Visualizing the Network: Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)

Extremism in Africa / Research and Visualization

Posted by RBoales@isvg.org on 07, September 2011

Summary

With the 10^th anniversary of the September 11^th attacks fast approaching, ISVG’s Rick Kania continues to break-down Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations.  In this analysis, Kania uses i2 to visually display the organizational structure of North Africa’s Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), as well as the group’s connections to the Ayman Al-Zawahiri led Al Qaeda Central (AQC).

AQIM Analysis

Of all Al Qaeda’s regional affiliates AQIM has probably garnered the least attention in the United States.  A concern about growing synergy between Islamist terrorist groups in North and Central Africa, however, has thrust AQIM to the forefront.  AQIM recently swore allegiance to newly appointed AQC leader, Ayman Al Zawahiri, on 7/7/2010,[1] and the group purportedly has nascent ties to Nigeria’s Boko Haram[2] [3] and Somalia’s Al-Shabaab.[4]

On the macro scale, the United States’ interest in North and Central Africa is driven by security as well as energy concerns, particularly as Russia and China seek to expand economic ties to the region.[5] Pham argues that the region has the potential of “being the setting for an explosive mix of Islamist terrorism, secular grievances, and criminality.”[6] Weak military and counterterrorism forces in Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, coupled with vast desert landscapes, have allowed AQIM to establish footholds in many of the region’s ungoverned areas.

AQIM is undergoing increased decentralization, but despite this fact, at least two of its senior leaders have connections to AQC.  In November 2010, the current AQIM leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, released a tape informing French authorities that they must negotiate directly with Osama Bin Laden to secure the release of French nationals kidnapped by AQIM in September 2010.[7] Droukdel was also in contact with the late Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in 2004 and 2005, as well as AQC leaders based in Waziristan, Pakistan.[8]

Mukhtar Belmokhtar, an infamous Algerian jihadist who fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the early 1990s and was a commander of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat’s (GSPC) Masked Brigade in the 2000s, served as a liaison between AQC and Algerian-based terrorist groups.  He was in contact with AQC when it was based in Sudan in the early 1990s and continued to serve as a point of contact through the mid-2000s; while he has notoriously been at odds with the Algeria-based wing of AQIM led by Droukdel, Belmokhtar still provides support to AQIM [9] and is a major player in the Sahel region, leading a brigade of 150 men.[10]

Finally, the recent arrest of former GSPC operative and current AQC external operations committee member Younis al-Mauritani (aka Abdul Rahman Hussein) is evidence of closer ties between AQC and AQIM,[11] assuming al-Mauritani has remained in touch with his North African contacts.

The visualization below is an update to a previous analysis that looked at the connections between AQC and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  Below, the structure of AQIM is laid out.  According to Pham, AQIM is “thought to be organized into geographical zones [wilayas], each of which has one or more operational battalions (katibats), which are further subdivided into several companies (fassilas).  A fassila is made up of two ‘platoons’ (sarayas), each with twelve to eighteen members, who may be further organized into smaller cells.”[12] According to Tawil, AQIM operates four zones (Central, Eastern, Western, Saharan/South) which are simplifications of the organization of AQIM’s predecessors, GIA and GSPC.[13] Similar to AQC’s Majlis al-Shura, AQIM’s senior leadership sits on the Majlis al-Ayan (“Council of Notables”), the group’s chief decision-making body.[14] While open source information detailing the group’s hierarchy is incomplete, the thoughtful bringing together of news and journal articles provides a glimpse into AQIM’s structure.

Please expand or download image for greater detail:

Following the 2007 merger of the GSPC with Al Qaeda, first announced by then-Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Al Zawahiri and confirmed by the late operations commander Abu Laith Al Libi, Algerian security forces successfully killed or captured several senior members of the newly formed AQIM.  This resulted from a renewed effort to neutralize AQIM by Algerian security forces, and an internal rift in the group, dealing, in part, with the use of suicide bombings against civilians, that resulted in former GSPC members cooperating with the government.[15]

A second victory against the group occurred in early 2010, when Algerian security forces led a major crackdown against AQIM, resulting from regional and international pressure to target the organization.  The effort, which focused largely on the Tizi Ouzou area of northern Algeria, resulted in the capture of several high-level members,[16] but the group remains active today in Algeria, Morocco, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Libya, and Niger.  An apparent decentralization of the group, led by the increasingly assertive commanders in the Sahara and Sahel region (northern Niger, northern Mali, eastern Mauritania), has resulted in a shift of AQIM’s tactics.[17] Mohamedou argues that AQIM is becoming increasingly connected to transnational criminality, at the expense of ideological terrorism, which is seen in the recent spate of kidnappings for ransom of foreign nationals in North Africa.[18] Similarly, Cristiani and Fabiani argue that AQIM has experienced a “growing dualism within the organization,” with the eastern Algeria-based branch at odds with the southern Sahel-based branch.[19] The Arab Spring and recent counterterrorism successes against Al Qaeda have, at least to a degree, marginalized the network, at least on the Algerian front.

References

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