Harald Ickler, who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, displaying a photo of his captors, including one of the group’s top operatives, Amari Saifi, right.From The New York Times:
NACIRIA, Algeria — Hiding in the caves and woodlands surrounding this hill-country town, Algerian insurgents were all but washed up a few years ago.
Their nationalist battle against the Algerian military was faltering. “We didn’t have enough weapons,” recalled a former militant lieutenant, Mourad Khettab, 34. “The people didn’t want to join. And money, we didn’t have enough money.”
Then the leader of the group, a university mathematics graduate named Abdelmalek Droukdal, sent a secret message to Iraq in the fall of 2004. The recipient was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and the two men on opposite ends of the Arab world engaged in what one firsthand observer describes as a corporate merger.
Read more ....
More News on Algeria:
Algerian Al-Qaeda Group Expands Attacks, Training, NYT Reports -- Bloomberg
Qaeda targets US oil interests in N.Africa - NYT -- Reuters
My Comment: Will Algeria go back to the bloody civil war of the nineties .... this year will decide the path that will be taken.