Abdelmalek Droukdal, a figure of the Algerian and African jihad

He had been the number one public enemy in Algeria and then founded the branch of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)dreaming of becoming a figure of global jihad. Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdal finally died as a “martyr” on June 3, in a French army operation in Mali.

On June 3, the French armed forces, with the support of their partners, neutralized the emir Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdal and several of his close collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali .

– Florence Parly (@florence_parly) June 5, 2020

With the death of Droukdal an entire section of the history of the jihad African. “He had the aura of one who had managed to last and who was linked to central Al-Qaida,” said an anti-terrorism expert on condition of anonymity. “But like all leaders in this business, he was challenged.” Another source said the fighters accused him of not being by their side.

Explosives expert

Born in 1971 in a poor district of Meftah, a deprived locality of the great suburbs of Algiers, Abdelmalek Droukdal studied science in Blida and joined in 1993 the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA), where he played the explosives experts. His political and military mentor is the Jordanian Abou Moussaab Al-Zarqaoui, who had multiplied the suicide bombings in Iraq before being killed by the American army in 2006. The man with the round face devoured by an abundant beard has even borrowed his war name, Abu Moussaab.

But he was nonetheless anchored in his country of origin, points out the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) site, describing “a mixture of political Islam and Arab nationalism” in one of these rare Al-Qaida leaders in not having been trained in camps in Yemen or in Afghanistan. “Droukdal has been described as tough, with a strong personality,” said the CEP. A “charismatic man with excellent speaking skills”.

At the end of the 1990s, he participated in the founding of the Algerian GSPC (Salafist group for preaching and combat), under the leadership of Emir Hassan Hattab. But the latter is deemed insufficiently active by Droukdel and another of his lieutenants, Nabil Sahraoui. “Shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, they deposed Hattab in the name of a much more internationalist commitment,” writes Jean-Pierre Filiu in his book “The Nine Lives of Al-Qaida”. When Sahrawi is killed, Droukdal becomes the emir of the GSPC.

Spotted by Al-Qaida

The GSPC then trains jihadists to send them to Iraq. The Al-Qaida leadership is interested in those who mobilize from southern Algeria in neighboring countries. The number of attacks doubled from 2006 to 2007, which earned him to be listed as a terrorist linked to Al-Qaida by the United States and the UN and to be sentenced in absentia in Algeria to life imprisonment in 2007.

At the end of the 2000s, it dominated northeast Algeria, “ransoms the surrounding populations and harasses the security forces”, explains Jean-Pierre Filiu. But the emir fails to federate the groups active in Morocco, Tunisia or Libya.

Long years of silence

In 2011, Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. Droukdal refuses to pledge allegiance to Zawahiri and resumes his autonomy. Its local hold is more evanescent, its authority is crumbling. He became rarer, even completely silent, between 2012 and 2015. In 2016, Algerian newspapers claimed that he fled to Tunisia. Since then, he has been hiding. This week’s French operation is “a fine result,” said the terrorism expert, but “it doesn’t solve the Sahel problem.”

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