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Suicide Bombings in Algiers: A Risky Strategy for the AQIMBy Evan Kohlmann
The Christian Science Monitor has published a new article by Jill Carroll analyzing the significance of Tuesday's dramatic suicide bomb attacks in the capital of Algeria. For the benefit of CT Blog readers, I am posting my complete, unedited comments to Jill below. An English translation of the official communique from Al-Qaida's Network in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claiming responsibility for the blasts can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website. ---------------------------------------------------------- Up until yesterday, AQIM has been fairly quiet (at least as of late) -- no big attacks and no big casualty counts. There have been indications that its leadership was growing frustrated by accounts from the Algerian press suggesting that the AQIM was effectively on the ropes. A twin suicide bombing attack like this has both benefits and costs for the AQIM. On the plus side, it regains media focus and it once again seems like a potent threat to stability. If they hadn't attacked foreign nationals in such a dramatic fashion, the operation probably would have been a tiny blip on the screen of global media. This is a lesson that the AQIM seems to have learned directly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Secondly, this sort of operation appeals to a certain fringe extremist element in Algeria (and elsewhere) who want to see a major escalation in the conflict, and who are intent upon targeting Westerners. It wins the admiration of Usama Bin Laden and his acolytes. The downside of launching an attack like this is that AQIM is risking alienating another much larger part of its constituency -- ordinary Islamist dissidents who may be opposed to the Algerian regime and its security forces, but who are disturbed by the idea of killing innocent UN workers for no apparent reason. This is similar to what has happened in Iraq recently with Al-Qaida -- AQI has managed to scare off everyone with its fanatical violence, including its own former allies among the Iraqi insurgents. In Algeria, this is even more of an issue, because you do not have an explicit foreign occupation to justify such acts, and because there is a storied local history of bitter internecine conflict among Islamic extremists over who and what are legitimate targets for jihad. So is this the great awakening of the jihad in Algeria? I'm somewhat skeptical. What we are more likely witnessing here is a jihadi movement that is flailing about wildly in the hopes of replicating the comparative success of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. In my opinion, it is more a sign of desperation then anything else. The AQIM is obviously not able to take the government or its allies on in a straightforward guerilla confrontation. The mystique of the Algerian Islamic resistance has always been based on the romantic idea of mysterious revolutionaries hiding in the mountains and launching courageous hit-and-run attacks on the Algerian military. That's why there have never been suicide car bombings before this year in Algeria. Instead, the AQIM has been reduced to driving cars full of explosives into civilian compounds in order to generate sensational death counts. There's just no honor in that. I suppose that doesn't make them necessarily any less dangerous -- it just means that their ultimate mission is futile.
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