Centrifugal Tendencies In The Algerian Civil War

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer, 2001 by Quintan Wiktorowicz

It is clear that there is no indiscriminate killing. Our fighters only kill those who deserve to die. We say to those who accuse us of indiscriminate killing that we will fight those traitors who have gone over to the 'taghout' [un-Islamic government]. We do no more than carry out the wishes of God and the Prophet. When you hear of killings and throat-slittings in a town or a village, you should know it is a matter of the death of government partisans, or else it is the application of GIA communiques ordering [us] to do good and combat evil. [22]

Still other civilians were targeted for engaging in what the GIA and other Islamists deemed un-Islamic behaviors. As part of the sharia injunction to command good and forbid what is evil, the GIA argued that it is a religious duty to eliminate "those who do not pray, who drink alcohol, take drugs, homosexuals, and immodest or debauched women." [23] This rationale was used to justify vicious assaults against a variety of targets, including women and pubescent girls who did not wear the hijab (head covering); places of "disrepute," such as bars and video stores; and individuals who did not act in accordance with GIA interpretations of sharia sanctioned moral behavior. [24] Any civilians killed inadvertently through bombs or other methods were considered martyrs if they were in the same area as the broadly defined "enemy," thus covering the GIA's religious legitimation for all casualties.

Attacks against civilians targeted not only ordinary villagers and Algerian citizens, but also prominent cultural figures and civil society leaders. Popular Berber singers, such as Cheb Hasni and Lounes Matoub were denounced as "the enemy of God, one of the symbols of depravation and debauchery in the Kabylie region." [25] They were kidnapped and murdered by GIA factions, engendering anti-Islamist protests in Berber communities. Other civil society figures, such as the head of a football club, a student leader, the director of the Algerian national theater, and the head of a feminist organization, were killed by the GIA for sponsoring ideas deemed inimical to Islam. [26]

THE PEN AND THE SWORD

In combating any group countenancing regime interests, journalists, editors, and the press became prime targets. The press is tightly censored and controlled by the Algerian regime, and reporting on the civil war was curtailed to suit the counterinsurgency efforts and propaganda of the state and its security services. Sympathetic Islamist journalists were consistently harassed and prevented from offering an alternative perspective on the conflict. Even secular journalists and editors who reported information the regime considered compromising were arrested. For the GIA, the press was simply an extension of the regime's war against the Islamists. As a result, the GIA viewed journalists and other members of the press industry as legitimate targets. Armed groups assassinated journalists and editors and bombed newspaper offices and television stations.