In the Spotlight:
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC)

 
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) has emerged in recent years as a major source of recruiting and other support for al Qaeda operations in Europe. A splinter faction of the Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the GSPC is engaged simultaneously in efforts to topple Algeria's secular government and to organize high-profile attacks against Western interests on the continent.

The GSPC broke away from the GIA in 1996. By 1998, vowing an end to attacks against civilians (although this promise has not totally been fulfilled), the GSPC had surpassed their parent organization in popularity and power. In the late 1990s the group carried out a number of operations aimed at government and military targets in the more rural areas of Algeria. The U.S. State Department estimates that during the 1990s fighting between the Algerian government and opposition groups, including both the GIA and the GSPC, led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people. Presently, both continue to commit small-scale terrorist operations against security forces in the country, especially in the mountainous Kabylie region.

Yet more alarming to U.S. and European observers, by 2000, according to Italian investigators, the GSPC had taken over the GIA's external networks across Europe and North Africa and were moving to establish an 'Islamic International' under the aegis of Osama bin Laden. Haydar Abu Doha, a London-based Algerian known as "the Doctor," was instrumental in this reorganization. Abu Doha moved to the UK in 1999 after serving as a senior official in a Qaeda Afghan terrorist camp.

Doha was one of the first to encourage the GSPC to split from the GIA and he helped recruit new terrorists from the large base of disenfranchised Algerian youth in Europe's cities, especially in France. (Algerians to have been among the most numerous militants at al Qaeda's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan before the war.) Many of these new adherents were involved in petty crimes such as car theft, credit-card fraud, and document forgery; and their earnings were now channeled to finance terrorist operations.

Another Algerian, Mohamed Bensakhria, who was based in Germany, and a Tunisian, Tarek Maaroufi, based in Italy, helped Doha establish and coordinate these cells across Europe. They expanded upon the Algerian base of recruits by incorporating radical militants who had left behind dormant conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Bensakhria and Maaroufi also created a vast support network that provided newcomers with false documents, lodgings, and incidental spending money.

In recent years, authorities have foiled an alarming number of terrorist plots across Europe and uncovered cells — many linked in one way or another to the GSPC — in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. Some of the high profile operations planned included a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Rome, and attacks on the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France and the G-8 summit in Genoa.

Bensakhria was arrested in Spain in June 2002. Maaroufi is wanted in Italy but remains free because of his Belgian citizenship, which prevents his extradition to Italy. Meanwhile, Abu Doha has been connected to Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian convicted for trying to attack Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium changeover, and is currently in British custody fighting extradition to the United States.

Although European and allied authorities have now begun to unearth the myriad connections between these groups and expose their plots, the struggle continues. Most recently French officials arrested four people, two Algerians and two Moroccans, on Dec. 16, 2002, in possession of chemicals and a military personal-protection suit. French authorities say they appear to have been planning a chemical attack. The four were later linked to the GSPC Frankfurt cell.

Sources

Agence France-Presse, " Philippines to lobby EU to label CPP as terrorists," Oct. 11, 2002.

Imelda Visaya Abano, "Hundreds of CPP-NPA deployed to the Ilocos and Cordillera," Cyber Dyaryo, Sept. 14, 2001.

Orlando Buenaventura, "The Communist Party of the Philippines/National Democratic Front Network Abroad," (1989).

Project Ploughshares, "Armed Conflict Report 2002, Philippines-CPP/NPA"

U.S. Department of State, Philippine Communist Party Designated Foreign Terrorist Group.

 

By Anthony Keats CDI Research Assistant akeats@cdi.org

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