In 1962, Algeria proclaimed independence from France following eight years of war and over a century of colonial rule. The Algerian war of independence, and the negotiations that followed, spurred decades of political assassinations, coups, terrorist attacks and civil war. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans fled the country, but many Algerians who fought alongside the French during the war were left behind. Harkis, as they were called, faced torture and execution at the hands of fellow Algerians. Under the rule of its first elected president, Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria adopted a socialist single-party political system. One year after independence, the country of nine million was poor, starving and war-torn.
In the late 1980s, mounting economic hardship, widespread corruption, and growing public frustration pushed Algeria toward political opening after decades of single-party rule. Mass protests forced the regime to introduce multiparty politics, allowing Islamist movements to gain rapid popular support. When the military intervened to cancel the 1991 elections to prevent an Islamist victory, the country descended into a brutal civil war. Throughout the 1990s, armed groups and state forces fought a conflict marked by massacres, disappearances, and terror, leaving tens of thousands dead. The violence reshaped Algerian society and reinforced the dominance of the military-backed state, even as the conflict formally subsided by the early 2000s.
