The road to Bainem is to be driven with caution, and only during the daytime: Islamist guerrillas have used the huge Bainem Forest, west of Algiers, as a staging ground for massacres in the Algiers suburbs and ambushes on motorists. The army tried to reassure residents that it was safe to vote in yesterday's local elections by announcing a major operation in Bainem Forest this week.
But there was little evidence of the much-trumpeted offensive yesterday: an army helicopter sputtering overhead; smoke from deep within the forest; army patrols in flak jackets and steel helmets. This seemed to reassure the people of Bainem, and by 10 a.m. 57 of 457 registered voters had cast their ballots at the Bainem Forest School.
Picturesque villas stand amid unsightly council housing in this seaside town of 10,000 souls. It has known its share of violence. Just a few weeks ago, 19 forest guards had their throats slashed on their way home from work. In the next town down the road, Bologhine, 17 members of two families were murdered.
But as he waited in the school courtyard-cum-polling station, Hamidou Djadoun, a candidate for town councillor from the virulently anti-fundamentalist Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), was most concerned about the abysmal quality of city administration.
A retired policeman, Mr Djadoun said he was going into politics "so that people will be honest and run the town properly".
His friend and election rival, Daoud Bourina from the National Liberation Front (FLN), was frank about Algeria's predilection for rigging elections. "If I have a chance to cheat I will," he admitted. "Any man would, in any country. We all want al kursi - the armchair of power."
In Algeria's last local elections, in June 1990, Bainem voted for the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Front for Socialist Forces. The government claims the nowoutlawed FIS started the civil war. "They were totally incompetent," Mr Bourina said.
"They changed the sign at the entry to the town," Mr Djadoun recalled. "They replaced our national slogan, `By the People and For the People', with a sign saying `Islamic Community' - as if all the towns in Algeria were not Muslim."
The candidates of the three biggest anti-fundamentalist parties were in a festive mood. Saad Fard, standing for President Liamine Zeroual's Rally for National Democracy (RND) - the party of government employees and the security forces - agreed with everything Mr Djadoun and Mr Bourina said. "As for terrorism," Mr Bourina added, "it doesn't come from our country. It was born in London." Mr Bourina's belief that Britain is fostering bloodshed in Algeria by giving asylum to Islamist activists is one often voiced by the government.
Echoing the rhetoric of the 1954-1962 war of independence against France, he mimicked the official rejection of foreign mediation, and the regime's suspicion of the West: "We have to wash our own dirty linen," Mr Bourina said. "Many countries are watching us with an evil eye. But the children of this country are here to defend it."
At Beni-Messous, on the far side of Bainem Forest in the Algiers suburbs, the mood was less cheerful, the voters fewer. A large gendarmerie base and several barracks stand on the ridge at BeniMessous. Yet it was here, between the walled complexes and the wadi leading into the forest, that 85 civilians were massacred on the night of September 5th-6th.
Mr Djamel Lardjane, a computer science professor and a candidate for the tame Islamist party, Hamas, blamed the massacre at Beni-Messous on "a dark force" which he would not name. He was not impressed by the manhunt going on in the nearby forest - "a campaign for public consumption" - he suspected. Like many Hamas members, Mr Lardjane once voted for the FIS.
In Beni-Messous also, the FIS won the last election. "Dark forces injected elements into the FIS to break the party," Mr Lardjane said. "It was a plot."
By participating in what he assumed would be flawed elections, Mr Lardjane was trying to rejuvenate Algeria. The generation that fought the war of independence have refused to cede power, a source of immense frustration to young Algerians. "We want our affairs to be run by younger people," Mr Lardjane (34) said.