I have to give props to the Times Online, for calling a jihadist a jihadist, and not watering down the ISLAMIC threat, like our State Department is trying to do.

As the jihadists face defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are moving stealthily into a new power base

On Monday the Iraqi Army launched a large-scale offensive in Diyala north of Baghdad to wipe out al-Qaeda’s last remaining hideouts in the country. Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of al-Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq.

Some returned home and resumed normal life. Others, looking for new places to pursue their holy war against “Zionists and Crusaders”, ended up in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Thailand and helped to reignite the fires of jihad.

However, North Africa appears to have attracted the largest number of returnees. According to the buzz in jihadist circles, confirmed by officials and analysts, a new arc of terror is taking shape in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania - the five countries of the so-called Arab Maghreb in North Africa.

Algeria was first struck by Islamic terror in 1986. Seven years of violence were triggered by the Front for the Islamic Salvation (FIS) in 1992, but by 2000, the Army and groups of armed citizens had crushed the FIS and its more violent offshoots. In 2006 Algerian jihadists announced a merger with al-Qaeda to create al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Since then they have received huge sums of money and quantities of arms from al-Qaeda sympathisers in the Gulf states, enabling them to make a timid - though no less deadly - comeback.

By all accounts, Algeria may be facing a new round of the War against Terror as it faces mounting political and economic problems. In the first phase of the war, Algerian jihadists never used suicide tactics. In recent months they have carried out at least four such operations, indicating total adoption of al-Qaeda tactics. They have also tried to kill President Bouteflika on at least four occasions. The latest plot was uncovered last week, 24 hours before a provincial visit.

Last month the President invited Ahmed Ouyahya, the architect of Algeria’s victory against the terrorists, to assume the premiership again. His return acknowledges that the policy of cuddling the Islamists, preached by the former Premier, Abdulaziz Belkhadem, has failed.

What’s that? Coddling islamists backfired!? No way! It is working quite well in Europe…. Errr, I mean, it is working out nicely in Pakistan… Shoot, well it seems to be working in Lebanon, right? Just ask the Sunni, Druze and Christians who coddled Shiite Hezbollah. Or not.

Read the rest of the story in the Times Online.