Military Internal Conflict behind Algeria Hostage Crisis

Geneva, Feb. 18 (Jiji Press)--Internal conflict within Algeria's military regime may have motivated last month's hostage crisis in the African nation that led to the deaths of 10 Japanese nationals and other foreign citizens, the head of a Geneva-based human rights group says. "It seems that there are some internal problems within the military leadership," Mourad Dhina, an Algerian native and executive director at the Alkarama Foundation said in a recent interview with Jiji Press. There must have been a plot in which one group in the regime was "trying to discredit the other one by allowing this thing to happen," Dhina said, pointing out that no gas plants had been attacked by antigovernment forces even at the height of the country's civil war despite their strategic value in terms of the oil business. Many people see "some kind of collaboration from some units in the army or security services" in the incident at the natural gas complex in In Amenas, Dhina said. The human rights group head observed there was little connection between the hostage-takers and the international terrorist network al-Qaeda and that French military intervention into Mali against al-Qaeda-linked militants was not a sole reason for the incident. This is "not something which is linked to what happened in Mali exclusively, neither something which is linked to September 2011," he said, though the French intervention "probably was a trigger." Emphasizing "it's deeper in Algeria," Dhina said, "By all objective accounts, we can link it back to 1992," when there was a military coup which stopped an election, with the country tipping into civil war, terrorism, repression and massive human rights violations. Antigovernment groups with political agendas will attack foreigners because this brings more attention to the problem, Dhina explained. "We are not immune from other such attacks, and this is where Algeria sits at this stage," he said, adding that the country is "in a very unstable situation." Japanese were among the targets of the attack because they may have been seen to be supporting the military regime by providing expertise and doing business with it, Dhina said. He added, however, that it was unlikely that the Japanese were especially targeted. END