Algeria is jihadists’ biggest prize

It is not often that the head of a Western government and a leading al-Qaeda operative see eye-to-eye on developments in the Middle East. But that is what happened after last week’s unprecedented take-over of In Amenas, a gas facility in Algeria.

British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that North Africa has now become a battleground against Islamist radicals that will last for “at least a decade”. One of al-Qaeda’s leaders in northern Mali, Omar Ould Hamaha, quickly concurred. France “had opened the gates of hell” by intervening military in Mali, he declared, falling “into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia”.

Recent history shows that both are spot on, albeit for different reasons. A decade after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is still mired in a cycle of sectarian bloodshed, ranks as the most corrupt country on earth and is a Shia theocracy aligned with Iran. As Nato forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, the consensus is that the only solution to that country’s continuing inter-tribal, and Islamist-inspried, chaos is a peace deal with the Taliban — whose overthrow was the justification given for the initial invasion.

With the fall of Libya, Colonel Gaddafi, the centre of gravity for al-Qaeda’s myriad networks has clearly shifted from Iraq and Afghanistan to North Africa. And that is a nightmare for recession-hit Europe. Algeria, North Africa’s economic powerhouse, is Europe’s third-biggest supplier of gas, and a major supplier, too, of high quality sweet crude oil. Last week, gas prices spiked 4 per cent in the wake of the terror attack. While the In Amenas facility represents 18 per cent of Algerian gas exports, supplies from Russia will make up for a short-term shortfall. However, that will give Russia, at loggerheads with Nato on the Syrian crisis, still more political leverage.