ASC-075287668-2887-01

EPILOGUE 325The GSPC is an offshoot of the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), andwas founded in September 1998 by former GIA Commander Hassan Hattab. In2003 there appeared a regional split in the leadership of the GSPC and a split inthe organisation, with one branch operating in Northern Algeria, and a secondbranch in Southern Algeria and in the bordering Sahel states, directed by twonew emirs: Amari Saïfi and Mukhtar Bilmukhtar. Amari Saïfi, a former AlgerianArmy paratrooper (hence his nickname ‘Al Para’), was responsible for thespectacular abduction of 31 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in March2003. 17 After the Algerian army managed to free a first group of seventeenhostages in Southern Algeria in June, the GSPC retreated into Mali with theremaining 14 hostages. The general if diminishing sympathy towards Muslimradicalism in the region, and the business connections between Tamasheq andother smugglers in the Sahara, made Northern Mali a necessary and excellenthiding place for the GSPC, and its inhabitants excellent mediators to solve thehostage crisis. The crisis was solved through the mediation of the MalianGovernment (the Malian Prime Minister at that time was the Tamasheq MohamedAhmed ag Hamani), but especially through the intervention of Kidal’spolitical elite. The main mediators were former rebel leaders, traditional chiefsand local ‘ulama from Kidal. The abduction ended in October 2003, when theGerman Government paid 5,000,000 euros in ransom for the 13 remaininghostages (one German woman had died of sunstroke, the remaining hostageswere 12 Germans and a Dutchman). The Malian Government tolerated thecontinuing presence of the GSPC on its territory, as long as it kept quiet and didnot attack anyone. The Kel Tamasheq intermediaries also made it quite clearthat, if the GSPC would stir up trouble, it would be dealt with on their ownterms. It is surprising that few of the reports written on the abduction casemention the fact that the GSPC hostage crisis was actually resolved through themediation of ‘the savage and violent rebel’ Tamasheq from Kidal. Instead,some journalists even mistook the abductors for local Kel Tamasheq fromMali. 18 Thus, the good guys quickly turned again into bad guys in the perceptionof the public, simply because they had been the bad guys for more thana century. A year later, in 2004, Al Para’s group was hunted down by the USSpecial Forces, but he was eventually captured in March 2004 in the northwesternpart of Chad by a small, local rebel group, the Mouvement pour laDémocratie et la Justice au Tchad (MDJT). After chaotic negotiations in1718The tourists were travelling in small separate groups or as individuals. In all 15German, 10 Austrian, 4 Swiss, 1 Dutch and 1 Swedish tourist were kidnappedduring March and early April 2003.In a pre-interview by Dutch TV news NOS Journaal at the occasion of the liberationof the remaining hostages in October 2003, I was asked what was wrong with theMalian Tuareg that they had abducted the tourists.