Sunday, 21 September 2014: French tourist Hervé Gourdel is kidnapped by Jund-al-Khilafa, an Algerian Islamist militant group linked to the Islamic State (IS). Gourdel had been driving through the remote region of Kabylie with two Algerian companions, in the northeast of Algeria, when armed men stopped the group. The Algerians were let go; Gourdel was not. What follows in the next few days is a back-and-forth mediated by the media. A video is released of Gourdel in captivity, flanked by the militants, relaying a direct message to French President Francois Hollande that the group wants the French intervention in Iraq stopped. In response, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says on French radio that there would be “no discussion, no negotiation” — "If you give in, if you go back one inch... you give [terrorism] this victory.”⁽²⁾ President Hollande’s office releases a statement that there is to be “total cooperation” with the Algerian government to find Gourdel.⁽³⁾

Wednesday, 24 September 2014: A video is released by Gourdel’s captors, titled “Message in Blood for the French Government.” Four masked militants, Gourdel kneeling, arms tied. A statement in Arabic, a pause; Gourdel’s decapitated head held up to the camera.

“This is why the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria have decided to punish France, by executing this man, and to defend our beloved Islamic State.”⁽⁴⁾

“We are all Hervé Gourdel”

The murder of Gourdel shocked Algerians across all strata of society. “We are all Hervé Gourdel,” said Chadly Boufaroua, director of Algerian public radio station Channel 3, expressing the prevailing sentiment. “The Algerian people have defeated terrorism in the past and it must do so again today,” he said.⁽⁵⁾ The murder brought back to Algeria the haunting memory of the 1990s, during which Algiers found itself at war with several militant Islamist groups and over 150,000 people were killed.

This spectre has not been peacefully buried. Though the country has suffered from intermittent incidents since then, the threat posed by Islamists is still prevalent, and the latest development of Gourdel’s murder implies a turn for the worse.

This paper examines the polarising political climate of Algeria and assesses the threat level with regards to recent terrorist activity there. It argues that the murder of Gourdel is a worrying example of IS – or those operating in their name – spreading out from their strongholds In Syria and Iraq to the Islamic Maghreb.

Boufaroua’s powerful statement - “We are all Hervé Gourdel.” – goes beyond a show of solidarity. It expresses the vulnerability Algeria faces at present.

Terrorism via television

As the repercussions of the Arab Spring unfolded, Algeria was held up as an example. Despite its tumultuous past, the upheavals, revolutions, and wars of Syria, Egypt and Libya have passed Algeria by. But this veneer of stability hides increasing discontent. The current president, Abdelaziz Beouteflika, was elected for his fourth term in April 2014, despite increasing calls and protest for a change from what is essentially authoritarian one-party rule. Bouteflika has been in power since 1999, and even though he had helped bring the carnage of the civil war to an end, there is more to what this appears on the surface.

The power behind Bouteflika is a cadre of senior generals and security officials dubbed ‘Le Pouvoir’ – literally, “the power” – by Algerians. They are the ones in charge of the secret police, and vet would-be Algerian officials.⁽⁶⁾ The aging Bouteflika, apart from facing what may be severe health issues following a stroke, presides over an economy nowhere near its oil-rich potential, and corruption is a problem.⁽⁷⁾ In the past year, tensions among the political elite appeared when the powerful head of military intelligence, Muhammad “Toufiq” Mediene, was rumoured to have sanctioned open press criticism and brought corruption issues into prominence. Yet the cadre continues to back Bouteflika once more; because Bouteflika is a symbol of the end of the civil war and of democratic legitimacy, backing him will leave the cadre with ample room to carry on as they always have.⁽⁸⁾ This does not, however, completely hide the fissures in the fabric of the country’s democratic process: when Bouteflika’s rival in the election, former Prime Minister Ali Benflis, warned against those who would “support a president for life,” Bouteflika accused Benflis of “terrorism via television.”⁽⁹⁾

With stifled political participation from both secular and Islamist parties, increasing unchecked clashes between Arab, Berber and Tuareg communities, and the lack of a strong economy, one would be right to wonder if the situation in Algeria may evolve into one that mirrors Egypt’s. Certainly, there is precedent: the civil war began when the generals rose up against an Islamist victory in 1991. The political status quo is therefore far from stable, and the public’s discontent threatens to push the country to extremes.

Aside from that, Algeria’s geography makes it vulnerable; one of the factors often exploited by terrorist groups is that of an “ungoverned space,” and another is using locations weakened by war. Algeria is the largest country in Africa, and the tenth largest in the world; 80% of its land area is covered by the Sahara desert and is sparsely inhabited,⁽¹⁰⁾ with 91% of the population living in cities, towns and villages along the Mediterranean coast. Its population density is 15.86 per sq. km, as last measured by the World Bank in 2011, making it one of the least densely populated countries in the world, particularly for its size. It places as a “high warning” state on the 2014 Fragile States Index.⁽¹¹⁾

The Uncatchable

The current threat picture as it stands in Algeria can be said to come primarily from three directions.

First, there is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). With the end-goal of overthrowing the Algerian government and establishing an Islamist state, they frequently run anti-government propaganda campaigns and aim to recruit from those who are discontented and outcast from the system. As the region’s most well-financed (90% from ransoms)⁽¹²⁾ and best-armed Islamist militant group, they are well-established in the region and are further building up cells and strategies. It was confirmed in June 2013 that French and Canadian forces killed one of their top commanders, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, during the clashes in northern Mali. This was but a minor setback – AQIM’s bigger problem is the groups that are breaking off from the main organisation.

One of these organisations is Jund Al-Khalifa. Having broken off from AQIM – the reason being that they perceived AQIM to be too local and not extreme enough – they declared their differences via the murder of Hervé Gourdel. Previously, they had claimed Mohamed Merah (the French citizen who murdered seven people in Toulouse, France in March 2012) as one of their own.⁽¹³⁾ Adopting the IS methodology of kidnapping Westerners and executing them on video for propaganda, they have aligned themselves with IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in wanting to establish a unified caliphate. They are the first North African Islamist militant group to do so.

The third major player is terrorist organisation al-Murabitun. Formed by two AQIM breakaway factions, the al-Mulathameen Brigade and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, the group affirm loyalty to Al Qaeda (AQ) leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban emir Mullah Omar and aspire to “unite Muslims from the Nile to the Atlantic.”⁽¹⁴⁾ Though not the leader, the prominent figure here is Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who has criticised AQIM for being too local and stagnant while being quick to align al-Murabitun with the central AQ organisation, repudiating the IS ideology. It is widely accepted that al-Murabitun has thus adopted classic AQ techniques, targeting economic interest in furthering their agenda. A major example of this is the massacre that occurred at the Amenas gas plant in Algeria, masterminded by Belmokhtar, where 40 Western hostages were killed in January 2013.⁽¹⁵⁾ Belmokhtar has survived several counter-terrorist operations where he had reportedly been killed in Algeria, Libya and Niger. Dubbed ‘the Uncatchable’ with a US$ 3.3 million bounty on his head, currently he is recruiting foreign fighters from Syria. This is causing concern that al-Murabitun is possibly branching out to Western targets in Britain and France, not just North Africa.⁽¹⁶⁾

From the Nile to the Atlantic

With a shaken political situation and several jihadist groups eluding capture, succeeding in their operations, and recruiting locally and abroad, there is certainly cause to worry that what current stability there is in Algeria is temporary. The gains of IS in the Middle East, meanwhile, bolster terrorist organisations elsewhere: not only are they making it easier to recruit from war-torn areas, they are also supplementing the jihadist discourse and providing very real “market competition” in the arena of terrorism, pushing others to step up their performance. Ultimately, Algeria needs to focus on its domestic issues to prevent further terror. Jund al-Khalifa’s “message in blood” may have been addressed to the French government, but it was a warning to Algeria and the entire Maghreb as well.

Written by Marika Josephides ⁽¹⁾

NOTES:

(1) Marika Josephides is a Research Associate at Consultancy Africa Intelligence (CAI) with a focus on terrorism, counterterrorism, statebuilding and the roots of conflict. Contact Marika through Consultancy Africa Intelligence’s Conflict & Terrorism Research Unit ( conflict.terrorism@consultancyafrica.com). Edited by Nicky Berg. Research Manager: Leigh Hamilton.
(2) ‘French tourist Herve Gourdel abducted by Algeria militants’, BBC News, 23 September 2014, http://www.bbc.com.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Johnston, C. and Willsher, K., ‘French tourist beheaded in Algeria by jihadis linked to Islamic State’, The Guardian, 25 September 2014, http://www.theguardian.com.
(5) ‘French tourist’s beheading stirs painful memories in Algeria’, France 24, 25 September 2014, http://www.france24.com.
(6) ‘Arab democracy: The lesson of Algeria’, The Economist, 19 April 2014, http://www.economist.com.
(7) ‘Algeria’s election: The old man won’t go away’, The Economist, 19 April 2014, http://www.economist.com.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Ibid.
(10) ‘Algeria’s geography - From the Blue Mediterranean to the sands of the Sahara’, http://www.algeria.com.
(11) ‘Fragile States Index 2014’, Fund for Peace, http://ffp.statesindex.org.
(12) ‘Millions in ransoms fuel militants’ clout in West Africa’, The New York Times, 12 December 2012, http://www.nytimes.com.
(13) ‘French tourist Herve Gourdel abducted by Algeria militants’, BBC News, 23 September 2014, http://www.bbc.com.
(14) ‘al-Murabitun terrorist organisation’, Control Risks, September 2013, http://www.controlrisks.com.
(15) ‘Al-Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar sparks new jihadi terror threat’, The Telegraph, 13 July 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk.
(16) Ibid.