Jeremy Keenan (born 1945) is a British

social anthropologist Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

. The regional focuses of his research are the Sahara, North Africa and the

Sahel region Sahel is one of Burkina Faso's 13 administrative regions. It was created on 2 July 2001. The region's capital is Dori. Four provinces make up the region— Oudalan, Séno, Soum, and Yagha. As of 2019, the population of the region was 1,094, ...

, and he concentrates on anthropology of

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped * Photograph ...

, security and globalisation. He has published a number of books and articles about the approaches of the United States to counter terrorism in Africa. Keenan has long argued that Islamist terror groups in North Africa are masterminded by Algeria, with the knowledge of the CIA and other intelligence services, which stage "false flag" attacks to expand Algerian and US political influence over the region and its economic resources. In his book "The Dark Sahara", Keenan accuses the United States and

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

of having conspired to fabricate evidence and exaggerate the threat of al-Qaeda terrorism in Northern Africa. He calls the " global war on terror" a deception and claims that it is causing immense damage to the peoples of the Sahara, namely the

Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Alg ...

. On 22 May 2012, he alleged in a BBC interview that the Algerian government (despite being officially secular) was backing

Ansar Dine Ansar Dine ( ar, أنصار الدين ''ʾAnṣār ad-Dīn'', also transliterated ''Ançar Deen''; meaning " helpers of the religion" (Islam) also known as Ansar al-Din (abbreviated as AAD) was a Salafi jihadist group led by Iyad Ag Ghaly. An ...

, both because Ansar Dine justified the existence of the government's security apparatus, and because backing it allowed Algeria to "project power in what it sees as its sphere of influence".

Works

* ''The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar'', Allen Lane, 1977 * ''Sahara Man: Travelling with the Tuareg'', John Murray Publishers, 2001 * ''The Lesser Gods of the Sahara: Social Change and Contested Terrain Amongst the Tuareg of Algeria'', Frank Cass Publishers, 2004 * ''The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in Africa'', Pluto Press, 2009 * ''The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa'', Pluto Press, 2012 * "''Report on In Amenas - ''Inquest Cover-up and Western Involvement in Algerian State Crimes''", ''International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), 2016'' Keenan, Jeremy. (2016) http://statecrime.org/data/2016/11/KEENAN-IN-AMENAS-REPORT-FINAL-November-2016.pdf.

References

Living people 1945 births Social anthropologists Academics of SOAS University of London British anthropologists British Africanists Historians of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb {{Anthropologist-stub