North Africa:A real network of terror?

Sep 11th 2008 NOUAKCHOTT AND RABATFrom The Economist.com
Al-Qaeda’s claims to have a network in the Maghreb are probably premature
TWO years ago a ruthless Algerian terrorist outfit, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, better known by its French abbreviation, GSPC, announced it was joining al-Qaeda.

Since then, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), as the group is now known in counter-terrorism circles, has stepped up a bombing campaign in Algeria and claimed responsibility for operations in several other North African countries. Last month the Moroccan government said it had broken up a terrorist cell with links to the group, while Algeria has toughened its security measures since more than 70 people were killed in attacks by AQIM in the last two weeks of August. The emergence of a powerful regional group of Islamist insurgents, recruiting members from among the millions of religious and poor North Africans, is rattling all the governments in the region and raises the unnerving prospect of a new wave of North African bombers heading for the cities of western Europe. But does AQIM really exist as a co-ordinated regional organisation?

So far there is little evidence that it does. Until now, nearly all of AQIM’s claimed attacks have been in a rectangle of land to the east of Algeria’s capital, Algiers. (The GSPC, from which AQIM has emerged, is a ruthless remnant from the civil war which began after the Algerian army stepped in to prevent Islamists from taking over after they had won the first round of an election in December 1991, thereby prompting a decade of strife that left as many as 200,000 people dead.) In this mountainous zone, clashes between AQIM fighters and Algerian security forces are occurring almost every day. Whenever the authorities claim a big victory, AQIM invariably sets off a suicide-bomb or a remote-controlled explosion, usually aimed at Algerian forces, sometimes at foreigners. AQIM said it was behind the double bombing last December of the UN offices in Algiers and a court house, killing more than 40 people.

But AQIM’s presence elsewhere in the region is fuzzier. In Algeria, says George Joffé, a north Africa specialist at Cambridge University, there is “constant low-level violence, a bit like in Colombia”. But he doubts that AQIM is a “coherent regional organisation, more a series of groups with national agendas and a common ideology”. He discounts the idea that they are controlled by al-Qaeda’s leaders on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Morocco’s security services have broken up numerous Islamist fighters’ cells since bombings in Casablanca, the country’s commercial capital, killed 45 people in 2003. “Al-Qaeda’s priority in north Africa is to recruit fighters for Iraq,” says Muhammad Darif, a Moroccan academic who tracks radical Islamist movements. “Since 2003 the authorities have broken up more than 30 terrorist cells sending fighters there. Al-Qaeda’s strategy here is part of its general strategy to win the war in Iraq.” There is scant evidence that these Moroccan groups have strong organisational links to AQIM in Algeria.
AQIM says it has also carried out attacks in Mauritania. It claims responsibility for the killing of four French tourists, which forced the cancellation of this year’s Paris-Dakar car rally; the deaths of three Mauritanian soldiers; and an attack on Israel’s embassy in the capital, Nouakchott. But a local expert, Yahya Ould el-Bara, says these incidents do not make a concerted threat. Mauritania’s tolerant form of Islam and its tribal network provide a buffer against radicalism. The new military rulers, who took over in a coup last month, have promised to eradicate the extremists.
Tunisia is yet another apparent target of AQIM. The group has boasted that it kidnapped two Austrian tourists there earlier this year. But that may have been a one-off. “It was an extremely rare example of what appears to be AQIM proper operating abroad,” says Wolfram Lacher, an analyst for Control Risks, a security consultancy with headquarters in London. “In Libya, there’s no evidence of organisational links between the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is defunct inside Libya, and AQIM,” he says. “On the whole, Algeria is the only country in the region which hosts a large and active terrorist organisation. In the other countries, such organisations are not able to survive, due to the tight control of the security forces.”

But, in order to extend its reach, AQIM may be moving its people through the Sahara desert, crossing the porous borders of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. European and American security officials are worried that camps in the desert may be used to train fighters for attacks on North African and European targets. America is pouring cash into military assistance projects such as the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership. North African groups tied to al-Qaeda have yet to carry out attacks in Europe. But governments in the Maghreb are certainly trying to stir Western anxieties in order to get more American and European cash and support.
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