With the European financial crisis dominating headlines, little attention has been given to the Eueopean Union’s recently announced plan to send a team of police and security experts to North Africa to ramp up counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
The development, announced earlier this week, comes after a spate of kidnappings of Westerners by AQIM-affiliated groups, along with mounting concerns that weapons from the conflict in Libya could end up in the organization’s hands.
That the EU has decided to focus on police training rather than military assistance can best be explained by the nature of the current AQIM threat, says Geoff D. Porter, a regional expert who heads the private advisory firm North Africa Risk Consulting.