"The danger of destabilization of the region is real because of AQIM's ability to engage in arms trafficking, drugs, and smuggling in the territories of neighboring countries," warns the document entitled "Security threats in the Sahel and beyond: AQIM, Boko Haram and Shabab."

Based on the findings of a number of reports made by the think tank Carnergie Endowment for International Peace, the document adds in this context, that "Malian officials had repeatedly affirmed that the Polisario is involved in kidnapping and drug trafficking operations in this region. "

A recent report from the U.S. think tank, Atlantic Council, had, in the same direction, warned that the collusion between AQIM and Polisario, returned to center stage following the kidnapping of Western nationals in Tindouf, is part of an " extremist web "that threatens the Maghreb stability, the Sahel and Africa as a whole.

"The franchise of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has strengthened its ties with the Polisario Front, a worrisome approximation marked by the kidnapping last October of two Italian and a Spanish aid workers in Tindouf," the study noted.

This  obvious collusion "is not really a surprise to observers, for whom" the youth of the Tindouf camps, living without hope for a better future, provides fertile ground for AQIM recruiters, looking for arms to support their terrorist and criminal activities. "

- News and events on Western Sahara issue / Corcas -