Divided against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

By Olivier Guitta

I wrote a piece for the Middle East Times looking at the current situation in Africa and the response of various nations to the threat of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
You can read it in full here.
Here is an excerpt:

On Jan. 22, four European tourists - two Swiss, one Briton and one German - were kidnapped at the border of Mali and Niger. The major terrorist group in the region, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is very likely behind this operation. This should not come as a surprise. In an article for this publication in March 2008 ("AQIM's new kidnapping strategy"), I had warned about this worrisome new strategy.
In fact, North Africa has become in the past two years a major front in the war against radical Islam. While Algeria has witnessed regular attacks and has been in the news a lot, its neighbors have also not been spared by Islamist terrorism. Indeed, Morocco, Tunisia and more recently Mauritania have suffered terror attacks.

AQIM's original intention was to federate all the Islamist terror groups of the region. In fact by putting together resources and attacking what they call "infidel" regimes, AQIM thinks it can recreate a portion of the Caliphate.

AQIM is using this to its advantage the porous and virtually uncontrollable borders in the region. The group is actually following the advice given in the early 2000s by a Yemeni representative of Osama bin Laden to GSPC's (AQIM's former name) then leader, Amir Hassan Hattab, to use the Sahara as its fallback base. Since then, the Sahel has become a haven for jihadist groups more or less linked to AQIM.

The West knows about it and tries to do something about it. For example a French Breguet Atlantique airplane, based in Dakar, flies over the area regularly, an operation that is tantamount to finding a needle in a sand dune. The United States has a training center in Gao, in Northern Mali, where it trains Malian military in anti-terror combat.