Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412300080
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Even trickier is the background to the terrorist outrage, in which four Algerian extremists killed three passengers and may have planned to blow up the plane to dramatize their cause.
This was a brutal act in a civil war between increasingly radicalized Islamic fundamentalists and Algeria's authoritarian quasi-military government. The war holds difficult, complicated implications for the spread of democracy.
On the one hand, the West has to worry about the ascension of a strict Muslim regime in Algeria. Among the concerns: stability of oil and gas supplies for Europe, and stimulation of Islamic movements elsewhere, especially in Egypt. The examples of Iran and Sudan, now suffering under radical Islamic governments, are not encouraging.
In their escalating violence against the Algerian regime, rebels have ordered foreigners out of the country on the grounds of their corrupting influence, and have begun murdering those who remained. Four European Catholic priests were killed within hours of the rescue in Marseilles. Extremists also have attacked secular members of the middle class and intellectuals. The rebels are no friends of democracy or tolerance.
On the other hand, civil war has broken out in part because the Algerian government in 1991 annulled elections in which the Islamic fundamentalists won a plurality. Government actions since then - banning the Islamic Salvation Front, arresting its leaders and conducting a violently repressive campaign against Islamic groups - have only further radicalized the opposition and invited more violence.
If free elections were held today, the fundamentalists likely would win. Well-organized at the grass roots, outspoken against corruption, they better express the popular will. And the current regime is as unpopular as it is ineffective.
At issue may be not whether the government can survive, but when and under what circumstances it will fall. The more significant struggle may be not between the government and fundamentalists, but between radicals and moderates among the Islamic forces.
All of which is a reminder that democracy's millennial march across the globe is not always simple or straightforward. But that is to be expected.
This year's annual report of the human-rights group Freedom House hails seven new democracies among the community of nations, bringing the total to 114. The United States and other democracies, such as France, have sometimes preferred pro-Western dictatorships to popular anti-Western governments. But the the spread of democracy is, in the long run, the best assurance of freedom, peace and prosperity everywhere.
Hitler, it will be noted, came to power as a result of popular elections. Democracy requires respect for rights as well as regular balloting.
Even so, the interests of democracy are better served by allowing a terrible government to come to power in an election, if the alternative is for the same group to seize power in a spasm of vengeance and civil collapse that overthrows even the framework and forms of constitutionality. Much of the radicalism in Algeria, it should not be forgotten, can be traced to the bloody revolution against French colonialism. And in Iran and Sudan, Islamic regimes took power, respectively, by violent revolt and military coup.
For terrorism there can be neither excuses nor tolerance. If others helped plan this week's hostage-taking and murder, they should be tracked down and punished, and their cause should not be advanced. Others should keep in mind, however, that the best antidote to terrorism is democracy.
by CNB