National Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Algeria: Lessons for Libya?

1. Introduction

In the 1990s, Algeria experienced a violent civil war between the government and an Islamist insurgency. There were seven armed groups, namely: the Armed Islamic Movement (AIM); the Islamic State Movement (ISM); the Islamic Front of the Armed Jihad (IFAJ); the Islamic Army of Salvation (AIS); the Armed Islamic Group (GIA); and the Guardian of Salafi Call (GSC). The war followed a contested process of political liberalisation that was associated with important societal cleavages. Disputes between sympathisers of secular parties and the Islamist opposition were seen on a daily basis, especially on university campuses. Mosques also were transformed into political mobilisation hubs and places of contestation against post-independence policies. In 1992, and after the suspension of the electoral process by the military, violence exploded and the country descended into a period of massive human rights violations. Civilians were vulnerable to various types of atrocities: political assassinations, mass killings, massacres, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and enforced displacements. In 1997, a truce was announced by the AIS after long negotiations with the national intelligence agency. Consequently, the levels of violence in the country decreased. According to the national authorities, there had been as many as 200,000 victims in the civil war, but no detailed reports have been published assessing the deaths and consequences of the “Black Decade”2 . According to civil society estimates, the war resulted in around 18,000 enforced disappearances by state forces3 and 20,000 enforced disappearances by armed groups, including 4,000 women.4 After Abdelaziz Bouteflika came to power in 1999, the presidency announced two complementary projects to establish peace and to implement reconciliation: the Civil Concord Law (CCL, 1999) and the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation (CNPR, 2005). Although violence decreased and life returned to various damaged villages, the projects have come under severe criticism from national and international human rights organisations, which asserted that reconciliation is not a one-step initiative. Instead, it is a long and multi-step process that involves enhancing societal tolerance, diminishing structural injustices, defending human dignity and victims’ rights. It follows that the reconciliation initiative should be revised and promoted continuously in a way that strengthens democratic norms and peaceful interpersonal relations. This paper5 scrutinises the reconciliation initiative in Algeria by highlighting the principal measures that have been undertaken by different actors. It, also, illuminates the main lessons from the Algerian experience. Those lessons might be usefully employed by experts seeking to design reconciliation processes in Libya, a country in a complicated transitional period. Certainly, the external and internal dynamics of violence differ from one country to another. But both countries share common socio-cultural characteristics and are exposed to similar security threats. The paper is part of a broader research effort that features extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Algeria in 2018-2019. We rely on three sources to address the main scientific concerns of the analysis; most of the data are primary materials. First, there are interviews. We conducted more than one hundred interviews with victim families and other agents who played a significant role during the war.