Al-Qaeda's obsessive fixation on the Maghreb

The bloody Salafist jihadist terrorist offensive during September in Algeria, marked by suicide bombings, has caused more than 50 dead and more than one hundred injured. Meanwhile, the opposition Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) grabbed the most votes in the Moroccan elections on September 7 (although it has been relegated to the second position thanks to the application of an electoral law arduously designed by the authorities). The latest events in Algeria and Morocco provide an eloquent scenario in the Maghreb, something that Spain should not ignore.

In Algeria’s case, the terrorism is evident, explicit, tremendously lethal and coherent in its approach; in Morocco’s case, Salafist jihadists that, as a rule of principle despise the ballot box, will undoubtedly use the example in Morocco to try increasing didactically their activism. One should not forget the very high abstention in the Moroccan elections – 63 percent – very similar to the legislative elections in Algeria on May 17, with a 65-percent abstention rate, something that many analysts hasten to blame on the people feeling apathetic due to the lack of appeal that governments and traditional parties have.

But that can also be due to the effectiveness of the emissaries of Islamist radicalism. They made it very clear in Algeria and Morocco: To vote is to play the game of apostate tyrants and Islam must discredit corrupt regimes by not playing their game and fighting back with the sword. It is evident that, together with those abstaining because they consider the political game as having very little credibility, there are some doing it to follow the radical Islamists’ breakaway slogans, and there are others doing it out of fear of terrorist threats – a detail far from negligible.

Terrorism’s Increasing Forcefulness in Algeria

Five suicide bombings since April 11 are enough to conclude that terrorism is not residual in Algeria and its increasingly ferocious manifestation should call everyone’s attention in the Maghreb as well as in Europe – if it has not occurred yet. That day, 3 suicide bombers crashed their cars loaded with explosives into the seat of government and police stations leaving 30 dead, 300 injured and the culprits, the martyrs, appeared a few days later on a didactic video by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) praising what they did and announcing what was about to come.

While all this was happening, the Algerian authorities and some Western analysts were deep into an incomprehensible debate, discussing if the attacks had been suicide bombings or not, diverting attention from the real problem. It is true that it was difficult to admit – although there was a precedent in Algeria with a GIA suicide attack against Algiers Central Police station in 1995 – because it is highly destabilizing that the daily suicide methods of Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan become implanted in the Maghreb and at Europe’s doors, but the sooner we assume it, the better because we will be able to apply preventive measures against them. On the other hand, it is also good to remember – to counter the idea that terrorism is residual – that 4 days before these suicide attacks on April 7, in the Aïn Defla region, around 50 AQIM terrorists had killed 9 Algerian soldiers in an ambush and that in the fire exchange between terrorists and military forces, the terrorists might have suffered 8 to 10 losses.

After the April 11 attacks – time on July 11 – another suicide attack in Lakhdaria against army barracks caused the death of 10 soldiers and left 15 injured in an attack very similar to the recent one in Dellys using a modus operandi repeated over and over again in Iraq. After that, the Batna suicide attack on September 6 caused 22 dead and 107 injured in an attempt directed against President Abdelaziz Buteflika – though the perpetrator, the first suicide bomber on foot in Algeria, had to precipitate the explos