Death of the Dakar

On January 4th 2008, the 30th Dakar rally was cancelled due to “direct threats” from terrorist cells in Northern Africa. It cost the organisers more than £10 million in lost revenue and has driven them to move the event to South America. But what really happened that day, and who were behind the threats?

It has been the toughest race on the planet, and its Siren-like cry to the rugged, the adventurous and the just-plain-mad has rung out across the world for nigh on 30 years. But this year, the Dakar rally – the ultimate off-road endurance race for bikes and their four-wheeled, dust-loving brethren – was infamously and spectacularly cancelled at the 11th hour. More than two months on, riders who had spent the best part of last year preparing for the race are still stunned. Many of them were there in Lisbon, literally hours from the starter’s pistol, when French organisers The Amaury Sport Organisation called everyone into an auditorium for an announcement that would shake the sporting world. It’s off, they said. Terrorists. There will be no Dakar rally in 2008.

It’s hard to imagine the scale of confusion, disappointment and anger over the news that one of the most prestigious and challenging events on the international sporting calendar had been pulled at a moment’s notice. While there was no direct talk of a mutiny, many who were there concede that if they had been given the chance to continue at their own risk, they’d have gone for it – jihadist bombers be damned. But the option simply wasn’t there. And now, as Dakar 2008 is quietly swept under the carpet amidst fanfare that next year’s event will take place in South America, we are left wanting answers. Just what the hell happened?

History of Threats

“The decision to cancel the Dakar was much too hasty,” says Hassan Ould Sidi Ahmed, a journalist based in Mauritania, the vast tranche of north-western Africa through which the rally passes en route to the Senegalese capital of Dakar. “Was the threat as serious as they claim it was? No, we certainly think it was not.” That threat centres around statements issued by a supposed terrorist cell operating under the wing of the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the GSPC. Their stated intentions of targeting the rally were taken seriously after Mauritania hit the headlines in December when four French tourists were shot and killed while taking a roadside picnic on Christmas eve. The victims had nothing to do with Dakar – they were simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as British terrorism expert Neil Doyle tells us. “Mauritania is very much a new country on the radar,” says Doyle, who wrote the books Terror Tracker and Terror Base UK. “Incidents like this are sparse there.”

But it’s not the first time that Dakar has had to deal with terrorist threats. Says Stephen Hague, a KTM-riding privateer veteran of two Dakar rallies: “In 2001 they changed the rules so that the mechanics would no longer leapfrog the riders by aeroplane; suddenly, they had to travel by land because there’d been a serious threat that some nutters were going to shoot their plane down. Then in 2004, on one of the stages we had to load all the bikes on a plane and fly over a river crossing because there had been a specific threat that we would be ambushed there. There have been threats going back 15 years.” But this year was different, and adding to the growing unease of the organisers – who have repeatedly changed the rally’s course over the years because of political instability – was a second, separate terrorist attack on a Mauritanian military base that left three soldiers dead. But was it really necessary to pull the plug?

The Lonely Road

To get to the root of just how vulnerable the 200-plus riders would have been as they thrashed through the dunes of Mauritania, it’s necessary to know a bit more about the conditions in which the riders have to operate. Invariably kicking off its African leg with a pretty gentle schlep through northern Morocco, Dakar notches up a gear once it cuts into the Sahara. Says Simon Pavey, head of the BMW off-road school who has raced Dakar six times, “people can get lost and crazy things happen – all the weird privateer stories happen on the desert stages. When you’ve got hundreds of kilometres in front of you and you can’t even move one, it can seem like a very hostile place. And if you’re on your own and you’re lost it can be really frightening. There are no tracks to follow, maybe your GPS isn’t working. It can be a freaky place – but that’s what makes Dakar so special.”

Its very remoteness (Mauritania is a country of just three million people but is the size of Texas and neighbouring New Mexico combined) is what puts Dakar competitors at a distinct disadvantage if ‘dark forces’ were at work. Says Stephen Hague: “It would be very, very easy for terrorists out there. They could kidnap people from the base, which is just a square in the desert, when they wander out to have a crap; they could flag down stragglers. People often travel together at night to maximise their light, so terrorists could easily round up the occupants of four cars or a gang of six riders…” Mauritania’s western frontier is the Atlantic ocean, but its neighbours north and east are the kind of places where you see shaky hand-held video footage of secret military training camps on the internet. It was formerly a French colony, eventually gaining independence in 1960. And its French ties – France in general, in fact – is directly at the root of the Dakar’s demise.

The French Connection

“There have been threats against France and French interests from Al-qaeda over the last eight months,” continues terrorism expert Neil Doyle, “and that certainly could have included the rally.”

Doyle says there’s been a lot of terrorist “chatter” about Paris of late, with new President Nicolas Sarkozy and his America-friendly policies sending the zealots’ pulses racing.

“They want to hit back at Sarkozy who is right-wing and is talking about sending more troops to Afghanistan,” he says. “They also protest about France’s role in Algeria, where there’s been so much trouble in recent decades. There’s a lot of discussion at the moment saying that Paris is the perfect terrorist target to hit.”

Says Emily Poucan, a spokesman for the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), who run the Dakar rally: “It was the French government that said we should not go. They didn’t give us much more information; they said there were threats on the rally itself. They didn’t say where; it was on the rally, not any one place. If it was one place we could have avoided it, but they said that they had found papers from Al-qaeda that were specifically targeting the rally.” But Mauritanian ex-journalist Hassan Ould Sidi Ahmed is having none of it: “Nothing would have happened,” he claims. “No one would have been killed, and the race would have been a success. There’s a kind of propaganda going on in the west: politicians would have people believe that these are serious threats, but it’s just a tiny minority of people living in faraway, remote areas.”

With the words ‘conspiracy theory’ never far from his lips, Hassan ventures a step further: “Our fear is that all of this is simply part and parcel of America’s intention to be somewhere in Africa. They just want someone to give them the reason for being here, and one way might be to cancel the Dakar rally. What they don’t see is that this rally is what we very much need in this part of the world because it’s people from the west coming over here, meeting people from different countries and experiencing their cultures. And they would all see that we are against violence, because it has nothing to do with our religion at all.”

But Hassan’s grasp on his country’s politics might be somewhat skewed. We’ve learned that the killers of the four French tourists – two men recently arrested and extradited from the tiny Republic of Guinea-Bissau, south of Mauritania, to the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott – were under specific orders to target the French. Under interrogation, the two men – Mohamed Ould Chabarnou and Sidi Ould Sidna said that it was Sarkozy’s buddying-up to America that had prompted a shift of focus locally from the US to France and French interests. And that included the Dakar, one of France’s largest sporting events after the Tour. “Al-Qaeda’s objectives in North Africa have changed,” said one under interrogation.

Blow to Africa

The cancellation of the Dakar has been a devastating blow for the countries involved in the race, with some estimates saying that the cash-starved nations the rally was due to pass through have lost out to the tune of over £6 million. Says Mamadou Dia from Senegal’s sports ministry: “Losing the Dakar was a great loss not just for us but for all the countries crossed by the race,” words echoed by French Sports Minister Bernard Laporte, who agreed that the cancellation would have “disastrous economic consequences.” Adds Hassan in Mauritania: “The rally was so important to us that ordinary citizens like me were ready to take on the role of police, and our government had offered to provide as much military as was needed. But our offers were not taken up.”

Stephen Hague has some ‘life-changing’ memories of just how poor the villages which dot the route are. He paints a vivid picture: “The first time I went in 1999,” he says, “the local soldiers were getting ready to take down the ring-fence that had been round the competitors’ bivouac at night. All the catering had been done using plastic cutlery and paper plates, and it was all piled up in a bonfire, ready to burn. The second the soldiers broke the cordon the villagers ran in to get at these dirty plates and plastic knives and forks and licked them clean. Another time, I walked outside the ring-fence with some bits and bobs from a packed lunch that I didn’t have room to take. There were a gang of teenagers and I pushed my way through to a girl in the middle. I gave her the bag, she grabbed it, curled her arms around it and made a rugby charge through the crowd to try and get away with the food, and the men were thumping her and trying to grab her to get at what was little more than a few leftovers.”

A Rider’s Nightmare

It’s hard not to feel for the privateers (accounting for 80% of all entrants) who had saved and prepared all year – sometimes even longer – for what would have amounted to the event of a lifetime, 5,700 miles of man versus machine. “Dakar is like going into the last round with Tiger for the playoffs in the Masters,” says Stephen Hague. “99% of riders who go into it know that they have no chance of winning, but one of the great things is that it’s one of the few sports where an ordinary guy can have the ambition and write his cheque and have a go.” Every privateer that entered had to find around £40,000 to be there, and then the event went up in smoke. Fearing a riot after breaking the news that Dakar 2008 was off, organisers quickly announced to competitors that entry fees would be refunded.

“We lost millions,” says the ASO’s Emily Poucan. “We gave back every single Euro to the competitors, and we’ll have lost somewhere between £7 and £14 million in the end.” Not that returned entry fees alone can make up for the shattering disappointment of having hauled yourself and your bike to Lisbon only to be told you have to go straight home. The impact the Dakar has on lives, jobs and families extends far further than just the race and the competitor. All of which ultimately begs the question: if they could have, and fully aware of the threat, would the competitors have carried on regardless? “Without a doubt,” says Stephen Hague. “A poll was taken in the paddock and they all said they wanted to go on, because that’s what they were there for. There have always been threats to the Dakar: it’s as normal an event as a blistered backside, really.” Rumours about the cancellation had been brewing for days, but Patsy Quick, a Dakar veteran from 2003-2006, said it seemed just too big an event to be affected by terrorism. “When they told us, it was a bit of a 9/11 moment, really,” she says. “Everyone was stunned and there was some anger – but I think anyone who knew the organisation felt there really must have been no choice.” Of course, this leaves the question open as to how, should the Dakar have proceeded, would the terrorists have attacked the event. The outcome, according to Neil Doyle, would have been chilling. “They’d have gone for roadside bombs, or even a good old-fashioned ambush; two or three blokes opening up on cars. Maybe multiple teams involved – and it could have been a bloodbath. The terrorists would have had quite a large window of being able to carry out the attacks and then get away.”

Life Goes On

The ASO had their arms twisted. “The French government put such a pressure on them that they were left with no choice,” continues Simon Pavey. “And you can understand their decision: with all that pressure, if they’d ignored it and someone had been killed, then that would probably have been the end of the rally, permanently.” American Ronn Bailey, who was in Lisbon making his fourth Dakar outing with NASCAR veteran Robby Gordon, also thinks the ASO made the right decision. Bailey is CEO of a company which supplies security software to the US and other governments, and told reporters that his own sources had confirmed that the security risk was significant. Bailey also revealed that he was given evidence of phone communications from a “French intelligence agency” in which suicide bombers were heard saying goodbye to their parents before setting off to blow themselves up at competitors’ bivouacs. Says Emily at the ASO: “If your government says we advise you not to go, you have to be responsible. When you have 3,000 people with you, you’re not going to put them in needless danger.”

So is this the end of the Dakar as it has been for three decades? “We’re working on going back to Africa right now,” insists Emily. But most in the know think it will be some years – if ever – before the race returns to Africa. For now, competitors will have to make do with a new-look race that will take place for the first time ever in South America: the 2009 ‘Dakar’ runs through Argentina and Chile. The speed at which this new event has been arranged has raised a few eyebrows, but if nothing else the change of scenery has given Patsy Quick and other veterans of the African rally itchy feet. “`The Dakar being somewhere else makes it very tempting for me to get back on my bike,” she says. “I feel lucky that I completed it when it was in Africa, and I guess it’s easy for me to be open-minded about the future because I’ve achieved my goal.” A goal which, for many, may now never again be within their grasp.