Salafist Group for Call and Combat Reaffirms Allegiance to al Qaeda
By Nick Grace
September 14, 2006

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), which seeks to convert Algeria into an Islamic emirate by force, has reaffirmed its alliegance to al Qaeda with a communique dated September 13, 2006 and posted both on their own Web site and the Ekhlaas Forum (as a downloadable RAR file).

http://www.moonnight9876.com/pages/join_qaeda.html

The file as posted on a total of 27 free file transfer sites, including sendspace.com, rogepost.com, 9q9q.net, turboupload.com and uploading.com.

Note: It is interesting that the radicals use the RAR format to compress files rather than the more popular ZIP format.

The communique, according to a SITE Institute report, is a statement by GSPC head Musab Abdul Wadud to declare the group's joining al Qaeda's call for Jihad and thus becoming "one stone in building the coming Islamic nation." The statement cites the balkanization of the ummah through the "disease" of nationalism and declares full support to Usama bin Laden, declaring that "He can use us to strike whomever and wherever he wishes and he will find nothing but obedience from us and shall only receive what pleases him."

Relations between al Qaeda and the GSPC was briefly discussed by Ayman al-Zawahiri in his September 11 "Hot Issues" video, where he stated "All the praise is due to Allah for the blessed union which we ask Allah to be as a bone in the throats of the Americans and French Crusaders and their allies, and inspire distress, concern and dejection in the hearts of the traitorous, apostate sons of France. We ask Him to guide our brothers in the Salafist Group for Call and Combat to crush the pillars of the Crusader alliance, especially their elderly immoral leader, America."

The French government is alarmed. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has just been quoted across the wires as saying that Zawahiri's statement falling on the 9/11 anniversary could not have been by chance.

Although this communique and the resulting implications on France are now being widely reported, the GSPC has declared an alliance with al Qaeda in the past. In 2003 GSPC head Nabil Sahraoui announced an allegiance with al Qaeda. Various GSPC videos released in 2004 and 2005 also contained images and footage of Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It appears, as Cindy of TruthUSA.com pointed out to me, this latest communique is a reaffirmation of its pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda.

While the history of GSPC terror attacks have led some analysts to conclude that the group is more committed to a nationalist agenda than a global one, it cannot be denied that this group has, in fact, operated on an international scale. In September 2005 French authorities rolled up a GSPC cell that was planning an attack on the Paris metro system. Later that year, in November, Italian authorities broke up a GSPC terror cell that was planning attacks on Jewish targets in Norway. In December 1994 members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which GSPC splintered off from in 1998, hijacked an Air France jet in Algiers for the purpose of using it to strike the Eiffel Tower (and probably served as the inspiration for al Qaeda's Bojinka Plot in late 1995). And in December 1999 Ahmed Ressam was arrested while attempting to enter the United States from Canada with a trunk of explosives. While the foiled Millenium attack is associated with al Qaeda, Ressam was a GSPC operative.