It is understandable that since 2001 the media and Western policy-makers have focused on the capture of tourists, aid workers and foreign dignitaries in the Sahel and Sahara. Yet, kidnappings and hostage-takings make for headlines that obscure the more fundamental, endemic issues of pervasive, persistent poverty and the United Nations’ millennium goals and development. Their headlines and official reports depict terrorists as profiting from the region's ‘ungoverned spaces’ and ‘invisible desert borders’. This is, after all, a region that is ‘sparsely populated and [with] loosely patrolled borders’ (Glickman 2003:167; Brulliard 2009; CSIS 2010:3). The most recent incidents include the kidnapping of seven people affiliated with the energy company, Areva, in northern Niger on 16 September 2010 (Toronto Star 2010). Such incidents highlight the exponential rise in kidnappings in the Maghreb and Sahelian states since 2001 (Alexander 2010). Experts believe that the most recent rise in kidnappings took shape in 2003 with the abduction of thirty-two foreigners, mostly German. El Para, a former member from Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, and 50 followers abducted this large group of tourists in the Algerian Sahara. They succeeded in procuring ransom of €5 million before releasing the hostages. Upon the release, the band of kidnappers was pursued by African and Western special forces through the northern regions of Mali, Niger, and Chad. In the end most of the kidnappers, El Para excluded, surrendered to local Toubou people who in turn sold them to Chadian authorities working in collaboration with US special forces (Africa Confidential 2006; Sahara Focus 2009a).