The Economist: The Middle East. Algeria's Hostage Crisis

is a murky mess! Details of what happened at the remote but massive natural gas complex of In Amenas, in the Algerian Sahara, remain scanty. What is known, is that an armed band of jihadist fighters, believed to be from a group that calls itself the Signed in Blood Battalion, emerged out of the desert to raid the heavily guarded facility, which is jointly operated by BP, Norway's Statoil, and the Algerian state hydrocarbons giant, Sonatrach. Taking dozens of workers hostage, the raiders claimed to be acting in response to France's intervention in neighboring Mali, where fellow jihadists had threatened an advance on the capital, Bamako. Several workers were killed and wounded in the initial attack, but hundreds escaped. A rescue attempt of the captives by Algerian ground troops, backed by helicopters, released more hostages, but appears to have left an unknown number dead. Rebel sources claimed that 34 foreign workers had been killed. Algerian government spokesmen put the numbers at seven, with a dozen of their captors killed, too. Amid the confusion, some facts do stand out. This was, oddly enough considering that Algeria's regime has fought a life and death struggle against Islamist extremists for two decades, the first ever such attack on the energy infrastructure that keeps the country solvent. This suggests either a lapse in stringent security, or an emboldening of Islamist insurgents, whose reach has diminished markedly in the coastal regions, where 90% of Algerians live. In Amenas lies only 35km from the Libyan border. The rebel group, which is known to profit from the smuggling of Moroccan hashish and cigarettes, and whose one eyed leader is sometimes called Mr Marlboro, may have found still lawless Libya a useful refuge, as well as a source of arms and cash. The bad news is, that their ability to strike so boldly, is likely to spook the Western oil operators, who run facilities across the region. Governments are also likely to see this as a sign of the of the Sahel region's jihadists, loosely linked under the umbrella of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), growing both stronger and better coordinated.