Islamists blame the existence of the GIA on Algeria's desolving of the Islamic Salvation Front in 1992, a jihadist political party that won popular elections in that year. The Algerian military refused to recognize the election results, which were marred by widespread violence and fraud. Terrorist violence, however, predated the elections.
As early as 27 November 1991, about ten soldiers of the Algerian army were savagely massacred in Guemmar (in south east Algeria) by an Islamic terrorist group, practically all of whose members had received training in camps in Afghanistan. This attack, the first of its kind, launched the terrorist campaign in Algeria and revealed to national public opinion the existence of groups structured, armed, trained and organised with the aim of seizing power to install a theocratic state. These groups called themselves the Armed Islamic Movement (MIA), with reference to a terrorist movement that had appeared in 1981, led by Mustapha Bouyali. At the political and ideological level, this movement was based on and inspired by a document called 'Jihad in Algeria', comprising 22 items of instruction to terrorist groups. It was written by the two principal leaders and founders of the FIS, Abassi Madani and Ali Benhadj.
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) was created in the same period, with the aim of taking control of the organisational structure of the MIA and extending areas of terrorist activity to the whole of the national territory. The institution of a military command (Imarat), a political structure (Madliss echourra) and terrorists brigades and sections (katiba and serya) are the main forms adopted by the GIA groups that have planned to install an Islamic state (Khalifat) in Algeria.
The decision of Droukdal to reach out to al-Zarqawi for an alliance came at a time when the GIA faced annihilation. The new-found merger, which has resulted in the renaming of GIA as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The results of this new alliance are being felt throughout Northern Africa.
Attacks in 2007 in Tunisia were hatched across the border in Algeria by AQIM.
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.
The exportation of violence across Northern Africa is viewed with some trepidation throughout Europe and the United States. Easy access from Northern Africa to Europe is seen as a direct route for al Qaeda to move freely around the world.
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 situation in Algeria spreading across Northern Africa has caught the attention of Defense Secretary William Gates. "These groups, as best we can tell, have a fair amount of independence. They get inspiration, they get sometimes guidance, probably some training, probably some money from the Al Qaeda leadership. It's not as centralized a movement as it was, say, in 2001. But in some ways, the fact that it has spread in the way that it has, in my view, makes it perhaps more dangerous."
Money and access to the worldwide al Qaeda leadership was the key to the merger of the two groups. "We didn't have enough weapons," Mourad Khettab, former militant lieutenant told the New York Times. "The people didn't want to join. And money, we didn't have enough money."
The Iraq war also was drawing many of the group's best fighters, according to Khettab and a militant who trained Algerians in Iraq for Zarqawi. Embracing the global jihad was seen as a way to keep more of these men under the Algerian group's control and recruit new members.
Then, in March 2004, a covert American military operation led to the capture of one of the group's top deputies [Amari Saifi, also known as El Para]. A few months later, Droukdal reached out to Zarqawi to get the man released. Zarqawi seized the opportunity to convince him that Al Qaeda could revive his operations, a former top leader of the Algerian group says.
Just as the Qaeda leadership has been able to reconstitute itself in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas, Al Qaeda's North Africa offshoot is now running small training camps for militants from Morocco, Tunisia and as far away as Nigeria, according to the State Department and Droukdal. The State Department in April categorized the tribal areas and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as the two top hot spots in its annual report on global terrorism.
According to Khettab, Osama bin Laden had made overtures to the GIA as far back as 1994. In Sudan at the time, bin Laden was looking for a new base of operations and saw "Algeria, with its rugged terrain and proximity to Europe, was an ideal spot."
The leaders of the GIA at the time, turned him down. They saw their struggle as merely regional. "We are interested in just Algeria."
But, while the GIA might have considered itself as a local group, the United States intelligence agencies recognized their potential in the greater war on terror. The overtures from bin Laden demonstrated that he also recognized their potential. In September of 2001 the Bush Adminstration listed it among organizations that "commit, threaten to commit or support terrorism."
The terrorist designation rankled Salafist group members, but there was dissent over whether to stay focused on the fight with the Algerian government. Two years later, the group's leader, Nabil Sahraoui, issued a statement for the first time endorsing "Osama bin Laden's jihad against the heretic America" and expressing his desire that the group join Al Qaeda.
Then a top GIA operative, Amari Saifi, kidnapped 32 European tourists in March of 2003, receiving more than $10 million in ransom, the US decided to act. With the help of the CIA, the US Military tracked Saifi for months across several international borders, finally capturing him in Chad in March of 2004.
His capture dealt a terrible blow to the GIA, prompting their message to al-Zarqawi. They hoped that al-Zarqawi could arrange a rescue for Saifi. Al-Zarqawi enthusiastically proposed a merger, although Saifi was turned over to the Algerian authorities before a release could be attempted.
The newly emerged AQIM has announced its presence with terrorist bombings across North Africa. The 2007 plot uncovered in Tunisia to bomb American and British Embassies in Tunis, came directly from AQIM.
This has not gone unnoticed with the US Military and intelligence communities.
"Africa had emerged strategically to the United States," said General Charles Wald, former deputy commander of the Pentagon's European Command, which had responsibility for Africa. "A significant amount of our energy is going to be coming from Africa in the future."
The wide open spaces of the Sahara where arms, drugs and cigarette smugglers roam and tribal law reigns were also seen as potential jihadist havens.
AQIM has also attracted the notice of European intelligence agencies. Arrests in France, Spain and Italy all point back to the Algerian terrorist group.
European investigators are examining a group of Tunisians with alleged ties to the North African Qaeda operation who are suspected of running a fund-raising and recruitment cell stretching from Paris to Milan. So far, despite its stated intentions to strike Europe and the rest of the West, investigators say they see little evidence that the North Africa branch of Al Qaeda is exporting fighters and equipment for an attack in the Europe.
"Their ambition is to attack in Europe, but I wouldn't hard-sell it," said Gilles de Kerchove, the head of counterterrorism for the European Union. "I wouldn't say AQIM is poised to attack in Europe."
What this all demonstrates is the fluid nature of the Islamist terrorist network. When al Qaeda saw Iraq as the place to make their stand against the West, recruits poured into Iraq from all over the Islamic world. As joint Iraqi and American efforts have squeezed al Qaeda out of favor in Iraq, they have metasticized into other parts of the world -- into the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan and the vast vacant regions of Norther Africa. What was once a well financed worldwide organization, has now degenerated into small autonomous, and somewhat disjointed terrorist organizations.
Like the game of Whack-a-Mole, where a child uses a rubber mallot to whack the heads of the moles as they emerge one at a time, the radical jihadists have been relegated to small regional organizations that stick their heads up -- only to be whacked by the US Military and our allies around the world.
Make no mistake, we are winning the war against radical Islam, but it will be a long and hard fought fight.
Fighting for conservatism one day at a time.