Algeria’s Strife Is Worsening Repressive Government, Islamic Front Fighting For 3 Years

As Algeria heads toward the third anniversary of a violent Islamic insurgency, the civil war only shows signs of getting worse.

The hijacking of an Air France jetliner over the Christmas weekend put the rebellion on new international footing. Three hostages were killed before the four hijackers were killed by French commandos on French territory.

The government of President Liamine Zeroual hopes 1995 will bring stability and perhaps some semblance of democracy, with a presidential election planned the second half of the year.

But prospects for an election are slim. Opposition parties that remain legal doubt an election can be held in the current repressive atmosphere, in which a 1992 state of emergency and overnight curfews are still in effect.

Government forces are believed control only major cities; police and soldiers avoid vast stretches of this desert country. Algiers, the capital, has had little electricity for two weeks because a power station was bombed.

The government cannot even assure security at locations such as Algiers’ airport, where three planes - including the Air France jet - have been hijacked this year and a bomb killed 10 people in 1992.

In 1990, when Algeria held its first multiparty elections after 30 years of Socialist mismanagement and corruption, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front swept the local races.

The Salvation Front also dominated the first-round vote for a new National Assembly in December 1991. But the military-backed government claimed 1 million votes were fraudulent and, on Jan. 11, 1992, cancelled the second round.

That - plus the banning of the Salvation Front - dashed hopes that change would come about at the ballot box, sparking an insurgency that has already left more than 15,000 people dead.

By September 1993, Muslim extremists were killing foreigners in a campaign to scare off foreign investment and expertise. The crusade has worked.

Precise figures aren’t available, but the number of French, the largest Western community here by virtue of France’s colonial rule over Algeria, has dwindled from an estimated 11,000 two years ago to fewer than 3,000 today.

The withdrawal of foreign experts has dealt a severe blow to Algeria’s oil industry, its main source of income. Oil sales service the $26 billion foreign debt.

The Islamic Salvation Army, the military wing of the Salvation Front, declared last week that “war with France has become a lawful duty” and threatened to strike at French territory “in coming days.”

“The Algerian nation is directly at war with France and all who aid the dictatorship” in Algeria, said the army’s newspaper El-Feth elMoubine (Brilliant Victory).

An even more violent organization, the Armed Islamic Group, carried out the Christmas hijacking and has claimed most of the some 75 assassinations of foreigners in the last 15 months.

The latest murders it claimed occurred on Tuesday, when one Belgian and three French Catholic priests were machine-gunned in their rectory in Tizi Ouzou, east of Algiers.

It said the killings were to avenge the deaths of the four hijackers when French commandos stormed the hijacked jet in Marseilles.

On Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Mike McCurry called for “genuine political dialogue between the Algerian government and a broad range of opposition elements, secular and Islamic, all who are willing to denounce terror.”

Public debate in Algeria has been virtually silenced by fear of reprisals from either Muslim radicals or the repressive government. The 1992 state of emergency is still in place, as are overnight curfews.

“It’s like a country where the nation doesn’t favor a solution,” former President Ahmed Ben Bella told French television this week. “There is no other solution than dialogue.”

The government tried dialogue earlier this year as part of its effort to restore government order, economic recovery and dialogue with the opposition.

But political talks with several parties went nowhere because Salvation Front leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj remain under house arrest.