VZCZCXRO6729
RR RUEHPA
DE RUEHNM #0062/01 0241120
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 241120Z JAN 07
FM AMEMBASSY NIAMEY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3203
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS 3339
RUEHBP/AMEMBASSY BAMAKO 0356
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0495
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUFGNOA/HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NIAMEY 000062 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF/W FOR BACHMAN; INR/AA FOR BOGOSIAN; PARIS FOR AFRICA 
WATCHER; PASS TO USAID FOR AMARTIN 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/24/2017 
TAGS: PINR PREL PGOV PTER NG
SUBJECT: NORTHERN NIGER POST KIDAL: UN STAFF / VOLUNTEERS 
OFFER SANGUINE VIEWS ON SECURITY IN THE ZONE 
 
REF: 06 NIAMEY 1133 
 
Classified By: POLITICAL OFFICER ZACH HARKENRIDER FOR REASONS 1.4 (C & 
D) 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (C) During recent travel to Tahoua, a city in 
north-central Niger, Poloff interacted with several United 
Nations Volunteers (UNVs) who work with Tuareg and Arab 
ex-combatants in the country's northern Azaouagh region. The 
Azaouagh borders Mali's Kidal region, and is an area of 
concern for several reasons. Its towns are home to a number 
of ex-combatants, both Tuareg and Arab, who run a lively 
smuggling business across the region's borders with Algeria 
and Mali. Its location between those two countries also makes 
it a potential zone of transit and operation for the Salafist 
Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which might seek to 
capitalize on the zone's porous borders and its alienation 
from the Government of Niger (GON). Due to its weak 
infrastructure and security environment, the Azaouagh and its 
principal towns - Tassara, Tillia, and neighboring Abala - 
have traditionally been difficult for Emboffs to visit. 
Interaction with UNVs who are integrated into the region's 
communities and who work closely with its ex-combatants 
afforded a rare opportunity to get a closer look at the 
region. Their assessments of the security situation in the 
Azaouagh were surprisingly sanguine. Disentangling truth from 
a local tendency to air-brush the reality for donors' 
consumption is always a challenge, but our traditional 
concerns over stability in the Azaouagh may be exaggerated. 
END SUMMARY 
 
¶2. (SBU) As noted reftel, the Azaouagh is home to better than 
half of the ex-combatants from the Tuareg rebellion and Arab 
"self-defense movement" of 1991-1995. As part of a 
Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) funded 
reinsertion project implemented by the United Nations 
Development Program (UNDP), UNVs from these communities train 
the ex-combatants in the use of microcredit and then monitor 
the small income generating activities thereby funded. In the 
process, they travel to these isolated communities, build 
relationships with locals, and discuss their ambitions and 
frustrations on a regular basis. Poloff and AIDoff spoke with 
the UNDP project manager and UNVs from Abala, Tillia, and 
Tassara on December 8 & 9. 
 
¶3. (C) All of the UNVs argued that the Nigerien/Malian border 
is well secured due to the Nigerien army and police "forward 
deployed" presence in places like Tassara and Tillia. NOTE: 
These towns fall under the Nigerien Military's Defense Zone 
IV, headquartered in Tahoua. Defense Zone IV's 424 Infantry 
Company is based in Tillia. It normally has a platoon size 
detachment deployed to Tassara. Zone IV units also conduct 
regular patrols along the frontier with Mali. While there 
have been reports of GSPC incursions into this region in the 
past, none have been received in the past nine months. END 
NOTE. Everyone agreed and affirmed that a Kidal-type 
reignition of the conflict would not occur in Niger. The 
Tuareg ex-rebels of the Azaouagh, the UN staff claimed, are 
content with the reinsertion money they have received and 
with the GON's attention to their concerns. According to 
them, no Salafists were operating in the Azaouagh. COMMENT: 
While all of this struck Poloff as unduly sunny - an attempt 
to tell the donor what you think they want to hear, lest the 
money somehow get cut-off - the UN staff did provide a deeper 
level of analysis that went some distance toward justifying 
their sanguine views. END COMMENT 
 
¶4. (C) The UNVs argued that the GON has been much more adroit 
in its management of the nomadic north than the Government of 
Mali (GOM). In the view of the UNVs, the reinsertion program 
in Niger actually works, while the Malian equivalent (also 
managed by UNDP, though 10 years ago) merely serves as a 
cautionary tale of how not to do such things. Stressing that 
the UN had learned from its mistakes in Mali, our 
interlocutors noted that the Malian program gave each 
ex-combatant 1.5 million CFA, but little in the way of 
guidance or training on what to do with it. Most 
ex-combatants blew the money and ended up right back at 
square one, frustrated and broke. There was little in the way 
 
NIAMEY 00000062  002 OF 002 
 
 
of follow-up or evaluation, and, since participants received 
most of the money up-front, little leverage that the UN or 
GOM could apply later on. According to the UNVs, that sort of 
mismanagement - coupled with neglect by the GOM, a poorly 
thought-out reintegration program that concentrated 
ex-combatants in certain Malian Army units, and ineffective 
co-optation of ex-rebel leaders contributed to the explosion 
in Kidal and lasting insecurity throughout Northern Mali. 
 
¶5. (C) The UNVs added that the GON had done a good job of 
managing the residual tensions between the Tuareg and Arab 
communities in the Azaouagh. NOTE: While the Tuaregs of the 
region rebelled against the GON, the Arabs' "self-defense 
movement" sided with the GON against their neighbors. END 
NOTE The GON worked through traditional Arab and Tuareg 
chiefs to get the two communities to forgive and forget. The 
daily necessity of living near each other and sharing scarce 
water-points and pasturage seems to have helped that attitude 
of pragmatic accommodation to take root. UNVs and a variety 
of other interlocutors in the region told us that both 
communities regard their past antagonisms as "shameful," and 
a thing to be forgotten. 
 
¶6. (C) COMMENT: While Post does not concede all of the 
conclusions that UN staff derived from this line of 
reasoning, we consider the reasoning itself to be valid. The 
GON has done a good job of managing its north. After the 
Kidal flare-up, President Tandja summoned Tuareg and Arab 
leaders for a tte--ttes at his residence. Many of them 
have benefited from inclusion into (or co-optation by) the 
GON. The two greatest ex-rebel leaders, Rhissa Ag Boula and 
Mohammed Anacko, are cases in point. The former served as 
tourism minister from 2000 - 2004 and currently runs a 
political party; the latter is the GON's High Commissioner 
for Restoration of the Peace. The dozens of ordinary 
ex-combatants Poloff met during the trip wasted no time in 
putting their problems on the table, but not one of them 
argued that a return to violence offered a solution. They 
felt that their communities had lost too much during the 
rebellion; satisfied with the GON or not, they have no more 
appetite for war. Borders too are sometimes less porous than 
we think; the concept of allegiance to the nation-state 
greater; and, different experiences of recent history and 
governance may logically yield different perceptions of the 
nation-state. As for Arabs and Tuaregs, the necessity of 
coexistence in a harsh environment forces pragmatic 
accommodation of neighbors. 
 
¶7. (C) At the same time, smuggling and cattle rustling ("vol 
traditionel" in local parlance) continue, engendering a 
certain level of ambient insecurity as culprits periodically 
shoot out their differences with competitors or the police. 
Nevertheless, without some first-hand information on the 
region, post will forever be caught between our own worst 
expectations of the region's stability, and some GON 
contacts' efforts to sugarcoat the same. TSCTP funded NGO 
activities in the region - such as the MercyCorps implemented 
decentralization project targeting the Azaouagh - can be the 
"entering wedge" that enables Emboffs to finally visit these 
communities and judge for ourselves. END COMMENT. 
ALLEN