US embassy cable - 05ALGIERS1534

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