International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) is a national political organization that waged a ten-year civil war from 1992 to 2002 against the secular Algerian government, after it was prevented from taking political power through democratic means. Algeria, the largest country in North Africa, situated on Africa's northern coast, known as the Maghreb, gained independence from France in 1962 after a 12-year revolutionary liberation struggle. After victory the National Liberation Front (FNL) consolidated power against all other insurgent groups and ruled the country with the support of the military through the 1990s. The economic backdrop to the formation of the FIS and the Algerian Civil War is the imposition of liberal economic reforms that undermined the economy and the emergence of democratic reforms that permitted religious party competition to secular central states. The political shape of liberal democracy in Algeria emerges from the independence era foundation and dominance of the National Liberation Front in national politics and the creation of a secular one-party state. The reforms imposed on Algeria, along with the decline in global oil prices, pushed more working and poor Algerians into poverty. In the late 1980s support for an Islamic fundamentalist party heightened among disillusioned poor and working-class citizens. The FIS emerged as the leading force to challenge the FNL, ... log in or subscribe to read full text