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Yeah but you ignore the relevant part.

The Mali dossier (as well as the Western Sahara one) has always been led by the Algerian intelligence services, the Département de la Sécurité et du Renseignement (DRS) (Ammour 2013). Convinced that it should hold the monopoly of mediation with regards to the northern Mali crisis, Algeria’s attitude was no longer necessarily to wait and see: Algeria has expressed its preference for a political solution in Mali. ECOWAS and Mali transitional authorities were wondering how Algiers could contribute to a negotiation process with the armed groups, particularly Ansar al-Dine, whose head Iyad Ag Ghali is well known in Algeria. He is among those leaders of the Tuareg rebellion working closely with the DRS. He came to prominence in 1988 when he founded a Tuareg secessionist movement in northern Mali. Moreover, he was the main leader of the Tuareg rebellion that began in 1990 and ended with the peace ceremony at Timbuktu in 1996. During that period, Iyad came under the eye of the DRS who were concerned that the rebellion might spread into Algeria. His first involvement with the GSPC/AQIM was in 2003 when he facilitated the liberation of the 14 out of 32 hostages abducted in the Algerian Sahara by Abderrazak Lamari (a.k.a El Para), a former Algerian parachutist to be said a DRS agent. As a local notable, Iyad ag-Ghaly recycled himself in the hostage liberation business, taking large percentages of the ransoms, and playing all sides of the table. That may explain the off-the-record set of talks Algiers led along the 2012 summer. In July, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika discretly received envoys from Ansar al-Dine, MNLA, and even from MUJWA (the kidnapper of algerian diplomats in Gao). Few days after, the MNLA publicly excluded the mediation of Algiers and accused the algerian government of expelling the injured Tuaregs who are seeking a shelter in southern Algeria, and of infiltrating the MNLA with agents from the DRS. The Algerian authorities never officially acknowledged that meeting took place. In October 2012, another secret delegation of Ansar al-Dine visited Algiers. The same month the Algerian government sent a humanitarian convoy and three military vehicles to Kidal, under the control of Ansar al-Dine. Another Algerian convoy reached Gao under the control of MUJWA. In both cases, Islamist organizations were in charge of distributing the food to local populations. The same month, French intelligence services assessed that Iyad Ag Ghali received a medical treatment in Aïn-Naadja military hospital in Algiers, thus confirming that the Islamist leader is at home in Algeria. It seemed then more profitable for Algiers to portray the MNLA as a destabilizing force, but one which was unable to found a State according the sacrosanct principle of self-determination. Algiers had more interest in dealing and negotiating with a familiar interlocutor, who would be easier to manage (to manipulate), whom ideological principles fluctuate, and whose interests might be limited to a consistent financial gain. Thanks to Algiers, Iyad ag-Ghaly was imposed as an unavoidable interlocutor in the regional conflict exit strategy plan, to such an extent that even the ECOWAS representative eventually held talks with him in Ouagadougou in November 2012. But even if Iyad ag-Ghaly announced he had given up implementing Sharia law throughout Mali (but in Kidal), some Malian and Western observers would still have been suspicious of such sudden reversal. The longstanding ties between the DRS and some key-individuals of Ansar al-Dine, the blood ties between Iyad ag Ghaly and Abdelkrim al-Targui who leads the AQIM-katiba al-Ansar, and the presence of Ansar al-Dine men in southern Algeria’s supply base and base camp, demonstrated that Algeria was apparently monitoring the Mali crisis dossier through the use of personal contacts.10 Keen to avoid criticism related to this connection, Algiers would later on refuse the legalization of a Salafi party in Algeria (the Front of the Free Awakening). Paradoxically, however, Algiers still permitted a Malian Salafist to build up his credibility among other protagonists of the peace process. At first, Algeria’s stance on the Mali crisis appeared to echo a greater number of stakeholders: the UN Secretary General’s report dated 29 November 2012, for instance, urged caution and dialogue. On the other hand, West African officials condemned the UN for being “out of touch” over its lack of urgency in taking action in Mali, and were pushing the Mali government to cut an autonomy deal with Tuaregs in exchange for their joining the fight against al-Qaeda. It seemed then that Algeria succeeded in finding out an opportunity to regain its traditional role as regional power-broker and mediator in any Tuareg conflict. By using Ansar al-Dine as a proxy in northern Mali, Algeria could pretend to provide an apparent peacemaker foreign policy, and retrieve a consistent leadership after decades of diplomatic decline. However, further serious setbacks came to contradict the Algerian strategy and prove that it was far from being wise in dealing with such a complex interlacing context. First, on the ground, the jihadist groups have strengthened their hold on the northern part of Mali and were preparing themselves for the possible military confrontation with the African forces. On November 28, 2012, AQIM announced the creation of a 6th brigade called “Youssef ben Tachfine”, made up mainly of Tuaregs residing in northern Mali. It was headed by El Kairuani Abu Abdelhamid al-Kidali (“from Kidal”), a local Tuareg member of the group’s al-Ansar brigade, whose leader is Abdelkrim al-Targui, the cousin of Iyad ag-Ghaly. Such a new ethnic distribution system was the result of growing resentment by non-Algerians after they were denied leadership positions. It was also an alarming sign that locally-rooted djihadist katibas had consolidated prior to the French military intervention in January 2013. Moreover, at that time, concerns were raised about the extension of jihadism in West Africa by Oumar Ould Hamaha, a former associate of Mokhtar Belmoktar, then head of MUJWA in Gao, and future leader of Ansar al-Sharia. Hamaha declared: “We want to enlarge our zone of operation throughout the entire Sahara, going from Niger through to Chad and Burkina Faso” (Joscelyn 2013). Second, Iyad ag-Ghaly’s apparent negotiations’ agenda revealed other hidden political ambitions, related to his coordinating projects with AQIM: just after the signature of an agreement with the MNLA under Algiers’ auspices (21 December 2012), Iyad-ag-Ghaly broke off the accord at the end of December, and took the lead of the Islamists offensive towards southern Mali cities (Konna and Dyabali). The confidential letter from Abdelmalek Droukdel (head of the AQIM northern Algeria katiba) to the islamists leaders in northern Mali found out in Timbuktu in February 2013, proves that a real synchronisation between AQIM and Ansar al-Dine did exist, and that the gathering of all the radical forces was part of a long-term strategy of entrenchement in the Azawad region:

“We must not go too far or take risks in our decisions or imagine that this project is a stable Islamic state. It is too early for that, God knows. Instead, it is necessary to be cautious in the matter and we must be more realistic and look at it from a broader and more complete perspective to see a historic opportunity that must be exploited to interact with the Azawad people, including all its sectors, with the aim of uniting it and rallying it behind our Islamic project, by adopting its just cause and achieving its legitimate goals, while giving it an authentic Islamist tinge. … That demands of us to establish a new framework regulating the organizational relationship with Ansar Dine and defining the nature of the appropriate activities, in a way that combines the continuation of our global jihadi project and the preserving of the Azawad Islamic project, while developing it and avoiding its failure. …. As for internal activity, in this we would be under the emirate of Ansar Dine. Our emir would follow their emir and our opinion would follow their opinion. By internal activity, we mean all activity connected to participating in bearing the responsibilities of the liberated areas.”. Third, on 30 September 2012, the US Africa Command chief, General Carter F. Ham, clearly aligned his view with the political solution route favored by the Algerian government saying “One of the key aspects of seeking a resolution to the security challenges in northern Mali will be to separate terrorist organizations from non-terrorist organizations”. This US alignment with Algerian stance is to be understood in the light of the strong partnership that emerged after 9/11 when Algeria needed to be firmly integrated into the new dynamic and the North-South security system in order to retrieve a place on the international scene after almost ten years of isolation due to the civil war. By joining the “Global War on Terrorism” the Algerian government found the opportunity to regain its international legitimacy and transform its foreign policy into a new source of legitimacy for its domestic policy. The strengthening of ties with Washington resulted in a flurry of visits to Algiers by American officials and regular invitations to the White House for Algerian ministers and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. On the security level, there has been an increase in the number of joint operations and initiatives.