The double bombing in Algiers on Tuesday is the latest in a series of fatal terrorist attacks in that region. As a result, many resident Algerians are reminded of the 1990’s, dubbed the ‘Black Years’, when more than 100,000 people were estimated to have lost their lives in a bloody civil war.

 

In December 1991 Algeria’s military government annulled the results of a general election that would have seen the Islamic Salvation Front sweep to power. This heralded, a few months later, the start of a war that divided the country, with most of the deaths occurring in clashes between the military and the Islamic government. The civilian population also found themselves in the line of fire, with the Armed Islamic Group responsible for most of the resulting fatalities.

 

The election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999 led to an eventual ceasefire being called, heralding an end to hostilities and a new era of relative stability, helped by the disappearance of the Armed Islamic Group in 2002.

 

But Tuesday’s double attack on the head office of the United Nations High Commissioner, and the neighbouring UN Development Programme has once again caused a sense of fear and insecurity among locals.

 

“The Algerians are in shock. They have the impression that they are returning to the past after learning to live in a more peaceful time”, says Nabila Amir, an Algerian journalist. “Today, they are afraid to go out, and they are avoiding the main roads.”

 

This opinion is shared by Ali Salhi, an inhabitant of Algiers. “It’s Algerian citizens, students and children that are being targeted. We completely condemn these terrorist acts”, he told France 24. “We don’t want to return to the horror of the 1990’s. We have learned our lesson from the past and do not want a repeat.”

 

Al Qaeda’s branch in Islamic Maghreb (Islamic North Africa) claimed responsibility for the attacks on Tuesday evening through an Islamic website. “Using suicide attacks is a strategy with little risk, and is the signature of the SGPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) and of Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb”, explains H’mina Ayachi, a director of the Al Djazair newspaper and a specialist in Algerian armed groups. The SGPC are dissidents of the Armed Islamic Group.

 

“In Algeria, in the Black Years, car-bombings and massacres were the preferred method of slaughter. But this has changed in recent months, evidenced by the recent attack on the Government Palace and today’s suicide bomb,” says Ali Laidi, a journalist and researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

 

“The manhunts carried out by the government against these terrorists were fruitful in the summer of 2007, and led to the arrest of members of the former SGPC, but paradoxically it seems that there is now less of them than in the 1990’s, they are more efficient and determined now. The violence of the attacks and the face that they now pick higher profile targets clearly shows this,” he added.

 

Algeria had been enjoying a respite of sorts since President Abdelaziz Bouteflika introduced a civilian concord policy. But then came a SGPC faction which had sworn allegiance to al Qaeda in 2007.

 

Earlier this year, on April 11th, two separate car bombs exploded targeting the Government Palace in downtown Algiers and a police station in an eastern suburb of the capital. Together, they claimed the lives of over 30 people and left 200 injured.

 

On September 6, 2007, a Bouteflika party was the target of a terrorist attack in Batna (in the east of the country) that killed 22 and injured a further 100 people. Two days later, a suicide attack against a coast guards barracks in Dellys (east of Algiers) killed 32. The Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb branch claimed responsibility for all these atrocities.

 

The date – December 11 is a memorial day for the December 1960 protests – wasn’t picked randomly, says Ayachi. “The SGPC and al Qaeda are trying to capitalize on the symbolism of 911, and playing with people’s imagination,” he adds. As a matter of fact, several attacks took place on the 11th: 11 September 2001 in the US, 11 March 2004 and 11 April in Algeria.

 

With parties like Bouteflika’s NLF (National Liberation Front) campaigning for a change in the constitution to allow the president to seek a third mandate, these attacks, in particular the one against the Constitutional Council, come across as a “military and media-savvy response to the government’s politics by the hardliners of the al Qaeda branch in Maghreb,” he says.

 

This doesn’t necessarily mean that these groups are getting logistical and financial assistance from Al Qaeda. “We’re talking about support to the cause,” says Ali Laidi. “It’s not as if lots of foreigners had joined the Al Qaeda branch in Maghreb. It consists mostly of Algerian extremists, just like in the 1990s. But their methods have changed and are inspired by al Qaeda. In particular by what Al Qaeda does in Iraq.” The head of the al Qaeda branch in Maghreb chose the name Mossaâb in reference to Abu Mossaâab A Zarqawi, an al Qaeda representative in Iraq killed in 2003, he says.

 

All this tends to prove that this isn’t just an internal Algerian affair anymore. Just like in New York, Casablanca, Madrid or London, in yesterday’s attacks “international stakes take precedence over the national ones,” Laidi concludes.