arrested—5,000 by the army's account, 40,000 according to Gilles Kepel and including its leader Abdelkader Hachani—that the jails had insufficient space to hold them in; camps were set up for them in the Sahara desert, and bearded men feared to leave their houses lest they be arrested as FIS sympathizers. The government officially dissolved the FIS on 4 March and its apparatus was dismantled. Beginning of war, 1992–93 Of the few FIS activists that remained free, many took this as a declaration of war. Throughout much of the country, remaining FIS activists, along with some Islamists too radical for FIS, took to the hills (the mountains of northern Algeria, where the forest and scrub cover were well-suited to guerrilla warfare) with whatever weapons were available and became guerrilla fighters. The very sparsely populated but oil-rich Sahara would remain mostly peaceful for almost the entire duration of the conflict. This meant that the government's principal source of foreign exchange—oil exports—was largely unaffected. The tense situation was compounded by the economy, which collapsed even further that year, as almost all of the longstanding subsidies on food were eliminated. At first Algeria remained relatively calm. But in March 1993 "a steady succession of university academics, intellectuals, writer, journalist, and medical doctors were assassinated." While not all were connected with the regime, they were French-speaking and so "in the eyes of the young urban poor who had joined the jihad ... associated with the hated image of French-speaking intellectuals". It also "exploded" the idea of the government's triumph over the Islamists. Other attacks showed a willingness to target civilians. The bombing of the Algiers airport claimed 9 lives and injured 128 people. The FIS condemned the bombing along with the other major parties, but the FIS's influence over the guerrillas turned out to be limited. The regime began to lose control of mountain and rural districts. In working class areas of the cities insurgents expelled the police and declared "liberated Islamic zones". Even the main roads of the cities passed into the hands of the insurgents. Founding of the insurgent groups The first major armed movement to emerge, starting almost immediately after the coup, was the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA). It was led by the ex-soldier "General" Abdelkader Chebouti, a longstanding Islamist. The MIA was "well-organized and structured and favored a long-term jihad" targeting the state and its representatives and based on a guerrilla