Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

SALAFIST GROUP FOR PREACHING AND COMBAT • 609During its history al Sa’iqa committed seven attacks, causing ninefatalities and injuring seven people. Its last known attack was the8 November 1985 bombing of the Iraqi Airlines office in Nicosia,Cyprus, in which neither life nor limb were harmed.Al Sa’iqa lacks both an original political program and broadpopular support among the Palestinians, largely due to its siding withLebanese Christians against fellow Palestinians during the siege ofthe Tel al Zat’ar refugee camp during January–August 1976. Its futuredepends on the foreign policy options that the Syrian regime willchoose to pursue in the wake of the loss of Soviet military aid essentialto Syria’s role as a player in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Within thePalestinian community, al Sa’iqa is a marginal group. It is considereddefunct as a terrorist group.SALAFIST GROUP FOR PREACHING AND COMBAT (GSPC).The Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, which renameditself in early 2007 as al Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb(AQIM), is an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist group that brokefrom the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in 1998 and then formeda covert operational alliance with the main al Qa’eda group. Asthe Maghreb is the generic Arabic designation for the North Africanregion west of Egypt, now occupied by Morocco, Algeria,Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania, the change in name may reflect thebroader mission of the group as a fully integrated member of the alQa’eda worldwide network. Originally the GSPC aimed to topplethe secular government of Algeria in favor of creating an Islamicfundamentalist regime there but after 2003, when the group aligneditself more openly with al Qa’eda, it broadened its goals, first toinclude attacking U.S., French, and other European targets, secondto helping other Islamic movements among the Chechnyans, Iraqis,Palestinians, and Somalians, and also to promoting the establishmentof a renewed Islamic caliphate. On 11 September 2006 the al Qa’edasecond-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri, announced the union ofthe GSPC with al Qa’eda, after which the GPSC changed its name.To help finance its operations, the GSPC is also involved in smugglingand hostage taking for ransom in the south of Algeria and theneighboring states of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad. The GSPChas operational links with al Qa’eda in Iraq, recruiting many NorthAfricans in Algeria and Europe to fight as insurgents in Iraq; these