The Algerian Civil War (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية الجزائرية, romanized: al-Ḥarb al-Ahlīyah al-Jazāʼirīyah), known in Algeria as the Black Decade (Arabic: العشرية السوداء, romanized: al-ʻAshrīyah al-Sawdāʼ; French: La décennie noire), was a civil war fought between the Algerian government and various Islamist rebel groups from 11 January 1992 (following a coup negating an Islamist electoral victory) to 8 February 2002. The war began slowly; it initially appeared that the government had succeeded in crushing the Islamist movement, but armed groups emerged to declare violent jihad, and by 1994 violence reached such a level that it appeared the government might not be able to withstand it. By 1996–97 it had become clear that the Islamist resistance had lost its popular support, although fighting continued for several years after this.
The war has been referred to as "the dirty war" (la sale guerre), and saw extreme violence and brutality used against civilians. During the conflict Islamists targeted journalists, over 70 of whom were killed, as well as remaining ethnic European pieds-noirs still living in the country after independence, and foreigners, over 100 of whom were killed, although it is thought by many that security forces as well as Islamists were involved in targeting civilians, as the government had infiltrated the insurgents. Children were widely used, particularly by the rebel groups. Total fatalities have been estimated at 44,000 and at between 40,000 and 50,000.
The conflict began in January 1992, when the new and enormously popular Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party appeared poised to defeat the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party in the national parliamentary election in December 1991. The election was canceled after the first round; the military effectively took control of the government and forced pro-reform president Chadli Bendjedid from office. After the FIS was banned and thousands of its members arrested, Islamist guerrillas rapidly emerged and began an armed campaign against the government and its supporters.
They formed themselves into various armed groups, principally the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA), based primarily in the mountains, and the more hard-line Armed Islamic Group (GIA), based primarily in the towns. The GIA motto was "no agreement, no truce, no dialogue" and it declared war on the FIS in 1994 after the latter had made progress in negotiations with the government. The MIA and various smaller insurgent bands regrouped, becoming the FIS-loyalist Islamic Salvation Army (AIS).
After talks collapsed, a presidential election was held in 1995 and won by the army's candidate, General Liamine Zéroual. The GIA fought the government, as well as the AIS, and began a series of massacres targeting entire neighborhoods or villages, which peaked in 1997. The massacre policy caused desertion and splits in the GIA, while the AIS, under attack from both sides, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the government in 1997. In the meantime, the 1997 parliamentary elections were won by a newly created pro-Army party supporting the president.
In 1999, following the election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika as president, violence declined as large numbers of insurgents "repented", taking advantage of a new amnesty law. The remnants of the GIA proper were hunted down over the next two years, and had practically disappeared by 2002, with the exception of a splinter group called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which announced its support for al-Qaeda in October 2003 and continued fighting an insurgency that would eventually spread to other countries in the region.
The Algerian Civil War (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية الجزائرية, romanized: al-Ḥarb al-Ahlīyah al-Jazāʼirīyah), known in Algeria as the Black Decade (Arabic: العشرية السوداء, romanized: al-ʻAshrīyah al-Sawdāʼ; French: La décennie noire), was a civil war fought between the Algerian government and various Islamist rebel groups from 11 January 1992 (following a coup negating an Islamist electoral victory) to 8 February 2002. The war began slowly; it initially appeared that the government had succeeded in crushing the Islamist movement, but armed groups emerged to declare violent jihad, and by 1994 violence reached such a level that it appeared the government might not be able to withstand it. By 1996–97 it had become clear that the Islamist resistance had lost its popular support, although fighting continued for several years after this.
The war has been referred to as "the dirty war" (la sale guerre), and saw extreme violence and brutality used against civilians. During the conflict Islamists targeted journalists, over 70 of whom were killed, as well as remaining ethnic European pieds-noirs still living in the country after independence, and foreigners, over 100 of whom were killed, although it is thought by many that security forces as well as Islamists were involved in targeting civilians, as the government had infiltrated the insurgents. Children were widely used, particularly by the rebel groups. Total fatalities have been estimated at 44,000 and at between 40,000 and 50,000.
The conflict began in January 1992, when the new and enormously popular Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party appeared poised to defeat the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party in the national parliamentary election in December 1991. The election was canceled after the first round; the military effectively took control of the government and forced pro-reform president Chadli Bendjedid from office. After the FIS was banned and thousands of its members arrested, Islamist guerrillas rapidly emerged and began an armed campaign against the government and its supporters.
They formed themselves into various armed groups, principally the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA), based primarily in the mountains, and the more hard-line Armed Islamic Group (GIA), based primarily in the towns. The GIA motto was "no agreement, no truce, no dialogue" and it declared war on the FIS in 1994 after the latter had made progress in negotiations with the government. The MIA and various smaller insurgent bands regrouped, becoming the FIS-loyalist Islamic Salvation Army (AIS).
After talks collapsed, a presidential election was held in 1995 and won by the army's candidate, General Liamine Zéroual. The GIA fought the government, as well as the AIS, and began a series of massacres targeting entire neighborhoods or villages, which peaked in 1997. The massacre policy caused desertion and splits in the GIA, while the AIS, under attack from both sides, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the government in 1997. In the meantime, the 1997 parliamentary elections were won by a newly created pro-Army party supporting the president.
In 1999, following the election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika as president, violence declined as large numbers of insurgents "repented", taking advantage of a new amnesty law. The remnants of the GIA proper were hunted down over the next two years, and had practically disappeared by 2002, with the exception of a splinter group called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which announced its support for al-Qaeda in October 2003 and continued fighting an insurgency that would eventually spread to other countries in the region.
History
Background
Social conditions that led to dissatisfaction with the FLN government, and interest in jihad against it include: a population explosion in the 1960s and 70s that outstripped the stagnant economy's ability to supply jobs, housing, food and urban infrastructure to massive numbers of young in the urban areas; a collapse in the price of oil, whose sale supplied 95% of Algeria's exports and 60% of the government's budget; a single-party state ostensibly based on Arab socialism, anti-imperialism, and popular democracy, but ruled by high-level military and consisting primarily of French-speaking clans from the east side of the country; "corruption on a grand scale"; underemployed Arabic-speaking college graduates frustrated that the "Arab language fields of law and literature took a decisive back seat to the French-taught scientific fields in terms of funding and job opportunities"; and in response to these issues, "the most serious riots since independence" occurring in October 1988 when thousands of urban youth (known as hittistes) took control of the streets despite the killing of hundreds by security forces.
Islam in Algeria after independence was dominated by Salafist "Islamic revivalism" and political Islam rather than the more apolitical popular Islam of brotherhoods found in other areas of North Africa. The brotherhoods had been dismantled by the FLN government in retaliation for lack of support and their land had been confiscated and redistributed by the FLN government after independence. In the 1980s the government imported two renowned Islamic scholars, Mohammed al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to "strengthen the religious dimension" of the ruling FLN's "nationalist ideology". Rather than doing this, the clerics worked to promote "Islamic awakening" as they were "fellow travelers" of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies. Al-Ghazali issuing a number of fatwas (Islamic judicial rulings) favorable to positions taken by local "radical" imams.
Another Islamist, Mustafa Bouyali, a "gifted inflammatory preacher" and veteran of the Algerian independence struggle, called for the application of the sharia and creating of an Islamic state by jihad. After persecution by the security services in 1982 he founded the underground Mouvement Islamique Armé (MIA), "a loose association of tiny groups", with himself as amir. His group carried out a series of "bold attacks" against the regime and was able to continue its fight for five years before Bouyali was killed in February 1987.
Also in the 1980s, several hundred youth left Algeria for camps of Peshawar to fight jihad in Afghanistan. As Algeria was a close ally of the jihadists enemy the Soviet Union, these jihadists tended to consider the Afghan jihad a "prelude" to jihad against the Algerian FLN state. After the Marxist government in Afghanistan fell, many of the Salafist-Jihadis returned to Algeria and supported the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and later the GIA insurgents.
During and after the 1988 October Riots Islamists "set about building bridges to the young urban poor". Evidence of their effectiveness was that the riots "petered out" after meetings between the President Chadli Bendjedid and Islamists Ali Benhadj and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The FLN government responded to the riots by amending the Algerian Constitution on 3 November 1988, to allow parties other than the ruling FLN to operate legally. A broad-based Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was born shortly afterwards in Algiers on 18 February 1989, and came into legal existence in September 1989. The front was led by two men. Abbassi Madani—a professor at University of Algiers and ex-independence fighter—represented a relatively moderate religious conservatism and symbolically connected the party to the Algerian War of Independence, the traditionally emphasized source of the ruling FLN's legitimacy. His aim was to "Islamise the regime without altering society's basic fabric." Ali Benhadj, a charismatic preacher and high school teacher appealed to a younger and less educated class. An impassioned orator, he was known for his ability to both enrage or calm at will the tens of thousands of young hittiestes who came to hear him speak. However, his radical speeches and opposition to democratic rule alarmed non-Islamists and feminists. Neither Madani or Benhadj were committed to democracy.
In December 1989 Madani was quoted as saying:
We do not accept this democracy which permits an elected official to be in contradiction with Islam, the Shari'a, its doctrines and values.
and in February 1989, Benhadj stated:
There is no democracy because the only source of power is Allah through the Koran, and not the people. If the people vote against the law of God, this is nothing other than blasphemy. In this case, it is necessary to kill the non-believers for the good reason that they wish to substitute their authority for that of God.
The FIS made "spectacular" progress in the first year of its existence, with an enormous following in the urban areas. Its doctors, nurses and rescue teams showed "devotion and effectiveness" helping victims of an earthquake in Tipaza Province; its organized marches and rallies "applied steady pressure on the state" to force a promise of early elections.
FIS electoral victory, 1990
Despite President Bendjedid and his party, the FLN's new liberal reforms, in the 12 June 1990 local elections—the first free elections since independence—the Algerian voters chose the FIS. The party won 54% of votes cast, almost double that of the FLN and far more than any of the other parties. Its supporters were especially concentrated in urban areas.
Once in power in local governments, its administration and its Islamic charity were praised by many as just, equitable, orderly and virtuous, in contrast to its corrupt, wasteful, arbitrary and inefficient FLN predecessors. But it also alarmed the less-traditional educated French-speaking class. 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.
Co-leader of the FIS Ali Benhadj declared his intention in 1990, "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 activists removed the satellite dishes of households receiving European satellite broadcasts in favor of Arab satellite dishes receiving Saudi broadcasts. Educationally, the party was committed to continue the Arabization of the educational system by shifting the language of instruction in more institutions, such as medical and technological schools, from French to Arabic. Large numbers of recent graduates, the first post-independence generation educated mainly in Arabic, liked this measure, as they had found the continued use of French in higher education and public life jarring and disadvantageous.
In January 1991, following the start of the Gulf War, the FIS led giant demonstrations in support of Saddam Hussein and Iraq. One demonstration ended in front of the Ministry of Defense where Ali Benhadj gave an impassioned speech demanding a corps of volunteers be sent to fight for Saddam. The Algerian military took this as a direct affront to the military hierarchy and cohesion. After a project to realign electoral districts came to light in May, the FIS called for a general strike. Violence ensued, and on 5 June 1991, a state of emergency was declared, many constitutional rights were suspended, and parliamentary elections were postponed until December. The FIS began to lose the initiative and within a month the two leaders (Madani and Benhadj) of the FIS were arrested and later sentenced to twelve years in prison. Support for armed struggle began to develop among Bouyali's followers and veterans of the Afghan jihad and on 28 November the first act of jihad against the government occurred when a frontier post (at Guemmar) was attacked and the heads of army conscripts were cut off. Despite this, the FIS participated in the legislative elections, and on 26 December 1991 won the first round with 188 deputies elected, as opposed to just 16 for the FLN, despite getting one million fewer votes than it had in the 1990 elections. It appeared to be on track to win an absolute majority in the second round on 16 January 1992.
Military coup and cancellation of elections, 1992
The FIS had made open threats against the ruling power, condemning them as unpatriotic and pro-French, as well as financially corrupt. Additionally, FIS leadership was at best divided on the desirability of democracy, and some expressed fears that a FIS government would be, as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian put it, "one person, one vote, one time."
On 11 January 1992 the army cancelled the electoral process, forcing President Bendjedid to resign and bringing in the exiled independence fighter Mohamed Boudiaf to serve as a new president. However, on 29 June 1992 he was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Lieutenant Lambarek Boumaarafi. The assassin was sentenced to death in a closed trial in 1995. The sentence was not carried out. Many FIS members were arrested—5,000 by the army's account, 40,000 according to Gilles Kepel and including its leader Abdelkader Hachani—that the jails had insufficient space to hold them in; camps were set up for them in the Sahara desert, and bearded men feared to leave their houses lest they be arrested as FIS sympathizers. The government officially dissolved the FIS on 4 March and its apparatus was dismantled.
Beginning of war, 1992–93
Of the few FIS activists that remained free, many took this as a declaration of war. Throughout much of the country, remaining FIS activists, along with some Islamists too radical for FIS, took to the forests and mountains with whatever weapons were available and became guerrilla fighters. The very sparsely populated but oil-rich Sahara would remain mostly peaceful for almost the entire duration of the conflict. This meant that the government's principal source of foreign exchange—oil exports—was largely unaffected. The tense situation was compounded by the economy, which collapsed even further that year, as almost all of the longstanding subsidies on food were eliminated.
At first Algeria remained relatively calm. But in March 1993 "a steady succession of university academics, intellectuals, writers, journalist, and medical doctors were assassinated." While not all were connected with the regime, they were French-speaking and so "in the eyes of the young urban poor who had joined the jihad ... associated with the hated image of French-speaking intellectuals". It also "exploded" the idea of the government's triumph over the Islamists. Other attacks showed a willingness to target civilians. The bombing of the Algiers airport claimed 9 lives and injured 128 people. The FIS condemned the bombing along with the other major parties, but the FIS's influence over the guerrillas turned out to be limited.
The regime began to lose control of mountain and rural districts. In working class areas of the cities insurgents expelled the police and declared "liberated Islamic zones". Even the main roads of the cities passed into the hands of the insurgents.