I don't have much to add to the commentary already out there on the terror attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb in Algeria and Morocco. There had been growing chatter about real threats in those two countries over the last few weeks, which in some ways makes it even more alarming - presumably the security services were on high alert. Ever since the announced merger of the GPSC with al-Qaeda, something like this has been likely, and now it's happened. AQM claims that it only targeted government officials and security forces, but those claims are belied by the large numbers of civilians killed and wounde (33 dead at last count and hundreds of wounded).
Just two quick notes before I run off to class.
First, the Muslim Brotherhood immediately condemned the terror attacks, which shouldn't surprise anyone but probably will. The condemnation was issued by the MB's Supreme Guide Mohamed Mehdi Akef, and extended to a reiteration of its blanket rejection of the use of such violence, which - in his words - will not lead to positive reform and only serves the interests of the enemies of Islam. Yusuf al-Qaradawi offered a similar denunciation, as did the Moroccan Tawhid wa Islah Party. In the context of the debates about the MB which have been rekindled around the Leiken and Brooke Foreign Affairs article, I guess this "dog bites man" condemnation is worth noting though.
Second, in terms of al-Qaeda itself it's worth noting the extent to which attacks like this mark a return to the insurgencies of the 1990s rather than a notably new development. The innovation of al-Qaeda Central, as has been widely noted, was to shift the attention of the jihad away from the 'near enemy' (local apostate regimes) to the 'far enemy' (the United States). One of the notable trends we're seeing in al-Qaeda 2.0, or al-Qaeda TNG, or whatever you prefer to call it, has been local cells hitting local targets under the banner of al-Qaeda... i.e. a return to hitting the 'near enemy'. The brand name is new, and gives a veneer of globalism to the attacks, but the terrorism itself looks more like the (failed) insurgencies of the 1990s: attacks on local regime targets which kill a lot of local citizens along the way, carried out by local cels which may or may not include returnees from Iraq or people directly linked to AQ Central. This isn't to discount the very real changes in the organization of the transnational jihad, or the importance of the jihadist rhetoric and images and identities forged over the last few years, or the opportunity to regularly attack the 'far enemy' provided by the presence of American troops in Iraq. But operationally, it is striking the extent to which these kind of terror attacks resemble the earlier period of jihadist terrorism in the 1990s rather than some kind of qualitative leap forward. I'll write more about that later.
update: George Joffe, a very experienced observer of North African Islamism, makes a similar point about the locality of this terrorism over at Comment is Free:
But the campaign is local, as it always was, against the Algerian security services and the Algerian state, which it seeks to replace with an Islamic caliphate. Even though it now claims the mantle of al-Qaida - something which Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's number two, confirmed after the group's second attempt to gain such an endorsement last September (the first was made in 2001) - its real agenda has not changed....And where does al-Qaida fit into the picture? The suggestion that it acts as a transnational organisation directing violence in Algeria according to a centrally-conceived plan is simply untrue. Events there do not fit into the alleged global threat to western states accused of interfering in the Muslim world. They still address the group's proclaimed national agenda of removing un-Islamic, tyrannical and corrupt government.
I suspect that debate will be raging for some time as to whether to treat these attacks as the continuation of a long-standing insurgency under a new al-Qaeda brand name or as the realization of an al-Qaeda strategy of "seeding" jihadist insurgencies around the Islamic world. That's an important debate to have.
Officials: Algerian Bombing Is First Wave of New Al Qaeda 'Spring Offensive'
http://www.crusade-media.com/news65.html
Posted by: paul | April 13, 2007 at 05:54 PM