Some of the Muslim groups that had come together to form the Islamic Salvation Front responded to the military seizure of power with violence. The Army of Islamic Salvation, the armed wing of the ISF, began to engage in guerrilla warfare. Between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people were killed in Algeria. The year 1993 saw numerous occasions in which gunmen went into the homes of policemen and other civil servants and killed everyone present. Prominent Algerian journalists and intellectuals, such as writer Tahar Djaout, were assassinated.
Terrorist attacks by the Armed Islamic Group and an even more radical splinter group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, reached a high point in 1998. The Algerian government also seemed to be involved in many terrorist activities. Widespread massacres during the holy month of Ramadan, in January, 1998, were at first believed to be the responsibility of the Armed Islamic Group. However, observers later claimed that many of these massacres were actually the work of secret government security forces.
Violence declined somewhat in the years following 1998 but remained a fact of national life in Algeria. At the beginning of 2000, it began to appear that the Algerian government had begun to bring the violence to an end, when more than two thousand members of the Army of Islamic Salvation and other guerrilla groups surrendered to take advantage of a partial amnesty offered by the government. Later that year, however, violence began to increase again. The Armed Islamic Group and the Salafists, who had not surrendered, remained active and were attracting new followers. By some estimates, as many as 9,000 people in Algeria may have died from terrorist acts in 2000. In 2001, demonstrations against government violence and government policies brought protesters into the streets in a number of Algerian cities. During the summer of that year, over one million protesters demonstrated in Algiers.
Following the hijacking of airliners by Islamic militants in the United States on September 11, 2001, the United States began to be concerned about links between the Islamic groups in Algeria and the al-Qaeda network that had staged the attacks. Algerian Fateh Kamel was reportedly in charge of al-Qaeda operations in North Africa, Spain, and France. The Algerian Salafist Group had especially close ties to al-Qaeda. The Algerian government offered to provide the U. S. government with information on Algerian citizens involved with the al-Qaeda network.
As the level of violence increased, some of the most radical guerrillas apparently broke away from the Army of Islamic Salvation in 1994 or 1995 to form the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, using the initials of the group's French name). A few observers claimed that the GIA was really created by the Algerian military in order to create disorder to justify military rule, but little evidence supported this suspicion. The GIA practiced extreme brutality, often slaughtering entire villages suspected of not supporting the Islamic cause. In 1997 some leaders of the Army of Islamic Salvation surrendered to the Algerian military, which had offered amnesty, or forgiveness, to rebels who surrendered. The Armed Islamic Group then turned against the Army of Islamic Salvation. The GIA would attack and murder people in villages that had provided volunteers or support to the Army of Islamic Salvation.
Carl L. Bankston III
World History
