The Algerian Civil War occurred from 26 December 1991 to 8 February 2002 when various Islamist rebel groups rose in rebellion against the Algerian government in the aftermath of a military coup which negated the Islamic Salvation Front's electoral victory in 1991. The government nearly crushed the Islamic rebellion early into its existence, but the rise of jihadism led to Algeria teetering on the brink of state failure by 1994. By 1997, the jihadists' violence had lost popularity, and the Armed Islamic Group was crushed in 2002. Dissident Islamists began the Insurgency in the Maghreb in 2002.
Background[]
Islamization of urban Algeria[]
In the aftermath of the Algerian War and Algerian independence in 1962, the socialist and nationalist FLN party rose to power, dominating a one-party state for decades. However, a population explosion during the 1960s and 1970s led to the stagnant economy being unable to supply jobs, housing, food, and urban infrastructure to massive numbers of young city dwellers, and Algeria also suffered from a collapse in the price of oil (which made up 95% of Algeria's exports and 60% of the government's budget), corruption on a grand scale, and authoritarian rulership. During the 1980s, the FLN government imported the Islamic scholars Mohammed al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qaradawi to strengthen the religious dimension of the FLN's nationalist ideology, but the clerics instead promoted an "Islamic awakening" with support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf kingdoms. Local radical imams now became more influential, and the inflammatory preacher Mustafa Bouyali promoted application of sharia law and the creation of an Islamic state by jihad. From 1982 to 1987, Bouyali and his followers launched an insurgency against the government, but he was killed in 1987. At the same time, hundreds of Algerian youths left for Peshawar, Pakistan to train in Mujahideen camps and fight in the Soviet-Afghan War, and many of the Algerian Salafist jihadists returned after the Afghan Marxist government's overthrow.
In October of 1988, thousands of urban youth took to the streets of Algiers to protest the many social issues in the country, and the government responded by killing hundreds of protesters. During and after the riots, Islamists set about building bridges to the young urban poor, and the riots petered out after Preisdent Chadli Benjadid met with Islamist laeder Ali Belhadj and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. On 3 November 1988, the FLN amended the Algerian Constitution to create a multi-party democracy, and, on 18 February 1989, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was founded in Algiers. The party was led by university professor and independence war veteran Abbassi Madani (a moderately conservative leader) and the high school teacher and charismatic imam Ali Belhadj (a radical and firebrand preacher who opposed democratic rule and alarmed secularists and feminists with his speeches). The FIS soon garnered an enormous following in the urban areas, operating nurse and rescue teams during natural disasters and holding rallies in favor of early elections.
Rise of the FIS[]
On 12 June 1990, in the first elections held since Algerian independence, the FIS won 54% of the vote in the local elections, and it was seen as just, equitable, orderly, and virtuous in its administration and Islamic charity, contrasting with the corrupt and arbitrary FLN. However, it imposed the veil on female municipal employees, pressured liquor stores, video shops, and other un-Islamic establishments to close, and segregated bathing areas by gender. The party alarmed the educated French-speaking class, and Belhadj stated his intention "to ban France from Algeria intellectually and ideologically, and be done, once and for all, with those whom France has nursed with her poisoned milk." Devout FIS activists removed satellite dishes of households receiving French broadcasts and instead installed satellite dishes receiving Saudi broadcasts, and the party also advocated shifting the language of instruction from French to Arabic. During the Gulf War, the FIS held rallies in support of Saddam Hussein and Ba'athist Iraq, and Belhadj demanded that a volunteer corps be sent to aid Saddam in repulsing the UN liberation of Kuwait. The Algerian military was opposed to the FIS' growing radicalism, and the Algerian government decided to realign electoral districts to harm the FIS. This led to a general strike in May 1991, and, on 3 June 1991, a state of emergency was declared. Parliamentary elections were postponed until December 1991, and the FIS began to lose initiative, while Madani and Belhadj were both imprisoned. Bouyali's followers and returning Mujahideen fighters advocated for armed struggle against the secular government, and, on 28 November, a frontier post at Guemmar was attacked and the heads of army conscripts were cut off. On 26 December 1991, the FIS won the first round of the general elections, winning 118 deputies to the FLN's 16; the FLN appeared on track to win an absolute majority in the second round on 13 January 1992. The FLN's opposition to liberal democracy alarmed the western world, including the United States, which feared that an FIS government would be "one man, one vote, one time."
War[]
Start of the war[]
On 11 January 1992, the Algerian Army cancelled the electoral process and forced pro-reform President Chadli Bendjedid to resign; the exiled independence fighter Mohamed Boudiaf was called back to Algeria to serve as President. On 29 June 1992, Boudiaf was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Lambarek Boumaarafi, leading to the army arresting 40,000 FIS members and set up internment camps in the desert for them, as the country had run out of jails; bearded men feared to leave their homes lest they be arrested as FIS sympathizers. On 4 March 1992, FIS was banned by the government and its apparatus was dismantled. Of the few FIS activists who remained free, this amounted to a declaration of war, and remaining FIS activists and even more radical Islamists took to the mountains of northern Algeria with whatever weapons were available and became guerrilla fighters. In March 1993, a steady succession of university academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, and doctors were assassinated by the Islamists, as the young urban jihadists saw them as members of the French-speaking elite. The FIS failed to rein in the activities of the guerrillas, who killed 9 and injured 128 in the bombing of the Algiers airport. The regime began to lose control of mountain and rural districts, and, in working-class areas of the cities, insurgents expelled the police and created "liberated Islamic zones".
Rise of Jihad[]
The former soldier and longtime Islamist Abdelkader Chebouti founded the "Islamic Armed Movement" (MIA) immediately after the coup, and Belhadj gave the MIA his blessing from behind prison bars. In January 1993, however, Abdelhak Layada split from the MIA and formed the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which became prominent around Algiers and its suburbs and opposed both the government and the FIS. The GIA was less selective than the MIA, leading to security forces infiltrating the GIA and killing several of its leaders in rapid succession. In 1993, the GIA began a campaign of killing anyone associated with the government, including teachers and civil servants, as well as journalists and intellectuals. It also attacked civilians who refused to live by their prohibitions, and, in September 1993, the GIA declared war on foreigners, forcing almost all of them to flee the country or be killed. In May 1994, the Movement for an Islamic State (MEI), led by Said Mekhloufi, merged into the GIA.
In 1994, General Liamine Zeroual was named the new head of the High Council of State, and he favored negotiations with the rebels over their eradication. However, smaller leftist and feminist groups backed the "eradicator" faction of the army, and pro-government paramilitaries began attacking civilian Islamist supporters. On 10 March 1994, 1,000 Islamist prisoners escaped Tazoult prison and joined the guerrillas. In 1994, under Cherif Gousmi, the GIA eclipsed the FIS as the most high-profile guerrilla army, and, in July 1994, the MIA, remainder of the MEI, and smaller guerrilla groups formed the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), which was loyal to the FIS. The GIA, which sought to "purge the land of the ungodly", declared war on the AIS, and the two groups were locked in bloody combat. Inside the "liberated Islamic zones" of the insurgency, however, the voluntary "Islamic tax" transformed into an extortionist racket run by masked men who also fought each other over turf, and the pious business class fled the safe zones and ended their financial support for the Islamists, severely weakening the Islamist cause. On 26 August 1994, however, Gousmi proclaimed himself Caliph and "Commander of the Faithful", but Said Mekhloufi left the GIA a day later, claiming that the GIA had deviated from Islam. In August 1994, the GIA began a campaign of arson against insufficiently Islamist schools. At the end of October, the government announced that it had failed in its negotiations with the FIS, and Zeroual promoted eradicators within the army and organized self-defense militias in Algerian villages to fight against the Islamists.
Decline of the GIA[]
On 14 January 1995, the FIS leader Rabah Kebir and the leaders of other opposition parties agreed on the Sant'Egidio platform, which promoted respect for human rights and a multi-party democracy, rejection of army rule and dictatorship, recognition of Islam, Arab, and Berber ethnic identity as essential principles of Algeria's national identity, demand for the release of imprisoned FIS leaders, and an end to extrajudicial killing and torture on all sides; even Belhadj endorsed the agreement. Gousmi was killed that same year, and Djamel Zitouni succeeded him as GIA head. Zitouni expanded the GIA's operations to France, carrying out the hijacking of Air France Flight 8969 in December 1994 and several bombings and attempted bombings throughout France in 1995. Zitouni undermined the FIS by proving its irrelevance to the outcome of the war, but outsiders in America and Europe realized that the only force capable of stopping the terrorists was the Algerian government. The GIA continued its attacks in Algeria, carrying out car bombings and assassinations of musicians, sportsmen, unveiled women, police, and soldiers, and its base to the south of Algiers was nicknamed "the Triangle of Death." The GIA also assassinated FIS co-founder Abdelbaki Sahraoui in Paris; at the time, the strength of the guerrillas fighting the government was 27,000. In November 1995, during the presidential election (which Zeroual won with 60% of the vote), the GIA pursued a policy of "one vote, one bullet," killing anyone who voted. The pious middle class was disillusioned by the violence and racketeering of jihadist youth gangs, with the Islamist candidate Mahfoud Nahnah winning just 25% of the vote. The armed groups experienced a high desertion rate after the elections, and the GIA leadership went on to kill the FIS leaders who had joined the GIA, accusing them of attempting a takeover. Mustapha Kartali, Ali Benhadjar, and Hassan Hattab's factions now rebelled against Zitouni, and full-scale battles between the AIS and GIA became common after the GIA assassination of AIS commander Azzedine Baa in December 1995.
Fall of the GIA[]
In July 1996, Zitouni was killed by a breakaway ex-GIA faction, and Antar Zouabri succeeded him, proving to be an even bloodier leader. On 5 June 1997, the liberal and pro-Zeroual Democratic National Rally (RND) party dominated the parliamentary elections, followed by the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace. The government softened its stance towards the FIS, releasing Abdelkader Hachani and moving Abbassi Madani to house arrest. However, at the same time, Islamist guerrillas began a campaign of massacring entire villages and neighborhoods, indiscriminately killing hundreds. These massacres occurred from April 1997 through to the end of 1998, and the slicing open of pregnant women, the hacking to pieces or dashing against walls of children, the hacking off of men's limbs, and the kidnapping of young women as sex slaves destroyed the FIS and Islamists' popularity in rural Algeria. Zouabri claimed that those who had not joined the GIA's ranks were impious and were therefore killed as an "offering to God", and the GIA's cruelty led to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) splitting from the bloodthirsty GIA on 14 September 1998. On 21 September 1997, the AIS declared a ceasefire with the government and offered its cooperation in hunting down the perpetrators of the many massacres. The GSPC under Hassan Hattab based itself from the mountains west of Kabylie, while former GIA groups continued massacring innocents, engaging in banditry, and serving landowners as thugs to scare off illegal occupants. On 11 September 1998, President Zeroual resigned, and, on 15 April 1999, the army-backed FLN independence fighter Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected President with 74% of the vote in a fradulent election. On 5 June 1999, the AIS agreed to disband, and a number of Islamist prisoners convicted of minor offenses were freed. On 16 September 1999, the pardon was approved by referendum, and Islamist fighters such as Mustapha Kartali were allowed to resume their normal lives. On 11 January 2000, the AIS fully disbanded. Over the next few years, the GIA was slowly destroyed by army operations, having already suffered from splits, desertions, and criticism from all sides of the Islamist movement. After the 9/11 attacks of 11 September 2001, the US government supplied infared goggles to the Algerian Army and stepped up its support for its war on the GIA and GSPC.
Last embers of insurgency[]
With the GIA's destruction from 1998 to 2000, the GSPC was left as the most active rebel group. It continued a campaign of assassinations of police and army personnel in mountainous northern Algeria and expanded into the Sahara, with Amari Saifi kidnapping a number of German tourists in 2003 before being arrested in Chad. In 2003, the even more radical Islamist Nabil Sahraoui supplanted Hattab as GIA leader and announced his open support for al-Qaeda, strengthening US-Algeria ties. Sahraoui was killed shortly afterwards, and Abdelmalek Droukdel succeeded him as leader.
Also in 2003, Madani and Belhadj were released from prison, and, in the 2004 presidential election, Bouteflika was re-elected with 85% of the vote, confirming strong popular support for Bouteflika's policy towards the guerrillas. In September 1995, 80% of Algeria voted 97% to approve an amnesty for former Islamist fighters, and the law was adopted on 29 September 2006, providing immunity to surrendered ex-guerrillas (for all but the worst crimes) and army personnel. By 2005, anywhere between 44,000 and 200,000 people had died in the civil war.
Aftermath[]
The defeat of the FIS and GIA prevented Algeria from following in the path of the Iranian Revolution, as the army rank and file and secular middle class had wholeheartedly supported the government, something which had not happened in Iran from 1978 to 1979. The pious middle class came to support the Movement of Society for Peace party, while the young urban poor who had initiated the 1988 October Riots were crushed as a political factor. The Islamists' atrocities during the civil war drastically weakened Salafism in Algeria, and the people were left with a deep fear of civil instability; for this reason, Algeria was one of the few in the Arab world to not participate in the 2011 Arab Spring wave of protests and revolutions.