1 - Algeria

Summary

This chapter tells the story of shifting jihadist coalitions within Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) initially built a broad coalition comprising veterans of Afghanistan, veterans of an earlier domestic Algerian insurgency, local hardliners, and other armed groups that the GIA drew in. Yet at the peak of coalition-building, the death of a unifying figure set the stage for bitter infighting as the local hardliners began to exclude and even kill the leaders of other coalition blocs. Eventually, the GIA fragmented along ideological but also geographical lines, with regional field commanders revolting against the clique of leaders from Algiers and nearby Blida. The GIA splinter organization the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (French acronym GSPC) represented the reaction of field commanders, who wished to move away from internal purges and civilian massacres and back to fighting the Algerian state.