In Algeria these days, attacks follow in quick succession. They are all, obviously, characterized by the number of dead and wounded they cause. The targets are always the same: the police, the military, and employees of foreign companies, as was the case yesterday for SNC-Lavalin's workers. A sign of the times? The terrorist network is proving to be far more resilient than the Algerian government asserts.

    In the course of the last five days and following as many explosions, 70 people have been killed and many more maimed. Apart from those who worked for the Montreal engineering firm, we are especially affected by the barely-eighteen-year-old youths who were assembling in front of a police recruiting office. When the al-Qaeda of Maghreb militants - for they are the ones responsible - are not attacking members of the security forces, they slaughter the wives and children of those security forces members, since they are all considered subject to takfir, or the Koranic concept that stipulates that any individual who collaborates with the "enemy" regime" is an apostate.

    With that in mind, this recent series of attacks confirms a renewed upsurge in violence, but also, even above all, the "reawakening" of the Salafist network in Algeria after a four, five year maximum, temporary suspension. In this history of sound and fury, there has been a before and an after. What? September 11, 2001.

    At the end of a civil war in which about 200,000 people perished during the 1990s, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) as well as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) had been seriously weakened. They were a mere shadow of what they had been the previous decade. It should be noted and remembered that these movements were strictly national. In other words, Algerian movements that brought together Algerians who were not grafted onto Saudi, Egyptian, or Moroccan networks.

    After having transformed the GSPC into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, more precisely after having sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the leaders of the Algerian subsidiary and of the Mesopotamian subsidiary performed what is customary in the economic universe: a merger. In the fall of 2004, Abdelmalek Drukdai and Abu Mussad Zarkaoui, then based in Iraq, signed an agreement.

    Immediately thereafter, training camps were built in Mauritania, that is, outside Algeria. Moroccans, Tunisians, Egyptians and others joined the ranks that up until then had been formed solely of Algerians. And what else? Finance sources were diversified. In short, they federated.

    After Zarkaoui's death and the American Army's change of strategy in Iraq, which resulted in a series of reverses for al-Qaeda, the network's bosses decided to repatriate a significant number of its militants. Some headed for Pakistan, others for Algeria. QED: veterans of the Iraq conflict are fighting in Algeria today.

    In the midst of all this jumble, here and there Libyan fingerprints have been discerned. Oh yes, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi has joined in the game. The cause or the reason for his indirect involvement in the Algerian chess board is simple: following his neighbor's example, Qadhafi aspires to the title of regional power. What is certain is that he doesn't want the influence of his rival on the Maghreb to be too pronounced.

    At its lowest, the Libyan's ambition most notably resulted in the following: in 2007, European tourists were kidnapped by al-Qaeda for ransom. What does our dear Qadhafi do? He liberates 90 imprisoned Islamists before any demands of that order had been formulated. In a word, Qadhafi busies himself at annoying Northern African heads of state.

    Between the GSPC's metamorphosis, the coalition with al-Qaeda, the addition of Mauritanians, Nigerians, Moroccans and others, the addition, above all, of Iraq war veterans, Qadhafi's intentional activism, and not forgetting the Algerian authorities' hesitations, its goes without saying that the proceedings of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb will continue to increase. Especially while President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his ministers give the impression of being on quite different wavelengths.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.