What is clear is that they were afraid the hostage-takers were escaping towards the Libyan border 60 miles away, and were determined not to let them. For years, Algeria fought a vicious civil war at a cost of 200,000 lives against Islamists, some of whom, after their eventual defeat, morphed into a branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and carried on a local insurgency. In the last decade, a few hundred militants have managed to survive despite the vaunted strength of the Algerian army, something that has itself given rise to conspiracy theories about Algeria's relationship with them.