RABAT, Morocco — The Islamists are back as a force in Algeria.
The terrorist attack on an Algerian natural gas plant that left dozens of hostages and militants dead has demonstrated how a failing Algerian insurgency transformed itself into a regional threat, partly by exploiting the turmoil unleashed by the Arab Spring revolts.
Al-Qaida’s branch in Algeria retreated into a Sahara no man’s land between Mali, Algeria and Mauritania after it was largely defeated by the Algerian army in a 10-year war in the 1990s that claimed 200,000 lives. There it grew rich on smuggling and hostage-taking, gained new recruits and re-emerged stronger than ever, armed with looted high-tech weapons from Libya’s 2011 civil war.
The audacious assault last Wednesday on Algeria’s Ain Amenas gas complex by a multinational band of Islamists shows how long-simmering ethnic tensions in Mali, a civil war in Algeria and a revolution in Libya have combined to create a conflict spanning the deserts and savannahs of both North Africa and West Africa.
Algeria’s Islamists were driven south into the desert by the military’s brutal counterinsurgency tactics — a take-no-prisoners approach vividly on display in the resolution of the latest hostage crisis.
Factions of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb became rich in the lawless desert by smuggling guns, drugs and cigarettes and by kidnapping foreigners for ransom. Soon they became involved in the longstanding disputes of the desert Tuareg against the government in Mali, whom the tribesmen felt ignored or abused them.
One of their prominent leaders was Moktar Belmoktar, who made millions smuggling and kidnapping and went on to mastermind the attack on the Ain Amenas plant.
While taking up the Tuareg cause in northern Mali, these al-Qaida-allied groups decided to use their new-found strength to settle scores against old opponents like Algeria and the West.
Belmoktar fell out with the local al-Qaida franchise, the Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and formed his own northern Mali-based group in December called the Masked Brigade. He promised to attack those threatening the radical Islamist mini-state that was emerging in northern Mali.
With the money to be made in smuggling and kidnapping, all that was missing was easy access to heavy weaponry. That changed in 2011, and weapons came cascading across the borders when Libya fell apart and dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s vast arsenals of oil-bought weapons were looted.
What began in January 2012 as a secular revolt of disaffected Tuaregs hoping to carve out a homeland in northern Mali was soon hijacked by al-Qaida and allied extremist groups.
With their new weapons, money and men, Algerian militants like Belmoktar could now do what had never been possible before — hit oil-rich Algeria’s strategic energy infrastructure in the remote desert.