Islamic salvation front

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Front islamique du Salut (FIS)
الجبهة الإسلامية للإنقاذ
Islamic salvation front
Flag of the Islamic Salvation Front.svg
founding 1989
Ban 1992
Alignment Pan-Islamism

The Islamic Salvation Front ( French Front islamique du Salut , abbreviation FIS , Arabic الجبهة الإسلامية للإنقاذ al-Jabha al-Islamiya al-Inqadh ) was an Islamist party in Algeria . After their victory in the first free elections in 1991, the military stopped the liberalization of the political system and banned and smashed the party. This led to the Algerian Civil War , in which the FIS itself was involved with its military arm.

prehistory

During the Algerian War , the FLN, organized as a socialist cadre party, enforced Algeria's independence from the colonial power by force of arms. The FLN established a one-party state modeled on the Eastern Bloc and directed the state ideology towards secularism, socialism and non-alignment. The FLN elite, which had passed through western education systems, saw the religion of Islam as a means of mobilization against the Christian colonial power France and used religious legitimacy and religious language, even if, as a socialist party, it was not a religious movement itself. After the victory in the War of Independence, the remaining Muslim foundations were expropriated. The replacement of Ahmed Ben Bella by Houari Boumedienne resulted in an intensified policy of Arabization, in which Egyptian teachers were used for teacher training, many of whom were persecuted supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood . Under Boumedienne, the Islamists obtained dominance over culture and parts of the school system, but an organized Islamist movement was not tolerated by the state.

The FLN inherited a linguistically divided population from the colonial state, as education and skilled employment were linked to French language skills. In addition to the native Arabic dialect, French functioned as a lingua franca and a status symbol for the upper classes. The Algerian government implemented a policy of Arabization which attempted to replace French with Standard Arabic, which had hitherto barely been used in Algeria. When the first students fully trained in Arabic came onto the job market in the mid-1970s, there was little need for them. The land reform, which Boumedienne forced through the involvement of the communist PAGS , also met with opposition from the rural elites and the Islamic clergy. In 1976, the Algerian state reacted to the incipient dissent by elevating Islam to the state religion in the new national charter. Likewise, gambling was banned, an Islamic weekend regulation was introduced and the close control of religious institutions by the state was further institutionalized.

In 1960, Al-Qiyam, an Islamist political group formed around well-known Islamic clerics, which was banned by the state in 1966. During the 1980s there was a boom in private mosques not registered by the state, which provided a stage for Salafist and radical preachers. Islamism was very popular in the country's universities and Islamic welfare movements concentrated their internal mission on the country's educational institutions. From 1981 onwards there were also acts of violence by civil Islamist activists against practices that were perceived as un-Islamic, such as prostitution , serving alcohol , Western media consumption and political opponents of the Islamists. In 1982, after the murder of a Trotskyist student by Islamists on the campus of the University of Algiers, there were large solidarity demonstrations by Islamists. The aims of the demonstrations were to reopen the prayer rooms that were closed after the murder, to abolish coeducation and to demand a society that conforms to Sharia law. The leaders of the movement were the popular clergymen Abdellatif Soltani , Achmed Sahnoun and the university professor Abbassi Madani . In the same year, the Islamist Moustapha Bouyali founded the Mouvement Islamique Armée, an Islamist terrorist group that tried to start a guerrilla war against the secular state of the FLN. The Islamist guerrilla was justified religiously and politically by public fatawa of radical preachers such as Ali Belhadj and Abdelbaki Sahraoui . The government under Chadli and Hamrouche gave the Islamists room and tried to maintain public order at the same time. Activists and leaders like Madani and Soltani were arrested after the murder. However, prosecution remained modest. The government also passed an amendment to family law in 1984, which placed the position of women in accordance with Sharia law below that of men, thus fulfilling a core requirement of the Islamists.

The Afghan war strengthened the Islamists' prestige by defeating the Soviet Union, which was seen as an ally of the FLN. Between 300 and 2,800 Algerians returned to Algeria as war veterans after the war. Many of these fighters took on key positions in the Islamist movement. The style of clothing used by the Afghan fighters also spread among the youth, expressing their rejection of the Algerian state.

Party history

In the course of political liberalization under Chadli Bendjedid , Islamist activists founded the Islamic Salvation Front in February 1989 and made the founding of the party public on March 10, 1989. The party president, a professor at the University of Algiers and the Islamic preacher Ali Belhadj emerged as prominent leaders . In September 1989 the party was officially recognized by Head of State Bendjedid. This provoked criticism from within the ruling FLN , which called for the prohibition of parties on a religious basis to be applied. The leadership of the party was formally in a 43-member advisory body, the Majlis asch-Shura . The party emerged as a tightly organized organization with spread throughout Algeria. The weekly party newspaper Al Munqidh had a circulation of 200,000 in October 1989. When an earthquake struck near Tipaza in 1989 , FIS activists provided disaster relief effectively and publicly in contrast to the state aid measures. None of the other competitors of the FLN admitted by the multi-party system could produce a device which could have replaced the state party. In the first half of 1990, the FIS brought this ability to the public's attention through regular demonstrations.

The party was fed by two ideological currents. On the one hand from Salafism , whose representatives sought the establishment of an Islamic state through political methods or armed struggle. In addition, there was an Algerian current that sought to penetrate society through Islamic principles by means of internal mission and informing the population and which goes back to the Algerian university professor Malek Bennabi . The FIS activists were fed by the unofficial, non-state-controlled mosques and Islamic welfare organizations, which had gained significant popularity in the 1980s. Madani and Belhadj were both involved in this movement, which brought around 400,000 demonstrators to the streets in Algiers even before the party was founded. The FIS claimed the true values ​​of the independence struggle, which had been betrayed by the FLN. The FLN was portrayed as a French-controlled political force. The task of the FIS is to establish an Islamist system in Algeria and to replace the FLN elites, which are determined by Western and socialist ideas. The FIS itself rejected political pluralism, according to Madani in 1990 there would be no new elections after the FIS came to power.

In June 1990 the FIS achieved a majority in local elections in numerous municipalities, especially in the suburbs of the capital Algiers, and was thus able to fill mayor posts and councils at local level. This gave the party a boost in the neighborhoods and made use of the state funding available at the local level. In the areas under its control, the FIS ensured that clothing, behavior and media consumption were brought into line with the Islamist norms of behavior it propagated. The FIS also did charitable work and took action against corruption and crime with ad hoc security forces. The central state, under the control of the FLN, blocked the financial resources of the municipal councils taken over by the FIS and withdrew its security authorities from the affected areas. The local cadres of the FIS were able to mobilize the support of craftsmen, small traders and, in some cases, larger private companies in order to cover their financial needs.

During the Second Gulf War in 1990/91 there was a widespread mood of solidarity with the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein in Algeria . At the beginning of the conflict, the FIS condemned the occupation of Kuwait as illegal and portrayed Saddam Hussein negatively because of his secularism. With the emerging US military intervention, the FIS turned around politically and jumped on the pro-Iraqi mood among the population. The FIS took part in anti-war demonstrations and Ali Belhadj tried to organize volunteers to fight the western troops in Iraq. The party leader Abbasi traveled to Jordan to set up a military infrastructure there. This enabled the FIS to gain further votes against the FLN government under President Chadli and Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche . After Saddam Hussein's defeat, the FLN establishment expected the FIS to fall in popularity among the population. The government duo Chadli and Hamrouche tried to weaken the FIS before the free national elections planned for June and July 1991. The state media criticized the FIS as a fanatical and puritan movement. In April 1991 a decree made political preaching in mosques a criminal offense. The electoral system was changed by Prime Minister Hamrouche so that each constituency could only send one MP. The government also ordered a reorganization of the electoral districts, which through Gerrymandering would strengthen the rural regions, in which the FLN was generally strong, to the detriment of the FIS. The FIS responded to these measures with a call for a general strike on May 25, 1991 and mass demonstrations, which brought around 100,000 sympathizers to the streets of Algiers on May 27. FIS activists subsequently erected barricades and loudspeaker stations to mobilize their presence on the street permanently. During the night of June 3-4, 1991, police units tried to break up the demonstrations. Since the police were not up to the Islamist demonstrators, the military intervened. The street fighting that followed left 13 dead and 60 injured, according to government reports. Several thousand FIS members and sympathizers were taken to internment camps in the Sahara. President Chadli responded to the military intervention by declaring a state of emergency for four months and curfews in Algiers, Blida , Tipaza and Boumerdes . The elections should only take place after the state of emergency had ended. Likewise, on June 7th, Chadli replaced Prime Minister Hamrouche, who had spoken out against the use of force, with FLN economic functionary Sid Ahmed Ghozali . On June 25th, the military replaced the FIS slogans on municipal councils with FLN slogans. The resistance of the FIS cadres took the military as an opportunity to arrest the FIS leaders Madani and Hamrouche and to charge them with calling for an armed uprising. The FIS reacted to the state repression with a change of leadership. At the Majlis asch-Shura conference in Batna , the more regional Algerian wing prevailed and named Abdelkader Hachani as the successor to the two imprisoned party leaders. At the same time, the first armed groups fled into the mountains and prepared for an armed uprising against the regime. Ali Belhadj supported the jihadist line from prison by means of receipts . The leadership under Hachani managed to organize demonstrations that dominated the cityscape of Algiers. The leadership under Hachani managed to keep some of the jihadists who joined the Maquis in check in the hope of winning the election. On November 29, the first attack on the Algerian military by the jihadist group Takfir wa-l-Hijra took place in Guemmar near the Tunisian border. The government scheduled the elections for December 1991 and January 1992.

In the first free parliamentary elections in the country on December 26, 1991 , a landslide victory for the FIS became apparent. According to the first-past-the-post system established by Hamrouche, the FIS won 188 of the 231 parliamentary seats in the first round alone. The FLN itself could only achieve 15 seats and was surpassed by the newly founded opposition party FFS with 25 seats. With the 199 seats still to be allocated in the second election round in January, it was clear from the outcome of the first ballot that the FIS could mathematically provide the government. The FLN General Secretary Abdelhamed Mehri agreed to work with an FIS government. Secular opposition parties and feminist and left-wing social organizations under the leadership of FLN union leader Abdelhak Benhamouda founded a committee to save Algeria on December 30 and demanded that the second round be suspended due to military intervention. Prime Minister Ghozali and other parties spoke out in favor of continuing the elections. On January 13, 1991, President Chadli announced his resignation under pressure from the military. Instead of the government , the military installed a State Council that acted as a coup government. This consisted of high political functionaries of the FLN and officers. The very popular independence fighter Muhammad Boudiaf was appointed chairman of the State Council . The new FIS chairman, Hachani, was arrested on January 22nd. Street fighting broke out again between FIS activists and the military. On February 8, the High Council of State deployed tanks and the military took vigorous action against the FIS. The new political leadership declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law. Around 8,000 FIS members and sympathizers were interned in the Sahara. Until the FIS was banned on March 4, 1992, the fighting claimed 103 lives and several hundred injured. Until the FIS was banned, Hachani tried to bring together an alliance of FLN officials and the FFS who demanded that the electoral process be restarted. However, after his predecessors were arrested, Hachani had already founded his own militant group, the Front Islamique pour le Jihad en Algérie (FIDA) .

The ban on the FIS and the cancellation of the election by the military coup is seen as the beginning of the Algerian Civil War , which claimed over 100,000 lives in the 1990s . Groups split off from the Salvation Front, the GIA and AIS, resorted to methods of terrorism, while the front itself finally advocated a peaceful solution in a joint declaration with other opposition groups from 1997 at the latest.

During the civil war, the FIS initially ceased to appear as an organization following its ban and repression against its members. The numerous armed Islamist groups, above all the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) and the Mouvement Islamique Armé (MIA), had ideological and personal overlaps with the FIS, but did not emerge directly from it. In 1994 the armed arm of the FIS was constituted as AIS under the leadership of Ahmed ben Aicha and Madani Mezraq . The AIS was in direct competition with the GIA and claimed to lead the jihad against the FLN state without terrorist means.

literature

  • Bernhard Schmid: Algeria. Frontline State in Global War? Neoliberalism , Social Movements and Islamic Ideology in a North African Country. 2005, ISBN 3-89771-019-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gilles Kepel: Jihad - The Trail of Political Islam. 4th edition, London, 2006, 2016 pp. 162f
  2. ^ Hugh Roberts: The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002 - Studies in a Broken Polity. London, 2003, p. 157, pp. 8-18
  3. ↑ a b Aït-Aoudia, M. (2006). La naissance du Front islamique du salut: une politisation conflictuelle (1988–1989). Critique Internationale, no 30, (1), 129–144. doi: 10.3917 / crii.030.0129 Reference Error : Invalid Tag . The name "Ait-Aoudia2006" was defined several times with different content.<ref>
  4. ^ Hugh Roberts: The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002 - Studies in a Broken Polity. London, 2003, p. 157, pp. 20-21
  5. ^ Hugh Roberts: The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002 - Studies in a Broken Polity. London, 2003, p. 157, pp. 20-23
  6. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, pp. 135-137
  7. ↑ a b John Ruedy: Modern Algeria - The Origins of Development of a Nation. Bloomington, 2005, pp. 251f
  8. ↑ Aït-Aoudia, M. (2006). La naissance du Front islamique du salut: une politisation conflictuelle (1988–1989). Critique Internationale, no 30, (1), 129–144. doi: 10.3917 / crii.030.0129 .
  9. ↑ Gilles Kepel: Jihad - The Trail of Political Islam. 4th edition, London, 2006, 2016 pp. 166–168
  10. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, pp. 146-151
  11. ↑ Luis Martinez: The Algerian Civil War 1990-1998. London, 2000, pp. 23-25, pp. 33, pp. 38-40
  12. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, pp. 161-163
  13. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, pp. 163-167
  14. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, pp. 168-173
  15. ^ Hugh Roberts: The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002 - Studies in a Broken Polity. London, 2003, p. 132
  16. ^ Martin Evans, John Phillips: Algeria - Anger of the Dispossesed. New Haven, 2007, p. 167
  17. ↑ John Ruedy: Modern Algeria - The Origins of Development of a Nation. Bloomington, 2005, p. 264