Jihadist Threat: Just Website Bluster? ‘Earth-Shattering’ Payback for Mali

The latest terrorist warning of “earth-shattering” attacks on the West shows Islamic extremists are still focused on the United States and Europe, but many analysts doubt that they have the capacity to follow through on their threats.

Threats posted over the weekend on the Ansar al-Mujahedeen Network website called for attacks on the United States and other countries helping France put down a terrorist uprising in the North African nation of Mali. The site began as a bulletin board for jihadists, said Andrew Lebovich, a Senegal-based U.S. analyst who focuses on extremist groups in the Sahel and Maghreb regions of North Africa.

The weekend warning predicted “strong, serious, alarming, earth-shattering, shocking and terrifying” attacks on the West.

Mr. Lebovich said the site is mostly a clearinghouse for extremist materials of all kinds — including translations of official statements by al Qaeda and independent postings such as the latest threats.

“It’s a kind of jihadist crowd-sourcing,” he said.

AQIM, like most al Qaeda affiliates, at some level aspires to attack the West,” said a U.S. intelligence official who was authorized to speak only on the condition of anonymity. “This doesn’t mean it necessarily has ready plots, but, at a minimum, the aspiration makes it a threat.”Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terrorist network’s North African affiliate, and other extremist groups have vowed to avenge the French-led intervention in Mali, which is aiding the government in recapturing the vast desert north of the country from Islamic extremists.

Analysts generally seem skeptical about the terrorists’ ability to attack Western countries on their own soil.

“I have not seen any evidence that AQIM has a capability to strike outside the region,” Mr. Lebovich said. “It is in my view much more likely that we will see attacks [against Western interests] in the Sahel or the Maghreb, rather than in Europe or the United States,” he added.

In January, extremist fighters loyal to the one-eyed desert bandit, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, seized dozens of Western workers — including Britons, Americans, Japanese, French and Danes — at a natural gas plant in Eastern Algeria, near to the border with lawless post-revolutionary Libya.

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