From: The Indian Express
Written by Praveen Swami
As world leaders assemble in Paris for a rally against terror, France scours african desert for Jihadist commander and his 3½-ft executioner.
Eighteen thousand feet below the state-of-the-art Rafale-4 jets arcing across Chad’s skies, the emptiest battlefield in the world unfolds: a giant arc of desert, some 3,500 km by 1,500 km, spread across five countries. Hidden there, somewhere, are their targets: among them, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed jihad commander widely known as ‘Mr Marlboro’, and his own MiniMe, a 3-foot-6 executioner who is reported by witnesses to have beheaded dozens of prisoners with an axe almost as big as himself.
For more than a year, jets like these have been taking off every day, with the spearhead of France fighting a war of attrition against jihadists in North Africa’s Sahel, called Operation Barkhane. Little noticed in India, the war has enraged Islamists, leading to calls for retaliation that culminated in the savage terror attacks in Paris last week.
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Belmokhtar raised millions for his new group by capturing control of cigarette-smuggling routes across the Sahel, and kidnapping western tourists for ransom. He developed formidable local contacts, marrying four women from different tribes.
