Algeria is one of the few countries in the Middle East and North Africa that seems to have been able to quell any rumblings of unrest with concessions – and its lifting of 19 years of emergency law could be part of that.
In 1992, a militant Islamist political party looked poised for a major parliamentary victory. To prevent the party’s victory, Algeria’s parliament was dissolved. Party supporters responded with violence throughout the country, and a state of emergency was declared in 1992 in order to bring the country back under control. However, terrorism and violence plagued Algeria throughout the 1990s, in spite of emergency rule.
When Tunisia’s unrest began spreading throughout the region in early 2011, including Algeria in February, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika approved the lifting of the emergency rule, one of the key demands of opposition groups for years. The concession appears to have quieted the situation in Algeria, which has not – as of yet, at least – seen the destabilizing protests witnessed in many other Arabic countries.
