Founding According to Algerian veterans of the
Afghan jihad who founded the GIA, the idea of forming an armed group to fight jihad against the Algerian government was developed not after the coup, but after leaders of the
MIA were freed from prison in 1989. The idea was not acted on then due to the spectacular electoral political success of the FIS. Embracing Sayyid Qutb's
takfir (excommunication) of secular governments and assertion that engaging in armed
jihad against
Jaahili societies was mandatory; GIA leaders condemned the
FLN regime as apostates and called upon Algerians to rise up, pledge allegiance to them, and violently overthrow the
socialist government in pursuit of establishing an
Islamic state in Algeria. The support base of the GIA mainly consisted of the educationally and economically underprivileged classes of Algerian society. In the early 1990s, the economic state of Algeria was dire. 41% of Algerians ages 15–24 were unemployed in 1990. Young Algerians were a main part of the GIA; it was able to "enlist young Algerians who felt overall excluded from mainstream society and the country’s political life", according to a study from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
Abdelhak Layada Leveilley was replaced in January 1993 by
Abdelhak Layada, who declared his group independent of the FIS and MIA and not obedient to its orders. It adopted the radical
Omar El-Eulmi as a spiritual guide, and Layada affirmed that "political pluralism is equivalent to sedition". He also believed jihad in Algeria was
fard ayn, or an individual obligation of adult male Muslims. Layada threatened not just security forces but journalists ("grandsons of France") and the families of Algerian soldiers.
Djafar al-Afghani On August 21, 1993, Seif Allah Djafar, aka Mourad Si Ahmed, aka Djafar al-Afghani, a 30-year-old black marketer with no education beyond primary school, became GIA amir. Violence escalated under Djafar, as did the GIA's base of support outside of Algeria. The GIA explicitly affirmed that it "did not represent the armed wing of the FIS", and issued death threats against several FIS and MIA members, including MIA's Heresay and FIS's Kebir and Redjam. About the time al-Afghani took power of GIA, a group of Algerian jihadists returning from Afghanistan came to London. Together with Islamist intellectual
Abu Qatada, they started up a weekly magazine,
Usrat al-Ansar as a GIA propaganda outlet. Abu Qatada "provided the intellectual and ideological firepower" to justify GIA actions, The GIA soon broadened its attacks to civilians who refused to live by their prohibitions, and then foreigners living in Algeria. A hostage released on 31 October 1993 carried a message ordering foreigners to "leave the country. We are giving you one month. Anyone who exceeds that period will be responsible for his own sudden death." By the end of 1993 26 foreigners had been killed. In November 1993 Sheik Mohamed Bouslimani "a popular figure who was prominent" in
Hamas party of
Mahfoud Nahnah was kidnapped and executed after "refusing to issue a fatwa endorsing the GIA's tactics." In May, Islamist leaders
Abderrezak Redjam (allegedly representing the FIS),
Mohammed Said, the exiled
Anwar Haddam, and the MEI's
Said Makhloufi joined the GIA; a blow to the FIS and surprise since the GIA had been issuing death threats against the three since November 1993. This was interpreted by many observers as either the result of intra-FIS competition or as an attempt to change the GIA's course from within. On 26 August, the group declared a "
Caliphate", or Islamic government for Algeria, with Gousmi as
Commander of the Faithful, Mohammed Said as head of government, the US-based Haddam as foreign minister, and Mekhloufi as provisional interior minister. However, the very next day Said Mekhloufi announced his withdrawal from the GIA, claiming that the GIA had deviated from Islam and that this "Caliphate" was an effort by Mohammed Said to take over the GIA, and Haddam soon afterwards denied ever having joined it, asserting that this Caliphate was an invention of the security services. The GIA continued attacking its usual targets, notably assassinating artists, such as
Cheb Hasni, and in late August added a new one to its list, threatening schools which allowed mixed classes, music, gym for girls, or not wearing
hijab with
arson. He was killed in combat on September 26, 1994.
Djamel Zitouni Cherif Gousmi was eventually succeeded by
Djamel Zitouni who became GIA head on October 27, 1994. He was the responsible for carrying out a
series of bombings in France in 1995. He was killed by a rival faction on July 16, 1996.
Antar Zouabri and takfir Antar Zouabri, was the longest serving "emir" (1996–2002) was nominated by a faction of the GIA "considered questionable by the others". The 26-year-old activist was a "close confidant" of Zitouni and continued his policy of "ever increasing violence and redoubled purges". Convinced of Zouabri's salafist orthodoxy, Egyptian veteran of the Afghan jihad
Abu Hamza restarted the Al-Ansar bulletin/magazine in London. some with their throats cut. The massacres continued for months and culminated in August and September when hundreds of men women and children were killed in the villages of
Rais,
Bentalha, Beni Messous. Pregnant women were sliced open, children were hacked to pieces or dashed against walls, men's limbs were hacked off one by one, and, as the attackers retreated, they would kidnap young women to keep as sex slaves. The GIA issued a communiques signed by Zouabri claiming responsibility for the massacres and justifying them—in contradiction to his manifesto—by declaring impious (
takfir) all those Algerians who had not joined its ranks. In London Abu Hamzu criticised the communique and two days later (September 29) announced the end of his support and the closure of the bulletin, cutting off GIA's communication with international Islamist community and the rest of the outside world. led by independent amirs with added "ingredients of vendetta and local dispute" to the putative jihad against the government. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (
GSPC) splinter faction appears to have eclipsed the GIA since approximately 1998 and is currently assessed by the
CIA to be the most effective armed group remaining inside Algeria. Both the GIA and GSPC leadership continue to proclaim their rejection of President Bouteflika's amnesty, but in contrast to the GIA, the GSPC has stated that it avoids attacks on civilians. The GIA, torn by splits and desertions and denounced by all sides even in the Islamist movement, was slowly destroyed by army operations over the next few years; by the time of Antar Zouabri's death it was effectively incapacitated. On 7 April 2005, the GIA was reported to have killed 14 civilians at a fake road block. Three weeks later on 29 April, Oukil was arrested. Nourredine Boudiafi was the last known "emir" of the GIA. He was arrested sometime in November 2004, his arrest was announced by the Algerian government in January 2005. A splinter group of the GIA that formed on the fringes of
Kabylie (north central coast) in 1998, called the
Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), rejected the amnesty. It dissociated itself from the previous indiscriminate killing of civilians and reverted to the classic MIA-AIS tactics of targeting combatant forces. In October 2003, they announced their support for
Al-Qaeda ==Claims of Algerian Government involvement==