“After the latest Algiers bombings” is the title of a December 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Algeria following two December 11 bombings of government and U.N. buildings in Algiers that killed dozens and shook the government. AQIM is Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. I picked this up from Justin Elliott. Excerpt:
The Al-Qaida in Iraq network, which already has ties to jihadi groups in Algeria, has strong influence on AQIM elements. … The AQIM videos strongly resemble videos from Iraq in terms of the music, Quranic citations and filming of hits on enemy targets they show. They strongly pitch the alleged American wrongdoings in Iraq and Palestine to recruit men to join AQIM….
A prominent conservative Islamist political leader, Abdallah Djaballah, told the Ambassador on December 17 that the suicide attacks demonstrated the influence of the Iraqi jihadis whose appeal to religious sensitivities finds a ready audience here. In addition, he noted, Islamist extremists released under the government’s amnesty program are hugely frustrated because they can find no jobs and lack any means to support themselves. They are easy to recruit, he claimed. AQIM’s choice to put a video of Ayman Zawahari ranting about Palestine last week is likely to further boost recruitment. The website has had over 35,000 hits in a week. Djaballah warned that many young Algerians react strongly to any suggestion that foreign forces are attacking Islam itself, and Palestine, along with Iraq, is the perfect symbol. Jaghloul Abdelghafar, a counselor at the Presidency working on extremism issues, echoed the point about Algeria suffering because of Palestine and Iraq to the Ambassador December 18. He stated that there is a “hard-core five percent” that will always plague Algeria.
