ICC Note:
“Algeria's Islamists, buoyed by election victories of their brethren across North Africa over the past two months, are looking to triumph themselves next spring in nationwide polls,” The Associated Press reports.
By Aomar Ouali
12/13/2011 Algeria (Associated Press) – Algeria's Islamists, buoyed by election victories of their brethren across North Africa over the past two months, are looking to triumph themselves next spring in nationwide polls.
But Algeria's Islamists have a bloody legacy of history to overcome — and that complicates their efforts to replicate Islamist breakthroughs in Tunisia and Morocco.
Algeria witnessed the first victory of an Islamist party in 1991 polls, but the army aborted those elections to keep the Islamists from power. It led to more than a decade of harrowing civil war that claimed an estimated 200,000 lives and left the country deeply traumatized.
Last week, parliament passed a new law that makes it easier to form a political party, opening the way for more Islamist forces competing for power. But it bans from politics former members of the now-outlawed Islamic Salvation Front, the party that won the first round of the elections 20 years ago.
"It is forbidden for those responsible for the exploitation of religion that led to the national tragedy to found a political party or participate in its creation," says the new law.
One key to the Islamists' fate is whether they're able to heal divisions in their ranks.
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