How Algeria's secret services manipulated Islamist groups during the "black decade"
We have always been told that during the "black decade" the Algerian army was mobilised body and soul to counter the fanatical Islamists, but the truth is different.
Mohammed Samraoui, a former Algerian army colonel who deserted in 1996 and has since been in political exile in Germany, experienced first-hand the "diabolical chain of events" that plunged Algeria into horror. He wrote the book Chronique des années de sang (Chronicle of the Years of Blood) (Éditions Denoël) to show how a "handful of corrupt generals" burned their country to preserve their privileges.
In his book, Samraoui, whom I met in a secret location in 2009, makes it clear that he has no intention of denying or justifying the crimes committed by the Islamists. However, if there was a war, there were bound to be protagonists and, in his eyes, "the generals and the FIS leaders are co-responsible for the Algerian tragedy".
The creation of the GIA by the Algerian services
Following the landslide victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the first round of the December 1991 legislative elections, the army urged the regime to annul the second round. As a result, the president dissolved the National People's Assembly and, in the spring of 1992, the Algerian army was also tasked with managing the state of emergency.
The army chiefs had decided that the FIS threatened their own power and had to be eliminated. However, the fight against the Islamists was an opportunity for the Algerian regime to get rid of other "enemies" of the regime, such as human rights activists and Amazigh leaders in Kabylia.
Samraoui himself recounted: "Every day, our bosses, Smaïl Lamari [alias Hadj Smaïn, major-general and head of the Direction du contre-espionnage (DCE), one of the branches of the Département du renseignement et de la sécurité (DRS), who died in 2007] and also [major-general] Brahim Fodhil Cherif [who died in 2008] repeated the same speech: We had to stop the "fundamentalist threat", which meant the end of the National People's Army (ANP). .. They also explained to us that people like Hocine Aït Ahmed (historic leader of the Front des forces socialistes, FFS), the lawyers Ali Yahia Abnennour (head of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights) and Mahmoud Khelili (who campaigned to defend all the victims of repression) were "enemies" of Algeria. "
To get an idea of the climate of bloodthirsty hysteria in which Algeria was sinking, Samraoui mentions a statement by Smaïl Lamari at a meeting attended by several DCE officers, which has stuck in his memory: "I am ready and determined to eliminate three million Algerians if necessary to maintain the order threatened by the Islamists".
In this context, it was difficult to be lucid about the organised perversion of the system that was being put in place. Much later, Samraoui came to understand the full extent of the responsibility of those in charge of the DRS for the creation of the Armed Islamist Groups (GIA), instruments of the most heinous crimes of the "black decade".
The emirs of DRS
From February 1992 onwards, the Algerian press often mentioned the name of Moh Leveilley, presented as one of the most dangerous Islamist terrorists. Samraoui, who had known him personally, said: 'Moh Leveilley was an agent of the services, fabricated to make him an Islamist scarecrow and get him to commit attacks to terrorise citizens. He was finally killed by the security forces in Tamesguida on 31 August 1992. He was only the first of many "DRS emirs" placed at the head of the GIA, who were regularly liquidated once their missions were accomplished. It is clear that Moh Laveilley was not an isolated case. His use as a terrorist agent by the DRS was part of an overall strategy of manipulation by our leaders.
It should be stressed that in February-March 1992, "we were not yet talking about the GIA, but about djamaates (Islamic groups or armed groups)". This breeding ground, Samraoui explained, would give rise to the GIA as it became known from autumn 1992 onwards: "a sort of federation of several existing groups that would gradually join the initial nucleus formed at the initiative of the DRS (which is why, from 1993 onwards, reference was increasingly made to the GIA and no longer to the GIA)".
The Algerian services' strategy
Explaining the strategy of the DRS over the years, Samaroui wrote: "From then on, it was no longer a question, as we had been told in the previous months, of manipulating the radical groups in order to control them better, but on the contrary, of doing everything possible to make them multiply and spread terror everywhere.
This strategy (which would reach its peak in the following years) was based on several methods:
- By infiltrating genuinely autonomous armed groups, through the intermediary of converted Islamist militants (most of whom were arrested by the services and then put back into circulation after agreeing to collaborate, through blackmail or compromise), or thanks to DRS agents, such as the soldiers who, posing as deserters, joined the maquis in Chréa, Zbarbar, Tablat, Beni Bouateb, Sidi Ali Bounab and Kabylia with weapons and luggage (known for their regular attendance at mosques, they were accepted without suspicion, although they were indeed on a mission for the DRS).
- Using the already manipulated groups that had turned to armed struggle in the early months of 1992 to attract new recruits
- Favouring the creation of groups by militants who had been manipulated from the start without their knowledge (such as Saïd Makhloufi's Islamic State Movement, created in the spring of 1992).
- Infiltrating the security camps and prisons of the south with fake Islamist criminals who would form from 1993 onwards armed groups active in regions known for their support of the FIS (to give just one example: on the initiative of Smaïl Lamari, Captain Ahmed Chaker, who was my deputy in Chateuneuf, recruited a certain Mamou Boudouara, a notorious thug and alcoholic in Belcourt, who overnight became a fervent supporter of the Islamic State).
- Creating, from scratch, armed groups led by emirs who were in fact DRS officers
All these techniques were used, sometimes in combination. The general idea of our leaders was to bring all these groups together to produce controlled and manageable violence.
It was this delicate work that did not work so well (on the contrary, it led to chaos), because it required absolute discretion, and therefore reliable officers, and perfect coordination between the various DRS services in charge of controlling these groups: Commander Amar Guettouchi's CPO (Centre principal des opérations, or Antar Centre), Commander Mehenna Djebbar's CRI (Centre de recherche et d'investigation) in Blida, Commander Athmane Tartag's CPMI (Centre principal militaire d'investigation), known as Bachir, and of course the head of the DCE, Smaïl Lamari, and his colleague in the DCSA (Central Directorate of Army Security), Kamel Abderrahmane, who oversaw these operations in liaison with Generals Toufik, Belkheir and Nezzar.
In the following months and years, these manipulations led to the creation of DRS-controlled GIAs. But very soon, due to a lack of coordination, they got out of hand and the violence spiralled out of control. This justified, starting in the autumn of 1992, the massive intervention of the PNA's special forces, led by General Mohamed Lamari. "Let us say here that the fighting was carried out with incomprehensible ferocity and abomination (napalm bombing, use of artillery and helicopter gunships, orders not to take prisoners, massive use of torture, etc.).
GIA, a counter-guerrilla organisation
In his book, Samraoui also denounces the blindness of most of the international media to the true nature of the "black decade", "because the simple observation of the Algerian political scene and the behaviour of armed groups was enough to invalidate the dominant thesis of a fragile democracy threatened by Islamist fundamentalism and defended by courageous republican generals".
In fact, "fundamentalist violence" against civilian populations has never had the slightest political coherence, not even in terms of the Islamist ideology that supposedly justifies it.
"In the end, who benefited from the GIA's actions? Certainly not the Islamists. The GIA had no vision for society, no political programme. They offered no alternative for the country. The behaviour of its members was characterised by murder, rape, alcohol, drugs, blackmail.... The GIA, surpassing itself during the presidency of Liamine Zeroual (1994-1998), went so far as to reproach the FIS leaders for their willingness to resort to political solutions or to seek compromises with the rulers," he asks.
Thus, far from attacking the generals and their auxiliaries, the GIA attacked the defenceless civilian population and waged a bloody war against other Islamic organisations. In short, everything possible was done to isolate them from the population and deprive them of all support. A simple reading of the GIA pamphlets is eloquent and shows that their objectives paradoxically converge with those of the predatory Algerian generals, for they contain nothing but extremist diatribes abounding in formulas such as: no reconciliation, no truce, no dialogue, no mercy....
Even if we do not know what is going on behind the scenes, there can only be one explanation for all these apparent contradictions: a movement that discredits Islamist organisations, that beheads women and children and that has no unified command can only be a counter-guerrilla movement, used against the real Islamists.... This testifies to the determination of the sponsors who masterminded the Algerian tragedy to stop at nothing to maintain the chaos, pit Algerians against each other in a fratricidal war and eradicate any serious opposition that might threaten their privileges.
Finally, Samraoui declared that he had written his book in the hope of helping to reveal the truth about the "black decade". "One day, I am sure, history will give its verdict and the criminals of the Algerian state will be brought to justice," he concluded.