Al-Queda Clinically Dead: NY Times Performs Emergency CPR.
THREAT RENEWED
A Ragtag Insurgency Gains a Qaeda Lifeline
A photograph provided by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb shows Abdelmalek Droukdal, third from right, an explosives expert and leader of one of the most potent Qaeda affiliates. The photograph’s authenticity was verified by The New York Times.
By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: July 1, 2008
This article is by Souad Mekhennet, Michael Moss, Eric Schmitt, Elaine Sciolino and Margot Williams.
A photograph provided by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and verified by The New York Times shows Abdelmalek Droukdal, fourth from left. His group has become a force in Osama bin Laden’s global jihad.
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.
Today, as Islamist violence wanes in some parts of the world, the Algerian militants — renamed Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — have grown into one of the most potent Osama bin Laden affiliates, reinvigorated with fresh recruits and a zeal for Western targets.