Some kill women because they wear the hijab, or headscarf. Other women are targeted because they are intellectuals, because they work and because they are resolutely and unabashedly modern. Four young Algerian women lost their lives in three separate incidents. A second, Yamina Amrani, was pregnant when she was killed by eight men in her home in Tessala El-Mardja. These are not unique cases.
Women die day after day.
Rather it is intended to break the silence surrounding the agony of Algerian women. The present situation in Algeria is different from that of Egypt, Palestine and even Afghanistan. In these cases, although state authorities and their Islamist rivals are locked in battles for power, both sides pursue strategies and tactics in which barbarous treatment of women and children is more or less avoided. The hijab is now the supreme obligation. The treatment of women raises serious questions about the level of faith and Islamic behavior on the part of the protagonists in the civil war in Algeria.