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Africa: North
GSPC forms Sahara Brigade
2004-10-17
For some time, the security services of the Sahel countries and international experts in counter terrorism have theorized that, with the loss of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda could well turn to the Sahara Desert for its next home base. That theory became reality when Libyan authorities discovered in June that the al-Qaeda-linked Algerian terrorist organization known as GSPC, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat had established a "Sahara Brigade, " a base of operations in the Tibesti Mountains. The Tibesti Mountains are in that remote part of the Sahara that lies in northern Chad.

Even before Libyan security services learned of the GSPC base in northern Chad, the terrorist threat in the Sahara -the soft spot of Africa -was real. Established by Hassan Hattab, GSPC had its origin in the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and has as many as 3,000 fighters. Most of them were trained at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Those fighters have reportedly suggested to al-Qaeda that because of the collapse of the Taliban and the loss of Afghanistan, the group should make the Sahara its new base.

One of the goals of GSPC in the Tabesti Mountains has been to recruit volunteers from Chad, Sudan, Libya, Mali and Mauritania and group them around the Sahara Brigade, the hard core of Algerian GSPC members, who will train them, including in the use of explosives. The recruitment of black radical Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa is of particular importance, because terrorists of Arab or Northern African origin have become increasingly easy to spot by Western secret services.
Posted by:Dan Darling

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