NEWS ANALYSIS : Algerians Losing Patience With Moderate Approach : Politics: Assassination may signal beginning of open conflict as militants take over agenda for change.

Five months after a coup ended Algeria’s democratic experiment, the North African state now faces the prospect of open conflict following the assassination Monday of Mohammed Boudiaf, the head of its ruling council.

The daring murder clearly marks a political threshold in Algeria’s escalating crisis. Militant activists appear to be replacing the moderate Muslim forces that have led the drive for political and economic change over the past year, according to U.S. analysts.

“We’re entering a period when militants are defining the agenda--and implementing it as they see fit,” said John Entelis, an Algerian specialist at Fordham University. “After a year of trying to operate by the rules and getting no place, there are now a lot of angry and frustrated people out there who no longer believe moderation works.”

Beginning with reforms pledged in 1988, Algeria had symbolized the boldest attempt to introduce democracy in the Arab world, the last and largest region to hold back from global shifts toward political pluralism. In a region historically prone to violent change, Algeria’s phased transition was also notable for the attempt to use ballots rather than bullets.

The democratization process began to break down, however, when a military-led coup in January suspended the first free, multi-party elections--mainly to avoid a sweeping victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), one of more than 50 new parties joining the elections and the largest of several Islamic groups. At least 8,800 activists were subsequently arrested, and FIS was outlawed.

Ironically, the Algerian junta may now face the same kind of underground campaign that it waged 30 years ago against French colonial rule.

Both Administration and private analysts believe that the Boudiaf assassination will almost certainly be followed by mass arrests and a wave of repression against the Muslim activists--whether or not they are responsible for the attack. The junta will use many of the tactics adopted by the French against Algerian nationalists in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In turn, the crackdown, they predict, will further radicalize the general public and provoke an intense reaction from Muslim and pro-democracy forces in the form of attacks on the junta--again imitating the pattern of the independence war.

As Algerian society is polarized, the core of anti-government forces may also expand in the months ahead, they predict. The crisis atmosphere has been exacerbated by the junta’s inability to deal with growing economic problems.

“Even those who don’t like the Islamists are not very happy with the government,” said a U.S. official. “The conflict may be defined by the split between the military and the Islamists, but most of Algerian society is now involved.”

Several Mideast experts predict that the crisis will eventually break down into a classic pattern for Third World conflicts.

“The Islamists don’t have a large enough military structure to challenge the army in a full-scale civil war,” said Fordham’s Entelis. “But they do have the ability to target security personnel to show that the state doesn’t have control over the political situation.”

Over time, the junta’s credibility and its ability to survive will be seriously eroded--just as France was unable to hold out.

The current conflict could also be just as important as Algeria’s eight-year guerrilla war against France in setting precedents for the Islamic movement in the Mideast and the broader Muslim world.

In the 1960s, the war against colonialism set the precedent for independence in dozens of Third World countries. In the 1990s, a new conflict could set the precedent for how the Arab world deals with both democracy and Islam.

“What happens in Algeria will definitely affect the rest of the Arab world directly and other Muslim countries indirectly over time,” said a military specialist. “A lot of very nervous governments are now watching Algeria very closely.”

A U.S. regional specialist noted that other Arab governments may back away from political change for fear that democracy will open the way for Islamic parties or a repeat of Algeria’s crisis.

“The message that the Moroccans, the Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Jordanians, the Gulf states and others will draw is that the cost of democracy is too high and that clamping down is the right way to avoid Islamic activism,” the specialist said.