Algeria: The struggle against Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb

Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a sovereign state in North Africa. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been in power since 1999. Algeria's capital and the most populous city is Algiers, located in the country's far north. Algeria's hydrocarbons constitute critical strategic importance to Europe. Contemporary Islamic movements which have emerged in different parts of the Islamic world for a variety of reasons may appear, given their radical interpretation of Islam, akin to the old phenomenon, stretching all the way back to the Islamic revivalism of the teachings of jurists such as Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taimiyya and Muhammad Abd al Wahhab. The European expansionism - or the expansion of capitalism and imperialism - reached the regions of Islam in the late 19th century and particularly in the mid-20th century. The phenomenon of Jihadism in Algeria dates to the 1980s. Between 2001 and 2012, 938 terrorist attacks took place within its borders.