In Algeria, Islam’s Holy Month Is Killing Season

In most of the Islamic world, Ramadan is a time for piety, sharing and warm family gatherings.

But in violence-plagued Algeria, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar has turned into the killing season.

Massacres blamed on Islamic extremists took more than 300 lives in the days leading up to the start of Ramadan on Tuesday, according to Algerian newspaper accounts, and authorities announced Wednesday that 78 more people were slain in the first 24 hours of the Muslim fasting month.

“The Islamic terrorist groups believe that, before Ramadan or during Ramadan, they get closer to God when they carry out these terrorist acts,” said Djamil Benrabah, a human rights activist working with families of massacre victims.

The killings seemed to mark the beginning of another bloody Ramadan for the North African country. As many as 600 civilians have died during Ramadan in each of the past five years.

Hoping to reduce this Ramadan’s death toll, the government already has launched a “vigilance campaign,” urging people to stay away from trash bins and suspiciously parked automobiles where bombs may be hidden. The army also has set up extra roadblocks and increased patrols against terrorists around Algiers, the capital.

The three massacres late Tuesday and early Wednesday that left 78 villagers dead took place in the western province of Relizane, according to the Algerian Press Service, the official government news agency. The attackers were unknown.

Islamic extremists, banded together under various leaders or “emirs,” have been battling Algeria’s military-backed government since the cancellation of January 1992 parliamentary elections that the now-banned Islamic Salvation Front was set to win.

By conservative estimate, 65,000 people have died since then. Authorities blame most of these killings on the extreme Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, a loose-knit militia that has made grisly and grotesque massacres of unarmed civilians its hallmark.

Some critics of the government, however, have raised suspicions that elements of the security apparatus itself may have directed or even carried out some of the massacres as a way to punish its enemies and turn the people against the Islamist cause.

The struggle between the government and its Islamic foes ebbs and flows. Last year, authorities managed to impose a measure of security in the capital city. And since two notorious massacres in August and September outside Algiers, government troops have been stepping up pressure on militants hiding out in a nearby mountainous area that has been dubbed the “Triangle of Death.”

But recently, more and more extremist attacks have been taking place in the west and central regions of the country where government forces are less effective.

At a village called Safsaf, near the western port of Oran, masked men invaded a mosque, where a government-appointed imam was preaching Saturday, and shot and hacked to death 30 worshipers as they begged for mercy.

Attackers erected a false police checkpoint Monday near Mascara, in central Algeria, where they stopped a bus and killed its 14 passengers and the driver by slitting their throats or shooting them.

One Algerian journalist, speaking by telephone from Algiers on condition of anonymity, spoke of a general mood of hopelessness that has befallen the country of 28 million as it starts Ramadan.

Last year, she said, people still held out hope for a possible political solution. New parliamentary and local elections were held, and a unilateral cease-fire was declared by the Islamic Salvation Front’s armed wing, the Islamic Salvation Army. But so far nothing has brought an end to the violence.

One positive development is the crackdown on violence in and around the capital, she said. “This Ramadan, police have been more vigilant. They are very alert at night especially,” she said.

During Ramadan, which marks God’s revelation of the Koran to the prophet Muhammad, faithful Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk.

At night, it is customary for families to gather and stay up late with relatives, eating and relaxing. Another custom is to donate food to the poor for the meal after sunset that marks the end of the daily fast. But because of the violence, few Algerians dare venture out at night.

Benrabah said that, because the Algerian extremists believe they are performing God’s will, they have tended to become even more violent during the fasting month.

Having seen his own wife, a judge, gunned down by militants Feb. 27, 1995, Benrabah said he does not believe dialogue or democracy will ever deter people with such a fanatical mind-set.

“The only aim of these Islamists is to have a state based on Islamic Sharia [law],” he said. “They will use any means . . . [and] democracy contradicts the plans and aims of these people.”

But the Algerian journalist said the only way out of the country’s suffering is through political negotiations.

“It’s going to take time,” she said. “The solution lies in democracy.”