The North African Franchise: AQIM's Threat to U.S. Security; Strategic Insights, v. 8, issue 5 (December 2009)
Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a growing and evolving North African franchise of Al Qaeda. While the group carries out a significant number of attacks within the Sahel, they have not executed attacks in the United States or Europe. There is significant research concerning the historical development of AQIM . However, there is a dearth of literature on the threat that this group poses to the United States. The purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap and evaluate the threat that AQIM poses to US security. My analysis will demonstrate that AQIM’s operations in Europe and Iraq are a security threat to US facilities and personnel. Moreover, this paper will demonstrate that AQIM has both the intent and capability to conduct attacks against US targets in Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The GSPC: Newest Franchise in al-Qa'ida's Global Jihad
Abstract : The GSPC, one of the most notorious terrorist groups in North Africa, has aligned with Al Qa ida and changed its name to The Organization of al Qa ida in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. On April 10, 2007, the new organization claimed credit for two suicide car bomb attacks in Algiers that killed 23 people. Some observers have speculated that North Africa may be the next safe haven for al Qa ida, and that European countries may face a greater risk of attack if Algerian terrorist groups expand their base of support in Europe. The alignment of the GSPC with al Qa ida represents a significant change in the group's strategy, however, its decision to join al Qa ida's global jihad should be understood as an act of desperation. The Groupe Salafist pour la Pr dication et le Combat (GSPC) was founded in 1998 as an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The GIA was one of the strongest and most violent groups fighting the Algerian government in a civil war that killed over a hundred thousand civilians. Operating as a guerilla army, the GIA was able to establish control over large areas of the Algerian countryside by using terrorism against civilian populations. GIA fighters executed "and sometimes beheaded" anyone suspected of collaborating with the police or gendarmerie. By the late 1990's, the group had lost momentum as government crackdowns reduced its numbers while the group's own hyper violent tactics alienated the Algerian population.
Towards a Formalisation of Justification and Justifiability
We introduce the logic QKD S which is a normal multi-modal logic over finitely many modalities that additionally supports bounded quantification of modalities. An important feature of this logic is that it allows to quantify over the information components of systems and, hence, can be used to derive justifications. We compare the proposed logic with Artemov’s justification logic and also report on a prototypical implementation of a satisfiability solver of this logic and show some examples.