What's So New About Al-Qaeda Being Active In North Africa?
02 February 2013
By Osman Mirghani
The tragic events in Algeria and the consequences of
Mali's crisis have overshadowed all other news stories
over the past few days and have been met with
understandable shock. However there is nothing
surprising about what happened, even if some analysts
are portraying the situation as if the world is
experiencing terrorism for the first time, or as if
North Africa never experienced Al-Qaeda's violence and
abhorrent terrorism. It is true that the
hostage-taking and the subsequent killing of at least
38 people-37 foreign national and 1 Algerian- is awful
and deserving of condemnation by any standards.
However such an incident was not out of the question
in light of what is happening in our region, not to
mention the threats being issued by groups affiliated
to Al-Qaeda, particularly Signatories in Blood
battalion commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
The Algerian government had been concerned about such
an operation and so it resisted international and
regional pressures and overtly voiced reservation
about military intervention in Mali. Algeria viewed
such intervention as a measure that would not end the
crisis but rather exacerbate and prolong it. This was
in view of the ethnic composition of the region, the
rugged landscape of the vast desert which is home to a
number of militant groups, and the history of struggle
in this particular region, something that the
terrorists and militants exploited following the
eminent lack of national and international concern for
the Tuareg Cause.
Algeria did not want to be involved in the Mali war,
but this war came to the Algerians' own backyards
because fire spreads quickly following that first
spark. In addition to this, a number of leaders and
members of armed groups that are fighting in Mali are
Algerians who are seeking to transfer the war to
Algeria. This is not because Algeria allowed French
warplanes to cross its airspace but rather out of a
desire to wreak vengeance on the Algerian government
that defeated them following a bloody war that lasted
for long years. Even if Algeria completely distanced
itself from the Mali quagmire and these armed groups
had been able to defeat the central government and
take control of this country, they would still have
sought to transfer the war not just to Algeria but
also to Mauritania and other neighboring countries.
The dilemma is that the Mali crisis has fallen into
the abyss and the country had become a hotbed for
armed groups, regardless of French or African
intervention. In reality, failing to find a solution
to the Tuareg Cause, not to mention the grievances of
other ethnic and tribal groups, created a climate of
escalation and fertile ground for armed groups which
the already widespread Al-Qaeda members could
infiltrate. What is certain is that Al-Qaeda is not a
new arrival to North Africa. After its long domestic
war with armed groups, Algeria suffered greatly as a
result of the spread of groups tied to Al-Qaeda.
Following this, we witnessed the establishment of the
so-called Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb franchise.
Similarly, Tunisia and Mauritania also suffered from
operations carried out by groups with ties to Al-Qaeda,
or which followed Al-Qaeda's ideology and approach.
Morocco was also subject to terrorist attacks that
aimed to destabilize the country. Terrorist operations
extended from Egypt and Sudan all the way to Somalia,
while we have lately witnessed extremist organizations
emerging in Nigeria and other African states.
There are those who view the In Amenas hostage crisis
and the emergence of organizations in Mali with ties
to Al-Qaeda as an outcome or consequence of the Arab
Spring. However the truth is that terrorism had been
present in North Africa for many years prior to the
Arab revolutions. It is true that the manner in which
Gaddafi was ousted, the chaos that followed this, and
the subsequent proliferation of weapons-which ended up
in the hands of numerous factions-all contributed to
large quantities of weapons finding their way outside
of Libya and into neighboring states. However this
does mean that if Gaddafi had not been ousted then the
situation in Mali would not have moved towards war or
that the terrorists would have disappeared from the
region. In fact, Gaddafi himself tried to utilize the
Al-Qaeda card, receiving a number of Al-Qaeda
detainees according to a deal concluded with Western
intelligence apparatus. We also recently discovered
that organizations with ties to Al-Qaeda and which
previously fought side by side with Gaddafi's troops
prior to his 2011 ouster are now fighting in Mali.
Despite all this, Colonel Gaddafi brandished the Al-Qaeda
card to intimidate the world, saying that terrorist
organizations would dominate the region if his regime
was toppled.
The state of unrest that followed the collapse of some
regimes may have created a climate that Al-Qaeda used
to its advantage; however we would be missing the
target completely and ultimately fail to resolve the
situation if we view the recent occurrences as mere
consequences of the Arab Spring. Terrorism has been
present for decades and the war on this phenomenon has
never stopped, while all signs indicate that this war
will be a protracted one. Although security solutions
are a necessity when confronting terrorist groups,
this alone will not succeed in completely eradicating
this from the roots because terrorism is a very
profound phenomenon with complex cause. We must deal
with all of its political, economic, and social
dimensions and remove the causes of injustice that
push some to embrace extremism. We must also take into
account the fact that circumstances and the
environment differ from one country to another;
meaning that solutions must be modified to fit the
circumstances of each country. Most importantly, we
must confront extremism ideology that incites hatred
and intolerance and pushes youth to die on distant and
not-so-distant battlefields.
The US, backed by an international coalition, fought
for over ten years in Afghanistan: Can we say that Al-Qaeda
or the Taliban have been eradicated? The fact of the
matter is that Al-Qaeda elements have moved to other
regions, while others have lately returned to
Afghanistan in order to resume the fight side by side
with the Taliban. After the US exhausted itself by
deploying its troops in remote battlefields,
Washington has resorted to utilizing drone attacks
with the objective of killing some Al-Qaeda commanders
and elements to the point that such attacks increased
three-fold from the previous year. An American
website, citing a statement made by a US Congressman a
few months ago, claimed that drone attacks have killed
3,378 people in Pakistan, 1,952 in Yemen and 170 in
Somalia. Despite all this, terrorism has not been
defeated; rather it is spreading from region to
region.
Drying up the sources of terrorism requires
confronting extremist ideology wherever it may exist,
as well as addressing the root causes that terrorists
use to recruit youth. Otherwise the In Amenas hostage
crisis or the war in Mali will be nothing more than
another incident in a never-ending war.
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