ALGERIA - The Challenges Of Terrorism.

Editor's Note: This is a new survey of Middle East/North African (MENA) countries being serialised through SBME volumes 49-52 in 2005 and 2006. The countries, to include Iran and Israel, will be presented in alphabetical order, starting with Algeria:

Part 1 - Algeria:

In most

of the MENA countries, the rulers are functioning by what critical Arab scholars call "speed-back dynamism", or the "dynamism of failure", having failed to take an initiative bold enough to reflect the aspirations of their people. In most countries the big majority of the people is under the age of 30, with unemployment having become an acute problem.

The other acute problem being faced by most of the rulers is Islamic militancy. What is spreading fast and is likely to pose a strategic challenge to their regimes is the Salafi branch of Sunni militancy, a fascist phenomenon out of neo-Islam now functioning by the dynamic of nihilism. Including the radical Wahhabi militants, this is still a mere fringe of Sunni Islam. But it is growing dangerously fast and feeds on the despair of the young and unemployed Muslims who dream of two things: paradise, as being the immediate reward of martyrdom in jihad (holy war) against the unfaithful and the Muslim heretics (such as the Shiites); and an imagined Islamic Umma (nation) based on a revival of the old Sunni Caliphate, as the ultimate objective for a universal order.

Democracy is the worst product of the enemy of Salafi jihadists, such as those Wahhabi militants of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, and so is any form of pluralism. The most dangerous dimension of this Salafi phenomenon is that it has been de-centralised and thus the militants are believed to be operating in more than 60 countries around the world, including Europe and the US.

To the Salafi jihadists, as one of their leaders once said, "democracy means the rule of the people, a system which is the product of the kuffars (unbelievers in Salafi Islam)". This leader said: "Those who want the rule of the people defy the rule of God, which is (Salafi) Islam, and thus deserve to and must be killed". This is pure terrorism as only the jihadist is the judge and the executioner of his (or even potentially her) victim.

However, the balance of power in MENA is in favour of the rulers' armed forces that can defeat this terrorism in each of the countries being surveyed. Iraq has become a haven for the Salafi jihadists, having replaced Afghanistan and moved to very heart of the Arab/Muslim world, and this is the most complicated challenge for the US which has invaded the country with no plan for the post-war period.

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan, a lecturer in Media and International Relations at Damascus University, says "democracy is the game of liberals". For Arab liberals "it is their long-awaited dream" [which] they must not abandon...merely because they cannot challenge the Islamists on the organisational level". Kuwait's liberal camp, for example, "needs to learn how to survive in electoral politics and face the challenge of the opposition with an open mind". In a democracy like Kuwait, "the best way to challenge the Islamists is by giving them the chance to demonstrate their efficiency or expose their bankruptcy in dealing with a mass of intractable problems that face the country". In the end "the people who voted for them would be the judge of whether they could provide a solution for their problems".