DELLYS Algeria (Reuters) - In this Algerian town on a rocky outcrop sticking into the Mediterranean Sea, al Qaeda recruiters find work for idle hands.
Local officials say that Islamist insurgents, fighting a lingering conflict with Algeria's security forces, are targeting the town's small army of unemployed young men and persuading some of them to join their ranks.
If before in this long-running conflict people were motivated to join the insurgency mainly by ideology or religious fervour, now money is the biggest recruiting tool.
It is a phenomenon which presents a challenge to the authorities not just in Dellys, a town of 30,000 people about 100 km (60 miles) east of the capital, but across Algeria.
After over a decade of fighting the militants have been reduced to a dwindling hard core but analysts say that if the government does not get to grips with widespread unemployment, that could hand the rebels an opportunity to carry on the fight.
"As long as the youth find no jobs and no occupation, al Qaeda will continue to hire new recruits," said Hamid Ghoumrassa, a security analyst with the El Khabar newspaper.
Dellys used to be an insurgent stronghold. At the height of the violence in the 1990s the militants killed tens of people every week here, often beheading them.
Since then the killings have subsided dramatically, but the militants have not disappeared -- as demonstrated by a spate of attacks in the area over the past few weeks.
Asked where the insurgents find their recruits, an official in the Dellys mayor's office replied: "Look around you".
Young men are everywhere on the town's streets. Some sell cigarettes. Others just sit for hours on street corners.
They are a reflection of the national unemployment figures: officially 10.2 percent are jobless, and 73.4 percent of the unemployed are below 30 years of age. Independent estimates put the overall unemployment figures much higher.
Jobless men are such a common sight that Algerians have a phrase for them: "hittistes", derived from the Arabic word for a wall, because they spend their days leaning against walls.
