The race was deemed too inviting - and too easy - a target for the terror group's new north African affiliate. The roughly 550 competitors were to have embarked Saturday on the 16-day, 5,760-mile trek through remote and hostile dunes and scrub from Europe to Senegal in west Africa.
Organizers of the rally, once known as the Paris-Dakar, cited warnings from the French government about safety after the al-Qaida-linked Dec. 24 slaying of a family of French tourists in Mauritania
- where most of the competition was to be held - and "threats launched directly against the race by terrorist organizations."
It was the first time that the 30-year-old rally, one of the biggest competitions in automobile racing, has been called off. The Dakar is one of the most prominent public events to be canceled since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when many sports events in the United States were canceled or postponed
- some as a result of airport closings or in mourning for the victims.
The cancellation of such a world-renowned sports event is rare, particularly as a pre-emptive measure against terrorism. Even the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich continued, following a 34-hour pause, after 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by Palestinian gunmen.
Victor Anderes, vice president of special projects at Global Security Associates, a New York-based firm that provides security for high-profile events including the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, called the cancellation unprecedented.
"Smaller cultural events have been canceled before because of terror threats, but this hasn't happened with such a major international event," he said.
"The threat is significant," Anderes said. "It would be almost impossible to secure the entire course." He said the race is particularly vulnerable because it crosses different countries and large, unpopulated areas.
"When you are told of direct threats against the event and when the sinister name of al-Qaida is mentioned, you don't ask for details," Patrice Clerc, who heads the company that organizes the rally, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It was enough for me to hear my government say
'beware, the danger is at a maximum.'"
Experts cautioned - as Western governments have often warned - that bowing to terror threats could encourage more violence. They said al-Qaida's North African wing had scored propaganda points as it seeks to increase its reach in the region.
"They scored a media victory without firing a shot," said Louis Caprioli, a former assistant director at France's counterintelligence agency DST. "Everybody gets the impression that they are very powerful, when they in fact represent a small number of people in this region."
Adam Raisman, senior analyst at the SITE Institute in Washington, said "the jihadist Internet community is quite happy with the closing, seeing it as a victory."
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa is the rebranded name of an Algeria-based insurgent group known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC. Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, first recognized a "blessed union" between the two groups on Sept. 11, 2006.
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa counts no more than several hundred members in Algeria and only a few dozen in Mauritania, said Caprioli, who now works for the risk-management company Geos.
But the group has adopted al-Qaida techniques to increase its impact. It claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings last month in Algeria's capital that hit U.N. offices and a government building, killing 37 people
- including 17 U.N. staff members. That attack was the most dramatic in a string of recent suicide bombings in Algeria.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and terrorism expert who now works at the Brookings Institution, called al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa "a threat to be reckoned with."
Rally organizer Clerc, in the AP interview, acknowledged that "Yes, we perhaps bowed to terrorism," but that security needed to come first: "We don't have the right to play games with safety."
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, in a Dec. 29 statement posted on an Internet site that it often uses, had criticized Mauritania's government for "providing suitable environments to the infidels for the rally." It did not directly call for attacks on the race or its participants.
The vast desert region stretching from southern Algeria through Mali and Mauritania has long been a prime haunt for traffickers in arms, cigarettes, drugs and other contraband, and a GSPC redoubt. It claimed responsibility for a June 2005 raid on a remote army post that killed 15 Mauritanian troops.
Another terror and smuggling chieftain in the region is Mokhtar Bel Mokhtar, a veteran militant said to have been behind threats against the rally several years ago.
