Making Deals In The Casbah

This is not the time to explore the Casbah," counterterrorism specialist Brian Jenkins tells American clients who insist on visiting Algiers. That's an understatement: three years into a deepening civil war between Algeria's discredited military junta and Muslim fundamentalists, foreigners are targets. But the war years have also been the best time ever for outsiders to explore Algeria's vast, mostlyuntapped reserves of oil and natural gas. Taking advantage of economic liberalization, U.S. firms have won big government exploration and construction contracts in Algeria -- a shock to France, which long has treated the former colony as a fiefdom. Some 400 Americans remain in the country. And so far they've been lucky. Not a single one has been among the 80 foreigners killed in the last 14 months.

Or is it more than luck? The French are suspicious of Washington's efforts to avoid repeating its catastrophically one-sided policy toward the Iranian revolution. In a search for moderate Islamists -- and for an identity as something other than "the Great Satan" -- U.S. diplomats have met repeatedly with members of Algeria's outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS); one exiled leader of the group was permitted to base in Chicago, over French objections. Washington's policy got a boost last week, when secular and Islamic Algerian opposition politicians joined together in Rome to propose a ceasefire and steps toward new elections. Resentful, many French across the political spectrum are murmuring that the White House cut a deal to protect U.S. interests and citizens in Algeria -- the kind of "pragmatic" policy that the French themselves have been known to pursue with Mideast militants. "It's no secret that our [American] allies support the [fundamentalist] Islamic Salvation Front," said Figaro Magazine, a conservative weekly. "Is it surprising that not a single American has been assassinated?" The left-leaning weekly L'Evenement du Jeudi charged that "if the fundamentalists come to power it will be thanks to -- and accompanied by -- Uncle Sam."

But the American firms in Algeria say they're simply betting that whoever wins the war will need to bow to the same imperative: maximizing oil revenues. "They've got a tough hill to climb no matter who is running the country," said Bruce Stover, who spent three years in Algeria launching the first new U.S. venture there, a successful exploration and drilling project by Houston's Anadarko Petroleum Corp. "It would be naive to say this will be another Iran just because they take over." Although FIS officials say they wouldn't be bound by contracts signed after 1992, they also want to place oil installations off-limits from attack. At the Rome conference, talks spokesman Abdennour Ali Yahia made a point of saying the priority should be to end all attacks not only on civilians but also on "the economic patrimony of the country."

Do the Americans enjoy the same kind of immunity? U.S. officials don't dismiss the possibility that the terrorists want to divide the allies by targeting the French and sparing Americans. But nobody's banking on that, partly because the Islamic opposition has become so splintered that no single figure speaks for it. And Algeria's gunmen don't check passports. "A foreigner is a foreigner," said Stover. He said the U.S. firms have moved every employee they can away from Algiers. "We try to keep a low profile and go about our business," he said. That may be America's best hedge against acquiring a new Muslim enemy.