Algerian Civil War: A Visual History

The Algerian Civil War (1991-2002) began when the army cancelled the second round of parliamentary elections in January 1992 to stop the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from winning, forced President Chadli to resign and banned the party. Armed groups formed: the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which killed foreigners, journalists, intellectuals and, from 1996, whole villages (Bentalha, Rais), and the FIS's Islamic Salvation Army (AIS). Security forces answered with torture, disappearances and militias, and were accused of complicity in some massacres. President Zeroual and then Bouteflika, elected in 1999, offered amnesties; the AIS gave up in 1997 and the Civil Concord (1999) and Charter for Peace (2005) ended most fighting, though the GIA's successor GSPC became al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died and 7,000 disappeared.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Algerian Civil War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated deaths per year in the Algerian Civil War

Timeline of the Algerian Civil War

1. 1988
   October riots; political opening
2. 1991
   FIS wins first roundDecember.
3. 1992
   Election cancelled; Boudiaf assassinated
4. 1994
   Air France hijack
5. 1996
   Tibhirine monks killed
6. 1997
   Bentalha and Rais massacres; AIS ceasefire
7. 1999
   Bouteflika elected; Civil Concord
8. 2002
   War largely ends
9. 2005
   Charter for Peace and Reconciliation

The cancelled election

Riots in October 1988 forced the FLN to open politics; the FIS swept local elections in 1990 and won 188 of 231 seats decided in the first round of December 1991 with a majority within reach. On 11 January 1992 the generals forced Chadli out, cancelled the vote, brought back Mohamed Boudiaf from exile to head a High State Council and interned thousands of Islamists in Saharan camps; Boudiaf was assassinated on live television by a bodyguard in June 1992. Islamists took to the mountains and the GIA emerged in 1993 with a strategy of killing everyone who served the state.

The years of massacres

The GIA murdered writers, journalists, teachers, unveiled women and 100 foreigners, hijacked an Air France plane in 1994 and bombed the Paris Metro in 1995. Under Djamel Zitouni and Antar Zouabri it declared the whole population apostate and in 1997-1998 massacred entire villages near Algiers, Bentalha and Rais among them, with hundreds killed by knife in a night, sometimes within sight of army posts; the seven Trappist monks of Tibhirine were killed in 1996. The army's 'eradicator' faction used torture, death squads and 'patriot' militias; the question 'who kills whom' has never been fully answered.

Concord and after

Zeroual, elected in 1995, negotiated the AIS's unilateral ceasefire in October 1997; the GIA fragmented, its Salafist wing forming the GSPC in 1998. Bouteflika, the generals' candidate in 1999, passed the Civil Concord law by referendum, amnestying fighters who surrendered, and the AIS disbanded in January 2000. Killings fell to a few hundred a year; the 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation gave a broader amnesty and made it a crime to question the army's role. The GSPC pledged to al-Qaeda in 2006 and bombed Algiers in 2007; Bouteflika ruled until the Hirak protests forced him out in 2019, and the generals still rule.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Italian Empire (1882 to 1947)
• Nazi Germany (1933 to 1945)

Wars of the same era and region

• Algerian War (1954 to 1962)
• French conquest of Algeria (1830 to 1903)
• Boko Haram insurgency (2009 to present)
• Syrian Civil War (2011 to 2024)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 to 2005)

8 surprising things about the Algerian Civil War

1. The FIS's cancelled victory of 1991-1992 was the first time an Islamist party had won a national election in the Arab world.
2. President Boudiaf's assassination by a bodyguard was broadcast live during a speech in Annaba.
3. The GIA hijacked an Air France Airbus in December 1994, allegedly to crash it into the Eiffel Tower; French commandos stormed it at Marseille.
4. The seven monks of Tibhirine, kidnapped and beheaded in 1996, are the subject of the film Of Gods and Men and were beatified in 2018.
5. The Bentalha massacre of September 1997 killed up to 400 people; the photograph of a grieving woman became known as the 'Madonna of Bentalha'.
6. Algeria's 2005 charter criminalises public statements that 'harm the image' of the army over the war.
7. The GSPC's successor AQIM carried the war into the Sahel and Mali.
8. The war's black decade delayed Algeria's Arab Spring: memories of the 1990s kept protests peaceful in 2011 and 2019.

Sources

• Algerian Civil War Wikipedia
• Algeria: Civil war Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Algeria profile – Timeline BBC News
• Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 1990-1998 (2000) Hurst

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