On September 11 last year, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, announced a formal merger with one of the most violent groups to have emerged from Algeria’s bloody civil war.

The announcement came within days of the expiry of the Algerian government’s six-month amnesty for militants and sparked an upsurge in terrorist activity by the GSPC (Salafist Group for Call and Combat).

The union was further cemented in January when the GSPC declared that it would be known in future as the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

The targets for the resurgent group’s bombers in Algiers today - the first such incidents in the capital for several years - appeared to adhere to the GSPC’s domestic agenda of attacking police and government buildings.

But other recent attacks have been directed at the oil and gas industries which employ many foreign workers and export energy to the West.

One roadside bomb was aimed at a subsidiary of Halliburton, the giant US firm with which Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, is closely associated, and GSPC propaganda has railed against France and the US for “stealing” Muslim assets.

This type of activity reflects the al-Qaeda agenda of attacking Western, and especially American, interests in the Islamic world. It has long been Osama bin Laden’s desire to channel Islamist groups away from nationalist agendas into the broader battle against the West.

Zawahiri’s reported intention in creating the new al-Qaeda in the Maghreb is to unify jihadist factions in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya under one banner.

The GSPC was identified as the lead group because of its long association with al-Qaeda (dating back to the Afghan camps of the 1990s) and because it has established highly effective mobile training centres in the Sahara.

They are believed to be in use at the moment preparing new waves of fighters who are initially deployed in operations in north Africa and then despatched to Iraq.

Western intelligence sources fear that those who survive Iraq can return to north Africa and be redeployed to terrorist cells across Europe.

Last week Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit and now a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, noted the threat posed by the merger.

He wrote: “The GSPC is a lethal and talented group that will benefit from its ties to al-Qaeda while extending the capabilities of bin Laden’s fighters, especially in Europe and Canada.”

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?