Violence Continues Despite Algeria’s Claims of Progress

CAIRO — Although Algeria had been claiming progress in bringing a violent Islamic insurgency under control, a wave of gory attacks and shattering explosions in the past two weeks has shown that neither suppression nor constitutional reform has quelled the country’s agony.

Since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began Jan. 10, a wave of killing in Algeria has claimed more than 125 victims--some of them slain in rural areas, left with their throats slashed and their heads on pikes.

The bloodshed took no respite Wednesday when another powerful bomb rocked a market in the garrison town of Blida, about 25 miles southwest of Algiers, killing at least five people. That attack followed two explosions Tuesday in Algiers, which claimed 18 lives, and a blast Sunday that killed 42.

The assaults are widely attributed to the Armed Islamic Group, a militant faction that considers as enemies any who oppose its campaign to overthrow the military-backed secular government of President Liamine Zeroual.

“They are imposing the law of God, and they are imposing it during the sacred month of Ramadan,” commented Nicole Grimaud, director of research at the National Foundation of Political Science in Paris. “This is a holy war.”

With Algerians said to be staying inside their homes out of terror, the carnage has left the government shellshocked, with few realistic prospects for stopping the bloodshed, analysts say.

The most common explanation for the violence is that it is intended to impress upon the government that its ironfisted attempts to suppress the five-year uprising have not dimmed the rebels’ fervor and that Algeria has not moved any closer to political stability or economic recovery.

An estimated 60,000 people have been killed in Algeria’s violence since January 1992, when authorities canceled a general election that the now-outlawed Islamic Salvation Front was expected to win.

The front shares the Islamic aims of the Armed Islamic Group but disavows its violence and seeks a dialogue with the government.

After a relatively peaceful summer in Algeria, however, attacks escalated in the autumn when the government staged a Nov. 28 plebiscite on constitutional amendments to give more power to the presidency and to ban from political life those parties whose platforms are based on religion. The measure passed easily, but heavy-handed government interference in the voting brought the result into question.

Besides the constitutional changes, claims by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia last month that the insurgency finally was being tamed may have incited the opposition to even greater violence.

Meanwhile, a statement signed by Antar Zouabri, the Armed Islamic Group’s leader, promised: “The war will continue and intensify during the month of Ramadan.”

Other government critics have sought international help to end Algeria’s downward spiral. “What level must the violence and casualties reach and how much longer must the civil war continue for you [in the West] to consider acting to stop the blood bath?” asked Hocine Ait-Ahmed, leader of the Socialist Forces Front and a key figure in the revolution that ended French colonial rule in 1962.

In an interview published by a Saudi newspaper last week, Ait-Ahmed said Algeria’s rulers were fueling violence by setting up pro-regime militias, blocking peaceful channels to a political settlement and exploiting the conflict with Islamist militants to advance private business interests.

“If the cycle of violence and civil war is not halted, Algeria risks falling into the same state as Somalia,” he warned in the interview translated by the Mideast Mirror monitoring service. “Never in Algeria’s history have we seen such attempts to fragment society.”

Salama Ahmed Salama, an Egyptian political analyst, called the latest wave of violence in Algeria “proof of the failure of the present government’s policies” of relying on political suppression alone. He also asserted that there is a “media blockade”--a paucity of global news coverage of the carnage--even though the level of massacres “taking place every day are worse than the massacres in Rwanda and Burundi.”

Although Algeria has said it will hold legislative elections this spring, Salama urged the ruling regime to reconsider this plan, saying, “Because of the internal problems, if they go ahead with these elections, we are going to witness greater carnage.”

The violence throws “extraordinary shadows over the region,” he noted, with secular governments in neighboring countries fearing that they could come under pressure if the Islamists succeed in Algeria.

Is there a solution to the situation, political or military? “No one knows anymore, the situation is so complicated. If we had a good idea, it would be put into action. But it’s obvious that there isn’t,” said Grimaud, the research director.

Aline Kazandjian of The Times’ Cairo Bureau and Christine Winner of The Times’ Paris Bureau contributed to this report.