Racing to a Finish

January 14, 2008

Photo:Flickr/Nygus

The Dakar Rally 2008, scheduled to begin January 5 and end on January 20, was cancelled on January 4, 2008 for the first time in its thirty-year history. This legendary race, originally known as the Paris-Dakar, usually began in the City of Lights and finished in Dakar. However, the routes were changed frequently, so that the last time the rally actually began in Paris was in 2001, which is why nowadays it seems most accurate to refer simply to the Dakar rally, or le Dakar. The planned route was to wind through Morocco, Western Sahara, as well as the sand dunes and canyons of Mauritania’s Adrar Region, which are said to be among the most challenging in all off-road racing.

Last year, two stages of the event in Mali were called off because France claimed that participants risked being kidnapped or ambushed by Algerian rebels. This year’s rally has now been cancelled entirely again due to safety concerns: four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania during a picnic on Christmas Eve, and the French government expressed grave concerns about holding the anticipated 8 stages in the region. Only three days later, there was another incident in which three Mauritanian soldiers manning a checkpoint were killed. This event sent further shock waves through a country which is otherwise known to be a generally stable and peaceful Islamic republic. After officials suggested that both attacks might be linked to a terrorist network affiliated with al-Qaeda, the French government issued a formal statement recommending that the event be cancelled. This left the leaders of the France-based Amaury Sport Organisation with little choice but to acquiesce, despite Mauritania’s stated willingness to mobilize 3,000 security forces to ensure the safety of all participants.

Personally, I am not entirely sure what al-Qaeda stands to gain by all this, if indeed it is actually involved (please excuse my skepticism here, but coming as I do from a country in which nonexistent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMDs) have been used as a pretext for waging war, I prefer concrete evidence, myself) but the losers are clear, namely those countries along the route such as Mali and Mauritania whose struggling economies would have benefited from an event drawing thousands of international racing enthusiasts. Tourism in Mauritania will clearly suffer tremendously as a result of all this negative media attention, in spite of President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi’s unflagging attempts to emphasize the safety and hospitality of his country.

Granted, the Mauritanians are far away, but the repercussions of canceling such an event are crippling for many others as well: there were 551 car, motorcycles and truck drivers scheduled to take part; flights and hotels were booked and deposits paid. Trucks containing the vehicles had to be called back and containers of petrol which had been sent on ahead to Lisbon will probably be written up as a loss.

Some cities had already invested up to 1.5 million Euros preparing for the event. France Télévisions, the French TV station planning to cover the rally, expects to be reimbursed to the tune of almost 5 million Euros (!), and so the last-minute cancellation poses a logistical as well as an economic nightmare for many.

Of course, security must take priority over economic concerns, and there are vast areas within the Sahara Desert which form a poorly regulated, huge gray zone that some claim represent an open feeding ground for drug smugglers, arms traffickers and jihadists. (Others contend with equal vigor that this is nonsense). In 2005, under the Bush Administration (who else?), the US initiated a Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative, pledging 100 million dollars a year for 5 years to help bolster security in the area, conveniently giving the US a foothold in West Africa, a region which is (somewhat coincidentally?) poised to become a leading supplier of oil. One official projection has it that by 2015, the US may be getting a quarter of its oil supply from West Africa, according to Global Research reports.
Critics of the Initiative assert that it is US involvement there that could ultimately destabilize the region, fuelling radicalism and inviting resistance to its flimsy attempts to legitimize a US presence in the Sahara.

But before we become too mired in political speculation, let me go on to mention some other rally details. It should be noted, for example, that in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s son Mark, who competed in the race, created quite a sensation when he went missing for 6 days only to be discovered later, unharmed. Over the years, others - frequently children crossing streets - have been less fortunate, ending up crushed beneath service trucks or film crew vehicles. More recently, Green Party members and other environmental activists have raised concerns about the race. Given these factors, as well as relatively sparse television coverage internationally plus the additional specter of terrorism, I wonder whether the entire event may not be racing to a finish?

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com