After the army cancelled the second round of legislative elections in January 1992, which the Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win, an insurgency developed that by 1994-95 had become a war of massacres. Armed groups, principally the Armed Islamic Group, killed civilians in villages of the Mitidja and the western interior, with individual massacres at Rais, Bentalha and Relizane in 1997 killing hundreds each; security forces and state-armed village militias conducted sweeps, and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented thousands of enforced disappearances by state agents. Villagers abandoned the countryside in large numbers for the towns. The Algerian government has put the death toll at 150,000-200,000; independent estimates range from about 60,000 to 200,000. Responsibility for some of the largest massacres is contested: the state attributes them to the armed groups, while former officers and some researchers have alleged army complicity or infiltration, allegations Algiers rejects and which no independent inquiry has been permitted to test. The 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation granted amnesties and criminalised public questioning of the security forces' conduct.
Armed Islamist groups and Algerian security forces and militias fought a decade-long war marked by village massacres and the emptying of the countryside
Algeria's Office National des Statistiques recorded a population of about 26.3 million in 1992, between the censuses of 1987 (23.0 million) and 1998 (29.1 million).
The low end reflects independent estimates based on documented incidents; the high end is the Algerian government's own figure of 150,000-200,000, later used by President Bouteflika. Deaths include civilians killed in massacres, insurgents, security forces and the disappeared.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented the village massacres, torture in detention and thousands of enforced disappearances attributed to state agents.
Algeria