International Politics of the Middle East

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)

northern Mali

Born as an Algerian insurgency in the early 1990s, the group was largely defeated and driven into a swath of ungoverned desert land — about the size of France — in northern Mali. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the group reached out to al-Qaida in an effort to survive. AQIM was officially recognized as an al-Qaida affiliate by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Both the U.S. and the European Union have designated AQIM a terrorist organization. The group has since absorbed some of al-Qaida's techniques for roadside bombs and suicide attacks. Occasionally it has issued videos and statements on jihadi Internet forums. In December 2007, for example, the group attacked the U.N.'s Algerian headquarters, killing 37 people, including 17 U.N. staff members. At the same time, AQIM has increased its recruiting efforts, drawing insurgents from Mauritania, Nigeria and Chad, officials said. The recruits are trained in small arms and roadside bomb construction, officials said, then return to their home countries to plan and execute attacks. The spike in recruiting and training, along with the increase in kidnappings and other crimes, has made the region more insecure and unstable in just a year, several officials said. The militants often partner with local criminals, who kidnap tourists then sell them to AQIM, which then demands ransoms, officials said. Those alliances cement contacts between the criminal groups and AQIM, broadening its reach and membership.

Britain and Ireland called on the Israeli ambassadors to their countries on Thursday to explain what they knew about the use last month of false British and Irish passports by the suspected assassins of a leading figure of Hamas in Dubai. France also said it was demanding an explanation from the Israeli Embassy in Paris about the use of a false French passport, suggesting that the diplomatic fallout from the incident was widening.

these homegrown radicals' trajectories and levels of association with jihadi groups are so different as to make the term "al Qaeda affiliate" meaningless.

More often than not, Islamist extremists assign the term "al Qaeda affiliate" to themselves -- regardless of whether it is true. Upstart terrorist groups, regional insurgents, and radicalized individuals embrace the name to lift their profile and gain cachet in the jihadi community. But it is not a particularly good indicator of their actual relationship to the al Qaeda organization.

The world of global jihad is so fluid and dispersed that it is almost impossible to capture the true extent of anyone's connection with al Qaeda.

he difficulty for Khamenei is that the Green Movement opposing his actions also wraps itself in the mantle of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution and will be marching to celebrate that revolution. They just insist that the Islamic Republic's constitution guarantees the right of public protest (correct) and that it exalts the rule of law over the personal whim of a monarch (also correct).

(Iran is notoriously hard to organize, being a set of mostly medium-sized cities separated by vast distances and arid, often craggy terrain; Khomeini used the radio, sending signals through BBC interviews, and audio cassette tapes, which followers played in private or in taxis beyond the hearing of the secret police of Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, the shah.)

a discourse that emphasises development before independence, is the greater cause for alarm

the development initiatives, in the actual political context, move Palestinians in three directions, and none of them are toward freedom from occupation

Dependency

Robert Ford Named US Ambassador to Syria