http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=94973&d=14&m=4&y=2007&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion
Saturday, 14, April, 2007 (26, Rabi` al-Awwal, 1428)
You Can't Appease Them
Amir Taheri, Arab News
Until just a few days ago, most policymakers and analysts in
the West often cited Algeria as a successful example of dealing with Islamist
terror through political means rather than the use of force. The idea is that
accommodating the Islamists by offering them a share of political power while
adopting part of their social agenda would temper their appetite for total
domination.
The resurgence of terrorism, as witnessed in the recent
series of attacks including a spectacular suicide operation that killed 30
people in the capital Algiers on Wednesday, casts doubt on the validity of that
analysis.
For, during the past six years, President Abdulaziz
Bouteflika has gone out of his way to accommodate the Islamists. He started by
freeing thousands of militants, including hundreds with blood on their hand,
from prison.
He continued with an amnesty that allowed thousands more to
come out of the hiding and resettle in society, often with generous grants from
the government. In some cases the government "compensated" the supposedly
repenting terrorists for losses sustained while away doing the "jihad".
In countless cases, these amnestied criminals have used their
time with normality as an opportunity to rest, have their teeth done, and in
many cases even get married and father a brood before returning to the forests
and mountains to resume their "jihad".
Dozens even went to Iraq to fight the "jihad" there.
The Iraqi authorities are currently holding at least 130 of
them.
Bouteflika went further by reinstating thousands of Islamist
sympathizers who had been purged from the civil service. He replaced Prime
Minister Ahmed Ouyahya, the man who had led the successful war against Islamist
terror for almost a decade, with Abdulaziz Belkhadem, who was the target of the
latest suicide attack.
Ironically, Belkhadem, who sports the correct Islamist
Vandyke, is himself a moderate Islamist. In the coalition Cabinet that he heads
at least a third of the portfolios are held by moderate Islamists with ties to
the Muslim Brotherhood.
To woo the Islamists, Bouteflika has also promulgated a
family law that cancels most of the rights granted to women under Algeria's
original, secular constitution. The "moderate Islamist' regime installed by
Bouteflika has also rewritten school textbooks and reorganized the nation's
cultural life to take into account some of the grievances of the jihadists
about the advent of a heathen social system inspired by the "infidel" from
across the Mediterranean.
The Bouteflika experiment, no doubt prompted by the best of
intentions illustrates at least two facts. The first is that the jihadists will
not be content with a share of political power. They do not want anything in
particular; they want everything.
The second is that concessions given to Islamists disheartens
the rest of the society, thus weakening its resolve to resist the diktats of
the jihadists.
In the kind of strategy adopted by Bouteflika, the more the
state gives to the insurgents the more they would demand.
The jihadist movement in Algeria was never only, or even
mainly, about what Bouteflika has offered. Mustafa Bouyali, the man who
fathered the jihadist movement in the mid-1980s, made it clear from the start.
"The Arab Maghreb (that is to say Tunisia, Morocco and Libya)
is the gateway to Andalusia (that is to say Spain) and only the first step
toward planting the banner of the Only True Faith over Europe," he wrote in
February 1986.
Bouyali's heirs, notably Ali Benhadj, one of the founders of
the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) have echoed that sentiment on a number of
occasions.
The global ambitions of the Algerian jihadist movement were
highlighted last September when the Salafi group for Preaching and Armed Jihad
(GSPDA) announced its dissolution into a new outfit named Al-Qaeda Organization
in the Islamic Maghreb. At the time, the news was greeted by Al-Qaeda deputy
leader Ayman Al-Zawahri as "a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness" for
Algeria's authorities.
Since last December, the group has targeted buses in Algiers
carrying Western technicians and businessmen, including some affiliated with
the US corporation Halliburton. In March it blew up a bus carrying Russian
workers close to the Algerian capital.
Six people were killed and 13 injured in seven explosions
outside police stations in the eastern Kabylia region in February and 33
Algerian soldiers are reported to have lost their lives this month. At least 22
smaller attacks have taken place in Ain-Deflah, Shlef and the forests south of
the capital. Other incidents across the Maghreb point to the group's possible
regional ambitions.
In January 12 people were shot dead by the security forces in
Tunisia near the small town of Solimane south of the capital Tunis.
The authorities initially described the attackers as ordinary
criminals but later admitted that the men were Islamic militants with
connections to the Algerian branch of Al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, in Morocco, the security forces are on high alert
after three suicide bombers blew themselves up on Tuesday. There have also been
attacks in Mauritania where the newly elected democratic government maintains
relations with Israel.
The GSPDA grew out of another of Algeria's leading militant
groups, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and together the groups are blamed for
some 150,000 deaths since 1992.
Two years ago, deputy GSPC leader Amari Saifi was sentenced
to life in prison for kidnapping 32 European tourists in 2003. The former
paratrooper was captured by Chadian rebels in mysterious circumstances and
passed on to Libya before standing trial in Algeria.
The original leader of the GSPDA was one Hassan Hattab, who
also spent a spell fighting in Afghanistan and Chechnya, but later defected to
the Algerian authorities in 2003. His successor was Nabil Al-Saharoui who was
killed in action in 2004. The current leader is one Abou Mossab Abdelwadoud, a
former university science student and notorious bomb maker in his thirties, who
took over in 2004.
Another leading member is Mokhtar Belmokhtar, known as the
"one-eyed", a former soldier who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. He leads the
Saharan faction of the group and has organized the importing of arms for the
underground network from Niger and Mali. The group is thought to have between
600 to 800 fighters spread throughout Algeria and Europe.
Since the rise of Al-Qaeda globally, security experts have
warned that the Sahara's wide-open spaces and porous borders make it a haven
for militant groups.
North Africa is only one of the four "gates" in Al-Qaeda's
dream of world conquest. Pakistan is known as "Bab Al-Hind" (The Gate of India)
while the Caucasus is "Bab Al-Saqalibah" (Gate of the Land of Slavs). Turkey is
"Bab Al-Roum" (The Gate of Europe). Iraq is " Bab Al-Arab" (The Gate of Arabia).
As the latest attacks in Algeria and Morocco show the "arc of
jihad" now stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlanti
