How Soon Until Algeria's Islamist Extremism 'Vaccine' Wears Off?

Despite being Africa's largest country surface-wise and having forty million inhabitants, which is much more than neighboring countries such as Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, Algeria has produced only a fraction of jihadists and Daesh supporters.

Only around 200 Algerians are estimated to have joined Daesh, as opposed to some 7,000 Tunisians and at least 1,500 Moroccans. Despite the fact that Algeria borders war-torn Libya, which in recent years effectively degenerated into a terrorists' breeding ground, the Islamic nation of Algeria both steered clear of the Arab Spring trend and has produced fewer Daesh recruits than many European countries, such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

At first, this may seem surprising. Algeria, which in recent decades has suffered from many conflicts, is not unfamiliar with religious extremism. When the Afghan War broke out in 1979, Algerian volunteers were among the first to be recruited to the Jihadi "resistance movement." Today, the situation is totally different.

According to political analyst Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, the main reason behind Algerians' lack of enthusiasm regarding violent extremism is the country's own experience with Islamist terror. The memory of the so-called "black decade" in the 90s lives on, and the Algerians want to avoid a repetition at all costs.

For ten years, from 1992 to 2002, the Algerians lived in a constant nightmare, which involved bombings and executions from a plethora of Islamist groups and brutal counter-attacks by the military. A total of 150,000 Algerians were killed, whereas over 7,000 went missing and one million were forced to flee their homes. Just like Daesh today, the Islamists claimed themselves to establish an "Islamic state." Incoming images of war from Syria and Libya, stir therefore up personal feelings among Algerians.

"The war left the country deeply traumatized. We still live with what happened and we feel strong fear that it will happen again," Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck told Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, arguing that Algerians in a way are "vaccinated" against Islamist extremism.

According to security expert Akram Kharief, Daesh's tactics to attract young people through social media have all but failed in Algeria.

"When we look at Islamists who have committed terrorist acts in Algeria in the past decade, we see that the average age is 39 years. We are thus dealing with the relics of the 90s, not new recruits," Akram Kharief told Hufvudstadsbladet.

In addition to "vaccinating" Algerians against radicalism, the time of troubles also hardened the country's Armed Forces. Today, the Algerian army is the region's most experienced and best-trained in fighting terrorism. Present-day Algeria is Africa's biggest arms importer and the first nation on the continent whose annual defense expenditure surpassed $10 billion. Additionally, Algeria is running a substantial police force of 209,000 men, which is larger than France's. Major resources are being spent on monitoring long desert borders to the troubled nations of Mali and Libya.

The regime, led by aging President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is not slow to exploit compatriots' fear of terror. In fact, this also became one of his best tools for staying in power. When Bouteflika ran for a fourth consecutive term in 2014, his election campaign was propelled by the slogan of "stability and continuity." Additionally, the country's imams were recently organized into a kind of trade union "to make Algeria immune to radical ideas from the outside." Journalist Faten Hayad from the morning newspaper al-Hayat advocated Sufism and Islamic mysticism as traditional opposites to extremism.

However, the idea that Algeria or any other country may become "immune" to radicalism is unlikely. According to Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, the vaccination effect from the 90s is wearing off with each passing year, as new generations are growing up without the painful experience.

Security expert Akram Kharief, who by his own admission watches about 50 Daesh videos every day to monitor the developments, ventured that the group has become "hugely sophisticated" and "much more capable."

Lastly, terrorist groups are still present in Algeria, most of which have links with al-Qaeda and its branches in Northern Africa. In 2013, 70 people were killed in a hostage situation at a gas plant in the desert town of In Amenas.