Death of Abdelmalek Droukdel: what role did the United States play?

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The staff of the French army told this Thursday, June 11 under what conditions Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir of Aqmi, had been eliminated. Paris recognizes intelligence support from the Americans. The latter also assume their share of the work and communicated from this weekend on the subject, via Africom, the United States Command for Africa.

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The Americans recognize that their role was decisive in helping to locate and monitor the emir of Aqmi . But no question of saying more about the means used to obtain this information.

Asked, the spokesman for Africom stands behind operational secrecy, while recalling that the United States has drones capable of flying more than ten hours. It's no secret that they have much more than France above the Sahel. Just as we also know that the CIA has had a foothold in Tamanrasset in southern Algeria for many years.

On Thursday, the French army explained that it had been alerted, two days before the operation, of the presence of a target of interest. The spokesman for Africom explains that this target was followed for "  a certain time  ". We understand that it was upstream…

The fact that the Americans are supplying Barkhane with intelligence is not new. According to information cross-checked by our colleagues from France 24, they provide approximately 50% of the information used by the French force in this area.

► Read also: France announces the death of the head of Aqmi, killed in Mali

Beyond intelligence, did the Americans also have men on the ground after the strike, to take DNA samples? No answer to this specific question. But they are formal: the identity of the terrorist leader has been verified by their own means.

On the route of the emir they watched, the reasons for his presence in northern Mali, the Americans are no more talkative than the French at this stage.

What we normally do is that we conduct an independent assessment, by our own means, in particular to assess the conditions under which the strike is carried out. Our role here was above all to provide intelligence, to help locate Droukdel, and that of course for a certain period of time, in cooperation with France and our African partners. I cannot go into details and tell you how the identification was conducted but looking at the level of information we had, the time it took to monitor, observe the target, and establish its location, I can guarantee , as did the French government, that Droukdel was killed.

Colonel Chris Karns

Marie-Pierre Olphand

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• Mali
• Terrorism
• France

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