WORM'S EYE

The GIA - GROUPES ISLAMIQUES ARMÉES and GROUPES SALAFISTES or the "Islamist Armed Groups" are a loose cell type structure under regional chiefs or "emirs". They have been waging war against the Algerian state ever since the Army annulled the the elections in 1991.

The GIA has used terror with a ferocity on a par with that of Al Qua'ida. Europeans were warned to leave. Some did not. Over 100 European residents were murdered, including nuns, often by having their throats cut. While European victims are counted in hundreds, Algerian victims are counted in thousands. Nobody knows how many, but an estimate of between 60,000 and 100,000 would not be out of the ball park. Whole villages were massacred. There were bombing campaigns both in Algeria and in metropolitan France.

The army's repression has been just as brutal with at least 1,000 persons having simply disappeared since 1991.

The following account, written by Algerian journalist Atmane Tazaghart in 2002 after the killing of Antar Zouabri, is as good an account of the GIA as any--

GIA leader’s death not the end of Algeria’s troubles Antar Zouabri is gone, but others remain Armed Islamic Group has suffered a severe setback, but the man tipped to take over the helm is just as ruthless

by Atmane Tazaghart-- The Daily Star (Lebanon) - 14th Feburary 2002

PARIS--The killing of Armed Islamic Group (GIA) leader Antar Zouabri was a great victory for the Algerian security forces. Zouabri wasn’t just some terrorist small fry, like the ones the security forces have been catching from time to time in the 10-year-old war against political violence in Algeria-­ a war that has claimed up to 150,000 civilian lives so far. Besides having been the most infamous of the men wanted by the Algerian authorities since taking over the GIA leadership in June 1996, Zouabri was also the innovator of the Algerian style of massacre which spares no one ­ neither men, nor women, nor children.

In the fall of 1996, soon after taking control of the GIA, Zouabri orchestrated the liquidation of all his opponents within that organization. In February of the following year, he issued his famous 60-page fatwa that allowed his followers to commit the most vicious and heinous crimes of murder and mayhem. In that fatwa, Zouabri decreed the whole Algerian people to be infidels; he even ordered killed Islamist fighters who did not recognize him as leader. He appointed himself Amir al-Mumineen-­ Commander of the Faithful-­ and ordered that henceforth he would go under the name of Antar Abu Talha ibn Mohammed bin Qassem ben Rabie al-Zouabri!

Zouabri’s fatwa led to a particularly gruesome series of massacres and mass rapes. Since all Algerians were “infidels,” he decreed that nocturnal “raids” should be mounted against villages and remote communities. He permitted the rape of “infidel” women and girls as “spoils of war.” Women were kidnapped and taken to remote mountain strongholds, where they were treated as slaves, raped by Zouabri’s followers, and forced to cook and clean for them.

Yet despite their extremism and sadistic violence, Zouabri and his followers enjoyed considerable support among minor and quasi-clerics such as London-based Jordanian fundamentalist Omar Abu Omar (a.k.a. Abu Qutada), who issued a fatwa of his own in support of Zouabri’s group, entitled An Authorization to Kill Young Boys.

Thanks to the support he received from various radical Islamist factions based in Europe, Antar Zouabri managed to impose his authority on all Algerian armed groups. He surrounded himself with a well-trained coterie of bodyguards, named Al-Katiba Al-Khadra-­ The Green Battalion-­ for which he chose the fiercest and most ruthless GIA members. Thanks to the ever-vigilant Green Battalion, Zouabri managed several times to evade capture by the authorities. In fact, the Algerian authorities announced his death several times in the past, but he always managed to survive and make good his escape. It was widely thought Zouabri was killed during a raid launched by the security forces against the GIA’s major stronghold at Hatatba in July 1997. The authorities had learned that Zouabri intended to hold a large meeting with more than 200 senior GIA cadres at his Tala Acha mountain headquarters. The Algerian Army sent in almost 1,000 troops supported by artillery and helicopters in an attempt to apprehend Zouabri and his henchmen. The operation lasted a whole week and resulted in the destruction of the GIA’s strongholds in Metidja. Seventy extremists were killed, among whom ­ it was said at the time ­ was Zouabri himself. But it was not to be. Soon afterward, Zouabri declared in a statement sent to Morocco’s Medi 1 radio station that he was very much alive.

Despite being forced to retreat from his home province of Metidja ­ which served as his major stronghold since he took up arms against the authorities in 1993 ­ Zouabri’s influence wasn’t diminished, and neither was the GIA’s savagery. Accompanied by his Green Battalion, he headed westward, toward the mountains of Ouarchanis, where he joined up with two local armed groups originally allied with the GIA ­-the Ketibet-al-Ahwal, and the Salafist group. Zouabri’s westward trek resulted in an infamous series of bloody massacres that hit the western Algerian regions of Shlif, Relizane, Tiyaret, and Sidi Belabes beginning in the holy month of Ramadan 1998. Despite being named the country’s most wanted fugitive, and despite a 4.5 million Algerian dinar ($65,000) price on his head, Zouabri still managed to elude capture ­ thanks mainly to the 100-strong Green Battalion that accompanied him wherever he went.

Zouabri thus remained at large until last week. Thanks to information provided by a GIA defector, who said Zouabri was holed up in a house in a poor area in his hometown of Boufarik, together with his trusted lieutenant Fodhil Boutheldja (a.k.a. Abu Haider), one of the GIA’s best explosives experts. Acting on this tip-off, Algerian Army units surrounded the area. Special forces units broke into the house in question, killing Zouabri, Abu Haider, and a third man thought to be the house owner who later turned out to be one of the GIA leaders who had laid down their weapons and renounced violence. President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika had pardoned this man, Abdel-Hakim Boumediene, also known as Sinbad, in January 2000.

Yet experts on Algerian fundamentalist groups don’t believe the GIA will wither away with the demise of Antar Zouabri, heavy though that blow undoubtedly was. These experts predict Zouabri’s death will spark a new struggle for leadership within the GIA, which will be characterized by liquidations and internal squabbles over spoils, positions, and zones of influence. All this will, of course, be played out against a backdrop of even more violence, massacres and terrorism, as the GIA seeks to “reassure” its fighters and supporters that it is still there. Otherwise, dispirited cadres might either give themselves up to the authorities, or alternatively join up with Hassan Hattab’s rival Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC).

According to experts on the Algerian insurgency, the battle for leadership within the GIA will be fought among five factions-­ namely,

the Green Battalion (whose area of influence extends from the central region of Metidja to Ain Defla in the west); the Al-Ansar Battalion (strong in the western region of Saida); the Ethabat Battalion in Mascara; the Essouna Battalion in Sidi Belabes; and, Al-Ahwal, which is strong in Relizane.

In addition to the various factions (or battalions) making up the GIA, other armed groups will also seek to benefit from Zouabri’s death. It cannot be ruled out that the GSPC, with strongholds in the central region of Kabylie and Oures in the west, and the western-based GPS will try to exploit the disappearance from the scene of Antar Zouabri either by trying to co-opt GIA defectors or by making alliances with any future GIA leader who decides to adopt a less bloody and more moderate approach than Zouabri.

Who that future leader will be is still unknown. Thanks to Zouabri’s penchant for murdering any potential rival within GIA ranks, all the leaders of the first generation have already been killed off. This will make finding a successor that much more difficult. Nevertheless, the most likely candidate for leadership is Miloud Bechroun, “prince” of Tipaza (a.k.a. Khaled al-Fermache), a particularly extreme and bloodthirsty man notorious for perpetrating a grisly series of massacres in his region in Ramadan 1998.

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat

Tazaghart knew his subject. Here is an analysis of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat ("GSPC"):-

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) has emerged in recent years as a major source of recruiting and other support for al Qaeda operations in Europe. A splinter faction of the Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the GSPC is engaged simultaneously in efforts to topple Algeria's secular government and to organize high-profile attacks against Western interests on the continent.

The GSPC broke away from the GIA in 1996. By 1998, vowing an end to attacks against civilians (although this promise has not totally been fulfilled), the GSPC had surpassed their parent organization in popularity and power. In the late 1990's the group carried out a number of operations aimed at government and military targets in the more rural areas of Algeria. The U.S. State Department estimates that during the 1990s fighting between the Algerian government and opposition groups, including both the GIA and the GSPC, led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people. Presently, both continue to commit small-scale terrorist operations against security forces in the country, especially in the mountainous Kabylie region.

Yet more alarming to U.S. and European observers, by 2000, according to Italian investigators, the GSPC had taken over the GIA's external networks across Europe and North Africa and were moving to establish an 'Islamic International' under the aegis of Osama bin Laden. Haydar Abu Doha, a London-based Algerian known as "the Doctor," was instrumental in this reorganization. Abu Doha moved to the UK in 1999 after serving as a senior official in a Qaeda Afghan terrorist camp.

Doha was one of the first to encourage the GSPC to split from the GIA and he helped recruit new terrorists from the large base of disenfranchised Algerian youth in Europe's cities, especially in France. (Algerians to have been among the most numerous militants at al Qaeda's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan before the war.) Many of these new adherents were involved in petty crimes such as car theft, credit-card fraud, and document forgery; and their earnings were now channeled to finance terrorist operations.

Another Algerian, Mohamed Bensakhria, who was based in Germany, and a Tunisian, Tarek Maaroufi, based in Italy, helped Doha establish and coordinate these cells across Europe. They expanded upon the Algerian base of recruits by incorporating radical militants who had left behind dormant conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Bensakhria and Maaroufi also created a vast support network that provided newcomers with false documents, lodgings, and incidental spending money.

In recent years, authorities have foiled an alarming number of terrorist plots across Europe and uncovered cells — many linked in one way or another to the GSPC — in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. Some of the high profile operations planned included a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Rome, and attacks on the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France and the G-8 summit in Genoa.

Bensakhria was arrested in Spain in June 2002. Maaroufi is wanted in Italy but remains free because of his Belgian citizenship, which prevents his extradition to Italy. Meanwhile, Abu Doha has been connected to Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian convicted for trying to attack Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium changeover, and is currently in British custody fighting extradition to the United States.

Although European and allied authorities have now begun to unearth the myriad connections between these groups and expose their plots, the struggle continues. Most recently French officials arrested four people, two Algerians and two Moroccans, on Dec. 16, 2002, in possession of chemicals and a military personal-protection suit. French authorities say they appear to have been planning a chemical attack. The four were later linked to the GSPC Frankfurt cell.

Although there has been very gradual progress towards the eradication of terrorist activity in Algeria, at the commencement of Ramadan at the end of October 2003, the Algerian authorities still felt it necessary to have over 15,000 police and special forces in readiness near the capital in case of a bombing campaign and scarcely a week goes by without there being a report of clashes between terrorists and security forces outside the capital.