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Mideast expert: Algeria attacks highlight global aim of jihadists

An expert on terrorism and the Middle East says this week's deadly terrorist attacks in the mostly Arab Muslim country of Algeria show that the war on terror is global and not linked directly to U.S. foreign policy.



The North African branch of al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's twin car bomb attacks that targeted the prime minister's office and a police station in Algiers. According to one Reuters report, hospital sources put the death toll from the two bombings at 30, and the official APS news agency reported 222 people wounded.

Dr. Walid Phares is author of the book The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). He says the militant "Salafi Combat Group" wants to bring down the Algerian government and establish an Islamist state like the Taliban did in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

"That is a bright example that the jihadists in North Africa and elsewhere in the world, regardless of American foreign policy, want to establish their own empire," Phares says. Meanwhile, he observes, the fact that Democrats in the U.S. Congress want to ban the phrase "global war on terror" shows that many in the West still do not understand that the aim of the jihadist movement is to establish a worldwide "caliphate," or Islamic form of government.

The attacks in Algiers affirm that it would be foolish for Democrats in Congress to eliminate use of the phrase "global war on terror," the Mideast expert adds. "If they would do so, that would mean that the jihadist camp is free to roam, develop worldwide, do the connections," he says.

"And because of the banning of the term and the concept of global war on terror," Phares continues, "our future defense analysts and our security planners won't be able to make the connections, to connect the dots, and that would be a massive loss in our analysis of the actual war on terror."

And making those connections is crucial to confronting global terrorism, Phares points out. For instance, he says the terrorism in Algiers is linked to last week's attacks in Morocco and the confrontations in the rest of North Africa and Somalia.