Manufacturing Terror

Abstract

This chapter describes how the United States (US), in just under ten years from 2002 to the beginning of 2012, was responsible for the transformation of a vast and hitherto largely tranquil part of Africa into what the Pentagon, as early as 2003, has designated as a ‘Terror Zone’ (Keenan, 2009, p. xxi). This part of Africa covers most of the Sahel and much of the Sahara, especially the north-west African portion of it, and swathes of West Africa. This vast region embraces Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, southern Algeria, southern Libya and select parts of certain West African countries, such as northern Nigeria. Its epicentre, in both the geographical and operational sense, is north-eastern Mali.