NORTHERN NIGER POST KIDAL: UN STAFF / VOLUNTEERS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NIAMEY 000062

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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

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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