Algeria hit by surge in guerrilla violence

[Al-khiyal]

Embuscade terroriste à Chlef :
Cinq gardes communaux assassinés à Oum Drou

Chlef : Les auteurs de l’attaque d’Oum Drou encerclés

Samedi 15 Décembre 2007 -- Les forces de sécurité combinées ont réussi dans la matinée de jeudi à éliminer 4 terroristes dans la localité de Oum El Drou située à l’est de la wilaya de Chlef, a-t-on appris de source sécuritaire.

L’élimination de ces terroristes intervient suite à une grande opération de recherche lancée par les forces de sécurité combinées après que 4 gardes communaux et leur chauffeur eurent été assassinés lundi dernier dans une embuscade tendue par 4 terroristes qui étaient à bord d’un véhicule de marque Clio. Selon les mêmes sources, ces terroristes ont ouvert le feu sur le véhicule des gardes communaux au moment où il réduisait sa vitesse, juste à la sortie du pont menant vers la localité «Chkaliles» où travaillaient ces gardes communaux dont l’âge se situe entre 31 et 44 ans.

Il est à noter que les forces de sécurité combinées, agissant sur information des citoyens faisant état de la présence d’individus étrangers à l’intérieur des champs agricoles de la localité de Ouled Ben Youcef située au nord de la ville de Oum El Drou, ont encerclé toute cette localité depuis l’après-midi de mercredi jusqu’à la matinée de jeudi. Cette vaste opération de recherche bien menée a permis d’éliminer 4 terroristes dans leur casemate après des échanges de coups de feu. Selon des sources concordantes, 7 armes dont 3 kalachnikovs et autres munitions ont été récupérées. Cependant, aucune information n’a filtré sur l’identité des terroristes, excepté que l’un d’eux était déjà recherché par les forces de sécurité.

Quatre terroristes éliminés à Chlef

[Al-khiyal]

Responsibility was claimed on Islamist websites by “al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”, as Algeria's main terrorist group now styles itself. Its declared aim was to strike a blow at “the Crusaders and their agents, the slaves of America and the sons of France”.

Algiers, December 14th, 2007:
Family and friends mourn Mustapha Boubara,
U.N. staff member,
murdered in Algiers on December 11th, 2007

[Al-khiyal]

Algiers attacks: “Ignorance turned dad into suicide bomber,” says son

December 14, 2007 -- The son of the suicide bomber who attacked the UN refugee agency in Algiers on December 11th said that his father was ignorant. “Because of that, terrorists managed to use him to bring weapons and bombs.”

Suicide bomber Rabeh Bechla was born on January 13th, 1944. Two of his sons are missing. One of them who was suffering from kidney disease has joined a Jihad organisation in Algeria.

The family of Rabeh Bechla alias Ibrahim Abu Otmane lives in a small house of two rooms in Algiers. His 82-year-old mother, who was crying, said policemen came to her on Thursday for DNA testing.

“They promised me to tell me about the results on Saturday. I will not allow them to accuse my son because he is innocent,” she said.

The suicide bomber’s family said there had been no news about him since he joined armed groups in the mountains. His sons have tried to convince him twice to give up his acts and benefit from the Civil Concord and the National Reconciliation but he refused.

“We wished our father did not die in this way,” said Assia, the suicide bomber’s oldest daughter.

His wife Aicha Settouhi died of cancer leaving five children behind.

“We were displaced after my mother died. She used to cook Mhajeb (a kind of tortilla) and sell it to earn money,” said Assia.

The suicide bomber’s life was lived in abject poverty. However, his children do not consider poverty as a justification for his act.

“My father was ignorant; otherwise he would not have joined the group which was giving him money to buy weapons and bombs,” said Younes, the suicide bomber’s oldest son.

Rabeh Bechla’s sister in law said he joined the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) because he trusted it to improve his social conditions.

His relatives said he was very kind and a hard working man before he joined the armed groups.

Rabeh Bechla asked for a piece of land as he was a war veteran’s son but he had no reply to his demand. Then, he tried to get a permit for driving a taxi which was his only hope to improve his situation but that was not achieved either.

Although he left his children, he gave his three daughters for marriage at the age of 20. He wanted to deny rumours that his daughters would not get married because their father was a terrorist.

Asked about his opinion on the terrorist organisation, the suicide bomber’s oldest son said he did not want to deal with the maze of politics.

“I want only to live in peace with my brothers and sons. Right things are clear and the wrong ones are clear too. I will change nothing whether I am a supporter or an opponent,” he added.

Younes said his family sold his grandmother’s land to buy a bus so that they can earn money.

“Yet, people said Al-Qaeda is financing us,” he said.

[Al-khiyal]

UNITED NATIONS, December 15, 2007 (AP) - Israel's U.N. ambassador signed a condolence book Friday for victims of this week's terrorist bombings in the Algerian capital despite Israel's lack of relations with the north African nation.

«I think that Israel is showing its sympathy for the victims of terror wherever they are, in this particular case in Algeria,» Ambassador Dan Gillerman told The Associated Press.

«Algeria does not recognize Israel and has not even made any steps towards normalizing its relations with Israel, as opposed to Morocco and even Tunisia to some extent,» he said. «Algeria's always been much more militant and much less friendly, but when it comes to moments like this I think the human side overrides everything else».

The United Nations put out two condolence books shortly before deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe announced that the death toll in the bombing of U.N. offices in Algiers had risen to 17. Algeria's Interior Ministry put the official death toll in the bombings at the U.N. offices and an Algerian government building at 37.

Al-Qaida's self-styled North African branch claimed responsibility for Tuesday's near simultaneous attacks.

«Our deep sympathy and condolences to the Algerian people and the families of the victims of this vicious terror attack,» Gillerman wrote in the condolence book, signing his name and title.

Afterwards, he said, «I think that one of the most horrendous elements of terrorism, and which I'm not sure the Arab and Muslim world has fully awakened to, is the fact that not only are most terrorists Muslim, but the vast majority of victims are Muslim».

«We've just seen it now in Algeria. We're seeing it in Morocco. We're seeing it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Sharm el-Sheik and in Amman,» Gillerman said.

«I think that terror is terror and it is horrible wherever it happens, and we feel very, very sad for the Algerian people who have to live through this as well as for the families of the victims including U.N. families,» he said.

«The U.N. was there to do a good job ... in a very difficult place and paid a very high price,» Gillerman said.

Israel signs condolence book to Algeria bombing victims despite no diplomatic relations

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS, December 15, 2007 (AP) — Bearded men in flowing white robes prayed and women in Muslim head scarves wiped away tears Friday as Algerians buried victims of twin suicide bombings at U.N. offices and a government building that killed at least 37 people.

Rescue workers ended the search for survivors where the truck bombs blew apart buildings in Algiers on Tuesday, and efforts turned to cleanup and to mourning.

The bombings claimed by a former insurgent group now calling itself al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa sent a chilling reminder that the government's fight against religious extremists is far from over — and becoming increasingly international.

Victims included U.N. staff from around the world as well as police officers, law students and other civilians.

Dozens of Muslim worshippers, many in flowing white robes, turned out Friday for weekly prayers at a mosque before the funeral of one U.N. employee, Mustapha Boubara, who was among the 37 dead listed by the Interior Ministry.

In New York, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Friday that the number of U.N. workers killed by the attack stood at 17. She said the world body did not know of any others still missing. The U.N. victims, four of them women, included 14 Algerians, a Dane, a Filipino and a Senegalese.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement expressing solidarity with Algerians and condemning the attack.

"I stand with the people of Algeria and the wider region in the face of the scourge of terrorism," Ban said. "This was an attack not only against the United Nations, not only against Algerians, but against humankind itself."

Ban pledged to "spare no effort" to ensure security for U.N. staff around the world.

The bombing was the worst attack on U.N. staffers since an August 2003 bombing at the world body's offices in Baghdad killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others. The attack was blamed on a group that later affiliated with al-Qaida.

An Algerian security official said Tuesday's suicide bombers — a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer and a 32-year-old man from a poor suburb — were among Islamic militants once held by police, but later freed under an amnesty decreed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's government.

The Islamic insurgency broke out in the early 1990s, when the army canceled the second round of Algeria's first multiparty elections to prevent an expected victory by an Islamic fundamentalist party. Armed groups sought to overthrow the government, and up to 200,000 people have died in the ensuing violence.

Until this year, the insurgency had been dying out, with militants' ranks dwindling after military crackdowns and amnesty offers.

Algerians mourn those killed in bombings

[Al-khiyal]

The Puzzle of Algiers

December 14, 2007 -- Algiers, the city once synonymous with armed Arab insurgency, recaptured its status this week, if only for a moment, as a symbolic ground zero in the shadowy drama we call the war on terror. The grotesque carnage visited on the Algerian capital Tuesday morning — two simultaneous car bombs, close to 70 dead, most of them either schoolchildren or United Nations refugee workers — caused people around the world to catch their breath for a moment at the macabre senselessness of it.

A moment later, many of us shook our heads in confusion and tried to remember why this day was different. With Islamic extremists setting off bombs almost daily in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkey and heaven knows where else, why should the bloodshed in Algiers stand apart?

Algiers stood apart because it embodied, in agonizingly precise microcosm, the dreary evolution of this global conflict over the decades. In the 1950s, Algeria became an international symbol of anti-colonial struggle during its eight-year independence war against France, perhaps the bloodiest struggle of any emerging Arab state.

After 30 years of faux-socialist dictatorship, the military succumbed to the post-Soviet rush of idealism and decided in 1994 to democratize and hold elections. At the last minute the generals realized — as others would later find in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere — that the elections were going to be swept by Islamic fundamentalists bent on imposing Iranian-style theocracy. The junta canceled the elections.

Civil war ensued. The army vowed to root out the Islamists and prepare the nation for secular democracy. Ten years later, facing stalemate, the government declared the war over and announced a general amnesty. But the Islamists turned it down; they had by now morphed from a local theocratic party into a branch of Al Qaeda bent on world jihad.

This week, with their bombs, they announced their goals. They are at war with France, Europe and Western infidels. They are at war with schoolchildren. They are at war with the world, as embodied in the humanitarian programs of the United Nations.

Now Algeria’s rulers must decode the lessons. Did they miss an opportunity a decade ago to tame the Islamists and bring them inside, before they morphed into a monster? Or did they merely unmask this week the true face of a monster that they and the world have no choice but to fight to death? And if it is a fight to the finish, just what would that mean?

Coincidentally or not, Israel faced much the same dilemma this past Tuesday morning. An armored Israeli column was sent deep into Gaza that day to dismantle rocket crews under fundamentalist Hamas control. Israel was due the very next day to enter renewed urgent peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. The Gaza incursion, they knew, was bound to sour the talks’ opening. Palestinian leaders, however anti-Hamas, cannot ignore street anger over an Israeli incursion — any more than an anti-settlement Israeli government can ignore a terrorist attack on settlers.

Hence, the dilemma: Israel’s government cannot afford to overlook persistent rocket attacks on its cities, particularly when it is about to discuss painful concessions to the Palestinians. But the Palestinian leadership cannot afford to ignore armed incursions into its territories, particularly when it is about to discuss painful concessions to Israel. The peace talks are thus hostage to Hamas. And Israel cannot let itself talk to Hamas.

Or can it?

Some Israelis say it’s time to engage Hamas, in hopes of moderating its positions, before it spins into Al Qaeda’s orbit. Others, a majority, insist it’s suicidal to talk to Hamas; it will only legitimize Israel’s sworn enemies. Each side warns that the other path leads to disaster, but they’re both guessing, and no one can know the answer until it’s too late.

What to do? Well, they might try asking the Algerians. They’ve got years of experience — and they still don’t have a clue.

[Al-khiyal]

Aboudjerra Soltani à Annaba :
«Une main étrangère est derrière ces attentats»