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Commentary on current events

Almost a year on, there is still much confusion surrounding the reasons behind the security failure at the In Amenas gas facility in eastern Algeria, which facilitated the bloody hostage crisis there in January 2013 and left 37 dead. A recent report released by one of the three companies operating the site, Statoil, blamed the attack on the ‘inability of the Algerian army to detect or prevent the terrorists from reaching In Amenas’ (‘Investigation Report on the In Amenas Terrorist Attack’, Statoil, August 2013). But the way in which the group responsible for the attack, the ‘Signed in Blood Battalion’, operated was complex and the lessons drawn from its actions have a regional significance. The group’s leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, is an Algerian national who was based in Mali but whose active cell was mostly made up of young Tunisians who had received training and weapons in Libya. Its genuinely regional dimension is reflective of the changes underpinning the evolution of the security situation in North Africa; especially in the wake of the dispersal of Mu’ammar Qadhafi’s weapons stocks after the 2011 civil war in Libya. Coupled with the current difficulties experienced by the economies of the Maghrib, this regional security crisis should, in theory, push North African policy-makers to revive the concept of the ‘United Arab Maghrib’ (better known by its French acronym; UMA) – an intergovernmental body set-up in 1989 aimed at encouraging greater regional integration to create a united front to face common security, political and economic challenges. The organisation’s last meeting, however, was held a decade ago and, when Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki recently proposed to hold a summit in the town of Tabarka, his idea was quickly dismissed by his Algerian and Moroccan counterparts whose countries are still engaged in a bitter dispute over their common frontier. But despite this mistrust between the Maghrib’s two dominant powers, the process of regional integration could easily be revived – more out of necessity, this time, than out of grand dreams of unity.