On the morning of April 11, 2007, the center of Algiers was shaken by a devastating blast, when a suicide-car exploded in front of the Government palace. At the same moment, two other terror attacks occurred in the eastern suburbs of the capital city, hitting two security stations. The casualty toll quickly reached 30, with hundreds more injured. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the slaughter and pledged to “liberate the land of Islam” from the “crusaders” and their “apostate” allies. A jihadi website broadcast the pictures of the three kamikazes, and the only one to show his face was identified as Marwan Boudina, a petty delinquent radicalized by a charismatic imam, a teenager from the populous outskirts of Algiers, who died under the war moniker of Moaz Bin Jabal.
The shock for the Algerian society was terrible. Even at the climax of the political violence, during the “black decade” of the nineties, suicide-attacks had been unknown (the only exception was probably the result of a mistake, with the terrorist exploding unexpectedly with the bomb he was carrying). The horrors of the civil war with the Islamist guerrillas were supposed to be buried in the past and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, just after his election in 1999, had conceived a “law of civil reconciliation” that was massively approved by referendum. Six years later, President Bouteflika had expanded his initiative through a “Charter for peace and national reconciliation”, also endorsed by referendum. Now jihadi terror was, under the banner of Al-Qaeda, striking Algiers again.
To understand this whole process, one has to move back in Algeria’s recent history, to October 1988 when social riots flared in the capital city. It was then that the young and disenfranchised protesters were emulating the Palestinian “stones revolution” against the Israeli occupation: they provoked the security forces with bricks and slingshots, they challenged the one-party system of the National Liberation Front (FLN), they denounced the widespread corruption and the economic fiasco, despite all the oil wealth. But this social intifada was crushed without mercy and hundreds of rioters were killed. The FLN monopoly was however obsolete and other parties had to be legalized, including the Islamic Front of Salvation (FIS), a coalition of the different shades of political Islam. The FIS considered Algeria to be still “colonized”, at least culturally, and pledged to restore the “Islamic identity” of the country by fighting the “party of France” (hizb Fransa), namely the secular, progressive and French-speaking elite.
The FIS was betting on the dynamics of democratization to achieve its Islamist goals and this gamble on “political jihad” gained momentum after the landslide FIS victory at the municipal elections of April 1990. But a vocal minority was calling for “military jihad” against the “infidels” and they paraded some of their militants in “Afghan” attire (kohl-lined eyes, henna-tainted beard, sharwal and kamis), presenting them as veterans of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. On the side of the regime, President Chadli Bendjedid was genuine in his commitment to political liberalization, but the military nomenklatura, widely described as the “decision-makers” (décideurs) by the Algerian public, became increasingly wary of the Islamist rising tide. FIS won the first round of the legislative elections in December 1991 but, before the second round could take place, the Army leadership deposed President Bendjedid, put him under house arrest and “suspended” the electoral process.
Security forces rounded up thousands of FIS militants and followers, while the “Afghan” networks went underground and the jihadi cells launched violent attacks on civil servants and secular intellectuals. They eventually coalesced in October 1992 into the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), while the FIS established its own military wing, the Islamic Army of Salvation (AIS). Osama Bin Laden had then been expelled from Saudi Arabia and, from his new base in Sudan, he was beefing up Al-Qaeda all over the Muslim world. But his openings to the GIA were not reciprocated, because even the die-hard jihadis refused any non-Algerian interference into their fight against the Algerian regime. The GIA became also engulfed in a bloody spiral of massacres, first against pro-government localities, then against rival FIS strongholds, ultimately against dissident jihadi groups.
Confusion also prevailed on the side of the regime, where one of the FLN founding members, Mohammed Boudiaf, was brought back from his exile in Morocco to be the new head of state. But he was killed by his own bodyguard in June 1992, in murky circumstances. So Algeria came to be ruled by a collective leadership, out of which General Liamine Zeroual emerged as the strongest man.
In November 1995, the first multi-party presidential elections gave 61% of the votes to Zeroual, while a non-FIS Islamist challenger reached 25%. Zeroual had then the legitimacy and the clout to push for negotiations with the FIS and to stop the now full-fledged civil war. In September 1997, the FIS proclaimed a cease-fire, while the GIA, increasingly isolated, became even more violent, with a horrifying string of mass slaughters. One of the GIA commanders, Hassan Hattab, condemned the blood-shed and led an offshoot faction, called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), in September 1998.
General Zeroual could claim victory over the jihadi insurgency before the end of his four-year term and he decided to step down from the presidency. The tremendous toll of the civil war was estimated between one hundred and two hundred thousand persons killed, but the human cost of the conflict was aggravated by the massive exile of part of the French-speaking urban class, who fled the jihadi terror overseas, as far as Canada.
Zeroual’s successor in April 1999 was Abdelaziz Bouteflika, minister of Foreign affairs during the seventies, the “golden age” of the FLN rule. But Bouteflika ran as an “independent” candidate and reaped three-quarters of the vote (his challengers had withdrawn in protest against a “set-up” election). He pledged to devote most of the oil revenues to healing the open wounds of the civil war. His “law of civil reconciliation” was widely endorsed because a majority of the Algerian population wanted, more than anything else, to close the chapter of the “black decade”.
This open-hand policy towards repentant jihadis who laid down their weapons came along with increased military pressure on the defiant groups. The decline of the GIA appeared irreversible and its Saharan branch switched to the GSPC, becoming the last jihadi organization to challenge the Algerian state. Hattab was obsessed by the preservation of his outfit and he kept a low-profile on the international arena, while focusing his attacks on the security forces. But he found troubles trying to rein the GSPC commandos in Southern Algeria, they kept roaming in the Saharan desert, from Mauritania to Mali, and even Tunisia or Libya. Their smuggling of drugs, weapons and illegal immigrants was quite profitable, but their abduction of Western tourists proved even more lucrative.
Hattab’s prestige as GSPC leader was tarnished by the defiant stand of his Saharan subordinates, but also by the criticism of younger militants, Nabil Sahrawi and Abdelmalik Drukdal, who were fascinated by Al-Qaeda. In August 2003, Hattab was forced to step down in favor of Sahrawi, who was killed later in a security ambush, leaving Drukdal as the undisputed leader of the GSPC.
Bin Laden, after years of being rebuffed by xenophobic jihadis in Algeria, had finally found potential partners. But Drukdal’s role model was less Al-Qaeda’s founder than was Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of its Iraqi branch. Drukdal even chose a war moniker echoing Zarqawi’s, Abu Musab Abdel Wadud (both nicknames refer to Musab Bin Umayr, who died as a martyr during the battle of Uhud in 625). Between the Eastern and the Western Abu Musab, cooperation increased, even though they never met face to face. The GSPC became the regional hub for Al-Qaeda in Iraq, channeling volunteers from all over North Africa to join the “blessed jihad” against the US occupation. Zarqawi reciprocated by abducting and executing two Algerian diplomats in Baghdad, in July 2005. The US command considered that one-quarter of the kamikazes in Iraq in 2005 came from North Africa, mainly through the GSPC.
Drukdal then decided to apply for a formal merger with Al-Qaeda. He was looking for enhanced international visibility through the Al-Qaeda inspired websites, but he was also hoping to deflect the impact of the “national reconciliation” among his own followers. Even Hattab, the GSPC’s founder, had answered positively to President Bouteflika’s call to end the violence. So Drukdal went global to escape this political trap where all jihadi groups were falling one after the other.
He pledged public allegiance to Bin Laden in September 2006 and GSPC officially turned into “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM) in January 2007. The triple suicide bombing in Algiers in April stunned both society and regime. But the worst was yet to come: on December 11, 2007, two simultaneous attacks struck the Constitutional Courtand the UN regional headquarters.
President Bouteflika had been reelected in April 2004 with 85% of the votes and he had earmarked a significant part of the oil bonanza, in order to launch a colossal program of public infrastructures across Algeria. He felt his capital city and his international status were being challenged. So the security apparatus went back on the offensive and mopped up isolated jihadi cells in 2008, thus containing AQIM into the ominous “death triangle” (the three provinces of Boumerdes, Bouira and Tizi Ouzou, where Drukdal and his associates are based, east of Algiers).
The dynamics of recruitment induced by the anti-US jihad in the Middle East collapsed with the crisis of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, where the nationalist insurgency turned against Bin Laden’s followers. Drukdal could no longer plug his network into this pool of potential militants, and he was also frustrated in his efforts to integrate jihadi groups from Morocco and Tunisia. So AQIM failed to live up to its commitment to expand the GSPC into the “Islamic Maghreb”, and it was also frustrated in its repeated attempts to export its terror North of the Mediterranean: European security services were on the alert and actively cooperating against AQIM that tried in vain to attract and recruit new members.
Drukdal was then forced to rely much more on its Saharan branch, run from Southern Algeria by one of his most loyal commanders, Yahya Djouadi. But the two major military units (katiba), even though they have safe havens on Algerian soil, are focused on neighboring countries, Mauritania for Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s katiba, and Mali for Abu Zeid’s.
All these leaders are Algerian, but their rank and file is increasingly mixed, with Mauritanian, Malian, Libyan or even Chadian members. Despite the superficial religious rhetoric, the main activity of these highly-mobile commandos is illegal smuggling, with occasional hit-and-run operations against the local security forces. The abduction of Western nationals became highly profitable, not only for the Saharan branch, but for AQIM as a whole. There was only one case when a British tourist was executed in May 2009, under direct pressure from Al-Qaeda’s top leadership, who wanted to “retaliate” against the “Crusaders’ crimes”.
In Algiers, President Bouteflika felt confident enough to have the Constitution amended by a parliamentary vote, in December 2008, thus allowing him to run for a third term. He was re-elected in April 2009 with 90% of the votes and, despite the low turnout and the heated controversy, he claimed his popular support was unprecedented. The jihadi threat, so spectacular in 2007, appears now marginal in the public debate but, even on the sides, AQIM shadow remains nefarious.
Algeria has been a reliable player in the US-inspired “global war on terror” and has joined the US-sponsored Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). Nevertheless, Algiers obviously prefers regional cooperation with its Southern neighbors without Western interference. And Algerian diplomacy pushes for an international commitment to ban any payment of ransoms to terrorist groups. To promote such a collective discipline, it argues that AQIM depends heavily on the abduction of Western nationals to finance its overall networks. After the “black decade” of the nineties, and the somehow “gray” start of this millennium, when Al-Qaeda managed to incorporate the Algerian GSPC, the next years will tell us if Algeria can finally turn the page of this political violence.
Jean-Pierre Filiu - Professor at Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) and was visiting professor at Georgetown University (Washington, DC). The French History convention awarded its main prize to his “Apocalypse in Islam”, soon to be published in English by the University of California Press.
