Alger: Casbah-Editions, 2010. 220 p. + annexes*

I have written many times about Islamism, or political Islam, in general and in Algeria in particular. In the Russian specialized literature, there are interesting studies by S. E. Babkin, B. V. Dolgov, and V. V. Kudelev on this topic.¹ Naturally, both these works and others devoted to Islamism in individual countries do not exhaust this topic. All the more interesting is the book "Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" published in Algeria in 2010, which contains first-hand information about the activities of the armed Islamist underground in Algeria and neighboring countries, about the leaders and inspirers of this underground, about the methods they have used in recent years, about the true scale of their operations and connections. distributed up to some regions of Russia.

The author of the book is Algerian journalist Mohamed Moqaddam, known under the pseudonym Anis Rahmani, one of the first reporters who managed to establish contact with the leaders of armed Islamist groups and interview them. Founder and director of the Algerian newspaper Al-Nahar since 2007, before that, from 1999 to 2007, he was a correspondent for the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat, specifically dealing with the situation in Algeria. In 2002, he published the book "Algerian Afghans", dedicated to the Algerian terrorists who fought in Afghanistan (according to some sources, more than 3 thousand of them formed the most radical wing of local Islamists upon their return to their homeland). In it, by the way, he predicted that the "Salafist Group of Preaching and Struggle" (SGPB), which is now leading Islamist militants in Algeria, will definitely join Al-Qaeda, which happened in 2007, i.e. in 5 years. Currently, Moqaddam is the most informed expert on the characteristics and situation of armed Islamist groups in Algeria.

In the book under review, which is based on personal impressions, conversations and interviews, as well as on numerous documents collected over the past 20 years, the author draws attention not to the military and religious aspects of the problem, which attract the attention of our specialists first of all, but to the political, personal and... criminal side of the events described by him. The first section headings are quite expressive: "The leader of kidnappers"," From tea smuggling to human life trafficking"," Hostages tell the story of their abductors"," Al-Qaeda intermediaries in the transfer of ransom", etc. Moqaddam pays special attention to the figure of Abd al-Hamid Abu Zeid, one of the leaders of militants in North Africa, nicknamed " Sahrawi Bin Laden." The author has collected the most detailed information about him, starting from his childhood years spent in the continuously nomadic Tuareg tribe of Al-Ghadir. Abu Zeid is a combat alias, and the real name of this character is Mohamed Ghadir. According to the author, all the militants operate under pseudonyms in order to confuse the police and special services and prevent them from "taking over" the families of the militants. But, as the example of Moqad-dama shows, not only the special services, but also journalists manage to reveal most of the pseudonyms of militants.

* M. Moqaddam. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Smuggling in the name of Islam. Alzhir: Kasbah Publishing House, 2010. 220 p. + apps.

¹ Babkin S. E. Religious extremism in Algeria, Moscow, 2001; Dolgov B. V. Islamist challenge and the Algerian society, Moscow, 2004; Kudelev V. V. "Al-Qaeda": structures, allies, patrons, Moscow, 2008.

Abu Zeid, who was born in a low-income family with many children, received almost no education, having learned only during occasional visits to the mosque school "rudiments of Arabic grammar and several suras of the Koran", after which he "completely abandoned all training", forced to "help his father graze camels and rams" (p. 12). From interviews with his relatives and associates, it is clear that he is an unsociable, harsh, cruel and irreconcilable man, who drove out two of his wives one after the other for no apparent reason and since about 22 years was engaged in smuggling and fraud on the "black market", especially since the village in which he settled was located in the very heart of the city. Algerian Sahara, 250 km from the nearest administrative center. Although he did not have a deep knowledge of Islam, he tried not to sell forbidden goods, did not drink wine, and observed the fast of Ramadan, for violating the precepts of which he even beat his brother.

In early 1990, Abu Zeid became a member of the Islamic Salvation Front ( IFF), a religious party that quickly gained popularity. Abu Zeid became a prominent activist of the IFS and, after the IFS switched to armed struggle against the Government in January 1992, began to supply the terrorist underground with food, weapons and equipment, using his smuggling channels. For this, he was arrested in 1994 and spent three years in prison, where he met many prominent Islamists. After being released from prison in 1997, he joined one of the units of the Armed Islamic Group (VIG), along with three of his relatives. By this time, the IFS had practically disappeared, splitting into many organizations, the largest of which were the VIG and the IAS (Islamic Salvation Army). However, in 1998, the aforementioned GSPB emerged, and its emir, Hassan Khattab, established a connection with Abu Zeid, by that time already a well - known smuggler in the Sahara, who had launched operations on the territory of four states at once-Algeria, Mali, Niger and Libya. In the fall of 2002, Abu Zeid became the head of the Tariq Ibn Ziyad group (named after the first Muslim conqueror of Spain in the eighth century).), whose task was to control the Algerian Sahara. By this time, the SSS, in need of funds, began to capture Europeans in the Sahara (engineers, tourists, scientists, etc.) in order to get a ransom for them. In particular, 32 such hostages were captured by the militants in April 2003 and released 4 months later for a ransom of 5 million euros (p. 24).

Around the end of 2006, according to Moqaddam, the SSS changed its name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It continued its activities, focusing primarily on kidnappings in addition to attacks on the security forces, which, according to the Algerian Minister of the Interior, were 375 in 2007 alone, of which 115 were the work of AQIM (p.26). In fact, all of these seizures are part of al-Qaeda's efforts to raise funds through the hostage trade, which is also active in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and (according to Moqaddam) Somalia. At the same time, the kidnappers, not recognizing the legitimacy of the authorities against whom they are fighting, consider themselves legitimate representatives of the Islamic caliphate, who can deal with non-Muslims in the "lands of Islam" as they please. The fact that the number of people abducted or taken hostage by other organizations or simply bandits (260 people) exceeded the" catch " of AKIM, only said that the profitability of this type of "business" also attracted competitors of AKIM (at the height of the war of 1992-2002, the number of groups that only broke away from the IFS and then spontaneously the number of gangs that have emerged has exceeded 600!) and in general was in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Sahara quite contagious bad example. In 2007, kidnappers in the Sahara alone demanded a ransom of 60 million euros for the release of hostages, and received a total of 12 million euros for them. But at the same time, it should be taken into account that some of the hostages managed to get free without ransom, and another part died without waiting for release.

Many hostages (natives of Great Britain, Germany, France. They were captured in the countries bordering Algeria and were usually held in camps specially created by al-Qaeda, where living conditions were very difficult in terms of sanitation, temperature changes, food shortages, and the danger posed by snakes and scorpions. The author asked in detail those of them who managed to get free. Their stories contain a lot of interesting things, including about the militants-kidnappers themselves, who are usually 17-25 years old, about the peculiarities of their behavior and attitude towards hostages, especially women, about the topics of conversations between kidnappers and abductees, many of whom were persuaded to convert to Islam. At the same time, the rather low educational level of the militants (usually 2nd - 3rd grades of the Koranic school) did not prevent them from discovering a very extensive knowledge of the history of Islam in polemics with those who defended their right to remain a Christian. So, in a conversation with the Austrians, they recalled the siege of Vienna by the Ottomans in 1529, which "only by a miracle did not happen."

It ended with the Islamization" of the capital of Austria (p. 43-45, 63-64). The militants all believe that "Islam is the ideal solution to all the problems of the world today" and "it is absolutely necessary to return to Islam in Spain as the former Andalusia" (meaning not the southern region of modern Spain, but the disappeared Arab-Muslim country of Al-Andalus, which occupied the territory of the Iberian Peninsula in the VIII-XV centuries).

But such conversations, as well as taking care of the hostages, including providing them with medicines (which the militants, like almost all types of supplies and food, receive through smuggling channels), did not determine the situation of the hostages at all. They were often treated rudely or disdainfully, regardless of their age, state of health, dignity and position. Some of them were killed, such as 78-year-old Frenchman Michel Germano, without really bothering to explain the reason for the murder, although it is still unclear whether he died of privation and illness or was shot. Moqaddam believes that Germano was killed in retaliation for a joint operation of Franco-Mauritanian troops against one of the AQIM units in July 2010 (pp. 49-53, 65).

The AQIM usually publishes its communiques using the Al-Jazeera channel, which the author describes as "highly valued by al-Qaeda" (p. 49). However, members of the organization are usually masked in photos and TV screens, covering at least half of their faces. Nevertheless, images of these heavily armed, heavily bearded men have become widespread in the Western media, and AKIM itself has grown from a small bandit group into "a significant military force with which the governments of greater Europe are in a hurry to start negotiations" (p.66). These contacts are usually established through Malian and Mauritanian intermediaries, who are not always reliable, as AQIM has activists originally from Mali and Mauritania (as well as from Libya, Chad and Niger). The aim of AQIM is to go beyond Algeria and become a "factor of international importance". At the same time, within the Algerian Sahara, AQIM failed to subdue the Tuaregs, who have inhabited this territory since ancient times. AQIM is hostile to most of them, although it is linked to some "poor Arab tribes" in Mali and neighboring countries. Their main conciliator is a Mauritanian businessman (by the way, put on the wanted list by the Mauritanian authorities). Mustafa Ould Limam Shafi, who speaks Arabic, French, Bambara, Hausa and Tamasheke (a Tuareg language). Shafi is also an adviser to the President of Burkina Faso, a partner of many prominent smugglers in the region, and a personal friend of a number of AKIM leaders, making him an ideal intermediary.

Moqaddam provides a wealth of information about the uneasy relations between Bin Laden and the Islamists of Algeria. The Yemeni emissary of al-Qaeda, Imad Abd al-Wahid Ahmed al-Yamani, arrived in Algeria in June 2001, where he met with the head of the SGB, Hassan Khattab, and then explored the possibility of launching jihad in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria. On his return to Algeria, he was killed by the Algerian military on 12 September 2002 near the town of Batna. For a long time, the circumstances of his death were unknown, and Bin Laden, who decided that al-Yamani was killed by the SGB, broke off all relations with this organization. However, ties were gradually restored, and the GSPB, with the help of Al-Qaeda, turned the Sahara into a "new Afghanistan", according to a statement from the US military headquarters in Stuttgart on May 12, 2010, as armed Islamist groups in the region, enriched by the hostage trade, were able to buy a lot of weapons and form new units.

Since the end of 2001, the GSPB has moved its operations to the Sahara due to "increased pressure" on it from "Algerian security forces in the east of the country". Since the fall of 2002, Abu Zeid, Abbi Abd al-Aziz (Okasha) and Amari Saifi (Abd al-Razzaq), who previously served in the Algerian Airborne Forces, have been nominated to the leadership of the SSPB. They have developed a new tactic based on communicating and working closely with smugglers, abducting Europeans, and engaging with al-Qaeda sympathizers in all the countries bordering the Sahara, in the south of which the main terrorist base is located in the Tassili Mountains. By April 2002, the number of European tourists, archaeologists, researchers, doctors, and others captured by the militants had increased to 34 (p. 73-75). Since then, the Algerian army and the AQIM have been tracking and attacking each other with varying success, especially since the AQIM detachments often retreat to the lands of neighboring states with Algeria. There have already been cases of Europeans being killed by AQIM militants in Mauritania, 250 km east of Nouakchott (p. 92).

The scale of AKIM's operations, as well as the damage they cause, is relatively small. However, the echo of these operations is used to the maximum extent by Al-Qaeda not only in material matters,

but also for propaganda purposes. For example, in February 2008, AKIM published the following communique on the Tatar television channel Al-Jazeera: "We are happy to inform our Muslim nation about the success of the Mujahideen in two major operations in Niger." It referred to the capture in December 2007 of two UN employees and four tourists who "will be treated well by the Mujahideen in accordance with the principles of Islamic Sharia" (p. 98). In May 2009, Abu Zeid executed British hostage Edwin Dyer after he failed to exchange him for Palestinian Mufti Abu Qatada, and in June 2009, American Christopher Langis, accused of "evangelizing Muslim countries" (pp. 103-105).

The list goes on, as does an even longer list of hostages from Europe and America released for ransom after much bickering, mutual threats, and exchanges of blows. Since 2008, AQIM has also actively participated in the campaign demanding the release of Islamic terrorists imprisoned in Algeria, Tunisia, France, Italy and Austria (p. 115).

In the final chapters, the author describes the main Islamist extremist organizations that emerged in Algeria: The Armed Islamic Movement (1983-1994), the Islamic State Movement (1991-1998), the Faithful to the Oath Movement (1991-1998), the Islamic Jihad Front (1993-1997), the Islamic Salvation Army (1992-2000), the VIG and the SSPB, as well as some smaller groups. For the first time, information about them, their leaders, relationships and rivalries, as well as about relations with Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, is given as exhaustively as data on Algerians participating in Islamist actions in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and France. The latter is given special attention by the leadership of Al-Qaeda. The appendices to the book (pp. 203-220) contain documents and photographs illustrating the content of the text.

In general, Moqaddam's book is a valuable source of information about the activities and nature of Islamist groups in North Africa, as well as the intellectual and political level of their personnel. The book gives an idea of the semi-criminal morality of the militants, the limitations of their ideas about the world, as well as their willingness to rebuild it "for themselves". The book once again confirms that Al-Qaeda militants are largely marginals who are ready for anything, capable of any crimes in the name of the triumph of Islamism.

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