Algeria
Country in N Africa, bounded E by Tunisia and Libya, SE by Niger,
SW by Mali and Mauritania, NW by Morocco, and N by the Mediterranean
Sea.
Government
The 1976 constitution, amended in 1989, 1991, and 1996, provides for
a president and a single-chamber national people's assembly of 430 deputies,
elected for a five-year term, with Islam as the state religion. A multiparty
system was adopted in 1989 but after the Islamic fundamentalist Front
for Salvation won the first round of assembly elections in Dec 1991,
the electoral process was suspended, a state of emergency declared,
and power assumed by an emergency military body, the high security council.
The president is appointed by the military council. From 1996 the amended
constitution gave the president increased powers and countered religious
fundamentalism.
History
A French army landed in 1830 and seized Algiers. By 1847 the north
had been brought under French control, and was formed in 1848 into the
départements of Algiers, Oran, and Constantine. Many French colonists
settled in these dé partements, which were made part of metropolitan
France in 1881. The mountainous region inland, inhabited by the Kabyles,
was occupied 1850- 70, and the Sahara region, subdued 1900-09, remained
under military rule.
After the defeat of France in 1940 by Germany in World War II, Algeria
came under the control of the Vichy government, which collaborated with
the Nazis, until the Allies landed in N Africa in 1942. Postwar hopes
of integrating Algeria more closely with France were frustrated by opposition
in Algeria from both those of non-French and French origin. An embittered
struggle for independence from France continued 1954-62, when referenda
in Algeria and France resulted in 1962 in the recognition of Algeria
as an independent one-party republic with Ben Bella as prime minister
in 1962 and the country's first president from 1963. Colonel Houari
Boumé dienne deposed Ben Bella in a military coup in 1965, suspended
the constitution, and ruled through a revolutionary council.
There have been a number of military coups and changes in government
since then, and civil unrest and violence persists.
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