Al Qaeda in the Maghreb: The "Newest" Front in the War on Terror

It is jihad for the liberation of Palestine, all Palestine, as well as every other home for Islam, from Andalucía to Iraq. The whole world is open for us!

—Fernand Reinares

The recent formation of al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) could be interpreted as the opening of a new battlefield in the cause of international jihad. Such a front, however, is not unprecedented. Algerian veterans of the 1980s Afghan campaign against the Soviets returned home and played a key role in the Islamist insurgency. Composed mainly of Algerian "Afghans," the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) committed unspeakable atrocities in the 1990s.¹ Moroccan and Algerian émigré communities in Europe, moreover, have played important roles in financing for al Qaeda and a variety of North African Salafist groups.² Given its consolidation of North African Salafist terrorist groups under one umbrella, al Qaeda in the Maghreb does present substantial security challenges for North African and European governments.

Terrorism in the Mediterranean region has grown recently because of numerous factors. By far the most important have been the growing fundamentalism of some Maghrebi communities in Europe, the failures of the jihadist movement (most notably in Algeria), and the financial largesse provided to jihadist terror organizations by Islamist civil society and criminal networks. The Iraq war has added a powerful new impetus to the expansion of the jihadist movement.

In this essay I argue that the al Qaeda–North African Salafist alliance is a response to post-9/11 organizational and ideological problems. Al Qaeda's loss of its Afghan sanctuary and the breaking up of its command-and-control operations have made it dependent on affiliates to recruit terrorists. The inability of the North African Salafists to overthrow any government in the Maghreb, moreover, requires the commissioning of a cause that could give them new life. The crossfertilization of al Qaeda and North African Salafists is a mutually beneficial arrangement designed to compensate for past failures.

My argument proceeds on four levels. First, I analyze various jihadist movements, their common problems, and the reasons why they crossfertilize their operations. Second, I examine the role of extremist Maghrebi communities in Europe in facilitating this intermarriage between international and nationalist jihadism. Third, I note the role of wars (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, and Kashmir) in raising Muslim consciousness and Islamic extremism. Finally, I provide an overview of the security threats created by the Salafists' incorporation into al Qaeda for the Mediterranean region.

Islamism's Many Violent Faces: Nationalist, Internationalist, and Regional Jihadist Networks

It is well recognized that modern Islamism's ideological and organizational roots lie with Hassan al Banna's Muslim Brotherhood and the ideas of its most preeminent theorist, Sayyid Qutb.³ Formed in the 1920s to fight Britain's occupation of Egypt, the Brotherhood urged the creation of an authentic Islamic state. The Brotherhood emerged as the main opposition to Gamal Abdul Nasser's pan-Arab secular socialist state. Many of the Brotherhood's leaders and members would eventually be imprisoned and killed (including Qutb). Prior to his death in 1966, Qutb focused on the need for violent jihad, and his essays would play a role in the formation of the jihadist movement.

Qutb's views on secularism, the West, and the nature of Islamic brotherhood involve a rejection of the European Enlightenment and a call for a renewed Islamic consciousness to resist secularization.⁴ Central to Qutb's complaints of the "Westernization" of Islam under the pan-Arabists was the separation of the earthly and spiritual realms and the alienating and weakening effect (that is, "the hideous schizophrenia") this has on the Muslim psyche. By emphasizing the nation-state and the nonreligious foundation of state power, Qutb argued, the pan-Arabists are conspirators in a broader Western plot to destroy Islam.

Qutb concluded that Muslims have an obligation to defend Islam by overthrowing the pan-Arabists and imposing sharia (the Islamic law) as the only legitimate and sole source of authority. Once the "barbarians" (Qutb's name for pro-Western Arab leaders) had been toppled by...