Al Qaeda: A Hostage Reflects

“Extreme fear and worry were the pervading themes of our Al Qaeda captivity: fear to the point of physical pain, fear that it would end suddenly with a sword, in a tent, on a video that would be seen by family and friends, and fear that it would go on and on and we would die of the heat, the food, the snakes, scorpions, or merely of broken wills and hearts.”

Such is how life-long Canadian diplomat and former United Nations special envoy to Niger, Robert Fowler, describes his 130 days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (A.Q.I.M). His book chronicling this harrowing five months, A Season in Hell (Harper Collins), was recently released. Now OpenCanada talks to him about what he learned about A.Q.I.M., the magnitude of the threat we face from terrorism in Africa, whether we are approaching it in the right way – and why Ottawa was so reluctant to tell his wife that he was alive.

Photo courtesy Harper Collins.