Al-Qaeda's top leaders are widely believed to be holed up somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the threat they and sympathetic Islamist extremists present has been cited by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as justication for declaring a state of emergency and suspending the constitution. The global terror network also has an active franchise in Iraq. But far from the mountains of Central Asia, or the target-rich deserts of Mesopotamia, al-Qaeda is seeking a new stronghold at the very gates of Europe.

Last June, an Islamist strategist published an article titled "Al-Qaeda is Moving to Africa" in the online magazine Echo of Jihad. The author, Abu Azzam al-Ansari, was identied by a condential source with ties to U.S. intelligence agencies as a Saudi national and al-Qaeda afliate who spent time in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet occupation, and while the country was controlled by the Taliban. Ansari described Africa as "an unexplored gold mine for global jihad."

"There is no doubt that al-Qaeda and the holy warriors perceive the significance of the African regions for military campaigns against the crusaders," he went on to say. "Many people sense that this continent has not yet found its proper expected role, and the next stages of the conflict will see the presence of Africa in the battle eld."

Ansari identied several factors that make Africa attractive for transnational Islamists, including the growing strength of Islam on the continent, the ease of movement between and within poorly governed countries, the weakness of local military and security agencies, and the prevailing poverty that will "enable the holy warriors to provide some finance and welfare and thus post there some of their influential operatives." Most signicantly, Ansari noted links to Europe from North Africa, "which eases the move from there to carry out attacks." The Strait of Gibraltar, separating Morocco from Spain, is only 13 km wide. But more important than geographic proximity is the access to Europe provided by Islamist sympathizers among the tens of thousands of North African immigrants in western Europe. A stronger presence in North Africa could give al-Qaeda a base from which to expand into that community.

European intelligence agencies have long worried about the presence of North African Islamist groups on their soil, and this fear has been justified. The Armed Islamic Group, an Algerian jihadist organization responsible for the widespread massacre of civilians in Algeria, carried out a wave of bombings and an attempted hijacking in France during the 1990s. More recently, the 2004 Madrid bombings, which killed almost 200 people, were executed largely by Moroccan immigrants, including at least one member of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, another North African Islamist organization.

Within North Africa itself, however, support for Islamist groups floundered during the late 1990s and early 2000s. An Algerian government amnesty caused many members of the Armed Islamic Group to quit the organization, and general revulsion directed at the group's murder of civilians dried up much of its support. Two factors helped revive militant Islam in North Africa. The first was the war in Iraq, which inflamed public opinion, but also provided Islamist-minded young men with a theatre where they could directly confront American soldiers. In June 2005, U.S. central command claimed that up to 25 per cent of suicide bombers in Iraq were North Africans, mostly from Algeria. However, those who didn't blow themselves up likely had a bigger impact on the spread of Islamic extremism. In Iraq, they met jihadists from around the world, including members of al-Qaeda, and they took these contacts and their ideas back to North Africa.

"When you have a North African who goes to Iraq, they're basically in a melting pot," says Emily Hunt, a former fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has conducted extensive research in North Africa. "They're being exposed to people from other parts of the Middle East that they never would have encountered before in their small village in Algeria, or their small village in Morocco. And that's what makes this so dangerous, is this melting pot, this cross-pollination of ideas and techniques and tactics that then is re-exported to Algeria and Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa."

The second factor in the revival of violent Islamism in North Africa flowed perhaps inevitably from the exposure of North African militants to al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq. In October 2003, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group, pledged its support for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's holy war against the United States. Three years later, on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri announced an alliance with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

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