Mali Intervention Made France al-Qaeda's No. 1 Target?

(TIME) Have France and the French moved to the top of the list of terror targets? French leaders are taking no chances. They have alerted their constituencies and the public in general to the increased terror threat following President François Hollande’s Jan. 11 announcement of France’s military intervention in Mali against al Qaeda-linked forces controlling the northern half of the country. Tightened security measures sent hundreds of armed soldiers patrolling Metros, train stations, airports and tourist sites across France, while officials instructed the French people to be wary of the increased risk of attack at home—and abroad. “We’re facing an exterior enemy and an interior enemy,” Interior Minister Manuel Valls stressed Tuesday.

On Wednesday Jan. 16, al-Qaeda-allied groups in Africa proved that warning was well-founded. News reports indicated Islamist radicals had kidnapped numerous French and European workers—including, the U.S. State Department confirmed, several Americans–from an oil installation in eastern Algeria. Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its regional allies have long used hostage taking as a fund-raising and terror method. Around the same time, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia announced it will execute a French spy it has held for three-and-a-half years in response to a failed Jan. 12 commando mission to rescue him left 17 extremists and two French soldiers dead. Those developments came after warnings by a jihadi leader in Mali Monday that by attacking Islamist forces in Africa, “François Hollande opened the gates of hell for all French people”.

All that action seemed to indicate French anti-Islamist action in Mali and elsewhere in Africa had already set jihadi groups seeking retaliation—with France looming largest in their sights.

“America gets a break from being top of target on Islamist terrorists’ lists now that France has taken that spot,” a senior French security official darkly joked to TIME. “Our intervention in Mali will make France the primary object of extremist anger and vengeance for awhile. Initially that will leave French interests, tourists, and other soft-targets abroad particularly vulnerable to terror reprisal, awaiting attempts to organize and mount attacks on French territory itself. But our action in Mali makes us enemy number one to both Islamist extremists in the region, as well as other allied jihadi who will be aching to avenge their brothers in Africa.”

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