Jerome Taylor: Al-Qa'ida or not, this spread of terror could be disastrous The hostage-takers claimed to be from a group calling itself "al-Qa'ida in the Land beyond the Sahel." For terrorism watchers the group's name was entirely new. But their tactic was depressingly familiar. The kidnapping of Westerners in the Sahara has become frighteningly commonplace. More often than not the finger is pointed at al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a violent Islamist group that was chased out of North Africa and now operates in the lawless Sahara regions of Niger, Mali and southern Algeria. But these two victims had been taken from north-west Nigeria. The group's choice of name seemed to relish that fact. Sahel is an Arabic word that means "shore coast" and refers to the semi-fertile strip of land where the Sahara meets the savannah. The hostage-takers chose a name that suggested al-Qa'ida now has a presence beyond the Sahara. Whether that claim is true or not is difficult to judge. AQIM claimed those behind the video were a group inspired by their goals rather than directly affiliated with them. Yet security officials have looked with alarm at the increasingly bold tactics violent Islamists have begun to employ in northern Nigeria. Boko Haram, a once poorly organised indigenous militant group, has carried out a string of co-ordinated attacks in Nigeria, one of which - on the UN compound in Abuja last year - used a complicated charge car bomb that showed an unusual technical prowess. The fear is that Boko Haram has made contact with, and is learning from, its militant allies to the north. Either way one thing remains certain. The western Sahara is becoming increasingly dangerous. If that instability spreads to northern Nigeria it could be disastrous.