One of the "little wars" we have going nobody hears about.
US search for Qaeda turns to Algeria
Country is seen as recruiting hub
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff, 3/11/2004
WASHINGTON -- US special forces are hunting for Islamic militants linked to Al Qaeda along Algeria's southern border with Mali in a little-known military operation aimed at destroying a key North African recruiting hub for Osama bin Laden's global terrorist network, according to US and Algerian officials.
Small teams of elite US soldiers have been working with local security forces in recent months in the Sahara Desert in an effort to capture or kill members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a radical Islamic organization that has pledged its allegiance to Al Qaeda and is suspected in terrorist plots in Europe and the United States, said the officials, who asked not to be identified.
The joint effort marks another front in the war on terrorism and a watershed in US-Algerian relations. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Washington stepped up military assistance to Algiers in its 12-year civil war against Islamic extremist groups. The US military involvement is also part of a larger US antiterrorism campaign in the vast, desolate Sahel region of North Africa -- which touches the nations of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad -- that US intelligence officials fear could become a primary training ground for radicals exporting terrorism around the world.
"They send troops in and out and have put up some kind of infrastructure" along the border with Mali, where members of the Algerian-based group are believed to be hiding among local Bedouins and nomadic tribes, a senior Algerian government official said of the US troops, adding that "there is no permanent presence of the US military in Algeria."
But US government officials with access to official reports said the US special forces have been working with Algeria and neighboring countries to trap members of the Salafist group, which is on the US terrorism list. The group, also known by its acronym, GSPC, was founded in 1998 at the urging of bin Laden as an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group, the violent domestic opposition to the Algerian government.
It appears to have eclipsed its parent organization as the country's main Islamic rebel group, while broadening its ties to other militants outside the country, US intelligence officials say.
Many of the group's members, estimated to be as high as 3,000 fighters, are believed to be veterans of bin Laden's Afghanistan training camps.
"Almost all the Al Qaeda cells that have been picked up in Europe have some link to this group," said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism specialist at the Investigative Project, a think tank in Washington. "These are the descendants of the Al Qaeda training camps who have gone home."
A plot to attack the United States during millennium celebrations in late 1999 and early 2000 was foiled when Ahmed Rassam, a member of the Algerian group, was arrested in Washington state in December 1999. He later testified in court to working under the control of senior Al Qaeda leaders, including Abu Zubaydah, bin Laden's chief of operations and top recruiter until he was captured in Pakistan in March 2002.
In January 2003, more Algerian links to Al Qaeda were discovered in Britain when authorities found the deadly toxin ricin in a London apartment, leading to the arrest of seven North Africans, most from Algeria. Spanish security services later arrested 16 suspected militants believed to be connected with the Salafist group.
The group has been steadily gaining popular support in Algeria by pledging to avoid killing civilians in attacks on government and military targets, according to US intelligence reports. But the reports say it has steadily expanded its contacts outside the country, particularly with Al Qaeda, which is believed to have trained 2,800 Algerians in its Afghan camps in the 1990s.
According to the Algerian official, the Salafist group has morphed into "the same group" as the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, which began waging a civil war against the Algerian government in 1992 after the government voided the results of elections in which Islamic political parties fared well. Officials estimate 150,000 people have been killed in the ensuing civil war.
The Salafist group has been the active component of Al Qaeda in Europe, according to Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Many of its members are believed to be living among Western Europe's large North African immigrant population, including in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. In late 2002, Algerian authorities announced they had killed an Al Qaeda operative from Yemen who was traveling in Algeria to meet with Salafist leaders.
US intelligence officials believe Algerians represent the third-largest pool of Al Qaeda recruits, behind Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
"The GIA in the beginning had no contacts with international terrorist groups," said the Algerian official. "The GSPC created contacts with the international terrorist groups and got involved more in international terrorist activity."
Concerned that Algeria and neighboring countries could become a new hotbed for Al Qaeda and its splinter groups, the United States stepped up military operations in the region after a visit by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in October, US and Algerian officials said.
The southern fringe of the Sahara, a vast region known as the Sahel, is considered one of the world's "gray zones," with little government control over widespread trafficking in arms and explosives and kidnapping.
"The United States fights against terrorist activity in Algeria and the Sahel," the US Embassy in Algiers said in a recent statement, without offering specifics.
Algeria, which has been battling Islamic militants since the early 1990s, is considered in a better position to control the spread of terrorism than its neighbors, such as the Islamic republic of Mauritania, where a key Al Qaeda operative, Abu Hafs, was born.
"The US government has an ongoing program known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative which provides training and support to Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania to help them control their borders, interdict smuggling, and deny use of their national territories to terrorists and other international criminals," a Defense Department official said.
The flow of militants from Algeria, however, remains a rising priority for counterterrorism officials. "Conflict there has bred an extremely dangerous foe," said Kohlmann. "Dating back to 1998, there is a continuous trail of these operatives in various terrorist plots around the world."
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