Al Qaeda's friends in North Africa

NY Times:

The plan, hatched for months in the arid mountains of North Africa, was to attack the American and British Embassies here. It ended in a series of gun battles in January that killed a dozen militants and left two Tunisian security officers dead.

But the most disturbing aspect of the violence in this normally placid, tourist-friendly nation is that it came from across the border in Algeria, where an Islamic terrorist organization has vowed to unite radical Islamic groups across North Africa.

Counterterrorism officials on three continents say the trouble in Tunisia is the latest evidence that a brutal Algerian group with a long history of violence is acting on its promise: to organize extremists across North Africa and join the remnants of Al Qaeda into a new international force for jihad.

[Last week, the group claimed responsibility for seven nearly simultaneous bombings that destroyed police stations in towns east of Algiers, the Algerian capital, killing six people.]

This article was prepared from interviews with American government and military officials, French counterterrorism officials, Italian counterterrorism prosecutors, Algerian terrorism experts, Tunisian government officials and a Tunisian attorney working with Islamists charged with terrorist activities.

They say North Africa, with its vast, thinly governed stretches of mountain and desert, could become an Afghanistan-like terrorist hinterland within easy striking distance of Europe. That is all the more alarming because of the deep roots that North African communities have in Europe and the ease of travel between the regions. For the United States, the threat is also real because of visa-free travel to American cities for most European passport holders.

The violent Algerian group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials G.S.P.C., has for several years been under American watch.

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Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda chose the G.S.P.C. as its representative in North Africa. In January, the group reciprocated by switching its name to Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, claiming that the Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, had ordered the change.

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Wiretaps, interrogation of terrorism suspects and recovered documents suggest that the network has associates in France, Italy, Turkey and even Greece, which is favored as an entry point to Europe because of its relatively lax immigration controls, counterterrorism officials say.

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These guys are part of the religious bigotry disease within Islam that must be destroyed. The Europeans are going to have to do a better job of policing these guys and we need to continue to help the North African governments find and destroy them. The story is silent on Libya and whether Qaddafi has had any association with them.

Thomas P.M. Barnett asks:

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Is this somehow only our doing? Only if you think radical Islam is solely explainable within the context of US actions. Some views of terror are this ahistoric and uncontextualized, but the counter-theory is ludicrous: America withdraws and radical Islam disappears. Everyone knows we are not the target, but the target's perceived (and somewhat real) shield. The targets (authoritarian/apostate regimes) have two routes to go: open up or close up. The former means speeding the killing and the latter means delaying the killing. Same can be said historically of our military presence in the region, traditionally off-shored. When boots put on ground, though, the only question becomes, "How sped up is the killing, and who gets involved in what sequences.

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If only liberals could comprehend this reality.