More reality to match Rico's fiction

The New York Times has an article by Eric Schmitt and Souad Mekhennet about al-Qaeda:

Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa has carried out a string of killings, bombings and other lethal attacks against Westerners and African security forces in recent weeks that have raised fears that the terrorist group may be taking a deadlier turn. American and European security and counterterrorism officials say the attacks may signal the return of foreign fighters from the Iraq war, where they honed their bomb-making skills.
The attacks also reflect al-Qaeda’s growing tentacles in the northern tier of Africa, outside the group’s main sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the officials say. In just the past six weeks, the group has claimed responsibility for killing a British hostage in Mali and an American aid worker in Mauritania, murdering a senior Malian Army officer in his home, and ambushing a convoy of nearly two dozen Algerian paramilitary forces.
Last weekend, fighters from the affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, attacked a Malian Army patrol in that country’s northern desert, killing nearly a dozen soldiers and capturing several others, American military officials said. Several militants were also killed. Assessing the militant threat in North Africa is complicated. Some security and counterterrorism officials say the affiliate, based in Algeria, is more a criminal gang— ransoming kidnapped Westerners to finance its operations— than a group of ideologically committed terrorists. Other counterterrorism officials point to the attacks as evidence of the group’s intent to expand its longtime insurgency in Algeria to other North African countries and possibly Europe, where the group has financial and logistical supporters. “AQIM has become much stronger in Algeria and Mauritania, and the killing of the British hostage and the American is a message they are not only concentrating on Maghreb issues, they are now part of the global jihad,” said a senior French counterterrorism official, using an acronym for the group and speaking anonymously because he was discussing intelligence reports.
Last week, the leader of the al-Qaeda wing, Abdelmalek Droukdal, threatened a “flagrant war” against France in retaliation for an effort by France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to ban burqas, the head-to-toe women’s garments, which Sarkozy called a symbol of enslavement.
The surge in violence has been less audacious than an attack by the group in December of 2007, in which suicide bombers struck the United Nations and court offices in Algiers, killing 41 people and wounding 170 others. But some American intelligence analysts say there are initial signs that small numbers of foreign fighters from North Africa who fought in Iraq are returning home. “Is there a threat? There sure is a threat,” General William Ward, the leader of the United States Africa Command, told reporters last month. Still other officials say the mayhem may be partly a result of a vicious rivalry between two al-Qaeda subcommanders in Mali, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, a clash that underscores the kind of autonomous jihad cells that counterterrorism officials say are particularly hard to combat.
Lauren Ploch, an Africa specialist with the Congressional Research Service, said the extremist Islamist ideology of al-Qaeda was unlikely to garner much sympathy or traction with the populations in the states of the Sahel belt, the southern boundary of the Sahara. “Nevertheless,” Ms. Ploch said, “the vast spaces in northern Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and southern Algeria are extremely difficult to police, so it’s quite possible that we may see surges in extremist activity in certain countries depending on how well their neighbors are able to control their own territories.”
The group originated in the 1990s to fight Algeria’s secular government. In 2007 it changed its name, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. (Maghreb refers to the western edge of the Arab world.)
It singled out Western targets even before the name change. In December of 2006, militants in Algeria bombed a bus carrying workers with an affiliate of Halliburton, the American oil services company. A year later, gunmen killed four French tourists in Mauritania. The latest spate of violence began in late May, when the al-Qaeda group killed a Briton, Edwin Dyer, a day after its second deadline for meeting its demands expired. He was kidnapped on 22 January, along with a Swiss citizen and two other tourists in Niger, and was held in Mali. The group had demanded the release of Abu Qatada, a Jordanian-born Palestinian cleric held in Britain, whom a Spanish judge has called the leading al-Qaeda lieutenant in Europe, as well as $14 million for Mr. Dyer and the Swiss citizen.
About two weeks later, gunmen in northern Mali killed a senior Malian Army intelligence officer who had arrested several members of the al-Qaeda group, which uses the northern Malian desert as a support base. Within days, Malian Army forces retaliated, capturing a militant base near the Algerian border and killing more than two dozen fighters, according to Malian news reports.
On 23 June, assailants in Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, killed Christopher Ervin Leggett, an American aid worker, in what authorities said was a bungled kidnapping.
In neighboring Algeria about the same time, militants using roadside bombs and automatic rifles ambushed a convoy of paramilitary police forces about a hundred kilometers east of Algiers, killing eighteen members of the security forces. Algerian security forces have long battled the Islamist militants, but security officials say they are also now offering military and intelligence support to poorer neighboring countries like Mali, where the insurgents have sought refuge. “With the kidnappings impacting on Mali’s tourism industry, the country seems to be taking the situation more seriously, and the Algerians are offering more support,” said Jeremy Binnie, a senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center.
General Ward, the American commander, said that in response to the killings, Army Green Berets would redouble training efforts with several regional militaries to improve their ability to fight terrorists.
In Europe, the authorities are eyeing al-Qaeda’s North African wing warily, expressing concern about its threats to attack European countries that have deployed troops to Afghanistan. “What we see here is indeed a lot of logistic support from people who are active in Maghreb,” one Belgian security official said, speaking anonymously about intelligence reports. “They are collecting money, faking papers and giving safe haven. They are active in indoctrination and radicalization of people and sending them for training.” But these officials have mixed views on whether the group can strike outside Africa. “We don’t rule out that al-Qaeda will try to attack us, and then AQIM would play probably an important role,” said August Hanning, state secretary of the German Interior Ministry. “But we see an increase of danger for German interests in North Africa and the Sahel.”

Rico says all this Maghreb stuff was covered in his novel Embassy Down, which you can go buy from Amazon, with his thanks.