Thousands of people disappeared in Algeria in the 1990s. It was not considered safe to go out in the cities at night, and rumors came back from the country of entire villages being murdered. The Islamists said it was the government; the government said it was the Islamists. It all started when the prevailing government suspended democratic elections in 1992 when it seemed that the opposition Islamist party, the FIS, would win. Since that time, the Islamists fought for what they saw as their divinely and democratically granted right to rule, and the secular power holders, headed by President Bouteflika, fought to crush the rebellion.

Now, in a referendum, the Algerian people have voted to put this past behind them and to get behind Algeria?s current government. Some say that the move was not designed to move the country forward, but rather to allow Bouteflika to pull the rug out from under any opposition in the name of ending the civil war. A spokesman for a Berber political party ? the Berbers being an oppressed minority, historically brutalized by the Arab government ? stated it thusly: ?this project has nothing to do with reconciliation, nor a return to peace. It?s Bouteflika?s way of using these two profound aspirations of Algerian society to give himself a plebiscite and give himself exorbitant powers.?