Two other men and a woman were wounded, and the U.S. forces treated them before detaining the men and taking the woman to hospital. The statement described all the men killed and wounded as terrorists.

"Coalition forces strive to mitigate risks to civilians while in pursuit of terrorists. Terrorists continue to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence," it said.

Relatives said the dead were a family of seven and a neighbor.

"I was inside preparing for Ramadan morning meal. I heard explosions and shooting and I ran out," one young, weeping woman told Reuters television as neighbors held her arms.

"When I came back I saw all my family killed. My father -- four women and three men. All of them, including my brother and his pregnant wife. They took two of our family away, a man and a woman. They were wounded," she said. She did not give her name.

Baquba is in Diyala province where many locals are hostile to U.S. forces and al Qaeda militants have strong influence.

Earlier reports from Iraqi police wrongly described the air strikes as a mortar attack. The U.S. military said it knew of no mortar attack in the area and neighbors interviewed by Reuters television confirmed the building was hit by air strikes.

This month is Ramadan, when Iraqis wake before dawn for a large meal and fast during the day.

The United States says violence in Iraq has surged in the last two weeks, with this week counting the most suicide bombs of any week since the war began in 2003.

U.S. forces predicted a surge in violence with Ramadan and have proven right so far, with bombings and clashes mounting since Sunni Muslims began observing the holy month on Saturday.

The registered refugee figures showed 40,000 families -- 240,000 people -- claiming assistance, up from 27,000 families in July. The figures do not include an uncounted number of Iraqis who have moved home without claiming aid.

"The reason for this increase is that the security situation in some provinces has deteriorated considerably, forcing people to leave their homes in fear for their lives," said Migration Ministry spokesman Sattar Nowruz.

BOMBS

A car bomb and a roadside bomb exploded in quick succession in the Saadoun district of central Baghdad on Thursday, killing four people and wounding 38, police said. At least five other bombs went off in the capital, killing at least three and wounding 30.

Mortar rounds landed on a district in the southwest of the capital killing four. Bombs exploded in Mosul and Numaniya.

U.S. commanders have focused their efforts on the capital Baghdad over the past two months and say they have managed to reduce the number of sectarian death squad killings in the scattered neighborhoods they have targeted.

The bodies were blindfolded, bound and showing signs of torture with bullet holes on different parts of their bodies, the source said.

The almost daily gruesome body findings, assassinations and explosions in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were seen as a major setback for the Iraqi government's efforts to stem violence and achieve national reconciliation.

Another poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year.

By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intended to keep permanent military bases in the country.

The stark assessments, among the most negative attitudes toward U.S. forces since they invaded Iraq in 2003, contrast sharply with views expressed by the Iraqi government.

Last week, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said coalition troops should remain in the country until Iraqi security forces were "capable of ending terrorism and maintaining stability and security."

The State Department poll was based on 1,870 face-to-face interviews conducted from June 26 to July 6 while the Program on International Policy Attitudes poll was conducted over the first three days of September.

"Lincoln Group is proud to be trusted to assist the multinational forces in Iraq with communicating news about their vital work," Lincoln Group spokesman Bill Dixon said in a statement. Details about the contract were confirmed by the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, and were also described in documents posted on a federal government Web site outlining contracts awarded.

The contract is worth roughly $6.2 million per year over a two-year period, according to Johnson.

The idea is to use the information to "build support" in Iraqi, Arabic, international and U.S. audiences for what the military describes as its goals in Iraq, such as destroying the insurgency and helping Iraqis build a democracy, according to contract documents.

The list of media outlets to be watched includes the New York Times, Fox Television and the satellite channel, Al-Arabia.

The Lincoln Group was mired in controversy last year when it became known that the company had been part of a U.S. military operation to pay Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories about coalition activities. According to the company's Web site, it was created in 2003 to do public relations and communications work in challenging environments such as Iraq.

The type of contract, its cost, and the fact that it was awarded to the PR and communications company have raised questions.

Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J., who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said he would be asking the Department of Defense for information about how this "controversial" vendor was chosen, saying the choice of the Lincoln Group "concerns me greatly."

But, Andrews said he's more concerned about the fact that the contract was awarded at all, not just to the Lincoln Group.

"I wish that our problem in Iraq was that the military wasn't getting good PR," Andrews said. "The problem seems to be that the country is sliding into civil war."

Johnson could not comment on how the Lincoln Group was chosen, simply saying it was a "standard contracting process." He said the contract did not include any provisions to purchase favorable coverage or pay for favorable stories. The Lincoln Group would not comment on the contract beyond the statement issued.

Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Arlington, Va., said she was worried about whether the military would be creating its own news through its own newspapers or Web sites.

"If they're trying to influence Iraqi opinion of Americans, I almost find that to be unconscionable because that would say that they do not value a free and independent press in Iraq," Dalglish said.

According to Johnson, the contract is really nothing new from programs that are already in existence.

Multi-National Forces-Iraq already has in place a one year contract with The Rendon Group, a Washington D.C.-based company, to perform many of the same functions this current contract would fulfill, Johnson said.

"We always monitor the press. Any organization, anywhere monitors the press to see what's being said to determine what messages are out there and how it's impacting the environment," Johnson said.

The Rendon Groups contract, worth $6.4 million over one year, was scheduled to expire this September but Johnson said it has been extended until Oct. 27 while the winner of the new contract is determined.

A key question is whether any public relations campaign in Iraq will work.

Nabil Khalid, the executive news director of Al-Arabia, one of the most popular Arabic-language television stations in the Middle East, said right now, the multinational forces in Iraq are losing the public relations battle.

"If you asked me who better influences the media, the insurgents or the multinational forces, I would say that the insurgents," Khalid said, speaking by telephone from the station's Dubai headquarters.

The first week of Ramadan has seen a spike in attacks, with not only drive-by shootings and explosions, but also the night time killings generally attributed to Shiite death squads that leave corpses strewn across the city.

Police reported finding another 15 corpses on Thursday morning, following the discovery of several dozen the day before.

"This has been a tough week," Caldwell told reporters. "We have seen an increase of attacks as anticipated. The terrorists and other groups are punching back to discredit the government of Iraq."

For the last several months US and Iraqi forces have been conducting a security plan to stabilize the war-torn capital which is beset by rival Sunni and Shiite forces engaged in a dirty sectarian war.

US forces said violence has decreased in areas where they have conducted their house to house sweeps.

"The pattern we have tended to see is that, as we've cleared areas, the numbers of murders and executions have decreased in most sectors," a coalition intelligence official told reporters.

There are indications, however, that armed groups are returning to these neighborhoods and perpetrating new violence once US troops have moved on, sometimes acting with the complicity of elements in the Iraqi security forces.

"We would ascribe that to probably some measure of some elements in MOI (Ministry of Interior) facilitating the re-entry of folks into the secure area," said the intelligence official referring to militia death squads.

The number two US military commander in Iraq emphasized Wednesday that the government had to deal with the militias in the country, which have close ties with some of the parties in the coalition government.

"We have to fix this militia issue. We can't have armed militias competing with Iraqi security forces, but I also have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that," said Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.

Despite the role of US forces in attempting to stabilize the country, however, recent polls conducted in Iraq have a majority of the population calling for the swift withdrawal of coalition troops.

A poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland had 78 percent of respondents saying that they thought the US presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing.

Support for attacks on US troops has also increased considerably: 61 percent approve of the attacks, up from 47 percent in January, according to the poll.

A separate internal US State Department poll quoted by the Washington Post had similar results: nearly three-quarters of Baghdadis would feel safer if US and foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent supporting an immediate pullout.

Iraq's leadership, however, has consistently stated that coalition forces are in the country with their permission and are necessary for stability

A number of other bombs went off in Baghdad on Thursday morning, without any fatalities, however. A car bomb went off in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Bayaa district in southwest Baghdad in a used car lot, wounding two people, followed by a second blast nearby an hour later, wounding eight more.

A National Police patrol was also targeted early on Thursday with a roadside bomb on the main city highway in east Baghdad which wounded three policemen.

In west Baghdad's Yarmuk neighborhood a car bomb and then another kind of makeshift explosive hit a police patrol, wounding four policeman.

Violence in Mosul, a city of 1.75 million people, is not as bad as in Baghdad or Diyala province, claims Mr Goran, who is also head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Mosul, during an interview with The Independent inside his heavily fortified headquarters. This is not saying a great deal, since he added that 40 to 50 people were being killed in Mosul every week.

"Two officials from the KDP working in this building were shot dead outside their homes a few days ago," said Mr Goran, an urbane, highly educated man who spent 11 years in exile in Sweden and speaks five languages. He has been the target of eight assassination attempts, in which several guards have been killed.

It was only possible for me to go to Mosul because Mr Goran sent several of his bodyguards in two cars to pick me up in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Travelling at high speed into Mosul, they pointed to the remains of the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which had been destroyed by a large suicide bomb in a Volvo in mid-August. The blast killed 17 men, mostly soldiers on guard. Fearing a similar attack, the KDP had just added another concrete blast wall to its already impressive defences.

The fate of Mosul, the largest city in Iraq in which Sunni Arabs are in the majority, may determine how far Iraq survives as a single country. The proportion of Arabs to Kurds in the province and city is much disputed.

There is no doubt that the Arabs are in a majority of around 55 per cent in the province, but they angrily dispute the Kurdish claim to make up a third of the 2.7 million population. When an Arab MP in parliament in Baghdad claimed this week that the Kurds made up only 4 per cent of the population of the city, all the Kurdish MPs staged a walk-out in a fury.

At the moment nobody wholly controls Mosul, one of the oldest urban centres on the planet, sprawling along both banks of the Tigris river. The 2nd Iraqi Army Division is based in the city, and the 3rd Division is outside, each 15,000-strong, and both of them are at least 50 per cent Kurdish, and with Kurdish commanders. But the Americans, fearful of the Sunni Arab reaction, have forbidden the army to patrol too aggressively.

If the Kurds have the army, the Arabs have the police. There are 16,000 policemen in the province, and 6,000 in the city. The Kurds regard them with the greatest suspicion. As we drove to the KDP headquarters, one of the Kurdish bodyguards told me to "hide your notebook and pen if we stop at a police checkpoint, because we don't trust them". The Kurds have long accused senior police officers of being crypto-Baathists, sympathetic to the insurgents.

The US experience in Mosul has not been happy. During the first year of the occupation General David Petraeus, the US commander of the 101st Division, tried to conciliate the many officers and officials of Saddan Hussein's regime who came from Mosul. In the long term the experiment failed. When US marines stormed Fallujah in November 2004, most of the police in Mosul resigned, and insurgents captured 30 police stations and $40m (£21m) worth of arms almost without firing a shot. The US was forced to call in Kurdish peshmerga fighters to retake the city.

The US and Kurds still co-operate. The Americans are highly reliant on Kurdish intelligence to search for guerrillas. But they are also conscious that a recent confidential Pentagon poll leaked to ABC television showed that 75 per cent of Sunni Arabs in Iraq supported armed resistance. The US forces, who used to have four bases in the city, have now retreated to one large base at the airport.

A final explosion may not be far away. Under article 140 of the new Iraqi constitution, there must be a vote by the end of 2007 to decide which regions will join the KRG. Mr Goran says that such a poll could see all of Mosul province east of the Tigris and the districts of Sinjar and Talafar to the west of the river joining the KRG. "As we get closer to the implementation of article 140, the problems will get worse," he says.

"We've got a lot of challenges facing us. All of us must protect our countries. But at the same time, we all must work to make the world a more hopeful place," Bush said during the brief public appearance.

"And so today's dinner is a chance for us to strategize together, to talk about the need to cooperate, to make sure that people have got a hopeful future," he added.

The three leaders broke bread in a stately White House dining room in an effort to ease tensions that Bush aides say undermine efforts to quell surging Taliban violence and to hunt down terrorist mastermind
Osama bin Laden.

"They understand that the forces of moderation are being challenged by extremists and radicals," said Bush, who has come under renewed pressure to find bin Laden ahead of critical November US legislative elections.

The US president, gesturing towards Musharraf, said the Al-Qaeda chief "wants to hurt my friend here," seeks to "upset the democracy in Afghanistan" and must be "brought to justice".

A brief White House statement after the dinner said Bush, Musharraf and Karzai had made a committment to support "moderation and defeating extremism through greater intelligence sharing, (and) coordinated action against terrorists".

Karzai and Musharraf have been waging a war of words over which country bears the brunt of the blame for the surge of attacks by the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, amid Afghan charges that Pakistan is coddling extremists.

In an interview with CNN television on Wednesday, Karzai charged Pakistan was "not doing enough at all" to rid Islamic schools of teachers who are "training extremists full of hatred for the rest of the world".

He also renewed his accusation that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had found refuge in Pakistan after US-led forces ousted the militia for refusing to hand over its sponsor bin Laden, the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

And Musharraf on Tuesday used an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to accuse him of being "concerned more about himself than about Afghanistan."

"We should work together, but I'm afraid he is not being honest about everything," said the Pakistani leader.

The three were expected to discuss a controversial deal between Pakistan and tribal leaders in a remote area where bin Laden may be hiding, amid US and Afghan concerns that it may take pressure off Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.

White House spokesman Tony Snow refused to say Wednesday that Bush believed Musharraf was doing everything in his power to battle extremists, saying only that Bush was "satisfied with the efforts he's made and supports them".

The US president, who laid the groundwork for the unusual summit by meeting with Musharraf on Friday and Karzai on Tuesday, was expected to make a forceful case for improved cooperation.

"The president is always candid when he speaks to other heads of state," said Snow.

Musharraf said in a newly published interview in the The Times of London that bin Laden was alive and hiding in Afghanistan, insisting "it's not a hunch" but the result of "good intelligence".

Bush, who has been emphasizing US help for moderates throughout the Muslim world, said he was eager to discuss ways the United States "can help these two countries provide a foundation for hope".

"It's very important for the people in Pakistan and Afghanistan to understand that America respects religion, and we respect the right for people to worship the way they see fit," he said.

"We welcome Muslim leaders here in the White House," he said. "I look forward to having dinner with friends of mine who don't happen to share the same faith I do but, nevertheless, share the same outlook for a hopeful world."

Although the United States had vague suspicions that the Sahel region of Africa might become a possible terrorist haven following its dislodgment of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the gear change was triggered by the hostage-taking of 32 tourists in the Algerian Sahara. The United States attributed their capture in March 2003 to Algeria's Islamist "terrorist" organization, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC). The presumed mastermind of the plot was the GSPC's second-in-command, who goes by many aliases, including El Para after his stint as a parachutist in the Algerian army.

The GSPC held the hostages in two groups approximately 300 kilometers apart in the Algerian Sahara. An Algerian army assault liberated one of the groups. The captors took the other group to northern Mali and finally released the hostages following the alleged ransom payment of five million Euros. The hostage-taking confirmed U.S. suspicions. Even before the hostages were released, the Bush administration was branding the Sahara as a terror zone and El Para as a top al-Qaida operative and "bin Laden's man in the Sahel."

The U.S. spin on these events was all very dramatic. And it was all largely untrue.

The Pan-Sahel Initiative

In January 2004, following earlier visits from the U.S. Office of Counterterrorism to Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Bush's Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) rolled into action with the arrival of a U.S. "anti-terror team" in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital. U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Pamela Bridgewater confirmed that the team comprised 500 U.S. troops and a deployment of 400 U.S. Rangers into the Chad-Niger border region the following week. (In 2005, the PSI expanded to include Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, and Nigeria, and the organization became the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative).

By the end of January, Algerian and Malian forces, reportedly with U.S. support, were said to have driven the GSPC from northern Mali. Then, in a series of engagements, a combined military operation of Niger and Algerian forces, supported by U.S. satellite surveillance, chased El Para's men across the Tamesna, Aïr, and Tenere regions of Niger into the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. There, thanks to the support of U.S. aerial reconnaissance, Chadian forces engaged the GSPC in early March in a battle lasting three days, reportedly killing 43 GSPC. El Para managed to escape the carnage but fell into the hands of a Chadian rebel movement. This group held him hostage until October 2004 when he was returned to Algeria, allegedly with the help of Libya. In June 2005, an Algerian court convicted him in absentia of "creating an armed terrorist group and spreading terror among the population." It sentenced El Para to life imprisonment.

Within a year, the United States and its allies had transformed the Sahara-Sahel region into a second front in the global "war on terror." Prior to the hostage-taking in March 2003, no act of terror, in the conventional meaning of the term, had occurred in this vast region. Yet, by the following year, U.S. military commanders were describing terrorists as "swarming" across the Sahel and the region as a "Swamp of Terror." The area was, in the words of European Command's deputy commander General Charles F. Wald, a "terrorist infestation" that "we need to drain." Stewart M. Powell, writing in Air Force Magazine, claimed that the Sahara "is now a magnet for terrorists." Typical of the media hype were articles in the Village Voice such as "Pursuing Terrorists in the Great Desert."

But the incidents used to justify the launch of this new front in the "war on terror" were either fiction, in that they simply did not happen, or fabricated by U.S. and Algerian military intelligence services. El Para was not "Bin Laden's man in the Sahara," but an agent of Algeria's counter-terrorist organization, the Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité.

Many Algerians believe him to have been trained as a Green Beret at Fort Bragg in the 1990s. Almost every Algerian statement issued during the course of the hostage drama has now been proven to be false. No combined military force chased El Para and his men across the Sahel. El Para was not even with his men as they stumbled around the Aïr Mountains in search of a guide and having themselves photographed by tourists. As for the much-lauded battle in Chad, there is no evidence that it happened. Leaders of the Chadian rebel movement say it never occurred, while nomads, after two years of scratching around in the area, have still not found a single cartridge case or other material evidence.

How and why did such a deception take place? The "how" is simple. First, the Algerian and U.S. military intelligence services channeled a stream of disinformation to an industry of terrorism "experts," conservative ideologues, and compliant journalists who produced a barrage of articles. Second, if a story is to be fabricated, it helps if the location is far away and remote. The Sahara is the perfect place: larger than the United States and effectively closed to public access.

The "why" has much to do with Washington's "banana theory" of terrorism, so named because of the banana-shaped route Washington believed the dislodged terrorists from Afghanistan were taking into Africa and across the Sahelian countries of Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania to link up with Islamist militants in the Maghreb. Hard evidence for this theory was lacking. There was little or no Islamic extremism in the Sahel, no indigenous cases of terrorism, and no firm evidence that "terrorists" from Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the Middle East were taking this route.

Washington appears to have based its notion on some unpublished sources and Algerian press reports on the banditry and smuggling activities of the outlaw Mokhtar ben Mokhtar. It also misconstrued the Tablighi Jama'at movement, whose 200 or so members in Mali are nicknamed "the Pakistanis" because the sect's headquarters are in Pakistan. Finally, local government agents told U.S. officials what they wanted to hear.

Notwithstanding the lack of evidence, Washington saw a Saharan Front as the linchpin for the militarization of Africa, greater access to its oil resources (Africa will supply 25% of U.S. hydrocarbons by 2015), and the sustained involvement of Europe in America's counterterrorism program. More significantly, a Saharan front reinforced the intelligence cherry-picked by top Pentagon brass to justify the invasion of Iraq by demonstrating that al-Qaida's influence had spread to North Africa.

The Algerian Connection

Washington's interest in the Sahel and the flimsiness of its intelligence were extremely propitious for Algeria's own designs. As western countries became aware of the Algerian army's role in its "dirty war" of the 1990s against Islamic extremists, they became increasingly reluctant to sell it arms for fear of Islamist reprisals and criticism from human rights groups. As a result, Algeria's army became progressively under-equipped and increasingly preoccupied with acquiring modern, high-tech weapon systems, notably night vision devices, sophisticated radar systems, an integrated surveillance system, tactical communications equipment, and certain lethal weapon systems. Whereas the Clinton administration kept its distance, the Bush administration invited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as one of its first guests to Washington. Bouteflika told his American counterpart that Algeria wanted specific equipment to maintain peace, security, and stability.

September 11 was a golden opportunity for both regimes, especially Algeria, which sold its "expertise" in counter-terrorism to Washington on the basis of its long "war" against Islamists through the 1990s that left 200,000 people dead. This common ground in the war against terrorism was the basis of a new U.S.-Algerian relationship. However, by late 2002, Algeria was publicly admonishing the United States for its tardiness in delivering on its promises of military equipment. Washington's caution, however, was justified by the fact that Algeria was on top of its "terrorist" problem and consequently no longer in need of such sophisticated equipment.

El Para was proof that "terrorism" was far from eradicated in Algeria and that Islamic militancy now linked the Maghreb and Sahel. His activities not only eased Washington's political reticence on military support for Algeria, but also provided the missing link in its banana theory of terrorism.

Who conned whom is perhaps immaterial, although the U.S. lack of human intelligence on the ground and its cherry-picking of unverified intelligence certainly made it unusually receptive to the wooing of Algeria's military intelligence services. The situation resembled Ahmed Chalabi's manipulation of U.S. intelligence agencies in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, while Algeria certainly duped U.S. intelligence services, the overall fabrication of the so-called Second Front involved the collusion of both parties. U.S. monitoring of the hostage situation, including the use of AWAC surveillance, speaks to Washington's willing participation.

The Front Collapses

The Second Front deception has done immense damage to the peoples and fabric of the Sahara-Sahel region. The launch of a Sahara front in the "war on terror" has created immense anger, frustration, rebellion, political instability, and insecurity across the entire region. The successful Mauritanian coup, the Tuareg revolts in Mali and Niger, the riots in southern Algeria, and the political crisis in Chad are direct outcomes of this policy. It has also destroyed the region's tourism industry and the livelihoods of families across the entire region, forcing hundreds of young men into the burgeoning smuggling and trafficking businesses for a living. In Washington, the same people who failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein are now busy classifying these innocent victims of U.S. foreign policy as putative "terrorists."

Fortunately for the people of the region, this Second Front is collapsing. U.S. regional commanders admitted to a German journalist this last spring that their EUCOM predecessors had over-hyped the terrorist situation. In the meantime, U.S. skullduggery in the region is likely to be exposed further by President Bouteflika's recent investigation into fraud and corruption by the Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root Condor (BRC), set up and registered as an Algerian company by Dick Cheney in 1994.

The Bush administration fabricated an entire front in the "war on terror" for its own political purposes. Its obsession with secrecy is not for reasons of national security but to conceal falsehood. That is why the Senate Intelligence Committee is stalling its investigation of Douglas Feith and his role at the Pentagon's controversial Office of Special Plans. The investigation is likely to open "an even bigger can of worms," as one former intelligence officer has warned.

The collapse of the second front is likely to have widespread implications for America's "war on terror." At a global level, it will reduce the credibility of the Bush administration still further, reinforcing the already widespread belief that much of what it has been saying about terrorism is simply not true. While of little consequence for those countries with which U.S. relations are already at an all-time low, the ramifications will be far more serious for countries such as those in the European Union on whom America still relies for a modicum of support. Increasing public skepticism toward the Bush administration's claims about terrorism and disapproval of the conduct of its "war on terror" has been forcing the governments of many of these countries to reconsider the extent and nature of their support for the American enterprise. This erosion of U.S. credibility in the world will carry over to subsequent U.S. administrations, even ones that attempt to reform American foreign policy.

This North African imbroglio also holds serious implications for America's principle regional allies in the deception. In Algeria, Mali, Niger, Chad, and pre-coup Mauritania, the launch of the Saharan front went hand in hand with an increase in repressive behavior by the security establishments of these countries against their civilian populations. Not surprisingly, the front's collapse is now leading to outbreaks of rebellious anger against these governments and a consequent increase in political instability and insecurity. In a terrible irony, the attempt to fight terrorists in a terrorism-free land might ultimately produce the very movements and activities that the U.S. government claimed it wanted to expunge in the first place.

FPIF contributor Jeremy Keenan is a teaching fellow in archaeology and anthropology at Bristol University. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at Exeter University where he is director of the Saharan Studies program. His book "Alice of the Sahara: Moving Mirrors and the USA War on Terror in the Sahara" will be published by Pluto Press in 2007.