Algerian Civil War

While the literature on the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) is extensive, studies on the armed conflict between the Algerian military and the armed Islamic groups, which cost the lives of more than 200,000 remain insignificant. The complex intersections between the political, social, and economic factors leading to the war in the 1990s show that the critical junctures began after independence in 1962. These junctures continued through the 1970s (Arabization movement) and 1980s (1988 Berber Spring), which together can help in contextualizing the Algerian Civil War. These different periods reveal the history of the National Liberation Front (FLN) as a one-party rule and contextualize its historical strong relationship with the Algerian National Army, revealing the power dynamics between the two and the roots of the struggle over the country’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the 1980s were marked by the youth riots in 1988 (Berber Spring) and their crucial role in what president Chadli Benjedid presented as a political reform program, including a new constitution, which ended the political monopoly of the FLN and saw the emergence of more than thirty new political parties. In January 1992, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) overwhelmingly won the municipal elections, with a much larger number of votes than the ruling FLN in the first round. However, instead of accepting the Islamists’ victory, the military promptly stepped in and cancelled parliamentary elections, banned the FIS, and arrested its leaders. After President Mohamed Boudiaf’s assassination, the government imposed a national state of emergency and used a combination of strategies including economic reforms as well tough laws to repress the Islamic armed groups and control the situation. The idea that the armed Islamic groups started after the official ban of the FIS has been contested. Two parallel strategies were adopted by the successive governments of the 1990s: one was based on the repression of the FIS, who in turn retaliated with car bombs and assassinations of women, intellectuals, police, and military forces; and the other was based on the introduction of social and economic reforms. The country went into cycles of extreme violence for more than a decade, in which the negotiations between the Islamists and the military were not interrupted. President Liamine Zaroual’s amnesty initiative, Rahma, was unsuccessful, yet it was the basis upon which his successor, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, proposed his project of amnesty, known as the Civil Concord, in 1999, later replaced by the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in 2005. Bouteflika resigned on April 2, 2019, after months of mass protest called the Revolution of Smiles, which started on February 22, 2019, against his candidacy to the presidency for a fifth mandate.

The Memory of the Civil War in Algeria: Lessons from the Past with Reference to the Algerian Hirak

The Algerian Civil War during the 1990s is considered to be one of the violent wars in the Arab world. For one decade, isolated from the international community, the country and its civilians suffered from extremism, radicalism, torture, and assassinations. Today, it is arguable that the memory of the Algerian Civil War played a pivotal role in producing the legitimacy of the political system and framing the citizens’ perceptions of the postwar regime before the current manifestations. Nevertheless, no field research has explored how that memory is represented and recalled by the people. Through analyzing the public narrative, surveying and examining the public platforms, and conversations dealing with the past civil war in Algeria, this article seeks to demonstrate how that violent past is remembered in the public arena, the emotions that have been accumulated from such experience and the lessons that have been learned by the people. In doing so, we use many examples from the Algerian manifestations after 22 February 2019, or what is called “the Algerian Hirak.”

Resurrecting Colonial Decadence in Independent Algeria

Chapter 4 proposes re-reading the language politics of the Algerian Civil War through the lens of Orientalist modes of evaluating language. It offers a summary of the conditions prevailing during the period of Arabization and its relation to Algerian society and the Algerian economy. This is followed by a comparative reading of Tahir Wattar’s Arabic novel, Al-Zilzal (The Earthquake) (1974), and Tahar Djout’s French novel, L’Invention du désert (The Invention of the Desert) (1987), which both develop a postcolonial critique of the concept of decadence. By narrating the Algerian present through the degenerating consciousness of two figures embodying a highly paternalistic understanding of Islamic tradition, these novels trace the limits of the role of French and Arabic in both Algerian national culture and transnational space. A critique of postcolonial decadence emerges that challenges the very idea of the nation in configurations of the loss inscribed within the discourse of decadence.

The Many (Im)possibilities of Contemporary Algerian Judaïtés

This chapter examines ways of thinking and acting about algerianités — a range of ways of belonging to Algeria, as locality or as culture — and how these intersect with judaïtés that are anchored within affective and political-historical positions. This chapter draws primarily from textual production by Algerian Jews as well as interviews with Parisian intellectuals of Algerian descent, such as Benjamin Stora and Shmuel Trigano, and is informed by the transnational impact of discursive constructs of nationhood prompted by key moments such as the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, the fiftieth anniversary of independence in 2012 and the supposed rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in France since 2001.

Islamic Reform Movements after the Arab Spring

On June 24-July 3, 2013, the International Institute of Islamic Thought held its annual Summer Institute for Scholars. Given the number of presentations, only a few of them will be mentioned here. In his welcoming remarks, Abdul Aziz Sachedina (George Mason University) spoke eloquently about how change has to come from within, how politics still dominates values, and how the Qur’an and Sunnah are being read not for inspiration, but for putting down opposition and dissenters. The Arab Spring represents a challenge to undertake such an internal reform. Unfortunately, he said, cyberspace contains no serious conversation in this regard, just hostility and animosity, which only damages Muslims. He called for leaders to “moralize” the entire issue in order to achieve co-existence, mainly between Shi‘is and Sunnis, and wondered if the reformers could deal with this and other issues. John Voll (Georgetown University), who delivered the keynote address, “Pop-politics and Elections: Islam and Democracy after the Arab Spring,” raised the question as to whether the Arab Spring makes any difference, given that reform movements have been going on in the Muslim world since 1880. Are we, he asked, “looking at something moving forward/different, or just rehashing the same old arguments?” He opined that a new vocabulary is needed and that people have to move beyond “interfaith,” “tolerance,” and interreligious dialogue and speak to each other about “shared interests.” He then discussed earlier Muslim reform movements and how their goals have changed over the years. Yahya Michot (Hartford University) presented a special lecture entitled “Taymiyyan Thoughts for a Temperate Arab Summer.” He pointed out how different groups (e.g., those groups responsible for assassinating Sadat, the Algerian civil war, and 9/11) took Ibn Taymiyyah’s anti-Mongol fatwas out of context to justify their actions. Thus they ignored the underlying issues: The supposedly “Muslim” Mongols were still massacring Muslims; ...

Schism and plurality in Algerian society: the struggle of identity in the sociology of ‘the other’

The questions of identity and citizenship in Algeria are complicated as well as a potentially divisive and axes of self-identification run across different lines. Individuals and groups may have more than one alignment where one locus of affiliation may overlap with another – the Berber with the Islamic, for instance, or the Arab with the secular. Construction of identity is mirrored by a parallel process in the construction of ‘the other’, both of which are guided by framing processes that prejudice particular elements of distinction and identity over others. The Algerian civil war sparked by the intervention of the military to stop the 1992 elections in which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was emerging victorious brought this issue to the forefront. Islamist organizations influenced by the exclusivist thought of Sayyid Quṭb such as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in particular employed a framing process based on creed to define and either include or exclude Algerian Muslims on the basis of criteria typically by Islamist takfiri groups that foment social divisiveness rather than rapprochement or toleration of ‘the other’. This trend is extremely pernicious to both central government and a plural society based on multiplicity and diversity that admits multiple and different voices.