Armed Islamic Group of Algeria
The Armed Islamic Group was one of the two main Islamist insurgent groups that fought the Algerian government and army in the Algerian Civil War.
It was created from smaller armed groups following the 1992 military coup and the arrest and internment of thousands of officials in the Islamic Salvation Front party after it won the first round of parliamentary elections in December 1991. It was led by a succession of amirs who were killed or arrested one after another. Unlike the other main armed groups, the Islamic Armed Movement and the Islamic Salvation Army, the GIA sought not to bargain with the government, but to overthrow it and "purge the land of the ungodly" in its pursuit of an Islamic state. The slogan inscribed on all its communiques was: "no agreement, no truce, no dialogue". GIA's ideology was inspired by the Jihadist writings of the Egyptian Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb.
The group desired to create "an atmosphere of general insecurity" and employed kidnapping, assassination, and bombings, including car bombs, and targeted security forces and civilians. Between 1992 and 1998, the GIA conducted a violent campaign of civilian massacres, sometimes wiping out entire villages in its area of operation. It attacked and killed other Islamists who had left the GIA or attempted to negotiate with the government. It also targeted foreign civilians living in Algeria, killing more than 100 expatriate men and women.
The group also established a presence in France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, and the United States. It launched terror attacks in France in 1994 and 1995. While it was the "undisputed principal Islamist force" in Algeria in 1994, militants were deserting "in droves" by 1996, alienated by its execution of civilians and Islamist leaders.
In 1999, a government amnesty law motivated large numbers of jihadis to "repent". The remnants of the GIA proper were hunted down over the next two years, leaving a splinter group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which announced its support for Al-Qaeda in October 2003. The extent to which the group was infiltrated and manipulated by Algerian security services is disputed.
The GIA is considered a terrorist organisation by the governments of Algeria, France, the United States, Argentina, Bahrain, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations. The GIA remains a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000. Canada listed GIA as a terrorist entity until 18 June 2024.
History
Founding
According to Algerian veterans of the Afghan jihad who founded the GIA, the idea of forming an armed group to fight jihad against the Algerian government was developed not after the coup, but after leaders of the MIA were freed from prison in 1989. The idea was not acted on then due to the spectacular electoral political success of the FIS. Embracing Sayyid Qutb's takfir of secular governments and assertion that engaging in armed jihad against Jaahili societies was mandatory; GIA leaders condemned the FLN regime as apostates and called upon Algerians to rise up, pledge allegiance to them, and violently overthrow the socialist government in pursuit of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria. The support base of the GIA mainly consisted of the educationally and economically underprivileged classes of Algerian society.Early in 1992, Mansour Meliani, a former aid to Bouyali, along with many "Afghans", broke with his former friend Abdelkader Heresay and left the MIA, founding his own Jihadi group around July 1992. Meliani was arrested in July and executed in August 1993. He was replaced by Mohammed Allal, aka Moh Leveilley, who was killed on 1 September 1992 by the Algerian military when it attacked a meeting held to unify command of the jihad.
In the early 1990s, the economic state of Algeria was dire. 41% of Algerians ages 15–24 were unemployed in 1990. Young Algerians were a main part of the GIA; it was able to "enlist young Algerians who felt overall excluded from mainstream society and the country’s political life", according to a study from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
Abdelhak Layada
Leveilley was replaced in January 1993 by Abdelhak Layada, who declared his group independent of the FIS and MIA and not obedient to its orders. It adopted the radical Omar El-Eulmi as a spiritual guide, and Layada affirmed that "political pluralism is equivalent to sedition". He also believed jihad in Algeria was fard ayn, or an individual obligation of adult male Muslims. Layada threatened not just security forces but journalists and the families of Algerian soldiers. From its inception on, the GIA called for and implemented the killing of anyone collaborating with or supporting the authorities, including government employees such as teachers and civil servants.Layada did not last long and was arrested in Morocco in May 1993.
Besides the GIA, the other major branch of the Algerian resistance was the MIA. It was led by the ex-soldier "General" Abdelkader Chebouti, and was "well-organized and structured and favored a long-term jihad" targeting the state and its representatives and based on a guerrilla campaign like that of the War of Independence. From prison, Ali Benhadj issued a fatwa giving the MIA his blessing. In March 2006, Abdelhak Layada was released from prison, amnesty measures provided for in the Charter for Peace and Reconciliation launched by the president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, even offering himself as a mediator to seek a truce between the government and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.
Djafar al-Afghani
On August 21, 1993, Seif Allah Djafar, aka Mourad Si Ahmed, aka Djafar al-Afghani, a 30-year-old black marketer with no education beyond primary school, became GIA amir. Violence escalated under Djafar, as did the GIA's base of support outside of Algeria.Under him, the group named and assassinated specific journalists and intellectuals, saying that "The journalists who fight against Islamism through the pen will perish by the sword."
The GIA explicitly affirmed that it "did not represent the armed wing of the FIS", and issued death threats against several FIS and MIA members, including MIA's Heresay and FIS's Kebir and Redjam.
About the time al-Afghani took power of GIA, a group of Algerian jihadists returning from Afghanistan came to London. Together with Islamist intellectual Abu Qatada, they started up a weekly magazine, Usrat al-Ansar as a GIA propaganda outlet. Abu Qatada "provided the intellectual and ideological firepower" to justify GIA actions, and the journal became "a trusted source of news and information about the GIA for Islamists around the world."
The GIA soon broadened its attacks to civilians who refused to live by their prohibitions, and then foreigners living in Algeria. A hostage released on 31 October 1993 carried a message ordering foreigners to "leave the country. We are giving you one month. Anyone who exceeds that period will be responsible for his own sudden death." By the end of 1993 26 foreigners had been killed.
In November 1993 Sheik Mohamed Bouslimani "a popular figure who was prominent" in Hamas party of Mahfoud Nahnah was kidnapped and executed after "refusing to issue a fatwa endorsing the GIA's tactics."
Djafar was killed by French security forces on December 26, 1994 during the raid on Air France flight 8969.
Cherif Gousmi
, aka Abu Abdallah Ahmed, became amir March 10, 1994. Under him, the GIA reached its "high water mark", and became the "undisputed principal Islamist force" in Algeria. In May, Islamist leaders Abderrezak Redjam, Mohammed Said, the exiled Anwar Haddam, and the MEI's Said Makhloufi joined the GIA; a blow to the FIS and surprise since the GIA had been issuing death threats against the three since November 1993. This was interpreted by many observers as either the result of intra-FIS competition or as an attempt to change the GIA's course from within. On 26 August, the group declared a "Caliphate", or Islamic government for Algeria, with Gousmi as Commander of the Faithful, Mohammed Said as head of government, the US-based Haddam as foreign minister, and Mekhloufi as provisional interior minister.However, the very next day Said Mekhloufi announced his withdrawal from the GIA, claiming that the GIA had deviated from Islam and that this "Caliphate" was an effort by Mohammed Said to take over the GIA, and Haddam soon afterwards denied ever having joined it, asserting that this Caliphate was an invention of the security services. The GIA continued attacking its usual targets, notably assassinating artists, such as Cheb Hasni, and in late August added a new one to its list, threatening schools which allowed mixed classes, music, gym for girls, or not wearing hijab with arson. He was killed in combat on September 26, 1994.
Djamel Zitouni
Cherif Gousmi was eventually succeeded by Djamel Zitouni who became GIA head on October 27, 1994. He was the responsible for carrying out a series of bombings in France in 1995. He was killed by a rival faction on July 16, 1996.Antar Zouabri and takfir
Antar Zouabri, was the longest serving "emir" was nominated by a faction of the GIA "considered questionable by the others". The 26-year-old activist was a "close confidant" of Zitouni and continued his policy of "ever increasing violence and redoubled purges". Zouabri opened his reign as emir by issuing a manifesto entitled The Sharp Sword, presenting Algerian society as resistant to jihad and lamented that the majority of the people had "forsaken religion and renounced the battle against its enemies," but was careful to deny that the GIA had ever accused Algerian society itself of impiety.Convinced of Zouabri's salafist orthodoxy, Egyptian veteran of the Afghan jihad Abu Hamza restarted the Al-Ansar bulletin/magazine in London.
During the month of Ramadan hundreds of civilians were killed in massacres some with their throats cut. The massacres continued for months and culminated in August and September when hundreds of men women and children were killed in the villages of Rais, Bentalha, Beni Messous. Pregnant women were sliced open, children were hacked to pieces or dashed against walls, men's limbs were hacked off one by one, and, as the attackers retreated, they would kidnap young women to keep as sex slaves. The GIA issued a communiques signed by Zouabri claiming responsibility for the massacres and justifying them—in contradiction to his manifesto—by declaring impious all those Algerians who had not joined its ranks. In London Abu Hamzu criticised the communique and two days later announced the end of his support and the closure of the bulletin, cutting off GIA's communication with international Islamist community and the rest of the outside world. In Algeria, the slaughters drained the GIA of popular support. A week earlier the AIS insurgents announced it would declare a unilateral truce starting in October.
These events marked the end of "organized jihad in Algeria," according to one source
Although Zouabri was seldom heard of after this and the jihad exhausted, massacres "continued unabated" through 1998 led by independent amirs with added "ingredients of vendetta and local dispute" to the putative jihad against the government. Armed groups "that had formerly belonged to the GIA" continued to kill, some replacing jihad with simple banditry, others settling scores with the pro-government "patriots" or others, some enlisting themselves in the services of landowners and frightening illegal occupants off of property.
In 1999 the "Law on Civil Concord" granting amnesty to fighters was officially rejected by the GIA but accepted by many rank-and-file Islamist fighters; an estimated 85 percent surrendered their arms and returned to civilian life.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat splinter faction appears to have eclipsed the GIA since approximately 1998 and is currently assessed by the CIA to be the most effective armed group remaining inside Algeria. Both the GIA and GSPC leadership continue to proclaim their rejection of President Bouteflika's amnesty, but in contrast to the GIA, the GSPC has stated that it avoids attacks on civilians.
Zouabri was himself killed in a gun battle with security forces 9 February 2002. The GIA, torn by splits and desertions and denounced by all sides even in the Islamist movement, was slowly destroyed by army operations over the next few years; by the time of Antar Zouabri's death it was effectively incapacitated.