Branding al-Qaeda in Mali – France’s Self-Declared Jihadist Gilles le Guen
Branding al-Qaeda in Mali – France’s Self-Declared Jihadist Gilles le Guen
Self-declared jihadist Gilles le Guen (a.k.a. Abdel Jelil) was arrested on April 28 by French forces in Timbuktu, questioned and handed over to Malian authorities. He was extradited back to France on May 14 and faces charges of criminal conspiracy under a French anti-terrorism bill passed in December 2012, which allows French authorities to prosecute nationals who train in terrorist camps overseas (RFI, December 22, 2012). [1] Le Guen’s claim to fame came in October 2012 when he appeared in a video in front of al-Qaeda’s emblematic banner to warn France against intervening in Mali.
Le Guen was born a Catholic in Nantes, located in western France, on February 21, 1955. Le Guen claimed that he converted to Islam in 1985 (Le Monde, May 17). He obtained a merchant marine certificate in the late 1980s and sailed around the world for over 15 years. His first wife was a French woman who also converted to Islam and with whom he had two sons before they divorced (Foreign Policy, April 12).
After leaving the merchant marine, he set up a farm in Morocco in early 2000, lived in Mauritania briefly and then settled in Timbuktu with his second wife, a Moroccan, and their five kids, between the ages of two to ten-years-old (L’Express, April 30).
Affiliation with AQIM
Le Guen first came to the French intelligence services’ attention in September 2012, when he appeared in a photo alongside known fighters of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) (France 24, May 14). The following month, he appeared in a short video warning France against intervening in Mali against the jihadist groups who had taken control of the North (Le Monde, April 30).
Le Guen describes himself as “following in the footsteps of Shaykh Osama bin Laden” and he makes no mystery of his personal devotion to Bin Laden (L’Express, April 30). In the video, he pays homage to Bin Laden for striking at the “head of the devil” (the West) on 9/11. He also declares that Islam will eventually defeat the West’s materialism and secularism, which run counter to the principles of Islam.
The exact nature of his affiliation with AQIM, however, remains ambiguous. His video does not bear the organization’s logo but was released by Sahara Media, a Mauritanian outlet used by AQIM to disseminate its propaganda to the Western world. [2] Le Guen was arrested by AQIM last November on suspicion that he was spying for France after he confided in a fellow mujahid that he had received a phone call from the French Embassy and began asking suspicious questions about the fate of the hostages and the organization’s plans in case of a military intervention (Foreign Policy, April 12). No verdict in the case was reported and Le Guen was released.
Le Guen was not in combat when he was arrested, but according to French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves le Drian, he had “evidently fought” with the jihadist groups that once occupied northern Mali (Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire, May 1). In a short interview with L’Express in January 2012, however, Le Guen did not show any eagerness to fight. Rather he indicated that in the case of a military intervention, his first priority would be to protect his family.
Ideology
In the video, Le Guen presented an unusual ideological profile that combines the requisite extreme religious zeal with completely secular concerns. He fully subscribes to the idea that Islam is the world’s salvation and will vanquish a wicked West. Yet, instead of focusing on AQIM’s traditional narrative of decrying the Western war on Islam, the obligation of Muslims to engage in violent jihad, or the need to restore the Caliphate, Le Guen focuses on the blatant injustice in world politics, the international community’s double standards, and the West’s imperialism and amoral values to mark his rejection of “imperialism and the consumer society” (L’Express, April 30).
The key elements of his narrative are as follows:
- Double standards: The international community was about to intervene in Mali against Islam where mujahideen only engaged in sporadic combat and caused a few accidental deaths while the mujahideen are fighting against the “criminal tyrant” Bashar-al-Assad who caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
- Imperialism: The world’s leaders are only serving the interests of the “great tyrant,” i.e. the world’s free market economy dominated by American and Israeli interests. International organizations such as the UN and NATO defend the “haves” and the political and economic interests of the Americans and the Israelis at the expense of everybody else.
- Injustice: No issue epitomizes the international system’s injustice more than Palestine. Le Guen describes the 1947 partition as an unequal, illegal and unjust usurpation of Palestinian Arab rights that can only be redressed by the “blood of those who caused it.”
- The West as a force of evil: The West is a malevolent force in the world promoting amoral values—greed, materialism, money, homosexuality, crime, profit, adultery, usury, and ignorance—that only insult and destroy Allah’s creation. [3]
Arrested, the man may no longer be a serious threat, but his words may remain a threat long after Le Guen is gone. Indeed, in Le Guen’s words, jihadism sounds more like anti-imperialism and anti-establishment prose than religious zeal. Such a narrative is dangerous because it has the potential to reverberate far beyond the confines of northern Mali and would-be radical Islamists and attract toward jihadism some of those who feel that the current economic upheavals and seemingly intractable international problems are hurting too many innocents. If Le Guen’s branding succeeds, it would dramatically expand the pool of likely candidates for jihadism. It would also greatly complicate counter-terrorism threat assessment efforts.
Pascale Combelles Siegel is a Virginia-based independent defense consultant specializing in perception management.
1. The French anti-terrorism bill was passed after French jihadist Muhammad Merah killed seven people in the south of France in March 2012; See Militant Leadership Monitor, February 2013.
2. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REPY9F7e75k.
3. Ibid.
