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Algeria: Recent History (Continued...)
1988 to 1999
In October 1988, the most serious riots in Algeria since independence in 1962 broke out. The rioters were members of the young, urban poor in a country where 24 million were under the age of fifteen (40% of the population), where the urban population was more than 50% of the total population, and where the unemployment rate was in excess of 18.1%.
On March 10, 1989, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was formed from a coalition of leaders including the more moderate, Abassi Madani and the radical firebrand preacher, Ali Benhadj. Among their supporters were veteran mujahedeen ("jihad fighters") from the 1980s war in Afghanistan.
Radical Islamists had begun to make their mark on Algeria by 1982. Their leader was Mustafa Bouyali. Bouyali, born in 1940, fought in the war of independence. He supported a war of jihad to uproot the regime and inaugurate an Islamic state ruled according to sharia law. Ali Benhadj became one of Bouyali's most prominent disciples.
Madani and Benhadj were both charged with sedition and jailed on June 30, 1991 because they had led a general strike that month. They remained jailed throughout the upcoming civil war.
In 1992, alarmed by the success of the Islamic revivalist "Islamic Salvation Front" (FIS), Algeria's ruler, Chadli Bendjedid, canceled a second round of elections scheduled for January 15 and then resigned from office. He was succeeded by Mohammed Boudiaf. Algeria began its descent into civil war as violence between the FIS and government forces escalated. By 1995, 30,000 had perished. Boudiaf was slain on June 29, 1995 by an alleged FIS assassin. He was succeeded by army officer Liamine Zeroual.
By 1997, the organized jihad in Algeria had disintegrated into criminal thuggery. Massacres of civilians were carried out during Ramadan (January-February) by axe wielding assassins who also slit the throats of their victims.
On January 3, 1998, the Associated Press reported the worst single massacre of civilians in the six-year struggle between Islamist militants and government forces in Algeria. Gangs dressed in baggy Afghan-style pants (many of them reportedly fought in the Afghan war against Soviet occupation) and armed with axes, hoes, and knives slaughtered 412 peasants in four western villages near the town of Relizane, 180 miles west of Algiers. The massacre started at sunset just as the inhabitants were ending their daily Ramadan fast. The killers slit the throats of victims, cut off their heads, and bashed children to death against walls.
By June 1999, more than 130,000 had died in the civil war. The civil war, in recent years, had intensified during the holy month of Ramadan, a time when militants traditionally escalated what they regarded as their jihad.
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