On his blog, Dierry Diallo takes up an article [fr] on Slate.fr where one can read: “For the GSPC , the stakes are enormous: it's about controlling a formidable strip of land stretching from the Atlantic and Mauritania all the way to Sinai and the Red Sea. Hence Bin Laden's idea at that time: to transfer war from the narrow Middle East to the Sahel and Sahara, even if troops are much fewer there.”