ENGAGING ALGERIAN OPINION MAKERS ON TERRORIST

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ALGIERS 001534 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/18/2015 TAGS: KPAO KISL PREL PTER AG SUBJECT: ENGAGING ALGERIAN OPINION MAKERS ON TERRORIST ATTACKS AGAINST IRAQI CIVILIANS REF: A. ALGIERS 1386 ¶B. STATE 131453 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Marc J. Sievers, for reasons 1.4 (b) (d). ¶1. (C) As described Ref A, Embassy Algiers actively engages Algerian governmental, political, social, religious, and media figures on a regular basis. As part of our engagement, we actively encourage public denunciations of terrorist violence in general, and of attacks on Iraqi civilians specifically. The GOA has been supportive of the Iraqi Transitional Government, as it was of the Iraqi Interim Government, but Algerian officials have tended not to offer public condemnations of terrorist attacks in Iraq, in part probably due to concerns about the shakiness of popular support for GOA policy on Iraq. Public opinion, as best as we can gauge it, is torn between horror at attacks on Iraqi civilians and sympathy for Iraqi "resistance to occupation." There is also a tendency in the press to hold coalition forces responsible for Iraqi civilian deaths, based either on the argument that MNF-I and the ITG have failed to provide security for civilians, or on the argument that civilians generally lived securely in Iraq before Operation Iraqi Freedom. ¶2. (C) Charge raised the Baghdad suicide bombing that killed over two dozen children as well as the Musayib bombing that killed scores of civilians in a July 18 meeting with Presidential Chief of Staff Larbi Belkheir, and urged Belkheir to recommend that President Bouteflika condemn such horrendous attacks. Belkheir said he was sickened by the reports of both bombings, commenting that these were "mindless carnage" and "vicious attacks." He accepted a French non-paper containing the points transmitted ref B, but deflected Charge's request for a public condemnation by asking why MNF-I was unable to prevent suicide bombings. ¶3. (C) Charge and PolEc Chief also called on Dr. Abderrahamane Chibane, the president of the Algerian Ulama Association and former minister of religious affairs July 20 with the same message. After a lengthy discussion of Quranic texts condemning murder, Chibane suggested that suicide bombings could be justified in some cases, such as when Palestinians used them to "resist" an Israeli occupation armed with tanks and Apache helicopters, although he also said he accepted Israel's right to exist side by side with a Palestinian state. Regarding Iraq, Chibane said terrorist attacks on Iraqi civilians were unacceptable and similar to the terrorism that Algeria suffered from in the 1990s, but said he did not see the need for the Association of Ulama to issue a statement condemning them since Algerian imams always stressed the importance of respecting innocent lives in their Friday sermons. ¶4. (C) PolEc Chief July 20 encouraged the spokesman of the Movement of the Society for Peace (MSP),a moderate Islamist political party, to make supportive public statements. In response, MSP Spokesman Abdelmajid Menasra said that those who kill civilians in the name of Islam are terrorists, not Muslims. For this reason, statements against extremist violence were generally not useful. He estimated that one in a million self-identified Muslims was a terrorist, whereas better than 99 percent of Muslims were opposed to terrorism and violence. A true Muslim could not condone attacks on civilians, be it in Iraq, London, or New York. ¶5. (C) Menasra believed that Muslim youth were attracted to the Islamic extremists out of the misperception that America was at war with Islam, be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Palestinian territories. He thought it important that the United States improve its image in the Muslim world and suggested that the U.S. start by engaging the Muslim world in dialogue and showing support for moderate Muslims. Menasra said the attraction of Arab youth toward extremist thinking was also evidence of the great need for Arab political and economic reform. Extremist thinking was more attractive, in his view, to youth without jobs, hope, and the means to express their ideas. Noting that it was important to separate ideas based on fact from ideas based on fiction, Menasra offered to organize a small gathering of Algerian youth whom PolEc Chief could engage in dialogue. Although it had been some time since the MSP had issued a statement condemning the violence in Iraq, Menasra said he would provide PolEc Chief with copies of future statements in another effort to bridge the gap between our societies. ¶6. (C) Separately, Acting PAO spoke with Dr. Ammar Messaadi, the Dean of Islamic Studies at the University of Algiers. Although he agreed in principle that targeting civilians was forbidden by Islam, Messaadi thought only Islamic scholars in Algeria and the government could speak out forcefully against targeting civilians. However, he suggested that denouncing such practices would bring more attention to the extremists and serve to grow, rather than diminish, their following. He implied that ignoring extremist tactics was a better strategy. ¶7. (C) Acting PAO also approached political science professor and La Tribune journalist, Louissa Ait Hammadouche, about the issue. Hammadouche said Algerians view the Americans, even if our humanitarian intentions are noble, as a foreign invading force without popular support in Iraq. Algerians, in her view, believe the U.S. forces are no more loved in Iraq than French forces would have been had the French served as peacekeepers in Algeria during the 1990s. Algerians, therefore, view Iraqi civilian deaths as an outcome of the invasion itself. ¶8. (C) Embassy officers, as reported ref A, plan to increase their contacts with Islamic leaders. We will continue to press our interlocutors, religious and otherwise, to condemn terrorist attacks in Iraq, and elsewhere. SIEVERS