As reported here. And in Algeria, al-Qaeda has its most convenient point of departure for Europe itself, as well as a base of operations to support its activities within the continent. “Algerian jihadists seek to expand,” from UPI, June 18:
ALGIERS, Algeria, June 18 (UPI) — The killing of some 20 Algerian paramilitary policemen in a desert ambush Wednesday by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaida was a show of force by the jihadists who appear determined to expand their operations across the region and open a new terror front.
The ambush was the work of al-Qaida in the Maghreb, the Arabic name for North Africa. It was formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, one of the most vicious Islamist groups to emerge from Algeria’s civil war throughout the 1990s. It swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s global network in September 2006.
The group has a hard core of an estimated 500 to 800 fighters, a fraction of the tens of thousands active during the war between Islamists and the military-backed regime in Algiers, in which an estimated 200,000 people perished.
But its alliance with Osama bin Laden has meant it has acquired seasoned fighters from other al-Qaida affiliates, many of them veterans of the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently Pakistan.
Wednesday’s attack serves as an illustration of the Algerian group’s growing expertise in guerrilla warfare that are straight out of the jihadist manual developed in Iraq, with considerable influence from Hezbollah’s 27-year-old war in Lebanon against Israel.
Arab and Western intelligence sources are convinced that al-Qaida in the Maghreb is seeking an operational alliance with other jihadist groups in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
It’s funny how they keep finding common cause in how they “misunderstand” Islam, isn’t it?
At the same time it is expanding its reach deep into the largely ungoverned areas of the Sahara region in Mauritania, Mali and Niger. It envisions this as the western end of an Islamic caliphate stretching across the Middle East and North Africa to replicate Islam’s glory days in 8th and 9th centuries.
Next stop: Andalusia, and points north.