The explosions which killed 33 people and wounded more than 200 in Algeria last week are not isolated events but the culmination of a renewed campaign of violence there and in neighbouring north African states claimed by an extreme Islamic movement directly linked to al-Qaeda.
Understandably there are fears of a return to the horrific violence of the 1990s in Algeria when hundreds of thousands died in a previous confrontation between the armed forces and Islamic groups. If this is not to recur it is essential that the lessons learned then are not forgotten or overlooked.
A good deal is known about the group responsible for these latest atrocities. Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb was previously the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat founded in 1998, which in turn had direct continuity with the Groupes Islamiques Armés (GIS), an extreme movement linked to the US Afghan campaign in the 1980s. It has deep roots in the Sunni Salafist tradition and is influenced by Wahhabi fundamentalism which believes Muslims should live as they did at the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
It is decidedly a minority tradition, whether in terms of religious belief, popular following or its dedication to an outright campaign of violence against the Algerian state. It should not be confused with much larger Islamic movements arguing for involvement in the political system. These reformist parties have been regularly prevented from political participation by Algeria's ruling apparatus dominated by the armed forces - most notoriously in 1992 after they were banned ahead of elections, a decision which led directly to the violent revolt of that decade.
The dialectic between these three elements - extreme rejectionist Islamists, reformist ones and the dominant state regime - continues to determine Algerian politics. Despite efforts to incorporate the reformist Islamists in the political system it was announced last week that the main opposition party led by Sheikh Abdallah Djaballah is to be banned from participating in next month's legislative election because it has not held a party congress. He said this sends "a signal that there is no hope of changing things through peaceful political activity".
It suits the extremists to exploit such an opportunity for rejectionism. And while there is no excuse for these atrocities, which must be condemned and prevented, it would be wrong to overlook the state's responsibility for narrowing political options and restricting human rights and media freedoms as it pursues the extremist groups. The point applies in Tunisia and Morocco as well as Algeria, notwithstanding the substantial differences between these states.
They face a common challenge to manage a transition towards more open and democratic societies by subduing Islamist extremists without empowering more radicals or undercutting mainstream, moderate Muslim movements from political participation. Their European neighbours have an interest in seeing them succeed, bringing greater stability to the Mediterranean area.