What About Political Support?

In its last report on the global fight against terrorism, the U.S. State Department credited Algeria for its positive engagement in the process of eradicating Islamist violence. This isn’t the first time that Washington has brought up the importance of the Algerian role in the global war against terrorism. But at the same time, the relationship is limited to a well-known script. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is isolated in the north of the country; its activities remain concentrated to the east of Algiers — more precisely, in Kabylie; there have been attempts to smuggle arms from Libya; and the menace persists in the sub-region — in this case, in the north of Mali.

Beyond that, the document doesn’t suggest steps that might be taken to end the movements that are now trying to capture territory with the generous aid (of course!) of certain Persian Gulf emirates. What’s happening in the north of Mali is not only a consequence of the coup d’état on Mar. 22 of this year, which deposed the government of Amadou Toumani Touré. The responsibility of this coup d’état in the development of terrorist cells is not a secret to anyone, let alone the United States. The sub-region has become a terrorist hideout ever since the 2001 war against al-Qaida’s bases in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. This led to the export of the practice of suicide bombings — something that Algeria has first-hand knowledge of since the terrible experience of 2007.

Algeria’s engagement in the fight against terrorism has continued for more than 22 years. If, in the beginning, the West supported terrorists that it considered armed opposition, the attacks of Sept. 11 came to change their approach, revealing to the entire world the true designs of Islamism. But this conception is now a little different. In bringing unfailing support to Arab revolutions, the U.S. has fallen into its own paradoxes. These events have brought fundamentalists to power and have created instability in certain countries—a situation that has reinforced terrorist movements in the Arab countries. The fight against terrorism is not an affair for military means. It is, above all, political. Washington cannot speak indefinitely about the war against terrorism if it continues to encourage fundamentalism, the political arm of terror.