On 9 February 2002, the Algerian Civil War that had lasted for more than a decade and caused more than 150,000 deaths finally came to an end. The civil war, fought between the Algerian government and several Islamist rebel factions, concluded with the practical disappearance of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, Groupements Islamiques Armés) following the death of its emir, Antar Zouabri.
After twenty years, the causality of Algeria’s civil war is still controversial. The main point of contention over its causes is centred on a failed democratization from 1988 to 1991, led by the third President of Algeria, Chadli Bendjedid, which has been widely attributed as the direct trigger of the civil war.
A popular structural view holds that Chadli’s democratisation plan had no chance of success and inevitably would have collapsed due to insufficient economic and social conditions. Nevertheless, an alternative individual-centric focus reveals a more complex causal process in the Algerian case, demonstrating that both the failed democratization and the outbreak of civil war were the unintentional outcomes of political actors’ mistaken decisions.
A born loser?
Under the structural view, Algeria seemed destined to be a ‘loser’ since its birth. After a war of independence from the French colonial system in 1962, Algeria, as a typical rentier state, established authoritarian rule in 1965 grounded on a single oil export economy. By the 1980s, the government controlled by the National Liberation Front (FLN, Front de Libération Nationale) and military forces was inefficient and corrupt, and held very limited control over local communities, especially Algerian Muslims. The Muslim community thus carved out its own conception of the Algerian nation based on Islamic teachings rather than secular culture. This led to contradicting visions of Algerian national identity between the Muslim and secular communities. Meanwhile, impoverishment resulting from the oil price crisis in the mid-1980s provoked a loss of legitimacy for the FLN, leading to social unrest across Algeria. As described by political scientist K J Holsti, Algeria in the 1980s was a ‘failed state’ with ‘little or no public order, leadership commands no authority or loyalty, and a variety of groups and factions are armed to resist.’ Many scholars argued that Algeria had no hope of achieving democratization in this context of an underdeveloped economy and highly divided society.
However, according to historian Bill Kissane, the structural view of Algeria’s failed democratization and civil war focuses only on ‘the two tail-ends of the causal chain,’ ignoring the more complex political actors’ motivations and decision-making processes connecting the two tail-ends together. One common question from scholars who are opposed to the structural explanation asks whether the Algerian government or opposition was capable of making any decision that would have avoided the worst outcome. By alternatively taking an individual-centric approach, it becomes clear that Algeria’s failed democratization and civil war may not be entirely determined by structural conditions; rather, they are largely the accidental outcomes of political actors’ behaviours.
An unexpected revolution
Returning to the beginning of the Algerian democratization in 1988, it is evident that the economic crisis caused by the oil price crash led to social instability. In urban areas, liberals had grown to become the main opposition to the authoritarian government, criticising the government’s inefficient economic reforms. In rural areas, a large number of poor people had chosen to join the Muslim community, resulting in both an increase in the Islamic opposition and an expansion of Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamic opposition had proposed a nationalization movement of Islam, which led to the government’s increased vigilance against Muslims. However, it is not obvious that the economic crisis was the direct cause of Algeria’s rapid political change. At that time, most people merely had simple demands for economic improvement, and there lacked evidence that the main oppositions had enough power and had plans to overthrow the government.
Professor Frederic Volpi argues that the Algerian government’s brutal response to dissatisfied people significantly deteriorated the legitimacy of authoritarian rule and led to an unexpected democratic revolution. Authoritarian rule in Algeria was not maintained solely by oil resources but also by solid civil-military relations established since the independence-war period. However, civil-military relations were greatly undermined in October 1988 (known as ‘Black October’) when the government recklessly deployed military forces to suppress popular protests on 5 October. Algeria’s problems rapidly turned from the original economic crisis into a nationwide anti-government political crisis. At that time, public outrage dramatically shifted to Chadli himself, who was believed to have ordered the military repression, forcing him to declare a democratization plan on 10 October.
Considering this background, it is plausible that Chadli’s initial motivations for democratization were limited to his self-protection and political survival. Volpi notes that Chadli’s speech on democratization on 10 October was ‘vague and open-ended,’—designed just to be a stopgap. Yet, unexpectedly, this speech suddenly sparked a massive and enthusiastic public response, forcing Chadli to continue his democratization plan. At that time, none of the government’s political elites, military commanders, or even the leaders of the main Islamic opposition, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS, Front Islamique du Salut), had anticipated such dramatic political change. Ironically, at the same time, Chadli’s democratization was widely praised as ‘the most promising and inspiring phase of political life since Algerian independence’, according to journalist Martin Stone. The popular passion for democracy was so strong that even the most conservative Islamists had to learn how to maintain and expand their influence by participating in the new political system after democratisation.
An unprepared democratization
Unfortunately, most Algerians, perhaps also including Chadli himself, did not fully understand what democratization would entail. More fatally, the different political actors involved in democratization had very different interests. At the same time, they also lacked basic communication and trust amongst each other. The political elites in government and military commanders aimed to stabilise society instead of causing significant political change. The Islamic opposition attempted to expand religious influence and enter the government by participating in elections. The liberals planned to completely abolish authoritarian rule and military might after occupying the government. The common people just wanted to overcome the economic crisis with a less corrupt and more effective government. All these contradictory interests would be contested in an open political arena of democracy.
Finally the Islamic opposition, the FIS, won more than half of the valid votes in the 1990 local government elections due to its disproportionate influence in rural areas and among poor groups. This unexpected result quickly deepened the rift between Chadli and the other political elites and military commanders, especially as the FIS promised to weaken these old ruling groups in the name of anti-corruption and Islamic teachings. Meanwhile, Chadli had removed the president’s supreme commanding authority over the national army in an attempt to imitate historical democratizations in other countries. Alternatively, perhaps he had just wanted to disassociate himself from the Black October military repression. Regardless, Chadli’s decision unwisely left other political elites and military forces a chance to stage a military coup d’état. Since there was neither an institution that could resolve the conflict between elites nor a top-down channel effectively connecting the president with civilians, the situation continued to worsen. When a sudden coup d’état overthrew Chadli and instituted military rule on 11 January 1992, all hopes for democratization vanished in an instant.
A tragedy of overconfidence
However, even after the failure of democratisation and the military coup d’état, there was still a chance to avoid the outbreak of a civil war. Ideally, Algeria could have avoided collapse if either the military government or the Islamic opposition had enough power to immediately take control of the overall state following the coup. However, in fact, neither of them had enough power to quickly control the entire state. Nonetheless, Algeria could have still maintained unity if both sides chose to compromise with each other. Unfortunately, neither the military government nor the Islamic opposition chose to avoid an all-out confrontation.
The culprit was simple: overconfidence on both sides. The military government in 1992 expected that they could eliminate the Islamic opposition’s influence in public by quickly of the FIS. At the same time, the FIS believed that they had sufficient popular support nationwide to continuously resist the military government, so they did not back down like other opposition groups. As a result, the FIS lost most of its moderate Islamist leaders in the military government’s nationwide manhunt in 1992.
Yet, the military government’s strategy subsequently led to a rise in extreme Islamists in local communities. These violent extremists, without unified leadership, formed a range of armed groups, both small and large. The most powerful one, the GIA, gradually became independent from the FIS and actively launched a series of terrorist attacks and armed insurgencies against the military government. When the moderate leaders of the FIS completely lost their control over the GIA in 1993, a civil war in Algeria between the military government and the armed Islamic insurgent groups became unavoidable.
According to Barak Mendelsohn and Mohammed M. Hafez, the situation of the Algerian Civil War was so chaotic as local armed groups acted spontaneously without unified situation. As such, their capacity to replace the functions of government institutions was questionable. Therefore, starting in late 1992, Algeria experienced a power vacuum. No political actor could fill this vacancy promptly and there was no successful compromise or mutual cooperation between the different factions to prevent the continuous deterioration of the situation.
Lessons from Algeria
The Algerian case shows very complex interactions between political actors from the launch of democratization to the outbreak of civil war. Thus, a structural explanation focusing on economic and social factors cannot fully illustrate the whole process. The failure of Algeria’s democratization and the Algerian Civil War are to a large extent accidents resulting from a series of poorly-made decisions. These mistakes all culminated
in the tipping point of Algeria’s collapse: the emergence of a power vacuum after the all-out confrontation between the post-coup military government and the Islamic opposition.
Algeria maintained its most defensive form of military rule after the end of the civil war, until mass protests broke out in 2019. Now, Algerians step into another critical moment determining their future. The memory of the Civil War is of high value for new generations of Algerians hoping to design a better future. It reveals the need for more mutual communication, collaboration, and trust to progress towards democracy without paying a bloody price. These teachings are also helpful for other people in the world seeking liberation and democracy. As Hegre’s statistical model of democratisation and civil war shows, the possibility of civil war will significantly increase at the halfway point as the regime transitions from a lower level of democracy to a higher level. With this in mind, the lessons from Algeria can guide others to overcome these risks of the democratisation process.
Max Junbo Tao is a graduate student in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics.
This piece previously appeared in our 7th print issue, “Looking South.” You can read the full issue here: https://issuu.com/oxfordpoliticalreview/docs/opr_issue_7_final.