![[AFP] AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel was planning to attend a jihadist summit in northern Niger, a plan foiled by Algerian authorities, according to security forces.](http://magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/images/2012/09/25/120925Feature2Photo1.jpg)
New details are emerging about a plan for Sahel-Saharan co-coordination among armed groups.
By Walid Ramzi for Magharebia in Algiers
[AFP] AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel was planning to attend a jihadist summit in northern Niger, a plan foiled by Algerian authorities, according to security forces.
Armed salafist groups operating in North Africa and the Sahel were attempting to co-ordinate extremist movements through a new shura council before the plot was disrupted by Algerian authorities, according to a recent report.
Confessions obtained from three terrorists arrested last month by Algerian security forces near the border with Niger have revealed a plan to unify the operations of terrorist groups from across the region.
The plan included facilitating the arrival of Ansar al-Sharia from Libya and Tunisia to the strongholds of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), providing food, fuel and safe haven for them, and then facilitating their smuggling via paths starting from Libya to the farthest point in southeastern Algeria and then to northern Niger.
Information obtained by security authorities helped thwart a meeting between the leaders of Libya’s Ansar al-Sharia, Mali’s Ansar al-Din, representative of AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel and leaders of salafist groups in the Sahel and West Africa. The meeting was scheduled to be held in northern Niger and to be attended by representatives of jihadist salafist groups in North Africa, the Sahel as well as Nigeria.
Algeria’s El Khabar daily cited a security source as saying that AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel sent AQIM’s judicial commission head Abderrahmane Abou Ishak Essoufi (real name Necib Tayeb) to northern Mali to prepare for the meeting which was due to be attended by representatives of jihadist salafist groups, including Libya’s Ansar al-Sharia, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, and the Movement for Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
The goal of the meeting reportedly was to co-ordinate weapon, money and militant smuggling operations between these armed groups.
However, the meeting was postponed before it was cancelled altogether following the arrests. Through surveillance of emails, Algerian security agencies obtained information that AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel, alias Abou Moussaab Abdelouadoud, might have been planning to attend the jihadist summit. The original plan of the security operation, which ended with the arrest of AQIM’s judicial commission head, was to arrest or kill Droukdel.
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But the extreme caution of the AQIM leader helped him escape the security agencies’ ambush as Droukdel decided at the last minute to send someone to represent him in his stead.
The goal of the meeting was to announce the formation of a shura council for jihadist salafist groups in North and West Africa and the Sahel, especially after the appearance of new groups that embrace the jihadist salafist ideology in the region. The militants hoped to take advantage of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups’ control of northern Mali in forming a rear base for jihadist groups.
Omar Abderrahmane, a researcher specialised in armed groups, believes that the “recent appearance of groups that embrace jihadist ideology, especially in Mali, the remarkable prominence of MUJAO and drop of al-Qaeda Maghreb branch’s operations prompted the latter to seek to unite all these groups under the banner of al-Qaeda; something that would enable it to restore its status as the biggest armed group in the region”.
“The group is trying to remedy its inability to carry out operations in Algeria by focusing on Sahel countries through its relations with its affiliated groups there, and especially in northern Mali,” Abderrahmane said. He added that the terror network was “trying to take advantage of the wave of anger in Muslim countries” following an amateur movie denigrating Islam posted on the internet.
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