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A Season in Hell

My 130 Days in the Sahara With Al Qaeda
Jan 17, 2013
Retired Canadian diplomat, Robert Fowler’s recent, personal recounting of his kidnapping by Islamic fundamentalists is especially timely given recent events in Mali & Libya. Shortly before Christmas 2008, Fowler, fellow Canadian diplomat, Louis Guay and their local driver are grabbed off the road in Niger and quickly trucked across the Sahara desert to a series of bleak camps in northern Mali. What follows can be described as 4 months of extreme camping. Fowler details their health problems, their attempts to fight off boredom and their attempts to communicate with a rotating group of guards. Their captors are portrayed as joyless, committed, with a narrow focus. The only authority they recognize is Allah speaking through the Qur’an. Non-believers, who wish to substitute any other authority, including democracy, for God’s, must be killed as blasphemers. The book can be read on both a personal, “How would I have reacted if I’d been kidnapped” level and to gain insight to current jihadist terrorism.