U.S. trains Africans to fight al-Qaida: "U.S., Dutch and Spanish special forces are training African soldiers how to fight al-Qaida in the Sahara as regional states establish a joint counterinsurgency command to coordinate an offensive against the jihadists.
For years, al-Qaida groups have exploited the political and ethnic rivalries between the regional states to dodge from one country to another when things got too hot.
The Americans and their allies have long urged these governments to join forces against the jihadists or risk have them turn the vast ungoverned spaces in the Sahara into a sanctuary from which to launch large-scale attacks while operating with narcotics smugglers and other criminal elements based in the unpoliced desert wastes."
