ABSTRACT

A common narrative links the recent developments of the jihadist scene in North Africa to the toppling of the Tunisian and Libyan dictatorships and their tightly controlled security apparatuses. The whole story of jihadism in North Africa started two decades ago, when the Algerian army ‘suspended’ the electoral process in 1992 that would have brought the local Islamists to power, precipitating a horrendous civil war. The Islamic Armed Group was the main jihadist organisation fighting the Algerian regime in the 1990s. The post-revolutionary Tunisian landscape was therefore quite different from the Egyptian one, where a fully-fledged Salafist party had developed independently of the Muslim Brotherhood. The impact of Western military interventions in Libya and Mali are still difficult to evaluate. The ensuing power struggle for the leadership of the global jihad between Zawahiri and Baghdadi will be a major component of jihadism in North Africa in the future.