Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a Salafi-jihadist militant organization which aims primarily to overthrow Algerian government and institute an Islamic state, or, caliphate. The group has also openly declared its intention to attack European, Spanish, French and American targets, but has seen the most success in its North African campaigns.
For more information about the Maghreb region, including its history, culture, and politics, please visit this page.
Origins
AQIM traces its provenance back to a guerrilla Islamist movement known as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which violently opposed Algeria’s secular leadership in the 1990s. A civil war began when Algeria’s military – supported heavily by France – cancelled a second round of parliamentary elections in 1992 which would have surely placed the political entity known as the Islamic Salvation Font into power. Over the course of the conflict, several GIA commanders became concerned that their brutal tactics, which included regular beheadings, were alienating Algerian supporters and so broke away in 1998 to to create a new identity as the Salafist Group for Preaching & Combat (GSPC). Initially, this break drew support from a large portion of the Algerian population, who liked the idea of continuing the rebellion without civilian casualties. However, in the early 2000s the government launched a new counter-terrorism effort, employing amnesty as a tactic to quell the insurgency, which completely threw the group into disarray.
In order to retain its relevance in the face of decline, the group aligned with Al-Qaeda in 2006, and rebranded itself as AQIM the following year. This move had a substantially positive effect on the group’s recruitment and fundraising efforts due to its enhancing their legitimacy among extremists. Additionally, the new name would denote the group’s broadened ambitions, which after the merger included Western interests in addition to Algerian targets. The rest of that year (2007) would see a rash of violent incidents and suicide attacks in Algeria, as well as bombings of both the regional UN headquarters and the Algerian Constitutional Court. Whether the group was uncomfortable with this transition back to brutality is unknown, but it is undeniable that the merger discredited AQIM among Algerian Islamists focused on pursuing a more diplomatic agenda.
Objectives
In its new capacity as a sect of Al-Qaeda, AQIM broadened its objectives, which are now listed as the following:
- Cleansing North Africa of Western Influence
- Overthrowing governments deemed apostate (including Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia)
- Installing fundamentalist regimes based on sharia (religious law)
This ideology blends global Salafi-jihadist dogma with North African nuances, including references to the early Islamic conquests of the Maghreb, most likely to draw regional support for the organization’s cause. A large component of this philosophy is concerned with waging war against the “far enemy,” which in this case is France and Spain. France, in particular, has a long history as the region’s colonial ruler, and continues to exacerbate tensions by providing political and military support for local regimes the organization opposes. If we could go so far as to define a “near enemy” as well, then it would be those apostate nations mentioned above.
Tactics
AQIM’s tactics include guerilla-style raids, assassinations, and suicide bombings of military, government, and civilian targets. Its members are known to have frequently kidnapped, and sometimes executed, aid workers, tourists, diplomats. and employees of MNCs. They raise money primarily through kidnapping for ransom – one report estimates they’ve raised over $50 million this way in the last decade alone – and also through various forms of trafficking (arms, vehicles, people, narcotics). These efforts not only provide adequate funding for the organization, but also discourage foreign enterprise in the region due to its volatility. All this has served to establish AQIM as perhaps the wealthiest Al-Qaeda affiliate in operation today.
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