Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats: The Second Algerian War

Abstract

Algeria's political crisis since 1992 is the result of a flawed transition from single-party to politics. Neither the Algerian government nor the military nor the political parties addressed the need to define a civic pact with the rising Islamist movement prior to the December 1991 parliamentary elections. The Platform of Rome, negotiated in January 1995, offers a slender opening to the protagonists--Islamists, soldiers, and democrats--to construct a pact. The Algerian (1954-62) was one of the grand episodes of the turbulent era of decolonization that followed World War II. From it emerged a relatively strong regime legitimized by the conquest of national independence and grounded in the key institutions of the nationalist struggle, the party, and the army. For two decades, this essentially populist regime was relatively stable. During the 1980s, however, previously contained social forces began to challenge the army/party-state, and the regime concluded that political reforms were desirable. Pell-mell and without any well-thought-out strategy of transition, it entered an uncharted terrain that led to civil war. From 1992 to 1994, political strife claimed at least 30,000 lives, and the number of victims rose unabated through 1995. The military, which has zealously guarded its historical role as the ultimate arbiter in Algerian politics, is engaged in a fearsome struggle with a dissident Islamist movement that emerged out of the failings of the single-party order. The Islamists, who saw their victory in the December 1991 parliamentary elections annulled by the high command, have resorted to violence as a means to attain power. Civil society, deeply divided over the Islamists' goal of a fundamentalist social order, has been subjected to the ordeal of rampant political violence. A segment of society has rallied to the military, which claims to defend the cause of secular democracy, another segment to the Islamists' claim of majority rule. Caught in the crossfire between these conflicting blocs have been a number of parties and associations that reject both military and theocratic rule. The latter, rather heterogeneous, social forces have often referred to themselves as the democratic pole or the third force. They stand for a secular and pluralist Algeria, but they have a rather fragile social base. During the period from 1989 to 1991, when a multi-party system came into being, they were unable to form any coalition capable of rivaling the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), whose fundamentalist orientation was a threat to their values. Since then, the armed confrontation between the Islamists and the soldiers has left precious little space to the secular democrats. THE ACTORS Algeria's political crisis is the result of a flawed transition from single-party to politics. Such transitions require bargaining among the diverse social forces likely to emerge from authoritarian politics. In the Algerian case, the task was to define a means by which to integrate an opposition force that threatened to subvert the very process of democratization itself. No one--neither the government in power nor the military nor the political parties--seriously addressed this task. What was needed, well before the fateful election of December 1991, was a dialogue between secularists and Islamists about pluralism and basic liberties. Instead, what occurred was a resort to force between the military establishment and the extremist wing of the Islamist movement that marginalized the authentic democrats, who largely became hostage to the violence itself. The outbreak of the second Algerian war has rendered this need for a dialogue all the more imperative. This article first examines the key protagonists in Algeria's political crisis--the soldiers, the Islamists, and the democrats--in order to understand the processes that led to political breakdown. By studying their interests, political resources, and strategies, the article explains why Algeria slid toward a state of civil war. …