By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Armed might alone won't defeat Algeria's al Qaeda militants, and they will fight on until the state offers hope to a war-weary society seeking jobs, homes and a future, an expert on the country's violence said on Wednesday.

"There will be more attacks, and the targets will likely be officials, public personalities and military personnel," Liess Boukra, who has lectured the OPEC member country's military officers on terrorism, said in an interview with Reuters.

Pro-al Qaeda preachers could persuade more young men to become suicide bombers like the ones who killed 57 people last week if the state fails to wage a battle of ideas and counter an entrenched social malaise, the academic and author said.

"Military means are simply not enough. At the end of the day, terrorism has an important political and ideological aspect that you must take into consideration if you want to defeat it."

Social factors like unemployment, anger, resentment and exclusion were "facilitators" of violence.

"The youth are fed up. They want change. They want jobs, and all they see is talk, not action. Tens of young men are crossing the sea daily seeking a better future in Europe."

Algeria is recovering from more than a decade of violence that began in 1992 after the then army-backed government scrapped legislative elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win.

The violence has fallen since the 1990s, but it has lingered on and this year regained a little of its old intensity.

Citing "defence of Islam and the Islamic nation", al Qaeda's north Africa wing said it was behind Saturday's suicide truck bombing at a coast guard barracks in Dellys east of Algiers and an attack in Batna town less than 48 hours earlier.

The bloodshed troubles Algerians because it coincides with a deteriorating social climate in which many feel the state has failed to provide more houses or jobs or prevent price rises for basic commodities despite a petrodollar bonanza.

The violence also worries neighbours Tunisia and Morocco, both of which have seen a revival in violence by armed groups in the past 12 months, although it has not been on anything like the same scale.

Some 75 percent of Algeria's under 30-year-olds are unemployed and despite a government pledge to build a million new homes by 2009 cries for more housing can be heard everywhere.

Al Qaeda said President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was the intended target of the bomb in Batna, but the bomber was forced to detonate his device prematurely after being discovered.

One of the attackers in the port of Dellys was a mere 15 years old, his relatives told reporters.

Boukra said the young man was "ideologically trained and politically brainwashed by an imam in one of Algiers' mosques."

"Being poor or jobless doesn't imply you'll become a terrorist," but extremist imams can find a receptive audience for propaganda in a social environment of hopelessness, he said.

Boukra added that al Qaeda had nothing to lose after its leadership rejected a series of amnesty offers made by Bouteflika in recent years. "Rebels who are still fighting will never give up, particularly now that they are working under the leadership of Osama bin Laden," the academic said.

"The problem in fighting terrorism in Algeria is quite simple. The military has done a good job, but not the politicians. As long as you don't address political and ideological sides of the problem you won't succeed in your war against terror," he said.

"It explains why fundamentalism is still present in Algerian society."

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