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| Africa: North |
| GSPC under US radar |
| 2004-03-10 |
| An extremist group known for deadly bombings and a brutal campaign to create an Islamic state in Algeria is moving to establish stronger ties to Al Qaeda, raising fears the militants may launch terrorist attacks beyond their North African territory. The new leader of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an armed organization whose decade-long aim has been to overthrow the Algerian government, declared allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s network in the fall. At the time, it received little attention, but now authorities worry the Salafists could become a dangerous affiliate of Al Qaeda, which has shown an ability to work through local groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, U.S. officials in Washington told The Associated Press. Authorities also worry that Algeria - with vast stretches of Sahara desert in the remote south and long borders that are hard to monitor - could become a haven for Al Qaeda members, U.S. officials told AP. Signs of the Salafists’ expansionist designs have emerged in the past year with dozens of alleged operatives arrested in Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and France - where the group is considered the top terrorist threat, French intelligence officials told AP. Nabil Sahraoui, after becoming the Salafist leader last year, declared the group’s allegiance with Al Qaeda in September. Sahraoui ousted longtime leader Hassan Hattab, who reportedly was viewed within Salafist ranks as too moderate. Under Hattab, the Salafists distrusted outsiders and kept Al Qaeda at arms length, focusing instead on a domestic agenda. Hattab also supported hacking up people with chainsaws and the like. If he’s the moderate one, I don’t even want to think what Sahraoui is like. Sahraoui’s declaration confirms authorities’ thinking that some regional terrorist groups are going international, joining the broader conflict of Islam versus the West, a French intelligence official told AP. Another analyst with high-level contacts in French intelligence sees the declaration as mostly posturing - a way to raise the Salafists’ profile and stir fear. Sahraoui, in his mid-to-late 30s, has a reputation for ruthlessness, stemming partly from a murder campaign he ran against a now-defunct insurgent group, the Islamic Salvation Army, after it called a cease-fire with the Algerian government in 1997. Despite Sahraoui’s ambitions, it remains unclear whether the limited resources of the Salafist group would be at Al Qaeda’s disposal, said Richard Evans, editor at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. The group - known by its French acronym GSPC - is fragmented with autonomous brigades in Algeria. Still, there’s reason for concern. "There was no indication until now that this group was pursuing a wider jihadi agenda," said Evans, an expert on the Salafist group. The Salafists’ actual strength is unknown, although experts believe the group is small, with several hundred fighters. Evans said Al Qaeda could call on the wider Algerian diaspora in Europe or militants with Salafist links "who might be prepared to attack Western targets.’’ Al Qaeda is known to have made inroads into Algeria. Interpol chief Ronald Nobel, who has noted the Salafist-Al Qaeda ties, visited Algeria a year ago to announce the international police agency would give Algeria a global communications system to track terrorists. As evidence of Al Qaeda’s presence in Algeria, authorities point to the killing of Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, a Yemeni Al Qaeda lieutenant, on Sept. 12, 2002, in a gunbattle about 270 miles east of the capital, Algiers. Authorities said he had been meeting with the Salafists in Algeria and was managing operations for Al Qaeda in North Africa. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 The title is false. There was an article on Rantburg yesterday talking about how the US was working with the Algerian government to stomp the GSPC. That's an indication to me the US is on the ball, and doing its bit to put these nutjobs on ice. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-3-10 1:27:55 PM |
| #2 That's what he claims. However, the GSPC was very much formed at the behest of bin Laden and the rest of International Front due to the fact that Zouabri and Co were having too much fun dispensing their revolutionary Islamist brand of justice and not enough fighting the Algerian military government. Certainly the GIA trademarks like throat slitting, decapitation, and dismemberment are also used by the GSPC on a regular basis - if you're truly in the mood for some macabre viewing you can download clips of their antics off of numerous jihadi websites. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-3-10 12:22:15 AM |
| #1 Didn't Hattab split away from the GIA because he opposed their senseless masacres of civilians? |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-3-10 12:16:18 AM |