John Kaninda
13 April 2007
Johannesburg — ALGERIA will not let itself be dragged again into a "Salafist age of darkness", Mourad Bencheikh, Algeria's ambassador to SA, said in the wake of bombings that left a trail of death and terror in Algiers this week.
The terrorist attacks, carried out in the kamikaze style that has become a trademark of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, have raised fears of a possible return to bloody political conflict of the 1990s.
Algeria descended into violence in 1992 when the then military-backed authorities scrapped a parliamentary election an Islamist political party was set to win. Up to 200000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed.
Fears of a return to such traumatic times were expressed by the daily Liberté, which said in an article yesterday that the Algiers attacks had "woken the demons of a violence we believed had been contained".
Bencheikh believes that although terrorism is a real threat, not only to Algeria but also to the rest of the international community, the chances of a resurgence of a 1990s-like reign of terror in his country are minimal.
"The context today is different from that of the 1990s," he says. "Algeria has been modernising since the beginning of the new century.
"Two democratic elections have since been organised, and the will of the Algerian people today is to reject the use violence in any form for political gain."
Bencheikh says this will was expressed clearly in September 2005 when an impressive 97% of Algerian voters heeded the call by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to vote in favour of the draft charter for peace and reconciliation. The charter was later passed into law by the country's parliament.
One of its main feature is an ambitious amnesty programme that saw Bouteflika pardon prominent members of former terrorist groups such as the Islamic Salvation Front .
The text was seen as the best option for Algeria's continued process of peace building and stability enforcement.
"This is a clear sign that we have turned the page of political violence," Bencheikh insists.
"There is no going back to the dark age of terror."
The Algerian diplomat also says that condemnation of the attacks by Algeria's Islamic coalition is a positive indication the bombings were the deeds of a "lunatic fringe" of Islamists that will remain sidelined in the country's politics.
"Those behind the attacks are among Islamist groups that see an element of extraneousness to democratic advancement made in Maghreb," he says.
Terrorism experts warn that the attacks signalled a wider resurgence of Islamist militancy in the region that can spread to countries such as Tunisia, Libya and further south to the Sahel -- an arid strip along the southern Sahara that stretches across six countries from Senegal to Chad.
"We now have a belt which extends from Morocco to Somalia," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist at the Swedish National Defence College.
"The key question is: are they going to internationalise that even further, with action in France for example or attacks on French interests, or actions in Spain by Moroccans?" Ranstorp says.
Bencheikh says tremendous efforts are being made at regional level to contain the spread of al-Qaeda's influence.
With Reuters
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