these same newspapers. And in the case of information from both newspapers and from books, he rarely cites more than one source. Therefore it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider such information as reliable on its own merits.

A second reservation to this work relates to how Keenan uses this evidence to present his argument. The text is littered with hypothetical phrases. Throughout the book information "appears" or "seems" to be accurate; facts are "perhaps," "probably," "likely, or "believed to be" true; conclusions are "possibilities," "suspicions," "hypothetical," or "conjecture"; but "we must presume" that these conclusions are correct because they "seem certain" and it would be "difficult to believe otherwise." Yet by the end of the book, all the statements previously qualified by the use of such words and phrases are presented as proven facts.

The only part of the book based on reliable evidence that can be confirmed is chapter 7, "Oil and Empire." This short chapter argues that the Bush administration used the acts of Islamic extremist terrorism by the GSPC—now al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—to justify its military activities in Africa in order to secure American access to African oil. The evidence presented in this chapter is primarily taken from the work of Michael Klare, particularly from his book Blood and Oil (Henry Holt, 2004), and from my own work (which Keenan generally acknowledges in his footnotes), or from U.S. government sources cited by either Klare or myself.

Keenan may be right about at least some of the things he says, particularly that the Algerian intelligence services permitted or fabricated some acts of Islamic...