Algerian Civil War - Elections Cancelled: A Guerrilla War Begins

Elections Cancelled: A Guerrilla War Begins

The army saw this outcome as unacceptable. The FIS had made open threats against the ruling pouvoir, 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 man, one vote, one time. "

On January 11, 1992 the army cancelled the electoral process, forcing President Chadli Bendjedid to resign and bringing in the exiled independence fighter Mohammed Boudiaf to serve as a new president. So many FIS members were arrested—5,000 by the army's account, 30,000 according to FIS, and including 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.

A state of emergency was declared, and many ordinary constitutional rights were suspended. Any protests that occurred were suppressed, and human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, reported frequent government use of torture and holding of suspects without charge or trial. The government officially dissolved the FIS on March 4.

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 hills with whatever weapons were available and became guerrilla fighters. Their first attacks on the security forces (not counting the Guemmar incident) began barely a week after the coup, and soldiers and policemen rapidly became targets.

As in previous wars, the guerrillas were almost exclusively based in the mountains of northern Algeria, where the forest and scrub cover were well-suited to guerrilla warfare, and in certain areas of the cities; 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 money—oil exporting—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. The hopes many placed in the seemingly untainted figure of Boudiaf were soon dashed when he fell to a bullet from one of his own security guards in late June. Soon afterwards, Abbassi Madani and Ali Belhadj were sentenced to 12 years in prison.

By August 26 it had become apparent that some guerrillas were beginning to target civilians as well as government figures: 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 initial fighting appears to have been led by the small extremist group Takfir wal Hijra and associated ex-Afghan fighters. However, the first major armed movement to emerge, starting almost immediately after the coup, was the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA). It was led by the ex-soldier Abdelkader Chebouti, a longstanding Islamist who had kept his distance from the FIS during the electoral process. In February 1992, ex-soldier, ex-Afghan fighter, and former FIS head of security Said Mekhloufi founded the Movement for an Islamic State (MEI). The various groups arranged several meetings to attempt to unite their forces, accepting the overall leadership of Chebouti in theory. At the last of these, at Tamesguida on September 1, Chebouti expressed his concern about the movement's lack of discipline, in particular worrying that the Algiers airport attack, which he had not approved, could alienate supporters. Takfir wal Hijra and the Afghans (led by Noureddine Seddiki) responded by agreeing to join the MIA. However, the meeting was broken up by an assault from the security forces, provoking suspicions which prevented any further meetings.

The FIS itself established an underground network, with clandestine newspapers and even an MIA-linked radio station, and began issuing official statements from abroad starting in late 1992. However, at this stage the opinions of the guerrilla movements on the FIS were mixed; while many supported FIS, a significant faction, led by the "Afghans", regarded party political activity as inherently un-Islamic, and therefore rejected FIS statements.