Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is attracting a lot of notice in the Sahel and North Africa these days. Last week an affiliate of AQIM executed a British citizen in Mali. Affiliates of AQIM recently claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Algeria, though the number of casualties they boasted of greatly exceeded numbers given by Algerian authorities and media.

Yesterday’s murder of Lieutenant Colonel Lamana Ould Cheik, a “senior Malian military intelligence officer who was investigating al-Qaeda in North Africa,” also looks to be AQIM’s doing. The attack may come as a reprisal for recent arrests of suspected militants in Mali:

Earlier this week Mali’s president said the army had detained three members of the militant group, which last week said it had killed a British hostage.

The assassinated officer is thought to have been behind two of those arrests.

If al-Qaeda in North Africa carried out the shooting, as officials suspect, it would be the first time the group has successfully directly targeted an officer of the Malian security forces, say correspondents.

The killing comes as part of an escalating confrontation between AQIM cells and the governments of Mali, Morocco, and Algeria, all of whom have taken a harder line against the group in the past few months.

If, however, I am correct in arguing that AQIM’s motivations stem more from national and regional political frustration than from inspiration by transnational terrorists, then solving the problems they pose will require both skilled police/military operations and attention to political tensions and lawlessness in the western Sahel and North Africa.