ALGERIA: ADVERSARIES IN SEARCH OF UNCERTAIN COMPROMISES
ALGERIA: ADVERSARIES IN SEARCH OF UNCERTAIN COMPROMISES

Author(s): Rémy Leveau
Subject(s): Governance, Security and defense, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: EUISS European Union Institute for Security Studies
Keywords: ALgeria; Islamic Salvation Front; National Liberation Front;
Summary/Abstract: The perception of Islamic movements has been marked in Europe since 1979 by images of the Iranian revolution: hostages in the American Embassy, support for international terrorism, incidents at the mosque in Mecca and the Salman Rushdie affair. The dominant rhetoric of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria, which has since 1989 presented a similar image of rejection of internal state order and of the international system, strengthens the feeling of an identity of aims and of a bloc of hostile attitudes. If such a simplistic analysis were accepted, the need for careful thought on the rhetoric and practice of this radical Islamic movement would of course be unnecessary. Such a movement has certainly borrowed from the dominant ideologies a vocabulary of global protest against the order established following independence which will go much further than the questioning by Marxist intellectuals in the 1960s. It will take up against the FLN (National Liberation Front) one of the themes of the Boumedienne era - the fact that independence is as yet unattained - and on the basis of this demand the institution of an Islamic state whose form is vague and uncompromising.

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