Splinter group breaks from Al Qaeda in North Africa

ALGIERS — A new armed group calling itself the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria has split from Al Qaeda’s North African branch and sworn loyalty to the radical breakaway group Islamic State (IS) fighting in Syria and Iraq.

In a communiqué, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) central region commander Khaled Abu  Suleimane, whose real name is Gouri Abdelmalek, claimed leadership of the new group, joined by an AQIM commander of an eastern region in Algeria, where the Al Qaeda wing has its base.

“You have in the Islamic Maghreb men if you order them they will obey you,” Suleimane said in reference to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of the IS. “The Maghreb has deviated from the true path.”

The communiqué was posted on jihadist websites. Algerian officials did not immediately comment on the statement.

The Algeria splinter group is the latest to side with Baghdadi over Al Qaeda’s aging chieftain Ayman Al Zawahiri, as the IS appeals to younger militants with successes in gaining territory in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdadi, who has declared himself “caliph” or head of state, fell out with Al Qaeda in 2013 over its expansion into Syria, where his followers carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions.

For some militants, IS’ creation of a Jihadi Salafist bastion spanning western Iraq and eastern Syria, and its strong online presence, compare with Al Qaeda’s failure for almost a decade to carry out a major attack in the West.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is just one of the fractured militant groups operating in North Africa, which has been a source of thousands of young fighters travelling from Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to Syria and Iraq.

Algeria, which itself recovered from a decade of conflict against its own Islamist fighters during which some 200,000 people died, is a strong US ally in its fight against militants in the region.

But experts said the announcement will likely not have a major operational impact on the ground as AQIM has been focused on the Sahel region rather than Algeria. Attacks are rarer now in Algeria though militants still have potential.

“The new group will try hard to make some noise, but it will be very difficult to execute big terrorist actions as Algerian security forces have knocked out most of the armed groups in Algeria,” local security analyst Anis Rahmani said.

The newly created “Caliphate Soldiers” or “Jound Al Khilafa fi Ard Al Jazayer” is the second group to break with AQIM, the first one being Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group “Those who sign in Blood” who observers say are likely based now in southern Libya.

Belmokhtar, a veteran Algerian militant and former Al Qaeda commander, was blamed for masterminding the attack on Algeria’s In Amenas gas plant in early 2013, in which 40 oil workers, most of them foreigners, were killed after a four-day siege.