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MoAssassination Prompts Algerians
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Jely /10 Question Army Policy, Focus
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By Jonathan C. Randal
Washington Post Foreign Service
ALGIERS-For many Algerians,
the most troubling fact about last
week's assassination of head of
state Mohammed Boudiaf was that
the man identified as the apparent
assassin was a junior officer in an
elite army security unit who had
Muslim "religious convictions."
The report that an army officer
had pulled the trigger seemed to
confirm recurring rumors here that
NEWS
ANALYSIS
the army, long consid-
ered the regime's ul-
timate bulwark against
chaos, was as subject as the rest of
society to the Islamic fundamental-
ist virus.
In Algeria, an old saw states,
"Other countries have an army;
here the army has the country."
Officially, that army, which effec-
tively has run Algeria from behind
the scenes since independence 30
years ago, was silent when con-
fronted with evidence of the seem-
ing penetration of its ranks by the
very fundamentalists it has sworn
publicly to eradicate.
The army had never formally
named the fundamentalist Islamic
Salvation Front as the enemy. But
in January, it ousted president
Chadli Bendjedid to prevent the
front from winning Algeria's first
free parliamentary elections. Then
it brought war hero Boudiaf back
from self-imposed exile to lend le-
Approved For Release 2000/08/08meSTA-RRPR
a "constitutional coup d'etat."
Boudiaf and Defense Minister
Khaled Nezzar later banned the
front, arrested its leaders and sent
thousands of militants to Sahara
detention camps.
Indeed, only two days before
Boudiaf's assassination, the regime
had brought before a military tri-
bunal the Islamic Salvation Front's
· top leaders-Abbasi Madani, Ali
Belhadj and five others-on capital
charges of seeking to overthrow the
government and replace it with an
Islamic republic in June 1991.
Conspiracy theories on Boudiaf's
assassination soon emerged, laying
blame variously on mysterious mil-
itary and civilian power brokers or
alleged skullduggery by Bendjedid
and the discredited National Liber-
ation Front, which monopolized
power until 1990.
Some accusations also were di-
rected at the army. Indeed, a senior
Algerian source said so many peo-
ple "were accusing the army of
bringing Boudiaf back, using him
and then getting rid of him" that the
government set up an impartial,
three-man panel of the slain lead-
er's associates to investigate his
death and "convince the people [the
army] had nothing to do with it."
In dealing with the succession,
Nezzar and his fellow generals, tra-
ditionally shy of the limelight,
brushed aside hard-line suggestions
that they impose an outright mil-
itary regime by invoking the ulti-
mate bulwark argument.
Instead, the military-backed gov-
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the Algerian veterans' organization,
who is not expected to fulfill Bou-
diaf's promise of "radical change"
for a people fed up with soaring in-
flation and unemployment, econom-
ic mismanagement and revolving-
door governments. Kafi, however,
has the political connections capable
of initiating a national reconciliation
with the Islamic fundamentalists.
Even Nezzar has favored such a
dialogue, according to key diplo-
mats and political observers, de-
spite his call a week ago for the
"eradicating" of fundamentalist ex-
tremists.
The generals are said to be con-
cerned about the army's cohesion.
They are mindful that younger of-
ficers are having second thoughts
about the yearlong state of emer-
gency decreed in February, which
has cost the lives of some 100 sol-
diers and policemen.
The generals also know the re-
gime now is more beholden than
ever to France, Italy, Spain and oth-
er Western governments, which
have thrown good money after bad
in helping successive Algerian ad-
ministrations.
Even before Boudiaf's assassina-
tion, foreign business hesitated to
make major investments because of
Algeria's political instability and a
$24 billion foreign debt devouring
70 percent of foreign-exchange
earnings-which come from oil and
natural gas exports.
In such circumstances, the fun-
damentalists have everything to
gain by keeping their heads down
WantMy YY further unraveling
of Algeria's social fabric.
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