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Algeria hostage crisis ‘ongoing’, says Foreign Office – live updates … more than 600 Algerian hostages freed, still several dozen foreign employees unaccounted for.
PM Cameron statement in British Parliament
(Guardian) – In the early hours of Wednesday morning, terrorists attacked a gas installation run by BP, the Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian company Sonatrech in In Aminas in south-eastern Algeria near the Libyan border.
The terrorist group is believed to have been operating under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a criminal terrorist and smuggler who has been operating in Mali and in the region for a number of years and who has been affiliated with Al Qaida in the Maghreb.
Mr Speaker, In Aminas is some 18 hours by road from the capital, Algiers. It is in the middle of the Sahara desert and one of the most remote places in the world. As a result it takes time to get a complete picture and the full details are still emerging.
But according to the information we have from the Algerian authorities, the terrorists first attacked two buses en route to the Aminas airfield before attacking the residential compound and the gas facility at the installation.
It appears to have been a large, well-coordinated and heavily-armed assault and it is probably that it had been pre-planned. Two of those travelling in the convoy to the airfield were very sadly killed, including one British national, and his family were informed on Wednesday.
A number of other workers were taken hostage by the terrorists in separate locations both at the residential compound and at the gas facility.
The precise numbers involved remain unclear at this stage but the hostages included British nationals, along with the nationals of at least seven other countries, and of course many Algerians.
Former head of French intelligence, Alain Juillet
The former head of French intelligence, Alain Juillet, is quoted by Le Figaro as saying that little is likely to emerge of what actually happened at the gas installation for several weeks:
“The Algerians have a principal: when they mount an operation, they don;t talk about it. From experience, it takes a minimum of 15 days to a month before we start getting a small idea of what really happened.”
Juillet added that even then, the accounts of freed hostages would likely be the most useful source of information.
Plenty of blow-back from reckless US foreign policy in the past …
Algeria’s GSPC and America’s ‘War on Terror’
(Washington Institute) Oct. 2, 2002 – Intensified Islamist violence prompted Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to launch his military’s largest counteroffensive against radical Islamic elements in five years. The target of this ongoing operation is the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a breakaway faction of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). GSPC deserves special attention in America’s “war on terror” for its extensive ties to al-Qaeda and its devastating effect on Algeria.
Background
Radical Islamic violence erupted in Algeria in 1992 when the military nullified a sweeping electoral victory for the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Led by the GIA (formed in 1993) and the armed wing of the FIS (known as the Islamic Salvation Army [AIS]), Islamists launched a ruthless campaign against the government, the military, and civilians that included school burnings, religiously motivated killings, and bombings. Their goal was to overthrow the secular Algerian government and replace it with an Islamist regime.
As the war raged, it became apparent that the majority of the Islamist combatants adhered to the rigid and utopian Salafist branch of Islam, which excludes all but one interpretation of the religion — that revealed by the Prophet Muhammad and his “salaf,” or companions. Between 1996 and 1997, Salafist violence reached its zenith. The GIA massacred thousands of Algerian civilians thought to support the regime and oppose their jihad. After a decade of violence, the death toll is estimated at 150,000.
Enter GSPC
The massacres of 1996-1997 led to significant fragmentation among Algerian Salafists. The GSPC was formed in 1998 by Hassan Hattab (aka Abu Hamza), who left the GIA and condemned “shedding the blood of innocent people in massacres.” Hattab’s group rose to prominence after Bouteflika’s January 2000 amnesty deadline for Islamists. Although some 5,000 AIS militants surrendered their weapons, the GSPC refused the amnesty, one of only a few groups to do so.
The GSPC began with 700 fighters, but now boasts an estimated 4,000. Its current tactics include attacks at false roadblocks and raids on military, police, and government convoys. Since January 2002, an estimated 900 people have been killed in Islamist-related violence in Algeria. Although the GSPC does not always accept responsibility for its attacks, many believe that the group is behind the majority of such operations, which have increasingly been launched in the heart of the country and its suburbs. The U.S. State Department now calls GSPC the “most effective remaining armed group” and the “largest, most active terrorist organization” in Algeria today.
Ties to al-Qaeda
Before GSPC emerged in 1998, its cadres were part of the GIA. Several hundred GIA members had fought in the Afghan-Soviet war, and many of them had links of one sort or another to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda provided support to those who returned to Algeria and formed the GIA in 1993, but the GIA was by no means an al-Qaeda front; it was a separate group with which al-Qaeda felt some affinity and therefore aided.
