al-Qaida Joins Algerians Against France
Pastor Dale Morgan
al-Qaida Joins Algerians Against France*
By JOHN LEICESTER and OMAR SINAN
The Associated Press
Friday, September 15, 2006; 3:00 AM
PARIS -- Al-Qaida has for the first time announced a union with an
Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying
they will act together against French and American interests.
Current and former French officials specializing in terrorism said
Thursday that an al-Qaida alliance with the Salafist Group for Call and
Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, was cause for concern.
"We take these threats very seriously," Interior Minister Nicolas
Sarkozy said, adding in an interview on France-2 television that the
threat to France was "high" and "permanent," and that "absolute
vigilance" was required.
Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced the "blessed union" in a
video posted this week on the Internet to mark the fifth anniversary of
the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
France's leader have repeatedly warned that the decision not to join the
U.S.-led war in Iraq would not shield the country from Islamic
terrorism. French participation in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in
Lebanon could give extremists another reason to strike.
The national police had no immediate comment on the announced alliance,
but officials have long regarded the GSPC as one of the main terror
threats facing France.
French experts agreed, but also noted the group has been severely
weakened by internal divisions, security crackdowns and defections in
Algeria, a former French territory still working to put down an Islamic
insurgency that reached its most murderous heights in the 1990s.
"The GSPC is losing speed and has suffered very significant losses in
recent months," said Louis Caprioli, former assistant director of
France's DST counterterrorism and counterintelligence agency.
Some GSPC fighters took advantage of a recent Algerian amnesty for
Islamic insurgents and others have been killed, said Caprioli, who works
for Geos, a risk management firm.
Of the 800 combatants that GSPC was estimated to have had last year,
probably no more than 500 remain, and the group has had no operational
cells in France since the late 1990s, he said.
But Caprioli and others also said an alliance of GSPC and al-Qaida could
increase the terror risk for France _ not least because al-Zawahri's
designation of the country as a worthy target could inspire extremists
to take action.
In his video, Al-Zawahri hailed "the joining up" of the GSPC with
al-Qaida as "good news."
"All the praise is due to Allah for the blessed union which we ask Allah
to be as a bone in the throats of the Americans and French Crusaders and
their allies, and inspire distress, concern and dejection in the hearts
of the traitorous, apostate sons of France," he said.
"We ask him (Allah) to guide our brothers in the Salafist Group for Call
and Combat to crush the pillars of the Crusader alliance, especially
their elderly immoral leader, America."
Although GSPC leaders had previously sworn allegiance to al-Qaida,
al-Zawahri's video marked the first al-Qaida recognition of a union
between the two, French terror experts said.
"From now on, the links are official, legitimate, and they are taking
part in the same combat," said Anne Giudicelli, a former French diplomat
specializing in the Middle East who runs the Paris-based consultancy
Terrorisc.
Sarkozy said it was "not by chance" that al-Qaida used the emblematic
Sept. 11 date to announce the insurgency movement's alliance with al-Qaida.
"But there is nothing new," he added, noting that the GSPC had done the
same three years ago.
The GSPC, in its own statement on a Web site used by militants,
confirmed the alliance and urged other militant groups to also join
al-Qaida.
Giudicelli said the alliance could act as a green light for al-Qaida and
GSPC militants to operate together and thus raises the risk for France.
"The Americans have become harder to target domestically, so they are
trying to widen the field of action and strike their allies," she said.
___
Omar Sinan is based in Cairo, Egypt. Associated Press writer Verena von
Derschau in Paris also contributed to this report.