The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) aligned itself with Osama bin Laden in September 2006 and in January 2007 assumed a new name to reflect its new regional (and potential global) reach - Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The new and more lethal entity is striking at the core of the defender of state authority - the country’s security and military apparatus and several other key targets. This has been pulled off with devastating consequences, through increasingly eroding national security which has been fragile since the 1990s.

The start of 2008 has seen a worrying increase in the number of attacks. Suspected Islamist rebels killed five soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy east of Algiers in early January 2008, while a car-bomb attack on a police station killed two people and wounded 23 in a town east of the capital at the end of January 2008.

According to security forces, nine government troops were killed in Algiers on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 May 2008 in two separate attacks blamed on Islamic extremists. Six died in an ambush allegedly carried out by armed members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), while the soldiers were in a truck patrolling Medea province, 90 km’s southwest of Algiers.

Three others were killed on Monday 12 May 2008 in another ambush allegedly set by the same group 120 km’s east of Algiers in Bouira province. The extremists halted the patrol trucks by planting two bombs in their path before opening fire, the sources said.

The attacks have proliferated as June 2008 progressed.

Six Algerian soldiers were killed and four others wounded in a bomb attack by Islamic rebels at the start of June 2008. The soldiers were returning to their barracks from an unspecified mission at the coastal village of Cap Djinet, about 40 km (20 miles) east of Algiers, when their convey hit a bomb planted by rebels.

On 4 June 2008, three bombs killed two people and wounded several others near a military barracks in Bordj El Kiffan area, about 25 km (15 miles) east of Algiers.

Two bombs exploded on 8 June 2008 a railway station east of Algiers, killing 12 people including a French engineer, diplomatic and security sources said. This attack was the third deadly strike in five days. The bombs went off at close intervals in the town of Beni Amrane in Boumerdes province, 50 km from the capital.

Eight soldiers accompanying the French person working for French water engineering company Rozele, two fire-fighters and an unidentified man also died when their convoy hit the bombs planted next to the station, according to one security source.

Algeria is increasingly becoming a treacherous theatre of operations for international companies. Several French firms working in Algeria sent home employees' families in 2007 when Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, called for the group's supporters in North Africa to "cleanse" their land of Spaniards and French.

Algeria is also increasingly seen as an important oil and gas supplier to European and US markets and due to its increasing centrality as an energy supplier to these markets, makes the threat of a continued increase in terrorism all the more worrisome.(2) The possibility of attacks on the country’s oil industry is likely to have the intended effect of further destabilising and crippling the country’s economy.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) may also seek to extend its operations to other countries in the region and could potentially target these countries’ lucrative tourist industries and potentially foreign industries operating in these particular countries, such as Morocco. Amidst growing fears that terrorist attacks are likely to continue, some 1,000 police officers are being mobilised in Algiers to ensure that the country’s beaches are secure against possible attacks from Islamic extremists. A plan is being devised by which 25 of the capital region’s 47 official beaches are to be secured.

Algeria’s once stable and relatively prosperous political period that began in 1999 appears to be coming to a violent end and once again the revolution is being led by the worst enemies of the state - well organised, radical extremist groupings with increasingly international ties.

(1) Gerrie Swart is Head Researcher: Conflict & Terrorism Unit. He is also a lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa, and a Research Associate with the Centre for International Political Studies, University of Pretoria (gerrie.swart@consultancyafrica.com).