France's War Deepens With Desert Al-Qaida Ally

NICE, France (Sept. 21) -- More than 80 French counter-terrorism troops in long-range reconnaissance planes are scouring a vast no-man's land on the edge of the Sahara for seven hostages taken last week in Niger.

It's the latest battle in what is beginning to look like a deepening war between France and a group that calls itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

"France will do everything to free the hostages," government spokesman Luc Chatel has told reporters, but the French Foreign Ministry said it had not yet received any proof that the hostages are alive or any demands for money from any group.

AQIM finances its operations and expansion by kidnapping European tourists, often with the help of local Tuareg people, an expert told AOL News. The group has openly stated its anti-French focus and warned that it could stage an attack. France has been on a high terror alert since last week in the face of the Niger kidnappings and reports that a female suicide bomber might blow herself up in Paris.

"They're Islamic extremists who are ideologues but who know how to get mercenaries to work for them," said J. Peter Pham, an expert on AQIM who is senior vice president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a New York-based think tank.

"France is in serious danger, but part of that danger comes from their allies like Spain who are giving in to AQIM and paying them ransoms in exchange for the return of hostages," he said.

AQIM operates out of the Sahel region, a vast, semi-lawless expanse encompassing parts of Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger. The region, a transitional zone between the Sahara Desert to the north and the savanna to the south, is a traditional home to nomads, and more recently a haven of sorts for drug and weapons traffickers.

The seven hostages seized last week, five of them French nationals, are reportedly being held captive in northeastern Mali. They all worked at a French uranium plant near Arlit, Niger.

France's military deployment, based in Niger's capital, Niamey, comes just two months after a disastrous French raid on a remote location in Mali aimed at rescuing a 78-year-old French aid worker kidnapped on AQIM orders. Michel Germaneau was not found at the location where the French attacked and is believed to have either died before the raid or been killed after it.

Seven AQIM militants were killed in the attack, and the group released a statement saying France had "opened the doors of horror" and vowed to retaliate both in Africa and in France.

France's first conflicts with the group now known as AQIM began more than 15 years ago during Algeria's civil war, when armed Islamist rebels tried to overthrow the country's secular government and make it an Islamist state.

Those rebels were part of a militia called the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which then evolved into the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat but had been reduced to relatively few fighters by the early part of this decade. Members cleverly re-branded the group by joining Osama bin Laden's worldwide terror network.

One of the group's most powerful leaders is the savvy, Algerian-born Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 38, known as the "one-eyed," who spent time in jihadist training camps in Afghanistan. Belmokhtar is described as an ideologue and a business genius who outsources the kidnappings of European tourists to local bandits -- and then collects the big ransoms paid for them by countries intimidated by the al-Qaida name.

"Mokhtar is one of the more innovative terrorist leaders," Pham said. "He's expanded into Mali and Mauritania and built this nexus of criminal activity which raises money for terrorist operations. Every time after he collects a ransom or some other funding, he plows that money right back into the organization by hiring even better people to handle the next operation, thus ensuring its success."

Belmokhtar often hired a local, former Polisario Front fighter who uses the nom de guerre "Omar de Sawrahi" to carry out kidnappings.

"Spain only heard the name al-Qaida when they learned three of their people had been kidnapped, so they instantly kowtowed and apparently paid the ransom," Pham said. He was referring to up to $5 million in ransom Spanish newspapers reported that the government paid for the return of three kidnapped hostages freed in August.

Pham said there is no evidence that Belmokhtar enriches himself through any criminal enterprise, adding that he "remains an ideologue through and through."

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has urged the European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to increase the EU's focus on the Sahel region, saying that the population there "must have another perspective than that offered by terrorists."

For his part, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's archenemy, former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, accused Sarkozy today of using the North African Islamist threat as a "ploy" to distract from bad publicity over his deportation of the Roma Gypsies and the Lillian Bettencourt finance scandal, the London Telegraph reported.