How was the GIA formed?
Out of a bitter struggle for control of Algeria between Islamists and the country’s authoritarian leadership. After winning independence from France in 1962, the country was governed by a socialist party called the National Liberation Front (FLN). Following a series of youth riots in the late 1980s, the FLN allowed the country’s first multiparty elections. When a party of moderate and radical Islamists called the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won a round of parliamentary elections in 1991, the FLN nullified the victory and banned the FIS. The resultant public outcry turned violent, and the paramilitary wing of the FIS began targeting security forces. The GIA emerged as one of several radical FIS splinter factions that have continued to fight against Algeria’s FLN-supported, military-dominated regimes, from the government that ruled the country until 1999 to the current, more conciliatory leadership.

What does the GIA want?
According to the State Department, the GIA “aims to overthrow the secular Algerian regime and replace it with an Islamic state.” Beyond that, however, the GIA has not articulated precise political goals, and GIA cells are said to operate independently. Most recent GIA attacks are thought to be either acts of retribution, assaults on wayward members, or simple banditry.

Whom does the GIA target?
Both Algerians and others. The GIA’s massacres of civilians reached their height in the mid-1990s. Other GIA targets have included Algerian journalists, intellectuals, and secular schools. More recently, the GIA was thought to be behind two bombings in Algiers in August 2001.

The GIA is also accused of killing more than one hundred foreigners, mostly Europeans, since 1993. The group has a particular disdain for France, the country’s former colonial ruler and a major supporter of Algeria’s military-backed regime. In 1994, GIA members hijacked an Air France flight, and in late 1999, a French court convicted several GIA members for a series of bombings in France in 1995.

Does the GIA have ties to al-Qaeda?
Possibly. Experts say that some GIA leaders may have had contact with Osama bin Laden while fighting in the 1979-89 Afghan war against the Soviet Union. Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network also includes some Algerians, and European authorities have arrested dozens of Algerian militants suspected of being al-Qaeda operatives plotting attacks on European cities, perhaps involving chemical weapons.

But while the full extent of the connection between the GIA and al-Qaeda is unclear, experts say, it is probably at least somewhat limited. The GIA operates principally in Algeria, and its objectives are more local than al-Qaeda’s ambitions for a global holy war. But some intelligence officials say that al-Qaeda’s leadership is increasingly interested in using national Islamist movements such as the GIA to breathe new life into the wounded al-Qaeda network.