ALGIERS: Algeria’s military establishment feels vindicated by the events of Sept. 11.
Previously, Algerian chief of staff General Mohammed Lamari explains, the world had turned a deaf ear to Algeria’s warnings that thousands of armed Islamist militants trained in Afghanistan were planning to wreak global mayhem, starting with his own country.
Lamari portrays the Islamist insurgency that broke out in Algeria in 1992 and which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, as the work of groups which had learned guerrilla warfare fighting the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and were intent on taking over Algeria and other Muslim states.
And he insists that this, rather than the ascendancy of political Islam through the ballot box, was the reason the military in January 1992 forced then-President Chadli Benjedid out of office, canceled the second round of Algeria’s first multi-party parliamentary elections after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) had scored a clear first-round lead, and outlawed the FIS and detained thousands of its supporters under a state of emergency.
Lamari, a regional military commander at the time, reputedly played a central role in those events. He later assumed charge of a 15,000-strong anti-terrorist taskforce, before being named army chief of staff in July 1993. He is considered one of the most powerful of the military strongmen who are widely characterized as Algeria’s de facto rulers.
It is a characterization Lamari rejects. In a rare on-the-record interview with The Daily Star, he insisted that the Algerian people pick their own rulers: “We are a constitutional state ruled by the law. The army neither chooses presidents nor appoints governors or ministers,” he said.
But he strongly defended the actions of the military and the state over the past decade as essential to defeating a fundamentalist threat of worldwide dimensions, whose menace was not fully appreciated by other countries at the time.
“The acts of violence and terrorism in Algeria preceded 1991,” Lamari said. “In other words, the cancellation of the second round of the elections was not the only cause of the outbreak of violence. There was a general weakness on the part of the state in confronting a clear-cut phenomenon that did not want good for this country. The Islamist groups imposed their will on the country. After the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, statements were made that the battle would be transferred to Algeria next. And there were indeed large numbers of Algerian youth who had been misled, sent on … combat training courses in Afghanistan, and had come back after having been brainwashed against their homeland.”
Lamari said the FIS first-round election victory in December 1991 had been a fraud, with the group exploiting its control of many of the recently elected local municipalities around the country to rig results and stuff ballot boxes at the aborted parliamentary polls.
“The army wouldn’t have intervened if the elections had been clean, but they forged them and Algeria would have been on the verge of collapse if we hadn’t intervened. We couldn’t allow our country, after all it sacrificed to achieve independence, to be an easy morsel for extremists, terrorists and fundamentalists,” the general said.
“We had to act quickly before it was too late. There were people who were intending to dismember Algeria and plunge it into civil war. They infiltrated the country … and began manipulating the minds of the youth. We had evidence … that the number of gunmen belonging to these groups had risen to 27,000. Could we have turned a blind eye to the threat posed by such a large number of outlaws? Would that have been a service to religion, even if at the expense of the homeland and citizens?”
Lamari declined to “name names” when asked where all the weaponry for such a large rebel army had come from.
“We approached Arab and international sides and major powers and asked them to help us overcome a crisis that could explode and subsequently afflict everyone,” he explained. “We had definite information that we were not the only ones targeted, that Algeria was not the only mark, and that if the scheme were to succeed, it would extend to other countries and perhaps threaten the entire world. But even our Arab brethren did not respond to us.”
Lamari claimed that Osama bin Laden himself had considered moving to Algeria after he was expelled form Sudan in 1996, but changed his mind because local Islamists refused to submit to his leadership.
“His (bin Laden’s) pre-condition was that he would assume supreme command over the Islamist groups and over FIS leaders and become the ultimate arbiter of their affairs, but they refused …,” Lamari said.
But the chief of staff emphasized that the worst of the Islamist insurgency was over, and “since at least 1999,” Algeria can no longer be considered in crisis. “There is security and an elected president chosen by the people according to the constitution in a democratic contest … in which no one interfered. The world witnessed and acknowledged the fairness of elections.”
Lamari conceded that the insurgents had not been fully overcome, but said they had been reduced in number from many thousands to several hundred: “They are no longer capable of … organized attacks … as   in the past. But they are still capable as individuals of attacking outlying villages.”
He accused Islamists of being responsible for a number of recent massacres of civilians in rural areas, and attributed the large numbers of people killed to their use of machetes rather than firearms in their attacks so as to avoid alerting the security forces.
Lamari said, however, that  “this matter is in its end-stages.” He also suggested it was because of the lingering threat posed by Islamist terrorists that FIS leaders Abbasi Madani and Ali Belhadj were being kept under house arrest and behind bars, respectively, after 11 years of detention, despite the FIS armed wing having made its peace with the authorities. “I am fully convinced and have … evidence that if they went onto the street they would be in danger,” the general said. “Not from the army or the Algerian people, but from … the terrorists themselves.”
Lamari charged that it had been Islamist extremists who assassinated former acting FIS leader Abdel-Qader Hachani, who was murdered in November 1999, two years after being released from jail by the authorities. “We advised Hachani, but he did not believe us until a few days prior to his murder. We tried to protect him, but he was gunned down by them.”
Lamari added: “Let me tell you something. They put us in a truly embarrassing position. Some people accused us of killing him, and we were afraid the assassin would be killed before he could be tried and confess to the truth.”

Hisham Aldiwan, a specialist on Gulf and Arabian Peninsula affairs, is editor in chief of the independent London-based pan-Arab weekly magazine Al-Mushahid Assiyasi

Guerrillas accused of killing 10 soldiers 

ALGIERS: Suspected Islamic extremists have killed 10 Algerian soldiers near Algiers, as a wave of violence continues to sweep across the north African country in the run-up to next week’s legislative elections.
A group of soldiers was ambushed late Wednesday on a mountain road near the town of Bourgara, on the outskirts of Algiers, Le Matin daily reported Thursday. The newspaper said seven other soldiers had been kidnapped by the assailants, another report said they were wounded. The authorities have not confirmed the reports.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) is known to operate in the Blida region. Deadly attacks by both the GSPC and the hard-line Armed Islamic Group have increased since President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced in late February that Algeria’s legislative elections would take place on May 30.
Both extremist groups are opposed to Algeria’s secular government and have rejected a reconciliation policy proposed by Bouteflika to end a decade of Muslim extremist insurgency.
Wednesday’s attack was one of the deadliest to target the security forces since the start of the year. ­ AFP

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