Al-Qaeda has successfully intimidated the government of Mauritania to cancel plans to host the annual Dakar Rally.

The Dakar is an annual off-road endurance race rather than a conventional rally. The terrain the competitors traverse is much tougher and the vehicles used are true off-road vehicles rather than the modified sedans used in rallies.

Most of the competitive special sections are off-road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass, rocks, and other terrain.

Rallies typically pass through Morocco, Western Sahara and on to the grasslands and deserts of Mauritania. The segments running though Atar and the sand dunes and canyons of Mauritania’s Adrar Region may be the most challenging in all off-road racing.

At any rate, Al-Qaeda has decided that Mauritania is wrong to host an infidel event like the Dakar.

The government in Nouakchott has been busy “securing for the infidels a suitable climate for the ‘Rally’,” the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb said in the statement dated December 29 and posted on Islamist militant websites.

In the statement, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed, Al-Qaeda said it had carried out a “successful operation” against a Mauritanian army barracks that “killed at least four soldiers” on December 26.

The statement refers to three Mauritanian soldiers that were killed on December 26 in a remote garrison where suspected Islamist extremists killed four French tourists two days earlier, according to security officials in Nouakchott.

In the statement, which also took credit for a series of attacks in Algeria, Al-Qaeda said that the attack on the Mauritanian army took place as the government was busy preparing for the Dakar Rally.

“This operation came at a time when the sky of beloved Nouakchott is sullied by the Israeli flag fluttering over it, at a time when the Mauritanian regime remains (an agent) of the crusaders, detaining Muslim youth and starving the Mauritanian people while guarding its masters, securing for the infidels a suitable climate for the ‘Rally’ and… fighting the mujahedeen under the banner of the cross,” it said.

Organisers of the Dakar Rally said on Friday that the 2008 event has been cancelled because of security concerns, in particular direct “terrorist” threats to the race.

I’ll bet that will teach those terrorists not to make threats!

-Chris Jones