Escorted tour: Geerewol Festival, September 2007

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Camping under star-studded skies, this recce tour will include beautiful oases towns, rock engravings in the beautiful south of Algeria, immense sand dunes, famous ancient camel-caravan routes, the Aïr Mountains and the fabled Geerewol, beauty festival of the Wodaabe. It is an exploratory trip and by its nature hardy and liable to change yet at the same time breathtaking and rewarding.

Below is an outline itinerary but if you are interested send an e-mail to Justin Wateridge at justin@steppestravel.co.uk or call him on 01285 880980 for more details.

Escorted tour: Geerewol Festival (Niger) September 2007

Mon 17 September: Algiers - Tamenrasset

Tuesday 18 September: Tamenrasset - Assamaka

Wednesday 19 September: Assamaka - Iferouane

Thursday 20 September: Iferouane - Timia

Friday 21 September: Timia - Agadez

Saturday 22 September: Agadez Abalak Geerewol

Sunday 23 September: Geerewol

Monday 24 September: Geerewol - Agadez

Tuesday 25 September: Agadez - dunes

Wednsday 26 September: dunes - Faachi

Thursday 27 September: Fachi - Bilma

Friday 28 September: Bilma - Seguidine

Saturday 29 September: Seguidine - Djado

Sunday 30 September: Djado - Djanet

Monday 1 October: Flight to Algiers and back to UK

Cost per person if 2 join Justin: £2,900
Cost per person if 5 join Justin: £1,950

Cost includes: International flights to Algiers, 4 nights in hotels on a bed and breakfast basis,
All camping on a full board basis

Cost excludes: Local payment of 200 Euros, visas, gratuities, extra items

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NIAMEY, June 11 (Reuters) - Authorities in Niger's remote desert north have banned travel between towns without a military escort following a rise in attacks by nomadic rebels, army sources in the West African country said on Monday.

Northern Niger, where foreign companies are mining uranium and exploring for oil, has seen an upsurge in attacks this year by Tuareg rebels who have long complained of neglect by central government, more than 1,000 km (600 miles) away in the capital.

The governor of the vast region of Agadez, a dusty Saharan trading town and meeting point of ancient caravan routes, had ruled that passengers and goods must be accompanied by soldiers when travelling outside towns after 3 p.m.

"We don't have the means to accompany each vehicle or group of vehicles so we're asking for people to help with this effort," one military official said, asking not to be named.

"People should either not take to the road alone or they should pay part of the costs for the convoy," he said.

Rebels from numerous light-skinned ethnic Tuareg, Arab and Toubou groups staged an uprising in the 1990s in northern Niger demanding more autonomy from the black-dominated government.

Most groups accepted peace deals in 1995 but insecurity remains rife, with frequent acts of banditry, carjacking and kidnapping by former rebels who say they are still marginalised.

A Tuareg group calling itself the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) was blamed for an attack on a uranium mine operated by a subsidiary of French mining group AREVA in April, in which one soldier was killed.

Members of the group, which also claimed responsibility for killing three Niger soldiers in February, took part last month in a cross-border assault on a gendarmerie post in the Malian town of Tin-Za, deep in the Sahara near the Algerian border.

The attacks have raised fears of a resurgent rebellion.

The MNJ, which is demanding that income from natural resources be more fairly shared out, has issued warnings on local radio to employees of the Chinese National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) - exploring for crude in the region - to leave.

Despite its mineral riches, which besides uranium include iron ore, coal, copper, silver, platinum, titanium and lithium, Niger was listed bottom of a 2006 U.N. development index ranking countries by quality of life.

High levels of unemployment and a young population fuel resentment in the north, where trafficking cigarettes or smuggling migrants trying to get to Europe has become an industry of its own.

Fearing that potentially oil-producing swathes of the southern Sahara desert could become a haven for militant Islamic groups, the United States military has been training armies - including that of Niger - in counter-terrorism operations.

U.S. Special Forces have held regular training exercises in recent years as part of Washington's Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership to bolster cooperation between countries in the region and boost intelligence sharing.

Niger's government refuses to recognise the MNJ and denies talk of a resurgent Tuareg rebellion, dismissing the fighters as bandits and drug-traffickers.

But it has been forced to send army reinforcements to the north and last month approved more than $60 million in extra budget funds to confront the attacks.

Niger bans travel without armed escort in north

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Niger asks Algeria to help fight desert rebels

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Niamey, August 30, 2007 - Niger's main desert tour operator has cancelled all flights this 2007 season because of Tuareg unrest, it announced Thursday as President Mamadou Tandja asked Libya to help deal with the insurgency.

Point Afrique, which in 2006 flew more than 4,500 people from France to the barren but beautiful Agadez region inhabited mainly by Tuareg nomads, "thinks it would be irresponsible" to go ahead, the firm's Niamey representative told AFP.

"All our flights to Agadez are compromised this year by growing insecurity and with the state of alert the authorities have declared throughout the zone," Abdoulaye Mali said. The season would normally run from October until March.

Since February, however, a Tuareg rebel Movement of Nigeriens for Justice (MNJ) has launched an uprising, fighting the army in the north, and similar unrest has broken out again this month in neighbouring Mali.

Tandja on Wednesday sent Niger's prime minister, Seyni Oumarou, to Tripoli to ask Libya's Colonel Moamer Kadhafi to help restore security, but said that he wanted no "foreign intervention in this affair which I submit to the hands of the brother leader," the official Libyan news agency reported Thursday.

Kadhafi is well known for influence with the Tuaregs, an indigenous Berber people who have centuries roamed the southern Sahara across the borders of modern Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali and Niger.

In Niamey, thousands of people held an authorised demonstration in July to protest at the upsurge of violence in the north by Tuaregs and their "foreign allies" and many in the crowd blamed Libya itself.

Oumarou's Tripoli visit came after the authorities on Monday expelled a Libyan diplomat at the consulate in Agadez for alleged interference, while Kadhafi has sued three Nigerien news weeklies for defamation over claims of financing the rebels.

The Agadez is now home to about half the tribes of the "Blue men of the Sahara" and has developed into a major adventure tourist attraction, also noted for its cave paintings, burial monuments and even dinosaur cemeteries at Gadoufaoua.

The unrest both in Niger and in the past week in Mali - where the army on Wednesday freed nine soldiers kidnapped by Tuaregs and is hunting for about 30 more troops abducted in surprise raids - is blamed on dissident movements that have rejected peace pacts signed with the respective governments.

A team led by the former rebel in charge of Mali's main Tuareg alliance, Iyad Ag Gali, will before the end of this week go to Kidal in the north "to take part in the return to peace," the movement's spokesman, Amada Ag Bibi, said Thursday in Bamako.

He condemned the rebel attacks, but also implicitly warned the army to ease off, saying "violence will settle nothing" and "it's only by dialogue that we can resolve these problems."

In the Agadez, local authorities have banned road traffic during the night. The army and rebels swap accusations of laying anti-personnel and anti-tank mines on roads and around some villages. About a dozen local people have already been casualties in mine explosions.

"The tourist season starts soon and if this insecurity goes on, the local economy is going to be wrecked again," the owner of an Agadez vehicle rental firm, Alhousseini Ahmed, told AFP.

Niger cancels tour flights, asks for help