TerrorismAQIM leader killed in Mali

If every cloud has a silver lining, this may be one: Algerian sources say that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the deadliest leaders of Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was killed during the 25 June battle of Gao, in which the Islamist Ansar Dine group took over the city of Gao in Azawad, the break-away region in north Mali.

UPI reports that Belmokhtar, 40, was a resourceful and seasoned leader who has built up a network of alliances across the vast region over the years. Belmokhtar, an Algerian, married four female relatives of Arab and Tuareg tribal leaders who, in turn, gave him safe haven and logistical support.

Belmokhtar became involved in the Islamist cause twenty years ago, in 1992, when the Algerian government canceled the second round of parliamentary voting after the Islamists made major gains in the first round. The Islamists reacted to the cancelation by launching a brutal, decade-long campaign against the Algerian government and citizens who supported it, a war in which between 150,000 and 180,000 were killed. To terrorize the pro-government population, the Islamists engaged in atrocities not seen in other places. For example, the Islamists would ambush school busses on their way to school, but rather than shoot at the bus they would stop it, then have two or three of their men enter the bus, methodically walk down the aisle, and slash the throats of the children sitting in their seats. Children who tried to escape by jumping of the windows would not be shot: they were forced back into the bus where their throats were slashed.

The Algerian military was also brutal in its reprisals against the Islamists and their supporters, but historians have now documented that the most of the atrocities were committed by the Islamists.

With his Algerian background and connections through marriage, Belmokhtar became a dominant figure in Islamic terrorism in North Africa. The Jamestown Foundation, a think tank that monitors terrorism, observes, “Belmokhtar appears to have successfully woven himself into the fabric of the region.”

“If he has been killed, AQIM has lost one of their most effective leaders, even if he has seemed for some time to be waging his own personal war and devoting much of his energy to lucrative criminal enterprises,” UPI quotes a well-informed French security source to have said.

Belmokhtar’s death notwithstanding, the Islamists are tightening their grip over Azawad, increasing worried that the vast territory – it is roughly the size of France – would soon become a haven for terrorists unless the Ansar Dine group and its followers are defeated.