Al-Qa‘ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb is an Algeria-based Sunni Muslim jihadist group that originally formed in 1998 as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a faction of the Armed Islamic Group, which was the largest and most active terrorist group in Algeria. The GSPC was renamed in January 2007 after the group officially joined al-Qa‘ida in September 2006. The GSPC had close to 30,000 members at its height, but the Algerian Government’s counterterrorism efforts have reduced the group’s ranks to fewer than 1,000.

Since the 1990s, the group has focused most of its attacks on Algerian security personnel and facilities to achieve its primary goal of overthrowing the Algerian Government and establishing an Islamic caliphate. Following its formal alliance with al-Qa‘ida, AQIM expanded its aims and declared its intention to attack Western targets. In late 2006 and early 2007, it conducted several improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against convoys of foreign nationals working in the energy sector. AQIM in December 2007 attacked United Nations offices in Algiers with a car bomb and in February 2008 attacked the Israeli Embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania, with small arms.

AQIM, which operates primarily in northern coastal areas of Algeria and in parts of the desert regions of southern Algeria and northern Mali, mainly employs conventional terrorist tactics, including guerrilla-style ambushes and mortar, rocket, and IED attacks. Its principal sources of funding include extortion, kidnapping, donations, and narcotics trafficking. The group added the use of suicide bombings in April 2007, with attacks against government ministry and police buildings in Algiers that killed more than 30 people. AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdal announced in May 2007 that suicide bombings were going to become the group’s main tactic. The group claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bomb attack that killed at least eight soldiers and injured more than 20 at a military barracks in Algeria on 11 July 2007, the opening day of the All-Africa Games. AQIM continues to target Westerners and has successfully kidnapped numerous Westerners for ransom, a tactic that predates the merger with al-Qa‘ida. In May 2009, AQIM announced it had killed a British hostage after months of failed negotiations. In June of the same year, the group publicly claimed responsibility for killing US citizen Christopher Leggett in Mauritania because of his missionary activities. This was the first time the group had killed an American. In 2011, a Mauritanian court sentenced a suspected AQIM member to death and two others to jail for the American’s murder.

In 2010, AQIM failed to conduct the high-casualty attacks in Algeria that it had in previous years, and multinational counterterrorism efforts—including a joint French-Mauritanian raid in July against an
AQIM camp—resulted in the deaths of some AQIM members and possibly disrupted some AQIM activity.

In 2011, however, AQIM killed two French hostages during an attempted rescue operation. AQIM continues to hold four French hostages, demanding at least €90 million for their release. An Italian tourist kidnapped in Algeria is also still being held.