Mustafa Bouyali
Encyclopedia
Mustafa Bouyali was the leader of the Algerian Islamic Armed Movement, a guerrilla group based around Larbaa south of Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...

, from 1982 to 1987.

Born in 1940, Bouyali fought for the National Liberation Front
National Liberation Front (Algeria)
The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was set up on November 1, 1954 as a merger of other smaller groups, to obtain independence for Algeria from France.- Anticolonial struggle :...

 (FLN) in the Algerian War of Independence
Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France...

, becoming a captain. In the 63-65 period, he joined the maquis of the FFS
Socialist Forces Front
The Socialist Forces Front , , is a social democratic and secularist, political party in Algeria. It was formed in 1963 by Hocine Ait Ahmed...

, leading to his exclusion from the FLN. He later became an electrician, and had seven children. Near the end of the 70s, he felt under the influence of imam Abdelhadi Doudi of the El-Achour Mosque, in the south of Algiers and began preaching at this Mosque in 1980.

In 1979, he formed the "Group for Defense against the Illicit", intended to pressure the government to adopt policies seen as reflecting Islamic values, such as implementation of the sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

. As his efforts failed, he began considering the possibility of an armed effort, and started stockpiling weapons from mid-1981. In April 1982, a confrontation occurred between his group and the police in which his brother Mokhtar was shot; this incident convinced him that violence was called for.

In July 1982, Bouyali took to the maquis, with significant support in local towns, particularly Larbaa. The "Group for Defense against the Illicit" announced its transformation into the Algerian Islamic Armed Movement (MAIA). According to the government, it planned a variety of attacks, including the assassination of the Prime Minister, which were forestalled by the arrest of 23 of its members in mid-December. Further arrests were made in January 1983. However, Bouyali himself evaded the security forces, and fled abroad (probably either Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 or Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

).

In May 1984, the government released some 92 of his supporters. Within a few months, he returned, reestablished his contacts, reconstituted the MAIA in February 1985, and began fighting again. In August, the group mounted two prominent operations - an armed robbery at a factory in Algiers on the 21st, and an attack on a police barracks in Soumaa
Soumaâ
Soumaâ is a town and commune in Blida Province, Algeria. According to the 1998 census it has a population of 31,451....

 on the 27th, killing a police cadet and taking weaponry. They painted the phrase "Allah the Avenger is with us!" across the gates of the barracks at Soumaa, to indicate that their motive was not simple criminality. Over the next two years, his group would continue its campaign, inflicting losses on government forces when pursued, but more generally targeting institutions it saw as un-Islamic, such as girls' schools, libraries, restaurants, and cinemas. On February 3, 1987, Bouyali finally fell in an ambush by the security services, and the movement was destroyed. Its surviving members were put on trial in July, with 5 of the 202 tried receiving the death penalty and 15 acquitted. The last of these were released on July 29, 1990. In 1991, several of these, led by Abdelkader Chebouti, reconstituted the organization as the Armed Islamic Movement. Shortly afterwards, some, such as Mansour Meliani, split with it to found the notably more violent Armed Islamic Group
Armed Islamic Group
The Armed Islamic Group is an Islamist organisation that wants to overthrow the Algerian government and replace it with an Islamic state...

.

Sources

  • Michael Willis. The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History. Ithaca Press: Berkshire 1996.
  • John Phillips and Martin Evans. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed Yale University Press - Jan 28, 2008)

External links

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