The French authorities have reacted cautiously to speculation that the bomb outrage in the Paris metro on Tuesday evening was the work of Algerian militants. The odds, for political and forensic reasons, are that it was, and that the French, once again, are paying the penalty for the muddled relations of their leaders with their former North African colony.
It is a situation that France, with its large and increasingly restive North African population, is ill equipped to deal with. Right wing extremism has sharpened racial sensitivities and the ambivalence of the official response has not helped to curtail the sense of alienation, particularly among the young, in the under resourced slums where many people of Arab origin live. To hunt down the sophisticated and highly trained killers responsible for this week's bomb will bed as difficult as it was to track the perpetrators of the series of terrorist attacks last year.
There is little chance that the large scale security operation mounted immediately in Paris and other major cities and at frontier posts, will put an end to the attacks though it may help to calm the current mood of public apprehension. At the initial stages, a high profile display of activity is a political necessity, but questions are being asked about the ability of the authorities not only to respond to terrorism but to neutralise it in advance.
Any long term solution, in a vulnerable and open society, depends not on intensifying repressive measures against terrorists and their suspected accomplices, and imposing restrictions from which everyone suffers, but on helping to change the political conditions responsible for the attacks. There is nothing fortuitous about the latest outrage, which followed last week's constitutional referendum in Algeria increasing the powers of the military regime in its bloody war against the militant social and fundamentalist forces arrayed against it. It is difficult to see it as other than a calculated act of defiance and a declaration that the opposition is still in business.
In spite of the fact that the French government has many differences with the Algiers regime, its efforts to maintain political dialogue and strengthen economic links are seen by the most violent Algerian terrorist organisation, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), as justification for making France a target. France welcomed - and was rumoured to have encouraged - the military coup that annulled the sweeping electoral victors of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) five years ago; it gave it financial support and interned Algerian militants. All this has failed to recognise the moderating role French influence could and must exert to bring the destruction of society in Algeria to an end.
At various points in the last five years, a negotiated settlement between moderates in the government and opposition has been within sight, only to be frustrated by the die hards on each side. That remains a viable alternative to mass slaughter and repression if a dialogue is opened under international auspices. France, with its historic ties, has an historic part to, play in making the process possible.