Liamine Zéroual

Liamine Zéroual

Liamine Zéroual ( Arabic اليمين زروال, DMG al-Yamīn Zarwāl ; * July 3, 1941 in Batna ) is an Algerian military man and politician. From 1994 to 1999 he held the office of President .

Zéroual was born in Batna in 1941 and received his military training in Moscow and Paris .

Zéroual joined the FLN guerrillas in the Algerian war at the age of sixteen . During the war he served within the colonized country and with the FLN foreign army stationed in Morocco and Tunisia. After the war he made a career in the army .

In 1988 he became Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but soon resigned due to disagreements with Chadli Bendjedid over the future direction of the armed forces. He then became ambassador to Romania but retired after a month. In 1993 he held his first high political office as Minister of Defense.

In 1994 he was appointed President of the State by the High Council and confirmed in an election in 1995. A constitutional reform significantly expanded the rights of the president.

During his reign, the civil war with radical Islamists continued . With the army there was increasing disagreement over the treatment of Islamist groups. Zéroual advocated negotiations with some groups, while the military demanded the destruction of the Islamist terrorists . Because of these disputes, Zéroual announced his resignation in 1998 and in 1999 handed over the government to Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika .

literature

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

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Hugh Roberts: The Battlefield Algeria 1988 - 2002 - Studies in a Broken Polity. London, 2003, p. 157, p. 245

Web links

Commons : Liamine Zéroual  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Liamine Zéroual in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Short biography