The terrorist attacks in Algiers on 11 December once again force us to face questions about the motives of the perpetrators. Are they really fighting for a cause, as they claim, or are they psychopaths determined to cause bloodshed and wreak destruction? The targets of the attack in Algiers, the way it was carried out and the horrific consequences suggest the latter. The twin bombings in the Algerian capital were an example of maniacal sadism. They singled out two symbols of humanitarian values. The first, the Supreme Constitutional Court, was struck when a vehicle laden with explosives crashed into a school bus, killing and wounding, among others, dozens of women and children. The second target was the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees, charged with overseeing programmes intended to help the displaced persons temporarily accommodated at the Haidara housing complex. This bombing, too, took a heavy toll: it claimed 50 dead and wounded more than a hundred. Among the victims were UN staff whose only crime was wanting to help the poor and displaced. Why do terrorists target places that symbolise peace, justice and the better side of human nature? Is it hate? Stupidity? Depravity? Or is it simple opportunism? Such places are, after all, easy targets. They allow for maximum carnage. A group that now calls itself Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) -- formerly known as the Salafist Group for the Calling and Combat -- claimed responsibility for the twin attacks, each carried out by a suicide bomber driving a truck carrying 800 kilogrammes of explosives. The Salafist group, determined to be in the vanguard of extremist violence, had broken away from the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front. It makes no distinction between locals and foreigners, or between civilian and military targets. AQIM issued a statement saying it had targeted "the dens of international infidels" in revenge for the shooting of one of its leaders by Algerian security forces and to remind the occupiers of Muslim lands that they should accede to the demands of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Any connection between "international infidel dens" and the Algerian Supreme Court and the UN High Commission for Refugees is clearly a fiction that exists only in the terrorists' deranged minds. They are minds so pathologically sick they couldn't see the truth if it hit them in the face. The Supreme Court is a symbol of justice, there to protect the rights of all, including criminals, even when they are members of terrorist groups. The UN Commission for Refugees provides aid and succour and a new place to live to people who have been driven from their homes by war and conflict. Terrorist operations against institutions of this sort fail to convince even the most naïve of people that their perpetrators possess either a credible creed or a just cause. If they succeed in anything it is in discrediting the claims and pretences behind which terrorists seek to hide, throwing into relief a vile opportunism and the lack of morality that afflicts all terrorists, regardless of their purported beliefs. The true fighter for a cause is one who abides by codes of honour and by humanitarian principles. The closer he adheres to such codes and principles in pursuit of his aims the greater the support and sympathy he will win for his cause. Mass murderers who parade beneath ideological slogans in order to decimate civilian targets and shed the blood of innocent people pose a great danger to the ideas and principles for which they claim to be fighting. Every bomb or bullet they fire against defenceless men, women and children rebounds against those ideas and principles, strengthening their enemies and exposing the pathetic folly of terrorism.
