ALGERIA, MAY 8TH OF 1992.

The President of Algeria, Mohamed Boudiaf, has recently gone into a massive debate with the Armed Forces in relation to the FIS dilemma. The President was against combating the party and had a massive desire to simply negotiate and go into a coalition government with them, along with providing amnesty to every combatant. Naturally, the Armed Forces had a different point of view than Boudiaf, and it was beginning to show.

Going against Boudiaf’s orders, the military raided over eight different apartment buildings in Algiers on the 8th of May and over 13 men with supposed FIS sympathies were executed in broad daylight, their bodies were hanged upside down from their apartment buildings and stood there, rotting in the sun, for three whole days, before the President furiously demanded that the Armed Forces remove their bodies from their gruesome, grisly grave; naturally, the MIA had a thing or two to say about it. The same day that the bodies were being retrieved, eight gunmen overwhelmed the military officers and cut off their heads in the middle of a public plaza; the picture of one of the man’s heads being shown to the cheering crowd was taken and became an important symbol of the early period of the Algerian Civil War.

BOUDIAF’S BOOT

On the 15th of May of 1992, following another argument with the Armed Forces, the President of Algeria decided to launch a Decree which forced the Armed Forces to remove their ground troops from the Sahara and to converge their troops near Algiers and other key urban centers; according to Boudiaf, the insurgent elements are completely urban and, according to anonymous reports, there has been concerns that the military has been profiting off of the oil-rich Sahara areas, so he decided to force them to move towards the north of Algeria. The move was unprecedented, and unfortunately had massive consequences.

On the 21st of May of 1992, minor reports originated in some Sahara military outposts talked about the movement of Islamic insurgents towards oil fields, but that was too ignored by Boudiaf, who believed that it was reports made by military officers to allow the profiteering to continue. Little did he know that, by the 5th of June of 1992, profits by oil were cut off by the MIA and now, the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, that took the opportunity to encroach on the border towns of Algeria, near Mali and Mauritania, achieving success in obtaining minor gas and oil fields. The military soon presented to President Boudiaf the current ongoing situation and a decision had to be done; Boudiaf, disfavored by the military, still attempted one final shot at obtaining peace with the rebels, calling a meeting in the small city of Biskra.

THE BISKRA DIALOGUE

In Biskra, MIA and government forces sat down for a dialog regarding the current situation in Algeria and their outrage at the coup d’etat they suffered by the military, declaring that Boudiaf was an accomplice to this situation by accepting the position of head of the HCE. The Armed Forces, on the other hand, were eager to get back at Boudiaf for his terrible efforts and, during the peace talks, launched an offensive near Ouargla, which sparked so much outrage at the MIA that they immediately left the negotiations table and were now dedicated to an armed struggle.

Boudiaf was left speechless, and the army content that they now had a chance to finally begin a major offensive against rebel forces and thus, retake Algeria and establish national control; all the while, the government had to slowly manage their remaining funds, as the rebels were holding onto - and selling - as much oil as they possibly could in as little time as possible, bringing about hundreds of dollars.