Chadli Bendjedid (14 April 1929-6 October 2012) was President of Algeria from 9 February 1979 to 11 January 1992, succeeding Rabah Bitat and preceding Abdelmalek Benhabyles.
Biography[]
Chadli Bendjedid was born on 14 April 1929 in Bouteldja, French Algeria to a family of Sunni Muslim Algerians. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the French Army during the First Indochina War in Vietnam, but in 1954 he defected to the FLN when the Algerian War began; in 1964 he became the leader of the Constantine Military Region in Oran. Later, he monitored the border between Algeria and Morocco, the site of several border disputes. From November 1978 to February 1979 he was Minister of Defense, and on 9 February 1992 he was elected as President of Algeria as a compromise candidate following the death of Houari Boumediene and the acting presidency of Rabah Bitat. During his role, he eased the government surveillance of civilians and reduced the state's role in the economy, but this led to an economic crisis in the 1980s. In the 1988 October Riots, several hundred students were killed when the Algerian Army put down marches by protesters. He decided to implement a multi-party democracy to ease political tensions, allowing for the Islamic Salvation Front to run for office; in 1991 the Army launched a coup to prevent the FIS from gaining power, leading to the Algerian Civil War. Bendjedid died in 2012.