In 1991 the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) - representing the 90 percent of Algerians who have been "locked out" of any meaningful participation in Algeria's Western-oriented economy and who live in the small towns and villages of that nation's countryside [known derisively by the francophone rich of that country as Algerie Futile ("Useless Algeria")] - led in an initial round of polling and seemed on the verge of winning the run-off election against the country's urbane, oil-producing business elites [known as Algerie Utile ("Useful Algeria")], most of whom reside in Algeria's major cities - Algiers, Constantine, Oran and Annabe. The FIS promised to cut the poor IN "on the action" and socialize the economy (Islamic style) - something that sent shivers up the spine of Algerie Utile and the multinational oil companies that suckle at her breasts.

As a result, General Liamine Zeroual - with help from the CIA and the French intelligence service (which is nothing more than a lackey to America's CIA) - postponed the election (permanently!) and established a military dictatorship. Since then, Algeria has suffered through a "Reign of Terror" which has taken more than 75,000 lives - about 135 people per week. The government blames the Terror on a shadowy force known as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

The "conventional wisdom" promulgated by the elites concerning the Terror, revolves around the assumption that an increasingly brutal, fundamentalist Muslim insurgency threatens a Western-oriented government that wants nothing more than to bring the people of Algeria the blessings of democracy and the "abundant fruits of the free enterprise system," forget the fact that it has stifled free elections and maintains its power only through the barrel of a gun - kind of like the way the Americans are maintaining themselves in power in Iraq while ostensibly bringing the Iraqi people the same "blessings of democracy" and the same "abundant fruits of the free enterprise system" - courtesy of Halliburton, Brown and Root, Bechtel, CitiGroup, Amoco, etc.

But a growing number of human rights organizations have begun to doubt the official line that the Terror is the result of the GIA, or even if there is such a thing as the GIA (at least as it is understood by the Western Press): that maybe - just maybe - the GIA is the creation of the government and not the FIS. And why is that? - well, for one thing, most of the assassinations that have been linked to the GIA have been directed against the poor, the FIS's own political constituency. Why would the GIA (supposedly the military arm of the FIS) be killing their own people? Take, for example, the massacre in Sidi Rais a few years ago where up to 300 people - men, women, children, and even tiny babies were slaughtered, many of them hacked to death while the army stood by and did nothing. None of those killed had at any relationship to the Zeroual government; but many of them were supporters of the Islamic Salvation Front.

Not only that, but Algerian journalists who have tried to honestly report on what's happening - for instance, to point out the inconsistencies in the government's accounts of the many massacres it has attributed to the GIA - have themselves been assassinated or targeted for assassination. Again, the question that fairly begs to be asked is, Why is the GIA targeting the journalists who favor them?

And more than that, Why have the citizens of "Useful Algeria" (Algerie Utile) been spared these attacks? And why is it that these massacres occur only in the neighborhoods of the poor (Algerie Futile)?

Finally, there is the matter that some of the people involved in the massacres are beginning to talk: Farhan Haq, writing in Covert Action Quarterly, reports that one former military intelligence agent in the Algerian army - in a spasm of remorse - has named two generals in the Algerian secret police, the securite militaire, for much of the Terror; and he also affirms what many have already begun to suspect - that the so-called GIA (again, at least as it is understood by the Western Press) is nothing more than a figment of the government's imagination to cover up their own (i.e., the government's) death squad activities and throw the press off their scent. This is exactly the kind of dissimulation and deception that is going on now in Colombia with regard to the FARC. [Please see our article, "Colombia: America's New Vietnam."]

Haq also reports that two other former members of the securite militaire who have since fled to England admit that they also participated in many of the killings as part of various STATE-SPONSORED death squads. Members of these government death squads call themselves the "Ninjas," and don Islamic fundamentalist garb while carrying out their assassinations. Among their other crimes, the two men detailed massacres, tortures, and "the murder of difficult journalists."

One of the men described a particularly gruesome attack:

"Our orders were clear. We should guard the surrounding area but not act unless we were given specific orders. The securite militaire (the government's intelligence service) went in and came out after a time, maybe two hours, maybe less. After they had gone, we went in to clear the place up. There were about 16 bodies, two families. I saw with my own eyes dead men, women, and children, even a baby, all with their throats slit."

What the men were describing bears an uncanny resemblance to the modus operandi of "Task Force 121" - the American "Christian" death squad that has been at work in Iraq. [Please see our article, "The Power of Self-Sacrifice: Taking Up Your Cross and Following Him," for a detailed description of this unit's (i.e., "Task Force 121's") activities in Iraq;" please also see our two articles, "The Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror, Torture, and Death" and "Christian Evangelicals and the Death Squads: Oh What a Tangled Web We Are Weaving for Ourselves."]

Other witnesses have come forward as well. One of them described the methodical way the massacres were carried out in the town of Bentalha -

"THE TERRORISTS HAD LISTS OF PEOPLE TO KILL ... The massacre went on for several hours and the terrorists left and no-one stopped them; then, the ambulances came and cleared the bodies."

The terrorists had lists? - this wasn't random killing as the government maintains; this was political murder; and - again - the fact that it was government-sponsored murder is evidenced by the fact that the army did nothing to intervene despite the fact that an army barracks was close by. Haq comments sarcastically -

"Such a strange convergence of official inattention and 'terrorist' attacks ... massacres during broad daylight and lasting many hours (with army units close by)."

Come on now! It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening. This kind of thing gives the lie to who is really behind the death squads: it's not the Islamic fundamentalists, but the government. Haq continues:

"The result is that the areas containing the most disenchanted segments of the population (i.e., the poor) are now dramatically less safe, while the major cities of Algiers, Constantine, Oran and Annabe (where the rich live) are relatively safe. This condition allows defenders of the government's anti-terrorism efforts to claim that the army and the security forces have in fact provided extensive protection to most of the country, and especially to major urban centers."

Haq continues:

"The relative safety of Algerie Utile has allowed the regime to present itself as winning the war on terrorism and isolating the Islamists while building a stable democracy."

But, as Haq points out, it's all a deception; it's all a lie. What Algeria has done - like the rest of America's client states all across the world - is to build democracy for the richest 10 percent of the population while excluding the other 90 percent - the poor. It's kind of like what Southern whites in the south used to do to blacks: democracy for the whites, something much less than democracy for the blacks. Algeria is a Potemkin world of illusion and fantasy - one that presents itself to the West as a world of affluence and safety in the rich enclaves of Algiers, Constantine and Oran, but behind the facade of affluence in the country's major cities is a world of abject poverty and hopelessness. The West sees Algiers and Oran; the Islamic world sees Bentalha, Sidi Rais and other villages and towns like them; problem is, 90 percent of the population live in them, while only 10 percent of the population live in Algiers and Oran.

The poor are kept "off balance" and unable to organize themselves through the ruthless use of death squads which aim at killing off all their leaders [as well as their families and loved ones (even their children and tiny babies) as a warning to the adults as to what will happen to their families if they even think of associating themselves with the FIS].

It is a ruthless and barbarous two-tiered system where those who successfully link themselves to the American New World Order System are amply rewarded, and those who fail to do so are DEMONIZED as "Muslim fanatics" (which is what's happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, etc.) or as COMMUNISTS and SOCIALISTS (which is what's occurring in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, etc.) or as THUGS (which is what's transpiring in the Congo, Angola, Ghana, Sierra Leone, etc.) - people who - according to the elites - deserve to be hunted down and slaughtered like brute beasts and animals.

God help those Christians who ally themselves with this EVIL system. There will be hell to pay someday!

More next time!

Until then, God bless you,

S.R. Shearer,
Antipas Ministries