assassinations, alongside 18,000 people, 'disappeared' and presumed killed in secret. This would give a total death toll of around 44,000 people. This is out of a population of about 25,010,000 in 1990 and 31,193,917 in 2000. Use of children Throughout the war children were recruited frequently by the armed groups fighting the government. A government-allied militia—the Legitimate Defence Groups (LDG)—also used children, according to some reports. Although the rules for joining the LDG were the same as the army, in which only adults were recruited (by conscription) the LDG applied no safeguards to ensure that children could not join up. The extent of child recruitment during the war remains unknown. Analysis and impact Factors that prevented Algeria from following in the path of Saudi Arabia and Iran into an Islamic state include minority groups (army rank and file, veterans of the War of Independence, the secular middle class) that threw their support with the government, and Islamist supporters that lost faith with the Salafi Jihadis. Unlike in Iran, the army rank and file stayed on the side of the government. Veterans of the War of Independence known as the "revolutionary family" felt its privileges directly tied to the government and supported the regime. Also unlike in Iran, the secular middle class remained firmly in support of the government. Branded as "sons of France" by the jihadis, they feared an Islamist takeover far more than they hated the corruption and ineptitude of the FLN government. The part of the middle class who supported the FIS supported the jihad against the government at first. However, living in GIA-controlled areas, cut off by the security forces, they suffered from extortion from less-than-disciplined young jihadis demanding "Zakat". Business owners abandoned the GIA to support first the AIS and eventually the government-approved Islamist Hamas or Movement of Society for Peace party. The young urban poor themselves whose 1988 October Riots had initiated reforms and put an end to one-party rule, was "crushed as a political factor". At least at first, the "unspeakable atrocities" and enormous loss of life on behalf of a military defeat "drastically weakened Islamism as a whole" throughout the Muslim world, and led to much time and energy being spent by Islamists distancing themselves from extremism. In Algeria the war left the public "with a deep fear of instability" according to Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud. The country was one of the few