The FIS took advantage of the upsurge in hostility and disillusion with the regime, which had first been expressed in riots in October 1988. After the creation of a new multiparty system in 1989 the FIS successfully posed as the only viable alternative to the regime capable of ejecting the corrupt and despised existing system. In 1992 elections were cancelled, and the FIS disenfranchised. Elements of it took to the hills and the streets in much the same way as the FLN had in 1954. … Starting with the killing of local policemen and regional administrators—just as in 1954, but displaying less coordination—an appalling civil war ensued, with the Algiers government proving as incapable of crushing the revolt as the French Army had been in 1954–62.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 40