Abdelaziz Bouteflika's name is associated with the end of the “black” decade of terror in Algeria.

More than 150,000 people were killed in the civil war of the 1990s.

The attacks by the Islamist terrorists and the extremely tough crackdown by the security forces caused the resource-rich country to almost bleed to death.

After Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected President on April 14, 1999, he headed the country for almost 20 years: slowly, stability and calm returned.

But illness and the increasing weakness of the president plunged Algeria into a new political agony, from which the country has not yet recovered.

Two years ago, the “Hirak” protest movement swept not only the head of state, but almost the entire political leadership out of office.

Hans-Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb, based in Madrid.

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It was not until the pressure of hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators that the aged Bouteflika renounced in April 2019 to run for a fifth term and withdrew.

Six years earlier he had suffered the first of several strokes and practically did not speak publicly afterwards.

His residence outside the capital was like a nursing home that he almost only left to seek medical treatment in Europe.

Exit through the back door

Far too late, the president and the power apparatus had drawn the consequences of his weakness and thus gambled away a large part of his legacy. Instead of giving him a dignified farewell, the army leadership, which until recently wanted him to run for a fifth time, forced him to exit through the back door. Soon nothing was left of the old elite, which under Bouteflika treated the state as their property. His once powerful brother and many other confidants are now in jail.

Resignation has spread in the protest movement, which has hoped in vain for fundamental political change. Activists and journalists critical of the government are in custody. The regime under Bouteflika's successor, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has consolidated its power with the support of the army and security forces. When Bouteflika set out twenty years ago to reconcile the country traumatized by terrorism, to lead it out of international isolation and to begin political reconstruction, he was a beacon of hope for many.

At the end of the 1990s, the military confrontation with the armed arm of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was almost over;

the first amnesty was largely negotiated.

After Bouteflika's election victory, “national reconciliation” was one of his most important political projects.

In the 2005 referendum, almost one hundred percent of the electorate voted for the “Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation” he proposed, a kind of general amnesty with minor restrictions.

According to him, it should help "to turn a new page" after the decade of terror.

Unemployment, poverty and corruption

Other reforms that he promised did not get that far. For years, the high oil and gas prices in particular helped modernize the country. Bouteflika launched an ambitious building program designed to combat the acute housing shortage. But he failed to get unemployment, poverty and corruption under control and to advance the infrastructure of the huge country, which is far from the prosperity of other oil states.

Like few other politicians, Bouteflika, born in the Moroccan city of Oujda in 1937, embodied the history of Algeria, which broke away from France in 1962. During the War of Independence he was in command of the "Mali Front" in the Sahara. In 1963, at the age of 26, he became foreign minister and remained so until 1978, when his mentor and supporter Houari Boumedienne died and drove him himself to a financial and corruption affair abroad. Bouteflika was only able to return to Algeria at the end of the 1980s, where he was elected to the highest office of the state as the first civilian in 1999, supported by the powerful military. He was the only candidate because all of his challengers had withdrawn shortly before the election because they feared manipulation. He was subsequently confirmed in office three times.

But in the end the president, who ruled Algeria for as long as none of his predecessors, was only a shadow of himself. As the Algerian state television reported on Saturday night, he died on September 17th at the age of 84.