The warning by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the Algerian president, delivered to a national conference on youth some months ago could not have been more stark. If Algeria failed to offer its young hope for a better future with brighter prospects, then there would be many more suicide bombings. The president was referring to a series of attacks in the capital and elsewhere by a militant group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, or AQM.
The bombings revived memories of Algeria’s civil conflict in the 1990s which pitted armed Islamic militants against the security forces in a ruthless confrontation marked by atrocities committed by both sides.
