Africa's Most Wanted
Charles Taylor is an accused war criminal. A U.N.-backed court wants him. Washington is dithering
Farah, the former Washington Post reporter, says the FBI's investigative strategy may be partly to blame. "If you are a white FBI agent going to hotels and saying, 'Have you seen a terrorist?' what are they going to tell you?" Farah asks. Lormel counters that perhaps White and Farah heard only what they wanted to hear.
With both sides dug in, whom to believe? "It's as clear as mud," acknowledges Lormel. But the FBI and the U.N.-sponsored court appear to agree on at least one thing: West Africa, with its abundance of diamonds, could well be the next crucible for jihad. "There's clearly an al Qaeda presence in the region," says Lormel. "The conflict diamonds--it's certainly an area of vulnerability."
Policing it, however, is difficult. "We descend on countries for a couple of months," says an FBI official, "then we're gone. We can't always be in a reactionary mode." That's about to change. Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who has long pushed the FBI to investigate White's findings, recently inserted $2 million in a 2005 omnibus appropriations bill to set up an FBI office in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. But, Wolf concedes, it's only just a start for the FBI. "They still don't have anybody in West Africa that understands the region," says Wolf.
The CIA's intelligence capabilities in West Africa languished after the Cold War, and especially after the September 11 attacks, when most of its intelligence assets were rerouted to the Middle East. "It's the sort of thing you don't pick up on a satellite. It requires human intelligence to get to the bottom of it," says Vance Serchuk of the American Enterprise Institute. "That's what we don't have."
Charles Taylor, meanwhile, appears to continue fomenting trouble in the region. "As late as three weeks ago," says the court's Crane, "we had him dealing with one of al Qaeda's key operatives and certainly the No. 1 guy in West Africa, Mustafa Mohamed Fadhil." Adds White, the investigator: "Charles Taylor hates the U.S. government, and he will do anything he can to bring harm to the U.S. Mark my words, the government is going to rue the day it didn't take this seriously." Ed Royce, a California Republican who chairs a House terrorism subcommittee, echoes those thoughts. "We all underestimate this thug, Charles Taylor," he says, "at our own peril."
A DEADLY DEAL FOR DIAMONDS?
Investigators from a United Nations special court say former Liberian President Charles Taylor sold diamonds from mines he controlled in Sierra Leone in exchange for cash and weapons, both before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The investigators say al Qaeda laundered the diamonds and used profits profits to fund terrorist activities. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies dispute these findings.
1 Diamonds from Taylor-controlled mines in Sierra Leone are sent to Liberia.
2 Taylor sells diamonds to al Qaeda in exchange for cash and weapons.
3 Al Qaeda launders most of the diamonds on the Antwerp, Belgium, diamond exchange.
4 Taylor's diamonds are also sold to al Qaeda through a Belgian diamond-laundering operation called Asa Diam, with ties to Hezbollah. Payment of cash and weapons goes back to Taylor.
[Map labels]
1 SIERRA LEONE
2 LIBERIA
3, 4 BELGIUM
SENEGAL
GUINEA
IVORY COAST
NIGERIA
KENYA
TANZANIA
Rod Little-- USN&WR
With Julian E. Barnes
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