West Africa: The Next Afghanistan?

By Chris Hansen

NBC April 29, 2005

At a time when the United States has thousands of forces hunting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, international investigators say the United States is ignoring another terrorist outlaw — former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who's hiding in plain sight in West Africa. This is a place most Americans and their government haven't paid much attention to. It is war-torn, remote and desperately poor. But that might be about to change. War crimes investigators have uncovered evidence that al-Qmaida terrorists — before and after 9/11 — were using West Africa as a hideout and as a place to launder money. More...