The rise and fall of AQIM

By African Bulletin on May 25, 2011

Expectations rise every time a group has tasted development. This is to say that AQIM has reached the success it needs to survive. Its macro conditions have been set and mainly since Usama Ben Laden had cited AQIM in a declaration claiming the abduction of seven persons in Arlit, Niger, on the 16th of last September.
However and just like any organisation, cohesion of the group, social status and reputation need to be fed, and mainly with the nerves of any mission: the moral and material benefits.

Thus, AQIM went through a strategy innovation, involving significant points of novelty like securing cocaine traffic from South America, via West Africa and back up to Europe via the Sahel. The old roads of salt traders have now become “zone of influence” of Al Qaeda, where temporary alliances are formed between different groups around a lucrative new business, and therefore, a levy of tax on goods is more than legitimized.
AQIM is also addressing, in negotiations, Spain and France as its opponents. It has been able to get through ransoms paid for the release of several foreign hostages kidnapped in Mali, Niger and Algeria. More than that, and within the temporary alliances formed with other traffickers – Toubous and Touareg, and taking advantage of the Libyan civil war, many lots of weapons, missiles and ammunitions were looted, with the complicity of mercenaries, from the Libyan army arsenals, as well as  the latest equipment like GPS, encrypted communication and night vision systems.
All these shifts are more than changing the fundamental pattern of AQIM. But with the death of Usama Ben Laden, AQIM will lose for sure its political and international audience. Historians are unanimous that Islamist turbulence founded on the dogmatic religious beliefs from ancient times will be off-set, as was the case of “Christianity” in Europe, or the inquisition period against Jewish and Moslem communities in Spain, or the holocaust in Germany. All these religious wars are based on emotional motivations, of course, planned by the “Elite”, executed by small groups, ready to die for their ideals. Nonetheless and in the midterm, AQIM will run for any mission, even a suicide one as far as the material needs of its 400 constituents are fed; and if nothing is done, the worst scenario in this uncontrolled Sahelo-saharian region could well turn into a war zone like Afghanistan. So let us wish that some positive factors will unfreeze the political clock in adopting an international cooperation against all forms of terrorism. That would be the end of AQIM rise…