Michael Wills gives some context in a short blog:http://www.hurstpublishers.com/islam...saharan-sahel/

The surge in international interest in the Saharan Sahel region of Africa following the French-led intervention in Mali and especially the attack on the In Amenas gas facility in southern Algeria by armed Islamists has drawn attention to the links between these incidents and the conflict in Algeria in the 1990s.
As for AQIM, before Al Amenas:
nothing could disguise the fact that AQIM was a shadow of its Algerian forebears.