Algiers hemmed in by a barrier of steel

Presidential poll in Algeria: Massive operation mounted to prevent Islamist suicide bombers wrecking today's election; Robert Fisk goes on patrol with gendarmes whose job is to crush the fundamental ists

Algiers - "If they're going to do something, they'll do it today." Commandant Mohamed of Algeria's Gendarmerie Nationale said it without emotion, as if making a station announcement or forecasting uncertain weather.

The two policemen in the jeep with us checked their Kalashnikovs and stared through the windows. Algiers looked a pretty, deceptive city, floating above the Mediterranean, the walls smeared with election posters to remind us of why the day before polling could be the day that the Armed Islamic Group "do something".

We pulled to the side of the motorway near Harrache for a routine shake- down. Young men driving cars and vans were ordered out by the roadside, hands above their heads, papers checked, vehicles prowled over by the gendarmerie. A phalanx of armoured jeeps pulled up behind, their green- uniformed occupants running up the motorway embankments, spilling over into the ground beyond.

By the time I reached them, two officers were looking suspiciously at an abandoned ground-floor apartment. Commandant Mohamed looked at two gas cylinders standing beside the entrance. "Who put them there?" he asked. "Could be for a bomb. Why would anyone leave valuable things like gas cylinders sitting outside an abandoned home? What are they going to be used for?"

A gendarme peered at the bottles and shrugged. A couple of gas cylinders outside a Harrache flat didn't make an insurrection on the day before Algeria's presidential election. It was almost noon, and the flood of supposed Islamist suicide bombers had very definitely not put in an appearance; in fact, it was security that was flooding Algiers - police and paramilitaries and soldiers and plainclothes men on every street corner, every highway intersection. Soaked in security might be the right expression.

"I think things are better than when you were last here - people are tired of terrorism and they want to collaborate with the security forces more than they did," Commandant Mohamed said. There was no doubt whose side the good commandant was on. Policemen admire Liamine Zeroual, the president who is going to be re-elected today.

We cruised the streets for another half hour, past the near-deserted French embassy and the equally abandoned home of Abassi Madani, leader of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front. Near Bir Mouradis we were waved down by some of Commandant Mohamed's colleagues. One was holding a pistol. "We found it in that car," he said, pointing down the motorway to where two men - one in a business suit, the other in a black leather jacket - stood guiltily beside a black VW Golf. "He says he works for the Ministry of Justice, but he doesn't have a permit for the gun." The pistol was old, a Chinese 9mm. The metal felt grainy, as if it had just been dug up in a garden - which is evidently what the police officer suspected. Commandant Mohamed chatted to the better-dressed driver. He had an identification card showing he had permission to use the Club des Pins, the old nomenklatura watering hole outside Algiers; which clearly did not satisfy the commandant's definition of a "terrorist".

Exactly what did was more evident back in the Harrache barracks, where a chart of the gendarmerie's "anti-terrorist struggle" lists an impressive number of Armed Islamic Group (GIA) cells broken, its members killed or arrested. Between 24 April and last month, in the Harrache area alone, six "terrorists" were shown as dead, 30 arrested, including the local technocrat leader, Mounir Sellaoui. Police archives record much more fascinating details. Of a group called al-Fidah, which co-ordinates the assassination of intellectuals, files showed that one group specialised in money and communications.

Its members - a former tax inspector, a bank teller who was playing the international exchanges, a shopkeeper rejoicing in the name of Dumdum Bouelem and an estate agent renting to other comrades - sent faxes from an architect's home to Paris, Brussels and London. One fax to Britain this summer was addressed to an Algerian called Mohamed Denideni, while others co-ordinated the purchase of cars for the transport of explosives, cash and men. The GIA are no longer stealing cars - they are buying them, fitting out members with the real identification papers of long-dead citizens; the GIA has made a habit of seeking information about women whose babies died at birth - and adopting the identity of the dead children 21 years later, a kind of delayed rebirth for anyone seeking anonymity in the streets of Algiers.

But just who owned the white Renault 19 we heard about off the motorway at Dely Ibrahim, we still don't know. Commandant Mohamed's radio told the story. "It saw our checkpoint and turned round," the message said. "Why didn't you shoot at it?" "We did, but it got away." We raced down the ring-road. Algiers was being sealed off from the countryside, the police forming a cordon sanitaire for election day. The Renault had tried to break into the city. We reached the junction not that far from Chaibia - a village where the commandant and I were ambushed last March and there was the gendarme who had fired a machine-gun at the car.

"He went down there," he said, and pointed to a winding hill road. We chased after it, avoiding the man-hole covers - people put bombs under them - and breaking whenever we saw blue-uniformed city police patrols or soldiers. "Did you see a Renault 19 going through here at speed?" Commandant Mohamed would ask. And they all said they hadn't. We crunched up side roads, looking for suspiciously parked white cars. Every street, every intersection seemed to be filled with white Renault 19s. And we were watched all the time by crowds of idle, interested young men.

Of course, we never found the car. It had made a getaway back into the country. "Maybe he was a car bomb - we don't know," Commandant Mohamed said. "They are the greatest danger now. They are the only danger, but we're successful so far." By late afternoon, a phone call reached his office from downtown. "Nothing at all," Commandant Mohamed beamed with delight. Then, just to keep bad luck away, he added: "So far."