This is tragic… a terrible loss for Edwin Dyer’s family and friends etc. It also wrecks the efforts of so many good and well-intentioned people to open up the southern Sahara to tourism, development and general human contact between locals and outsiders. I’m sure that Aroudeyni, the organiser of the Tamadacht Festival, to which Edwin Dyer and his fellow tourists were travelling to or away from (I’m not sure which), will be absolutely devastated by this news, as will Manny Ansar, the organiser of the Festival in the Desert and many many other Touareg leaders, business people and activists.

However, I still maintain that it’s wildly misleading to confuse the Touareg rebellion, and its various militias, with this AQIM group. The two have completely separate aims and agendas. In fact, one of the bones of contention between the Touareg Alliance and the Malian government is that although the Malians have received aid from the USA and the EU to combat Islamic terrorists on their territory, none of it has been used effectively. And the only real opposition that AQIM has encountered within Mali is from the Touareg Alliance itself. I think I’m right in believing that there was a skirmish between the Alliance and AQIM last year, north of Timbuktu, on the road to Arouane, in which several Touareg rebels were killed by the Islamists. So far from being in cahoots with each other, the two groups are at loggerheads.

I believe that this is the first time that one of the Islamist militias have actually killed one of their western hostages in the Sahara. In the big hostage taking of 2003, a female tourist died, but that was from ill health. So this is a serious change in AQIM’s strategy. Heretofore, they’ve been content to keep their hostages alive for as long as it took to extract a ransom from whatever source. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Touareg react to this turn of events. Many of them were already very very frustrated that the activities of the renegade Touareg warlord Ibrahim Bahanga was holding up any kind of inward investment or development before the signature of a new peace accord in January. This new atrocity, committed by outsiders, and Arabs to boot, will be condemned and decried by the vast majority of Touareg, I believe. And AQIM had better be aware that their very ability to operate or even exist in the northern Malian desert is conditional on good relations with the Touareg.

The Touareg are muslims, but the middle eastern and southern Asian brands of extremist political Islamic fundamentalism have never taken a real hold amongst them, despite the best efforts of certain wealthy Saudi and Pakistani extremist organisation who send preachers to the southern Sahara. The Touareg practice their own, relatively liberal and undogmatic form of African Islam, and are very proud to do so. I can’t count the number of times a Touareg has shaken his head at me in total disbelief and disgust at some of the things which Al Qaida style terrorists do in the name of the religion they share.

Personally, I see this event as a kind of rape committed against a place and people who I love deeply. I still believe that the southern Sahara is safer, statistically and actually, than many inner city areas of the UK and the USA. I certainly won’t stop travelling there myself. But none of this will be of any comfort to Edwin Dyer’s friend and family, or to the many people who will now think twice about traveling to the Festival in the Desert or visiting this beautiful magical region.

Andy Morgan