Time for the west to stop ignoring the rise of  al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s rise to power in Mali.

Via The Australian:

THE attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was carried out by members of an extreme Islamic militia in contact with an al-Qa’ida organisation based outside the country, the de facto head of state says.

A Benghazi militia, Ansar al-Sharia, had communications with al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb last Tuesday in which they discussed an assault on the US consulate that night, said Mohammed Magarief, the president of Libya’s newly elected national congress.

The attack was a “deliberate, calculated action by a group working in collaboration with non-Libyan elements”, he said in an interview at his heavily guarded home in a city from which most Western officials have since fled.

He warned that Libya – liberated last year from Muammar Gaddafi’s long dictatorship – was now locked in a battle with extremists seeking to turn it into a hardline Islamic state.

He said the Ansar al-Sharia leadership had been divided, but some of its members had taken part in the attack. The militia has denied responsibility, but a witness said he saw armed men carrying the group’s black flag among the attackers. He saw one fire a rocket-propelled grenade into the consulate’s grounds and another shooting an AK-47 at the gate.

His assertion was lent credence at the weekend when another al-Qa’ida affiliate, al-Qa’ida in the Arab Peninsula, celebrated the killing and called for more attacks.

AQAP is based in Yemen. AQIM operates mainly in Algeria, Mali and Mauritania. Both are proscribed terrorist organisations that attack Western targets.