Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika ended Algeria's civil war and then stayed in office six years after a stroke left him unable to speak in public. He joined the independence struggle young, was foreign minister at twenty-six under Boumediene, and spent the 1980s in exile after losing the succession and facing corruption allegations. He returned to win the presidency in 1999, at the end of a decade of war between the army and Islamist insurgents that had killed something like two hundred thousand people. His Civil Concord, endorsed by referendum, offered amnesty to fighters who surrendered - and to the security forces - and it substantially worked: the violence subsided, and the price was that almost nobody was ever held responsible for any of it, including the disappeared. High oil prices through the 2000s paid for housing, roads and subsidies, and Algeria came through the Arab Spring of 2011 without a rising, which his government presented as vindication. He suffered a stroke in 2013 and was barely seen afterwards. He was re-elected in 2014 and governed through a circle of relatives and generals, appearing at ceremonies in a wheelchair without speaking, while a framed photograph stood in for him at some official events. In February 2019 his people announced a fifth term. Algerians marched every Friday for a year - the Hirak - and the army withdrew its support in April; he resigned within weeks. He died in 2021. The protests continued after him, because the objection had been to the system rather than the man.
- Lived: 1937 CE – 2021 CE
- Nationality: Algerian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
