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| AlgerieOnLine.com >>> History | |||||
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The earliest known inhabitants of the region that is now Algeria were Berber-speaking nomads who were settled there by the 2d millennium B.C. As Numidia, it became (9th cent. B.C.) a province of Carthage and then (106 B.C.) of Rome; during the Christian era, St. Augustine (354–430) was bishop at Hippo (now Annaba). With Rome's decline in the 5th cent. A.D., Algeria was conquered by the Vandals (430–31), the Byzantine Empire (6th cent.), and finally, in the late 7th and early 8th cent., by the Arabs, whose introduction of Islam profoundly altered the character of the area.  Spain captured the coastal
cities in the 15th cent. but was expelled (mid-16th cent.)
with the help of the Ottoman Turks, who assumed control.
During this period the Algerian coast was a stronghold of
pirates and a center of the slave trade. France invaded
Algeria in 1830 and declared it a colony in 1848. Europeans
began to arrive in large numbers, dominating the government
and the economy, and leaving the native Muslim population with
scant political or economic power.A nationalist movement began to develop after World War I, and a war for independence, led by the National Liberation Front (FLN), broke out in 1954. After more than seven years of bitter fighting, in which at least 100,000 Muslim and 10,000 French soldiers were killed, Algeria became independent on July 3, 1962. Since independence, Algeria has been a prominent nonaligned state and a champion of the movements against white minority rule in Africa. It also has supported the protracted struggle of the Polisario Front for the independence of Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara) from Morocco. Ahmed Ben Bella, prime minister and then president of Algeria after independence, was deposed by Houari Boumedienne in 1965. After Boumedienne's death (1978), Chadli Benjedid succeeded (1979) him as president. Riots in 1988 led Pres. Benjedid to reduce the role of the state economically and of the FLN politically. After Islamic fundamentalists won 42% of the seats in the first round of parliamentary elections in Dec. 1991, the army forced Benjedid to resign (1992) and cancelled the election. A civilian-led state council was installed, but real power resided with the army. The fundamentalist party was banned and its leaders arrested. Fundamentalists launched a guerrilla insurrection, and Algeria was torn by violence from both sides, resulting in an estimated 50,000 deaths by the mid-1990s. In Jan., 1994, Gen. Liamine Zéroual was appointed president. Under Zéroual, limited efforts at negotiations with the Islamic opposition were followed by a renewed crackdown. Zéroual won the Nov., 1995, presidential elections, which were boycotted by Islamic militants. Fighting continued, and he resigned early in 1999. Presidential elections held in Apr., 1999, were won by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the candidate of the military oligarchy; all the opposition candidates had withdrawn before the vote, claiming ballot-rigging. The Islamic Salvation Army, the armed wing of the outlawed FIS, renounced its armed struggle in June, 1999; its members were to be granted amnesty (approved in a referendum in September) and invited to join government forces in fighting other radical guerrillas still waging war against the state. By mid-1999, 100,000 people had been killed in the violence and repression that began in 1992. In Jan., 2000, President Bouteflika granted a blanket pardon to the Islamic Salvation Army forces, and the government announced that 80% of all the Islamic guerrillas had surrendered under the amnesty. The government began an offensive against the remaining guerrillas during the same month.
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