For a man whose death in combat in the Malian city of Gao was announced last June, Mokhtar Belmokhtar – the Islamist militant allegedly behind the raid on the Ansema gas field in Algeria – has been surprisingly busy.

Since that raid – which saw the deaths of several foreign oil workers, including a Briton, and the kidnapping of 41 more – Belmokhtar has been described in journalistic shorthand as "al-Qaida".

On Thursday, as it was reported that some 25 of those captives had escaped, the real motives behind Belmokhtar's raid – and his relationships with other Islamist groups in the Sahel – began to emerge as far more complex than first reported.

The standard version of Belmokhtar's career as an Islamist leader is easy to summarise. The man dubbed the Uncatchable, as well as Mr Marlboro for his involvement in cigarette smuggling, was born in Ghardaia, Algeria, in 1972, starting his jihadist activities early.

By his own account – given in an interview at a time he was trying to shore up his leadership credentials – Belmokhtar, also known as Khalid Abu al-Abbas, travelled aged 19 to Afghanistan, where he claimed he gained training and combat experience before returning to his homeland in 1992.

This launched him into a two-decade career of Islamic militancy, first as a member of Algeria's Islamic Armed Group (GIA) in the country's civil war, then as a joint founder of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which started extending its attacks against security forces into countries of the arid Sahel, which forms the southern fringe of the Sahara.

That group evolved into al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group as much interested in the financial benefits of kidnapping and smuggling as building an Islamic caliphate.

Despite the claims that Belmokhtar's latest actions were carried out on behalf of AQIM in response to the French military action in Mali, his real agenda is likely to be more complicated and opaque.

"He's one of the best-known warlords of the Sahara," said Stephen Ellis, an expert on organised crime and professor at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. The reality is that Belmokhtar's relationship with the AQIM leadership – all Algerian like him – had become deeply strained even before this week's attack.

Passed over for several senior positions within the organisation in recent years, in October it was announced he had been relieved of his command of fighters in northern Mali by AQMI's leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, who appointed Yahya Abou El Hamame as "emir of the Sahel".

Then reports in both Malian and other media suggested that Belmokhtar had been removed from command of his unit, known as the Turbaned Ones, after being deemed a loose cannon, later forming his own splinter group known as Those Who Sign in Blood.

By December, the Associated Press was reporting in an interview with Oumar Ould Hamaha – a figure who has held positions in AQIM, Ansar al Din, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad (MUJAO) – that Belmokhtar was no longer under AQIM's direct command, but was still a follower of al-Qaida.

Belmokhtar's problems with his fellow jihadis have been historic. While instrumental in forming the GSPC, he was passed over for leadership of the group in 2003 when the less experienced and popular Droukdel was elevated above him.

As he increasingly distanced himself from the AQIM leadership with the outbreak of the Islamist insurrection in Mali, he emerged as a key figure through his close relationship with the Ansar al-Dine leader, Iyyad Ag Ghali, who had acted – lucratively – as the intermediary negotiating the release of hostages held by Belmokhtar's group.

Indeed, Belmokhtar and Ag Ghali's careers have been similar in many respects, both credited with being influential fixers in a region, able to negotiate the competing interests of different groups.

During the fighting in the Malian town of Gao last summer, where he was reported to have been killed, Belmokhtar was said to be in an alliance with another defected former AQIM fighter Hamadou Ould Khairou, a Mauritanian who quit AQIM a year before to form his own new militant Islamist group MUJAO, and was, like Belmokhtar, also implicated in the drug trade.

Although some have attributed differences in opinion over how to conduct jihad in the Sahel, other local media sources have suggested far more prosaic reasons for Belmokhtar's split – a falling out over who gets the lion's share of proceeds of the kidnapping business.

Belmokhtar has been credited with a more pragmatic approach to kidnapping than some of his rivals in AQIM, who have less qualms about killing hostages, with Belmokhtar reportedly more likely to negotiate a settlement.

All of which leads to the question of what Belmokhtar's real motive is for launching an attack on the Anseema gas field.

The reality is the operation is probably as much about his own credentials as a jihadi warlord as it is about the French military operation in Mali, and a reminder to those who sidelined him in AQIM that he remains a well connected and powerful figure to be reckoned with.