The toll exacted by terrorism in Algeria, estimated to be more than 100,000 dead and one million victims by the end of the year 2000, can on its own adequately indicate the extent of the drama that has affected the Algerian people. But mere statistics do not reveal the full horror of the reality: a terrorism in which the darkest and most barbaric compulsions of armed violence have been taken to their utmost limits. It is a movement that is genocidal in character, with no equivalent in Africa or the world, except perhaps the disastrous toll of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

A religious political movement, whose roots go deep down into the contemporary history of Algeria since independence, embodies this terrorist violence. If endogenous and exogenous factors that gave birth to it are excluded, our attempts to gain a non-exhaustive comprehension of this phenomenon in Algeria leads us to a political and subversive movement that became the repository of this violence, which is the Islamic Salvation Front, known as the FIS (a political party dissolved on 14 March 1992).

Simplistic analyses place the onset of this terrorist violence at the interruption of the electoral process in January 1992, but the beginning and development of terrorism in Algeria precede this date.

As early as 27 November 1991, about ten soldiers of the Algerian army were savagely massacred in Guemmar (in south east Algeria) by an Islamic terrorist group, practically all of whose members had received training in camps in Afghanistan. This attack, the first of its kind, launched the terrorist campaign in Algeria and revealed to national public opinion the existence of groups structured, armed, trained and organised with the aim of seizing power to install a theocratic state. These groups called themselves the Armed Islamic Movement (MIA), with reference to a terrorist movement that had appeared in 1981, led by Mustapha Bouyali. At the political and ideological level, this movement was based on and inspired by a document called 'Jihad in Algeria', comprising 22 items of instruction to terrorist groups. It was written by the two principal leaders and founders of the FIS, Abassi Madani and Ali Benhadj.

The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) was created in the same period, with the aim of taking control of the organisational structure of the MIA and extending areas of terrorist activity to the whole of the national territory. The institution of a military command (Imarat), a political structure (Madliss echourra) and terrorists brigades and sections (katiba and serya) are the main forms adopted by the GIA groups that have planned to install an Islamic state (Khalifat) in Algeria.

It was as a result of this organisation that terrorism was able to develop so speedily and violently. Between 1992 and 1997, the GIA conducted a series of violent campaigns against an unarmed population and a security service that had never faced such a phenomenon. Their actions included bombings, purposeful criminal acts, the massacre of isolated citizens, sabotage, rape, mutilation, torture and the systematic liquidation of any Algerian citizen who refused to support the extremist fundamentalist solution.

A bomb exploded in a cemetery on 1 November1994, killing four young scouts and seriously wounding seven others, who had to have limbs amputated. The violence would escalate to a state of total, absolute terror, with no discernment, as even children were regarded as legitimate targets.

Thus factories, bridges, railways, schools and cultural centres have been systematically destroyed and burned, causing losses of over $20 billion in 10 years. All those with a different religious view—including administrative officials, artists, journalists, working women (who were asked to stop working), doctors, teachers, farmers and men of religion (Imans—have been systematically eliminated.

Through the assassination of foreigners, the terrorists have also targeted women and men of religions other than Islam, even those that preach tolerance and forgiveness. Catholics, Protestants, both monks (seven of whom belonged to the Trappist Order) and high dignitaries of the church, have been killed, such as Bishop Claverie, who was killed in a bomb attack in Oran in August 1995.

The criminal logic of terrorism has also been directed against foreign interests in Algeria—more than 120 foreign citizens were killed in the early stages of the campaign. This wave of assassinations provoked the departure of many foreigners, as well as many airlines and foreign companies. This has to a certain extent achieved its aim: that of weakening the country economically and sustaining the mistrust of foreign partners.

In January 1995, the GIA also launched a campaign of bomb attacks in main cities. That was when a suicide bomber drove a car containing explosives into the headquarters of the national police on Amirouche Boulevard, killing 42 Algerians and wounding 265. Thousands of other attacks would follow, with an ever-increasing list of victims.

The circumstances that led to the formation of the GIA are to be found in the availability of a large fringe of Algerian terrorists in Afghanistan. Experts estimate that the GIA was created in the house of the Muhajirin in 1989 in Peshawar. It was from this town, located on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, that the first hard core of "Algerian Afghans" launched their terrorist campaign against Algeria.

This link is all the more important since it marks, with the conclusion of the Afghan-Soviet war and the end of the division caused by the cold war, the emergence of the decision of Islamic groups to reproduce, intra muros, the conditions of a second Afghan war. From that moment, all the efforts of the groups originating in Afghanistan were aimed at reinforcing the hard cores of the GIA and waging a total, determined and implacable war against all layers of Algerian society.

The logic of the terror being imposed was aimed at destroying all capacity of resistance to the inauguration of a theocratic state, even though it contradicts the values of Islam as experienced in Algeria and the Maghreb. These veterans of Afghanistan, trained in the Afghan militias, returned to Algeria with the help of international networks, via Bosnia, Albania, Italy, France, Morocco or Sudan.

Algeria, which has paid and continues to pay a heavy tribute to terrorism, has always called for the necessity of an international action to combat terrorism that would not just stop at the doors of Europe.

A terrorist, Mohamed Berrached, tried by an Algerian court, confessed in 1998 that Ousama Bin Laden, leader of El Qaida, was at the origin of the creation of the GSPC (Combat and Prediction Salafist Group), a dissident group of the GIA. One year earlier, in 1997, Algeria had experienced its worst massacres in the villages of Bentalha, Rais, Sidi Mhamed, Sidi Youcef or Relizane that caused, in the space of two months, the death of more than 3000 people.

Exceptional material means, including vast quantities of arms and money collected all over Europe, arrived from the principal European capitals. London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Geneva or Brussels were harbouring more than 5 000 Islamic activists who constituted the backbone of the Algerian terrorist networks abroad, of which the investigations following the September 11 attacks have only revealed the tip of the iceberg.

During all these years, terrorist networks were being deeply rooted in Europe in order to support the armed groups, taking advantage of the liberal laws in democratic countries. Many terrorists have been able to settle legally in Europe, where they have organised the financing of terrorism and the dispatch of arms.

Paradoxically, while Algeria was facing a destabilising movement that threatened the whole region, these terrorist groups enjoyed international support, active or passive, enabling the dispatch of arms, men and financial means to the terrorist networks in Algeria.

Fortunately, the involvement of the population in reaction against the atrocities, carried out on a huge scale by the terrorist groups, has forced them to retreat towards the mountains, where they are isolated from the population. They have begun to split up and their struggle has degenerated into acts of banditry and the settling of scores between rival factions. But in the opinion of the Algerian people, still subject to the capacity for harm of these terrorist groups, the toll of 100 000 dead is far from over.