The Maghreb has been hit by a series of Islamic militant attacks in recent weeks that point to a growing threat by Islamist radicals who appear to be coalescing into a region-wide network that some fear is poised to extend offensive operations into Europe. At the very least it suggests that bigger attacks should be expected and that major battles with militants are brewing. It is clear that militants in North Africa are becoming more confident and pursuing a more regional, rather than national, approach and avoiding attacks on civilians, a tactic that ultimately discredited Algerian militants during the savage bloodshed of the 1990s. Between April 10 and 15, suicide bombers struck in Morocco and Algeria, killing about 50 people, including themselves. The Moroccan incidents occurred in the port city of Casablanca. Islamic militants wearing explosive vests blew themselves up when trapped by police. They included two brothers who detonated their belts outside the US Consulate and American Cultural Center when they could not penetrate the security barrier. Police reported that a larger plot against the tourist resorts of Marrakesh and Essaouira and cruise ships in Casablanca had apparently been nipped in the bud. In Algeria, jihadist bombers struck in the capital Algiers for the first time in years on April 11 and blew up the Government Palace housing the office of Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, the heart of the country’s political power, and other government targets. Thirty-three people were killed. The high-profile attacks were a major setback for the Algerian government, which has been claiming the Islamist extremist threat had been virtually eliminated after 15 years of violence, and were seen as dramatic evidence of a new front in Al-Qaeda’s global struggle. New front. Tunisia, which has largely escaped serious problems with Islamist militants, witnessed militant activity in late December and early January. Security authorities announced they had killed 12 “Salafist terrorists” and captured 15 in a series of gunbattles. They alleged the Islamic militants were led by Afghanistan War veteran and former gendarme Lassad Sassi, who has been linked to militant cells in Milan, Italy. The heavily armed militants had crossed from Algeria, where on January 15 the interior ministry linked the Tunisians to Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the deadliest of the Maghreb Islamic militant factions. Their intended targets included Western diplomatic missions, according to Tunisian authorities. The US military said on February 8 that the GSPC was running a series of mobile training camps in Mali for militants from that country, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Niger and Senegal. Algerian authorities have arrested at least two groups of Tunisians suspected of wanting to join the GSPC since April 2005. In 2006, the GSPC was reported to have joined forces with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, Libya’s Islamic Fighting Group and several Tunisian factions to form the Union of the Arab Maghreb. The GSPC later formally allied with Al-Qaeda and renamed itself Al-Qaeda of the Maghreb. The recent bombings across the region do not appear to have been coordinated, as many observers have suggested, but they do point to a growing threat by Islamic militant factions in the region. These are spearheaded by diehard veterans of Algeria’s civil war, who have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda and appear to be seeking to build a region-wide network to coordinate operations. The indications are that these will be directed against Western and economic targets, in line with Osama bin Laden’s jihad against the US and its allies, and ultimately against continental America itself. New horizons. Intelligence analysts are divided about the importance of this coalition and its intentions and capabilities. While the recent attacks in Algeria and Morocco do not appear to have been coordinated, the potential for united action by the militants clearly exists. Indeed, if the upsurge in militant activity across the Maghreb in recent months is anything to go by, a sustained and coordinated offensive is increasingly likely. The professionalism of the Algerian bombings and the discipline of the Moroccan bombers who, despite their poor tactics and clumsy planning, blew themselves up when cornered rather than be captured, could be a lethal combination against authoritarian regimes that have shown little interest in joining forces against a common threat. These deeply entrenched regimes, using the Islamist threat (real or imagined) as justification for continued repression and denial of democratic reforms, have given impetus to the swell of radical militancy across North Africa. But the pattern of attacks in recent months, targeting infrastructure such as oil installations, the security services, the expatriate workforce - indicates that while hitting symbols of these regimes remains a major objective, the militants now have a wider agenda that increasingly slots into Osama bin Laden’s overall strategy of hammering the US. Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who in 1996-99 headed the agency unit tasked with tracking bin Laden, noted recently: “Until bin Laden came on the scene, the Islamists were exclusively fighting local tyrannies.” Now, he observes, it has become clear that “the addition of the GSPC to Al-Qaeda’s ranks fits nicely into the primary mission bin Laden has defined for his organization: instigating and inspiring Muslims to move their focus toward Islam’s ‘far enemy,’ the United States and its allies.” These efforts, he stressed, “are being furthered by Al-Qaeda’s ability to operate from bases in Iraq.” Spreading southward. These Islamic militant groups, the Algerians and Moroccans in particular, have established themselves in Western Europe, mainly France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, and have extended their bases and their recruitment southward into the ungoverned wilderness of Mauritania and other countries of the Sahel such as Mali and Chad. On April 5, Mauritanian police arrested three Algerians and four Mauritanians on terrorist charges. One of the Mauritanians was in the army. Further evidence of a growing cross-border alliance was provided in 2005, when the GSPC attacked a military outpost in Mauritania, killing 15 soldiers. The attackers fled into Mali, according to the US military, which recently established a new Africa Command, in part to counter growing jihadist activity. The US Army is currently training counter-insurgency forces in Mali and its neighbors. But like the Maghreb regimes Washington is supporting - with the possible exception of the Moroccan monarchy - the Americans are paying scant attention to the political and economic reforms that would eradicate much of the discontent on which the Islamic militants thrive. Morocco and Tunisia are longtime US allies; Algeria is rapidly becoming one, a process that began after 9/11 when, overnight, the Americans, who had kept Algeria’s military-led government at arm’s length throughout that country’s war against militant Islam, suddenly found themselves fighting the same enemy. Algerian epicenter. The epicenter of jihadist activity in the Maghreb is Algeria. The Islamic insurgency triggered in 1992 after the military-led government cancelled parliamentary elections the Islamists were set to win has been effectively crushed. But the diehard GSPC, probably numbering no more than 500 activists, fights on despite a major military offensive in its main area of operations in the mountains of eastern Algeria. In 2006, the GSPC appeared to be on the ropes, most of its leaders killed or captured, its organization splintering into what were little more than bandit gangs, its numbers eroded by a government amnesty. But its alliance with Al-Qaeda, annointed by bin Laden’s deputy and
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