by Katrina Bushko –
Last year, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) strongly resurfaced in the media after a lull in publicized activity. The January attack and hostage crisis in In Amenas, Algeria—orchestrated by AQIM defector Mokhtar Belmokhtar—served as a precursor to the group’s resurgence in Mali. A few months later, AQIM created a Twitter account (now suspended), proving themselves a group of tech-savvy jihadi militants keen on extending their influence via the web. And later in April, a skirmish with Tunisian security forces along the Tunisian-Algerian border brought AQIM and its off-shoot Ansar al-Sharia back into the international spotlight. Although 2013 has been a busy year for AQIM’s smuggling and terrorist activities, it has also been fruitful for the Algerian, French, and Chadian armies that have managed to kill high-ranking officials in the group’s extremist network.
I predict that 2014 will be a fairly stagnant year for AQIM. Mali will continue to be a hot spot for AQIM militants, since French forces will be shrinking due to the upcoming intervention in the Central African Republic. However, the appointment of two new leaders earlier this September may become problematic: the creation of a new organization spawning from AQIM (much like Belmokhtar’s Al-Murabitoun) is not out of the question. Furthermore, the combined efforts to fight extremism by Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, and other countries through religious and cultural means might prove to be useful supplements to the counterterrorism strategies already being applied. Seeing as AQIM does not tend to operate outside of the African Arc of Instability, there will be no need for the United States to directly intervene in AQIM operations.
For more information on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, visit the websites of ConflictMap.org and the Council on Foreign Relations, along with publications from the Rand Corporation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace