By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

A LIST OF LARA MARLOWE'S DATELINES since she joined TIME in 1989 reads like a gazetteer of the globe's hot spots: Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia, the Gaza Strip, Azerbaijan, Somalia, Zaire and, for the sixth time, Algeria. Her story this week on the fierce struggle between the Islamic fundamentalists and the Algerian government is a rare and gripping look at a nation many feel is the most dangerous in the world, especially for Westerners.

In Algeria, says Marlowe, "you're not worried about artillery shells or snipers but about the guy who might shoot you point blank or slash your throat while you're sleeping." Three times--once at night--Marlowe ventured out on tense patrols with the "ninjas," the country's masked paramilitary police. It is the only way to see Algiers' most violent areas. On the fourth day, she worked in her hotel while photographer Abbas accompanied the ninjas. His group was ambushed by remote-control bombs, severely damaging an armored vehicle but, fortunately, injuring no one.

Ironically, Marlowe feels at home in Algeria. It reminds her of Beirut, where she lives with her husband Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper the Independent. "Like Lebanon," she says, "Algeria is marked by French as well as Arab culture. Both countries have been tugged back and forth, and the resulting identity crises led in both cases to war."

A native Californian, Marlowe has an education ideally suited for a foreign correspondent, with a B.A. in French from UCLA, a master's in international relations from Oxford and a year of study at the Sorbonne. She speaks French and Arabic. Among Lara's greatest assets are her intrepidness and versatility. Says chief of correspondents Joelle Attinger: "With Lara, you know you'll get the story. She's an incredibly quick study, an acute observer and rigorously fair." As Marlowe puts it, "I've learned how crucial it is to show that I don't take sides. In a civil war, people become irrational. They no longer want to consider the other's point of view."

Accordingly, on this latest foray, Marlowe not only interviewed official sources but also sought out ordinary Algerians. When she phoned the mother of a friend who had fled the country, the woman begged her not to visit. "She was afraid I'd get killed, and it would be her fault," says Marlowe. "But when I showed up at her apartment, she threw her arms around me and cried."