Al-Qaida winning recruits in Algeria

Al-Qaida-linked militants are winning recruits from the margins of Algerian society for a new strategy of high-impact attacks, details emerging from last week's bombings in Algiers suggest.

The methods of al-Qaida in North Africa have been denounced by former leaders of the Islamic insurgency that peaked in the 1990s and left up to 200,000 people dead.

"I condemn it, and I am ready to work to stop this bloodletting," said Madani Mezrag, who headed the Armed Islamic Group, an insurgency movement, before signing a cease-fire with Algerian authorities in 1997 and being pardoned by the government.

"For me, today's rebellion in Algeria has no name," Mezrag said. "Al-Qaida today is an umbrella. Everyone works and al-Qaida signs for it, it's easy."

Last Wednesday's car bombings targeted a government building housing the prime minister's office in central Algiers and a police station on the outskirts of the capital, killing 30 people and wounding up to 330.

The attacks were claimed by al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, the name adopted in January by Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat, better known by its French initials GSPC.

The attacks have dealt a blow to the Algerian government as it seemed to be turning the page on the drawn-out civil conflict. The violence began in 1992 after the army canceled the country's first multiparty national elections to prevent a Muslim fundamentalist party from claiming victory. Fighting in recent years had been reduced to sporadic attacks.

Demonstrations against the attacks Tuesday were confined to the sports stadium in the capital, which has been under a state of emergency for 15 years. Marchers chanted: "No to Algeria's destruction!" and "The fight against terrorism goes on."

The bombings were widely believed to have been suicide attacks. But in comments reported by Algerian media Tuesday, Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said a remote-control detonating device had been found in one of the cars.

The minister also suggested the men driving the cars could have been unknowing participants, perhaps delivery men who had no idea the vehicles were rigged.

"It is very probable that the terrorist drivers of the three cars blew up with their explosive charges without knowing it," the daily Liberte quoted him as saying.

In earlier comments, Zerhouni had played down the attacks as the desperate acts of a group that has been cornered and was "at an impasse."

One bomber has widely been identified as Merouane Boudina, 23, one of 10 siblings from a poor Algiers suburb. Local media reports say he was in and out of jail for drug trafficking before disappearing a few months ago.

The interior minister said the two other bombers also have been identified and are Algerian, but gave no further details.

Liberte said one of them was Mouloud Benchiheb, a multiple offender from a district not far from the government offices hit in the attacks. The paper, which did not cite sources, said he had been recruited while serving a prison sentence for drug dealing.

Hamida Ayachi, head of the Djazair News newspaper who is writing a book on the GSPC, said its leadership represents the ideological core that has survived military crackdowns and refused repeated amnesties.

"But with regards to recruitment, it's very much the new generation," he said in a telephone interview. "These are people who have been in prison, who have been marginalized, and have lots of problems," he said.

Ayachi said the attacks show al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa is trying to increase the range and media impact of its attacks "to prove that now they are the real representatives of al-Qaida" in the region.

Hassan Hattab, who founded the GSPC in 1998 and was among those reported to have condemned the double bombings, tried to keep the group's focus local before being ousted by rival leaders.

But the new leadership "wants to internationalize the conflict and create several sources of chaos," Ayachi said.

In Algeria, as in other countries, coverage of conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East on Arab satellite channels have helped recruitment by extremist groups, analysts say.

Algeria's interior minister played down the possibility that terrorists would again get the upper hand.

"They have before them two options: give themselves up or kill themselves, and they are in the process of killing themselves," the state newspaper El Moudjahid quoted the minister as saying.