Age of Terror

BBC programme

"By the late 1980s, 40% of the country's population of 24 million were under the age of 15. Many were in school preparing for jobs that did not exist.

They became known as hittistes - "those who prop up walls" - as they had nothing else to do all day.

They were angry and frustrated, providing the rich soil in which a brand of militant, fundamentalist Islam could flourish.

Neighbourhood mosques became the focus for discontent with clerics building support not just through fiery sermons but through practical support, running soup kitchens and providing food, clothing and welfare.

In 1988, Algeria exploded in the month known as Black October. Ali Belhadj organised a demonstration of 20,000 Islamist supporters who were stopped in their tracks by the military that effectively ran the regime.

In the ensuing confrontation, the army shot dead 50 demonstrators. It was Algerian's equivalent of Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday or South Africa's Sharpeville and Soweto.

The fuse was lit. Algeria's intifada had begun, the launchpad for political Islam. "