Posted on 03/10/2012 9:07:34 PM PST by nickcarraway
The killing of British hostage Chris McManus in Nigeria is a wake-up call to the threat posed by Islamic militants in Africa, warns former kidnap victim Robert R Fowler
In December 2008, I was making my third trip to Niger as the United Nations Special Envoy, attempting to broker a peace between the government and rebel Tuareg groups. One Sunday, two weeks before Christmas, my colleague, Louis Guay, and I were returning to the capital, Niamey, in a UN vehicle when a truck passed us, slewed in front and forced us to a stop.
Two AK-47s were aimed at the face of our driver, and within the blink on an eye all three of us were torn from our seats and thrown into the back of their truck. The whole grab took perhaps 40 seconds.
Thus began our 56-hour descent into hell, a 1,000 km off-road nightmare into the middle of the Sahara desert. Twelve hours into that appalling journey, we stopped for a couple of hours rest. As I paced back and forth, the sentry, a young Senegalese, looked up from where he was making tea and asked, “Have you figured out who we are yet?” Refusing to acknowledge the dawning reality, I shook my head and he spat “We are al-Qaeda,” enjoying the effect as the bottom fell out of my world.
Three days later, we were ushered toward a large, dark tent, and when I saw the assembled video equipment, I despaired at the thought of my family watching a You Tube video of our beheading. Instead, we recorded a message in which I stated that we had been captured by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and urged the UN and the government of Canada to bend every effort to secure our release and — as instructed
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Thanks for posting. Informative and chilling.
Awww c'mon - that's hate speech. All the lefties told me that the followers of Mahomet are peaceful folks, and all us whiteys are just a bunch of racists.
It’s probably going to be a quick kick in the gut when it dawns on them whom they really serve.
The threat to the stability of the northern half of Africa posed by militant jihadi Islam is present and real. It has been exacerbated by the fall-out from our Libyan adventure, which has caused weapons in untold quantities to spew across one of the most fragile parts of the world. Not only do Al Qaeda’s predations endanger the development gains of the past half-century in the upper part of Africa, but chaos there will very directly impact Western Europe as human emergencies of immense proportion bloom, and illegal refugee flows multiply by orders of magnitude.
(The emphasis is mine, not the editors' or author's.)
Well worth reading all the way. A searing testimonial and urgent warning.
You may find this interesting, ping.
So much for the religion of peace. Wake up, America!!!
Whenever I see phrases like:
“Korean adventure”
“Vietnam adventure”
“Somalia adventure”
“Middle East adventure”
“Kuwaiti adventure”
“Iraq adventure”
“Afghanistan adventure”
“Libyan adventure”
Or similar phrasing, I dismiss anything issuing forth from that person’s mouth.
I can just hear the United Nations idiots when they are taken captive, driving around without security:
“But...we are here to bring peace! We are the friends of everyone...we don’t take sides. We are on your side too...we are with the United Nations, not the American war machine! Why would you cut our heads off?”
Bump for later read.
In some statements adventure is apt,
especially when Dem purposes prod.
Yes, indeedy. I wish people would wise up. Obama and his foreign promotions must go.
A map of the Sahel region showing where Al Qaeda operates (AFP/Graphic)
This was from a post I wrote a while ago about liberals:
"It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.
Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don't even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.
If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu."
This couldn’t possibly have happened- the Democrat’s poster boy Joe Wilson assured us that Niger is secure and we should not concern ourselves with the thought of Niger’s yellowcake uranium being smuggled out, or anything else, as all waa laid back and peaceful.
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