MADRID — The twin suicide bombings in Algeria's capital that took at least 37 lives last week have given the enigmatic militant group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb a sharp burst of publicity.
But experts say the reality is more complex than the propaganda or media reports depicting an overwhelming and ubiquitous menace.
In fact, the Algerian military has recently inflicted damage on the group, chopping away at its rural strongholds and capturing or slaying leaders, experts say. Moreover, the network has suffered from infighting and struggled to mold a North Africa-wide offshoot of Al Qaeda, according to authorities.
"Al Qaeda in the Maghreb has not been able to show it has achieved its announced goal of regional federation," said a senior British anti-terrorism official. "I am not seeing real operational control by Al Qaeda central."
As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Algiers on Tuesday to pay homage to 17 employees killed at a U.N. complex there, North African and European security forces were on alert against a network striving to reassert itself. The strikes against the U.N. and the Constitutional Court continued a strategic shift from guerrilla combat against Algerian security forces to an Iraq-style campaign of suicide attacks and roadside bombings against national and foreign targets.
A video released hours later declared that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is stronger than ever, a North African legion waging Osama bin Laden's war on "crusaders" and "apostates." The rhetoric makes Western authorities fearful about attacks on their interests in North Africa or Europe, according to investigators and experts in both regions.
Experts believe the Algiers bombings were a gambit by Abdelmalek Droukdel, the network's leader, to demonstrate viability and overcome battlefield defeats by adopting a new form of warfare. With skillful propaganda, target selection and militants willing to die, even a weakened network can have an international impact and, in some ways, become more dangerous.
"They showed they can still carry out a massacre in a heavily guarded area of the capital," said Louis Caprioli of the GEOS security consulting firm, a retired anti-terrorism chief of France's DST intelligence agency. "But it is complicated. Militarily, they have had many losses in the countryside.
"Droukdel had the malevolent genius to realize he couldn't succeed militarily, so he chooses an international opening. He wants to turn Algeria into a land of jihad like Afghanistan or Iraq."
