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| Africa: North |
| GSPC primer and update |
| 2005-04-05 |
| The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) is currently engaged in a violent jihadist insurgency against the Algerian government with the goal of replacing the secular regime with an Islamic state. The GSPC splintered from a rival Algerian organization, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in 1998 over a disagreement on whether civilians constitute legitimate targets. Since its inception in 1992, the GIA has killed thousands of Algerian civilians, including women and children, in targeted massacres. Consequently, the GIA came to be viewed as contaminated and as a result, Hassan Hattab, a former GIA leader and founder of the GSPC, was able to take many GIA defectors with him when he left. The GSPC was also able to attract new members through its stated focus on attacking exclusively government targets and security forces. The group got an additional boost after Algerian President Bouteflika instituted a widespread amnesty program for Islamic militants in 1998, and the GSPC was one of the few groups that declined to participate. Al-Qaeda — which maintained a loose relationship with the GIA through individual combatants that had fought in Afghanistan — also separated itself from the GIA over the civilian massacres, and allegedly encouraged Hattab to defect, providing him with funding to establish the GSPC. Since 1998, the GSPC has grown in strength and visibility to become the most effective terrorist group in Algeria, consequently co-opting most of the GIA's well-established overseas networks. Early in its campaign, the GSPC successfully attacked Algerian security forces and other government targets. However, the group eventually returned to killing civilians — probably when it began suffering more significant losses — but not on the same scale as the GIA. Since 2002, the group has had some major setbacks, primarily due to infighting, the loss of two emirs and the steadily improving skills of the Algerian police and security forces. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |