Tessalit is a rural commune and village in the Kidal Region of Mali. The village is the administrative centre of Tessalit Cercle (district). The village lies 85 kilometres (53 mi) north of Adjelhoc and about 70 kilometres (43 mi) from the Algerian border. The commune extends over an area of 30,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) that is almost entirely desert. In the 2009 census the commune had a population of 5,739.
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by the French acronym GSPC, was an Algerian islamist terrorist faction in the Algerian Civil War founded in 1998 by Hassan Hattab, a former regional commander of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). After Hattab was ousted from the organization in 2003, the group officially pledged support for al-Qaeda, and in January 2007, the group officially changed its name to the "Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM).
The 2007-2009 Tuareg rebellion was an insurgency that began in February 2007 amongst elements of the Tuareg people living in the Sahara desert regions of northern Mali and Niger. It is one of a series of insurgencies by formerly nomadic Tuareg populations, which had last appeared in the mid-1990s, and date back at least to 1916. Populations dispersed to Algeria and Libya, as well as to the south of Niger and Mali in the 1990s returned only in the late 1990s. Former fighters were to be integrated into national militaries, but the process has been slow and caused increased resentment. Malian Tuaregs had conducted some raids in 2005–2006, which ended in a renewed peace agreement. Fighting in both nations was carried on largely in parallel, but not in concert. While fighting was mostly confined to guerrilla attacks and army counterattacks, large portions of the desert north of each nation were no-go zones for the military and civilians fled to regional capitals like Kidal, Mali and Agadez, Niger. Fighting was largely contained within Mali's Kidal Region and Niger's Agadez Region. Algeria helped negotiate an August 2008 Malian peace deal, which was broken by a rebel faction in December, crushed by the Malian military and wholescale defections of rebels to the government. Niger saw heavy fighting and disruption of uranium production in the mountainous north, before a Libyan backed peace deal, aided by a factional split among the rebels, brought a negotiated ceasefire and amnesty in May 2009.
An Islamist insurgency is taking place in the Maghreb region of North Africa, followed on from the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002. The Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied itself with al-Qaeda to eventually become al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algerian and other Maghreb governments fighting the militants have worked with the United States and the United Kingdom since 2007, when Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara began.
Abdelmalek Droukdel, also known by his alias as Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, was the emir, or leader, of the Algerian Islamic militant group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). He was killed during a French special operation during the Battle of Talahandak.
Robert R. Fowler is a Canadian diplomat and was the special envoy of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Niger from mid-2008 to 2009, to find a solution to the conflict in Agadez region.
Events from the year 2009 in Algeria
Amari Saifi, also known under his aliases Abou Haidara or Abderrazak le Para, is one of the leaders of the Islamist militia Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is an Islamist militant organization that aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. To that end, it is currently engaged in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa or the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, was a militant Islamist organisation that broke off from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb with the intended goal of spreading jihad across a larger section of West Africa, as well as demanding the expulsion of all French interests that operates in West Africa, which they regard as "colonialist occupiers".
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, also known as Khalid Abu al-Abbas, The One-Eyed, Nelson, and The Uncatchable, was an Algerian leader of the group Al-Murabitoun, former military commander of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, smuggler and weapons dealer. He was twice convicted and sentenced to death in absentia under separate charges in Algerian courts: in 2007 for terrorism and in 2008 for murder. In 2004, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Algeria for terrorist activities.
Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, was an Algerian national and Islamist jihadi militant and smuggler who, in about 2010, became one of the top three military commanders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a Mali-based militant organization. He competed as the chief rival of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian national who had become the major commander in AQIM and later head of his own group. Both gained wealth and power by kidnapping and ransoming European nationals. After taking control of Timbuktu in 2012, Abou Zeid established sharia law and destroyed Sufi shrines.
Al-Mourabitoun was an African militant jihadist organization formed by a merger between Ahmed Ould Amer, a.k.a. Ahmed al-Tilemsi's Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Mokhtar Belmokhtar's Al-Mulathameen. On 4 December 2015, it joined Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The group seeks to implement Sharia law in Mali, Algeria, southwestern Libya, and Niger.
The Islamic State – Algeria Province is a branch of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), active in Algeria. The group was formerly known as Jund al-Khilafah fi Ard al-Jazair.
Timbuktu three refers to three abductees, South African Stephen Malcolm McGown, Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, who were all kidnapped on 25 November 2011. A fourth German victim was shot and killed when he refused to climb into the kidnappers' truck.
The 2005 El Mreiti base attack occurred on 4 June 2005 when militants from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a predecessor group of AQIM, attacked a remote army garrison in western Mauritania, killing eighteen government troops and capturing a significant amount of weapons. According to a statement released by militants, the attackers surrounded the base and engaged in a battle that lasted several hours, eventually breaching the base, seizing large quantities of weapons and ammunition, and fleeing. The same statement claimed that fifty Mauritanian troops had been killed in the assault. Five GSPC militants, all Algerian nationals, were killed during the battle. The attack was led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian jihadist and veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War. It was one of the first al-Qaeda linked operations to occur on Mauritanian soil and spurred the government of Mauritania to ally with Algeria and Mali in a bid to root out militants in the region.
Nabil Makhloufi, nom de guerre Nabil Abou Alqama, was an Algerian jihadist who fought in the Algerian Civil War and the Mali War, and served as the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)'s Sahara region between 2011 and 2012.
Abdou Aïssa, nom de guerre Sultan Ould Bady, is a Malian jihadist and drug trafficker. He co-founded the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) with Hamada Ould Mohamed Kheirou and Ahmed al-Tilemsi, and founded Katibat Salahadin, a katiba within MOJWA that later reformed in the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara after Bady defected.
Hamada Ag Hama, also known as Abdelkrim Taleb or Abdelkrim al-Targui was a Malian jihadist and emir of Katiba Al Ansar, a brigade in Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Algeria 
Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat