Ahmadou El-katab
Algerian with Sahraouie origins, Mohamed Lamine Ould Bouhali has been sacked from his position as pseudo-Minister of Defense of the Polisario. Former member of the Algerian Army (ALN), he was placed in his position by Algeria to gain the upper hand on everything related to military matters, or arms trafficking within the separatist movement . As proof, his name was mixed in 1982, weapon trafficking, which had antagonized his minions who had discovered to their cost that the weapons that were provided to the Polisario were sold to the Algerian Touareg rebels.
This could not had been done without his complicity. Ould Bouhali was then summoned to the Algerian Ministry of Defense where he was admonished without any consequences.
Since there were no replacement as faithful and as submissive as Bouhali, he was kept in his position. But the recent abductions of Western hostages inside the Polisario camps in Algeria could not be perpetrated with the complicity of senior separatist movement and the ensuing investigations had pointed to the services within the department that Bouhali runs. The Algerian Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS) continued, however, to close their eyes on their protégé and his actions and until the publication by the Spanish newspaper ABS of Bouhali’s last statement where he recognizes that there are links between members of Polisario and AQIM. The Algerian Ministry of Defense then called Khaddad, another Sahraoui, originally from Mauritania, who then was ordered to make Ould Bouhali wear the hat of relations between Polisario and AIQM giving the DRS a reason to dismiss their protégé.
Khaddad would, according to sources in Tindouf camps, accuse Bouhali of being involved in all drug and weapon trafficking inside the area of the Polisario camp.
The Bouhali dismissal intervenes in a context where a new coalition is being formed to fight more effectively against terrorist movements that may engulf the entire region making it like a new Afghanisant in the Sahara/Sahel battlefield.
This new coalition will be formed of France, Britain, Spain, the USA and several countries around the Sahel region, including Morocco according the Spanish Media “Al Confidential Digital”.
