Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 8/5/2007
Demilitarizing Algeria
2007 May
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract
The Algerian state constituted at the end of the eight-year war of independence by the victorious Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) exhibited an impressive degree of continuity and stability during its first 26 years, from 1962 to 1988. In February 1989, however, the regime of President Chadli Bendjedid abruptly introduced a pluralist constitution and legalized parties which, based on rival Islamist and Berberist conceptions of identity, polarized public opinion by advocating mutually exclusive Islamist and secularist conceptions of the state. In doing so, the regime set in motion a process that profoundly destabilized the state. Instead of restoring order, however, the army’s eventual intervention in January 1992 precipitated a descent into armed conflict which, while greatly reduced since 1998, has still not entirely ended.
The violence that has ravaged Algeria since 1992 has expressed and confirmed the ascendancy of the military in Algerian political life and the weakness of all civilian forms of politics, both on the progovernment side and among those opposed to the regime. The civilian leaders of the Islamist movement were almost entirely outflanked by the Islamist armed movements and, within the regime, the army’s General Staff and intelligence chiefs became the main source of decision making. In particular, successive presidents proved entirely unable to impose their authority. The deposing of President Chadli Bendjedid in January 1992 was followed by the assassination of President Mohammed Boudiaf six months later, the brief and ineffectual interim of Ali Kafi (July 1992 to January 1994), and the eventual failure also of Liamine Zeroual (1994- 1999), who, despite his impressive electoral endorsement in 1995, was unable to secure a consensus within the regime in support of his efforts to resolve the crisis.
