The beheading of French climber Hervé Gourdel in Algeria provoked outrage around the world, and notably in France. But the murder of the Frenchman by jihadist group Jund al-Khilafa ('Soldiers of the Caliphate') also sparked anger in the Kabylie region of northern Algeria where it took place. Local people gathered on September 25th and September 28th to pay homage to the murdered hostage and to express their anger at the lack of security in their area.
The Algerian authorities have also been forced to respond in the wake of the execution. The website Tout sur l’Algérie ('All about Algeria') reports that the army has been deployed in strength in the immediate area where the mountaineer was kidnapped, and the country's justice minister claims they have identified some of the killers. Kabylie is an economically-deprived region that has been largely abandoned by the central authorities. Algerians themselves rarely venture into its mountains because of the number of terrorist groups based there since the end of the Algerian civil war at the end of the 1990s.
Key questions arise after the group's murder of the French mountaineer. How was such an act possible given the decades of attempts by the Algerian authorities to wipe out terrorism in the country? And why did Jund al-Khilafa, which in common with other such outfits in Kabylie appears to be a small group rather than a major organisation, abandon its stated support for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and instead pledge allegiance to the Iraq and Syria-based Islamic State (IS)?
Despite the break-up of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria after the civil war and the general amnesty granted to terrorists who agreed to leave their hideaways in the Algerian maquis and rejoin mainstream society, several groups have continued their struggle in Kabylie's rugged mountains. The most likely hypothesis is therefore that Jund al-Khilafa is a group that emerged out of the GIA. This underlines the fact that Islamic State has developed no structure in the Maghreb in its own right.
“This terrorist group is representative of a residual terrorism that is seeking media coverage and influence,” says Tunisian analyst Riadh Sidaoui on the Algerian website Maghreb Émergent. “It involves local terrorism, and has absolutely no structural relationship with Islamic State or with al-Qaeda. In common with other terrorist groups in North Africa and the Sahel, the relations it does have are paper links. Islamic State has absolutely no structure in Algeria, nor in Tunisia, nor anywhere else in the Maghreb.”
A study of the terrorist acts carried out there in recent years reveals little about the Algerian groups based in Kabylie. Their ability to commit acts remains very limited, as is their area of operation. The groups here are not linked to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, whose own organisation carried out the bloody raid on a gas facility at In Amenas in southern Algeria in January 2013. Belmokhtar still remains loyal to AQIM.
By pledging allegiance to IS, the aim of Jund al-Khilafa seems clear: to steal a march on rival groups by endorsing the Islamic State franchise, and to get itself talked about in the media and above all on social media – something which is now the centrepiece of all international jihadist propaganda. It is similar to the reasoning that persuaded Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria to adopt the al-Qaeda label, hoping it would become a reference point for jihad and attract foreign fighters. This strategy failed in the face of the “dynamism” and the extremism of Islamic State.
So the violence shown by Jund al-Khilafa should in no way lead to the conclusion that Islamic State suddenly has a powerful presence in the Maghreb. The group's allegiance to IS is a first in the region and so far remains an isolated example. Though IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi expressly called for support at the time his group proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq in June, no other organisation in North Africa has pledged allegiance.
“In a statement posted in March [2014] this group [editor's note, Jund al-Khilafa] stated it had broken away from AQIM in Kabylie,” says journalist David Thomson, author of Les Français jihadistes ('French Jihadists'). “At the time the group’s head merely expressed his support for Islamic State. The formal statement of allegiance came in July. The group was clearly saying to al-Baghdadi: 'We are your soldiers in Algeria'. To this day no other jihadist group in the Maghreb has given its allegiance to IS, even if Ansar al-Sharia [editor’s note, which is based in Tunisia] has issued some messages of support.”
Jund al-Khilafa probably reached the conclusion that the al-Qaeda name is no longer a powerful enough rallying point, especially given the criticism that surrounds its head, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Jihadists accuse Zawahiri of not being close enough to events on the ground, and he has never really replaced Osama Bin Laden in their affections. In contrast these groups are deeply fascinated by Islamic State, in particular by its operational “effectiveness” and its presence on the ground as shown below by this documentary, in English, which analyses the videos and weapons used by IS personnel:
In this second video, broadcast by FRANCE 24, and which is also in English, several French citizens can be heard justifying their decision to move to Raqqa in Syria, to embrace the lifestyle advocated by Islamic State ( starts 1 minute 20 seconds in):
Islamic State has certainly built up momentum. Yet is it capable of winning its battle for influence with al-Qaeda and becoming the leading force in world jihadism? There is no evidence yet that it is doing so.
Oil and money
Up to now, rather than IS extending itself into the Maghreb, the influence has been travelling in the other direction. IS has relied on groups such as Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia and Libya, who since 2012 have sent hundreds of fighters to the group in Syria. “It is, however, possible that the coalition air strikes will galvanise the groups around Islamic State and increase the number of formal allegiances,” says David Thomson. “But for the moment it's Ansar al-Sharia who are giving fighters to IS, and not the other way around.”
In the end the key factor that could push other groups towards supporting Islamic State is money. Not so much because they would receive money directly themselves, but because IS's financial clout is a good indication of how long its potential dominance over other jihadist or radical Islam organisations might last. Organisations in Indonesia and Egypt and a group in Gaza have already made the judgement that IS will be around for some time, as have many individuals who have pledged their allegiance since the proclamation of the caliphate.
But just what financial resources do Islamic State fighters control? Are they certain to last? These are key questions and the answers remain unclear for the moment. In particular there has been uncertainty about the status of the oil refinery at Baiji, the largest in Iraq, and which has come under attack from IS fighters. At the end of August the International Energy Authority estimated that, in addition to its control of oil around Deir Ezzor in Syria, Islamic State controls seven oil fields in Iraq, corresponding to a daily production of 80,000 barrels. The IEA also said IS controlled two gas fields that were not, however, in production.
Simply multiplying the number of barrels by the price they currently fetch on world markets – 100 dollars – would suggest that IS could be earning as much as 8 million dollars a day from this level of production. However, Francis Perrin, editor of the specialist magazine Arab Oil & Gaz, cautions against such simple calculations. “Is IS's control of the oil fields constant and lasting, despite the fighting going on in Iraq? Are these fields producing at full capacity? None of that is at all certain, and it's difficult to say without being on the ground,” he says.
Perrin also points out that Islamic State will need a certain amount of any oil produced for its own general consumption and its military offensives. “So it won't all be sold. Moreover, when you're called Islamic State you can't sell your oil at a high price, you have to apply a discount, which could be as much as 50% or even 60% of the price. Based on all these elements and these major uncertainties we estimate that IS's oil resources fluctuate between 1.5 million dollars and 3 million dollars a day. But it's just a bold estimate.”
In any case, given that they are boycotted by all the major world powers, just who can IS sell its oil to anyway? As well as selling to the population it controls, Islamic State uses smuggling networks that pre-date it by some years, and which were used in particular by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to get around oil sanctions and the restrictions of the 'oil for food' programme imposed on Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “Oil sells quite easily, lots of people are ready to buy it, including in shady circumstances, to sell it on again,” explains Francis Perrin. “These are not states, but in the Middle East region, around Syria, Iraq and Turkey, there are lots of private networks. IS looks to them, just as Saddam Hussein did, and as Iran did before him, to sell their oil and to try to attract buyers with large discounts.”
By bombarding the oil refineries under IS control, the international coalition is trying to weaken the group by attacking its source of finance. But in doing so it runs the risk of encouraging other groups to pledge allegiance to it, and thus to produce more tragic cases such as that of Hervé Gourdel. Having failed to act sooner against the IS threat, the coalition now faces itself confronted by this terrible dilemma.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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