Al-Qaeda's Far-Reaching New Partner

As the massacres continued, bin Laden's allies in London and elsewhere wrote scathing denunciations of the Algerian group, a rejection that persisted for years.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat -- its name is derived from a branch of fundamentalist Islam -- was founded in 1998 by a splinter group of Algerian rebels who wanted to reduce the number of civilian massacres. It quickly eclipsed the GIA, but it still struggled to win support from abroad.

That started to change after al-Qaeda launched the Sept. 11 attacks. With its territorial base in Afghanistan in jeopardy, al-Qaeda's leadership began looking for safer places to relocate.

In the fall of 2001, according to French and Algerian officials, bin Laden dispatched a Yemeni deputy to Algeria for talks with the radical group. The emissary was reported killed in September 2002 by Algerian security services, but his presence in Algeria marked a turning point, they said.

"Until 2001, the GSPC wasn't trusted by the rest of the international jihad," said Louis Caprioli, former director of international counterterrorism for the DST, the French counterintelligence service. "That's when the GSPC started to become international. It used to be focused solely on Algeria."

On the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a leader of the Algerian group posted a statement on the Internet pledging the group's allegiance to al-Qaeda for the first time, adding: "We strongly and fully support Osama bin Laden's jihad against the heretic America." In March 2005, a successor leader, Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, issued a similar statement praising bin Laden.

Until recently, al-Qaeda's leadership had offered cautious or tepid responses. In the summer of 2005, bin Laden referred to "our brothers" in the Algerian network in a long statement on audiotape, but otherwise has not publicly embraced the group.

It became clear, however, that an alliance could bring benefits to both sides, analysts said. If the Algerians could win al-Qaeda's endorsement, it would erase their network's pariah status in radical Islamic circles, making it easier to raise money and logistical support. In turn, al-Qaeda would gain a local affiliate and an operational foothold in North Africa.

"The leadership of al-Qaeda doesn't have a secure base left anywhere else in the world," said Liess Boukraa, a terrorism expert and author in Algiers. "So al-Qaeda needs the GSPC at the logistical level. The GSPC needs al-Qaeda at the ideological level."

Al-Qaeda has pursued this strategy in multiple Muslim countries, partnering with local underground groups in an effort to extend its name and influence. In Iraq, al-Qaeda teamed with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's insurgent group, prevailing on him to change its name to al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam and various organizations in Kashmir have similar ties with bin Laden's movement.

Analysts said the shift by the Algerian organization toward a global strategy was a tacit admission that its original goal -- seizing power in its home country -- had failed. The network continues to attack government targets in Algeria almost weekly, but it has taken heavy losses in recent years and is confined to remote areas in the mountains and desert.

Estimates of the number of active GSPC members, who constitute almost all of the remaining fighters against the Algerian government, run from 500 to 1,200 -- a sharp drop from the 40,000 Islamic extremists who took up arms against the government in the 1990s.