In the campaign headquarters of Moulod Hamrouche, one of the leading ex-candidates, adrenaline-charged campaign staff manned the phones and faxes beneath blank result-charts, working desperately to pass word of the pull-out to all the campaign offices across Algeria's vast desert hinterland.

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This has followed the move by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) to change its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and begin a new campaign of violence in Algeria.

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He was then sent to Algeria where he led the "irregular" counter-insurgency campaign against the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the 1957 Battle of Algiers.

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