The blowback from the war on terror is ripping through North Africa.

In Mali, the French are fighting an army of ex pro-Gaddafi supporters and fighters who had previously wanted independence in Mali, and they are being armed with weapons crossing the border from Libya used in the war there.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the attack of a BP oil plant in Algeria where 38 hostages were killed this week could represent a spillover from Mali. This is what the militants in Algeria have claimed.

And now, Libyans are warning westerners to get out of their country, or face retaliation.

As Seamus Milne reports for the Guardian, “Instead of fighting terror, it has fuelled [terror] everywhere it’s been unleashed: from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen, spreading it from Osama bin Laden’s Afghan lairs eastwards to central Asia and westwards to North Africa – as US, British and other western forces have invaded, bombed, tortured and kidnapped their way across the Arab and Muslim world for over a decade.”

The irony of this “war on terror” is that it actually creates the “war on terror.”