Nine killed in pre-election violence in Algeria

APF ^ | 5/12/07

[Valin]

Seven Islamic extremists and two members of Algeria's security forces have been killed in the violent run-up to parliamentary elections, newspapers reported Saturday. Three armed Islamists and one soldier were killed Thursday when fighting broke out during a military operation in the Tizi Ouzou region of Kabylie, 110 kilometres (70 miles) east of Algiers, the Liberte newspaper said. Another three extremists were killed on the same day in another military sweep, in Saida, 430 kilometres southwest of the capital, it added, as Algerians looked forward to the May 17 legislative polls. All six Islamists were said to be members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which styles itself as the North African wing of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

On Friday, meanwhile, a village guard was killed and two other people injured when a bomb went off in an abandoned house in Beni Mehboub, in the El Milia region, 400 kilometres east of Algiers, newspapers said. Earlier in the week, an armed Islamist was killed by security forces at Ait Yahia Moussa, near Tizi Ouzou, according to Saturday's press reports.

The upcoming elections are seen as a referendum against terrorism in Algeria in the wake of suicide blasts on April 11 which claimed 30 lives in the capital. In total, nearly 90 have died violently since the start of last month.

In a videotape aired Wednesday on the Al-Jazeera news channel, the purported chief of the GSPC, Abu Mussaab Abdul Wadud, urged his followers to join what he called a "war between infidels and believers". The videotape included testimonies from the three suicide bombers who carried out the April 11 attacks in Algiers which also left more than 220 people injured. "It is a crusade against Islam and a decisive war between the infidels and the believers," said Abu Mussaab Abdul Wadud in the videotape, the authenticity of which could not be verified.

The GSPC claimed responsibility for the Algiers attacks which targeted the prime minister's office, the suburban Interpol offices and a police special forces headquarters on the road to the capital's airport.

[Valin]

Little hope of change at polls in Algiers slum
By Lamine Chikhi

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=742112007

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Visit the tin-roofed shacks of Algiers’ “Kamikaze Slum” and you’ll find plenty of poverty and discontent. What is harder to uncover is any expectation that parliamentary polls this week will bring change for the better.
Like many in Algeria, a north African oil-exporting country, inhabitants of this pocket of urban poverty feel the polls are unlikely to be transparent and parliament serves little purpose.
“We thought that the candidates, or at least some of them, would visit the slum and talk to the people,” said one resident, Saidani Hamoud, 23. “No one came, so why should I go to vote?”

The ghetto earned its most recent nickname because it was the home of one of the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up, killing 33 people, in Algiers on April 11.
Marwan Boudin grew up in the huddle of 200 brick, corrugated iron and plastic shanty homes which used to be nicknamed, somewhat optimistically, The Garden.

Its inhabitants have little hope the May 17 polls will usher in solutions to unemployment and homelessness.
Providing jobs, improving housing, health and education and reducing reliance on oil are key to stabilising a society still reeling from a decade of violence in the 1990s and shocked by a recent resurgence in bombings by Islamist armed groups.
One of Africa’s most brutal conflicts, the 1990s struggle between the army and Islamist armed groups cost an estimated 200,000 lives and caused damage estimated at $20 billion.

But the abiding, albeit often unspoken, conviction is that the 389-seat assembly is dominated by a powerful executive and made up of politicians happy to rubber stamp its decisions.
The residents of Kamikaze Slum tend to feel they have been forgotten, even if the April 11 attacks claimed by al Qaeda’s north Africa branch brought the ghetto a brief notoriety.
“The gap between the people living in the slum and the politicians is big,” said Abdelhamid Bouhala, 39, a resident.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS

“Actually we live in two different worlds, and we believe that voting will not improve our daily living conditions.”
The bombs were a reminder that the social failings that helped fuel the rise of Islamist parties in the 1980s and early 1990s still fester, despite the current oil and gas bonanza.

Critics blame incompetent statist economic management and reliance on Soviet-style command economics.
“I won’t be a terrorist, but my son could become one,” said Abdelhamid, a security guard. “I want him to be well-bred, to have good manners, to have a good education. I’m not sure that you can achieve these goals if you are stuck in a slum.”

The slum, perched on a mound of earth called Oued Ouchayah in the Kouba district and bereft of amenities like water and sewerage, sits nexts to chic villas in a posh district nicknamed Dallas after the 1970s U.S. soap opera about Texas oil tycoons.
Selmane Abdelghani, 23, sitting in a brand new black four wheel drive vehicle, is thankful that his father’s business wealth enables him to live in Dallas. But he thinks the government should tackle poverty much more effectively.
“I think that the government main task is to alleviate the suffering of its people ... Algeria is rich but thousands of its inhabitants live in slums. It doesn’t make sense.”

According to official figures, unemployment among people under 30 was 75 percent in 2005, up from 73 percent in 2004.
To address social problems, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is leading an economic revival plan worth $140 billion to create two million jobs and build one million houses.

“SOCIAL PRESSURE WILL GROW”

But he has had little success in revitalising the private non-energy sector, which provides very few jobs.
“Oil does not mix with economic reforms. Algeria still doesn’t have a productive economy. It produces nothing but oil and imports all its needs from wheat to milk to pharmaceuticals,” economic expert Abdelhak Lamiri said.
“Social pressure will continue to grow, and the government has no alternative but to fulfill its inhabitants’ needs. Otherwise, one day or another we will have a social explosion.”

Algerian officials say poverty doesn’t produce terrorism.
“You cannot justify terrorism by poverty. How then can you explain that several wealthy Saudis are involved in terrorism?” former premier Ahmed Ouyahia told reporters recently.

For Abdelhamid, demolishing the slum would help.
“The Moroccans did it,” he said, referring to slum clearance carried out in its commercial capital Casablanca after a dozen suicide bombers killed 45 people including themselves there in 2003. The bombers came from Casablanca slums.
Abdelhamid added: “Our government should do the same. It is up to it to restore hope among the people.”

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

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