Burkina Faso announced Oct. 11 that it would deploy 1,000 troops to its northern border with Mali to prevent al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from expanding its kidnapping operations into Burkinabe territory. Although AQIM has not yet targeted Burkina Faso, the traditional hostage-taking area — northern Mali, northern Niger, eastern Mauritania and southern Algeria — has been constrained as a result of the Malian insurgency. AQIM earns roughly $3 million in ransom for each foreign hostage it releases and is estimated to spend approximately $2 million of that ransom money per month. If this trend continues, AQIM would not need to compel its next ransom payout until around May 2013. However, due to increased counterterrorism operations against it, the jihadist group will likely increase its defensive measures, necessitating an uptick in revenue. Taking hostages will likely occur more frequently. AQIM has conducted approximately 20 kidnapping missions in the Maghreb and Sahel regions of Africa since February 2003, either on its own or through Tuareg proxies. Hostage-taking raids are becoming more frequent; the group conducted one raid each year in 2003, 2006 and 2007, but the tempo has risen to three to five raids per year since 2007. U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said Oct. 5 that the al Qaeda network as a whole has earned kidnapping revenues of approximately $120 million since 2004, adding that AQIM has become the most proficient of the al Qaeda franchises at profiting from kidnappings.
