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 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) -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶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