PARIS/ALGIERS, 18 August 2005 — After 15 years of a bloody civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people died, Algeria stands on the threshold of what may be the beginning of a new era in its history. On Sept. 29, Algerians will be asked to vote in a national referendum on a Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation that offers amnesty for many militants, on condition that they lay down their weapons.
On Sunday, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika appeared on national television to provide details of the “charter” and sell it to his conflict-weary compatriots. The deal, he said, is intended to “restore social peace and stop the blood-letting,” which has killed an estimated 200,000 people over 15 years and caused some 20 billion dollars of material damage.
The conflict began in 1992 when Algeria’s military canceled the second round of parliamentary elections which the main opposition party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was poised to win. With thousands of civilians still missing and distrust and fear still running high in the country, national reconciliation seems a distant prospect, but the 68-year-old Bouteflika is gambling that the vast majority of the 32 million Algerians have had enough.
“Never again!” he beseeched his compatriots, concentrating on the victims of the conflict and their families, whom he asked “to pay a heavy but inevitable tribute for peace and security for everyone”. Bouteflika’s charter consists of a series of legal and social measures addressed primarily at militants who are not implicated “in collective massacres, rapes or bombings of public places”.
It promises the end of legal proceedings against thousands of militants from a number of extremist Islamic groups who have held to the truce decreed in 1997 by the Islamic Salvation Army, the armed wing of the FIS. The project also offers amnesty to militants living abroad or at home who are still wanted by police and to those who have been convicted of crimes in absentia, if they give themselves up. Also included in the offer are those already serving prison time for certain acts of terrorism.
Bouteflika’s proposal is all the more daring since at least one splinter group of the Islamic Salvation Army is still active in and around Algeria and professes to have ties with Al-Qaeda.
In July, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which was responsible for kidnapping 32 European tourists in southern Algeria in the spring of 2003, published an edition of its official magazine in which it provided details about a cross-border attack on a Mauritanian army post.
The attack, the magazine claimed, was carried out “to erase a number of myths, beginning with the myth of ‘reconciliation and general amnesty’ and ending with the myth of ‘desperate remnants’ or a ‘small group that is about to be eliminated’.”
In addition, there has been pressure on the Algerian president from his own camp, by powerful army generals and their allies opposed to all forms of compromise with the extremists.
This issue became more than pertinent after the recent abduction and execution of two Algerian diplomats in Iraq by the terrorist group headed by Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. On July 27, former FIS No. 2 Ali Belhadj appeared on Al-Jazeera television just hours before the two Algerians were executed to praise the kidnappers and declare that “jihad (holy war) and resistance are the only response to occupation” and that Bouteflika had “legitimized the occupation” by sending diplomats to Baghdad.
In this regard, Bouteflika has offered no compromises. The charter bans from all political activities former FIS leaders as well as “anyone with any responsibility in the conception and implementation of the policy known as ‘jihad’ against the nation and the institutions of the republic”.
