to 1999, and since its end there have been no proper official investigations into the massive human-rights violations that took place during the conflict. The government's main opponent in the war was the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), an Islamic terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate that was described by John R. Schindler in The National Interest in July 2012 as "supremely violent" and as the perpetrator of "a wave of bombings in Paris in the summer of 1995" that were "Al Qaeda's first attacks on the West". Schindler notes that "Algeria's nightmare years of 1993–1997 were a focus of the international human-rights community" but that "the terrible fratricide [of] the 1990s got little coverage in Western media, despite the fact that it probably claimed twice as many lives as the Bosnian conflict, which ran concurrently and received nonstop Western attention." Schindler added that "Algeria's bloody civil war, which began twenty years ago, never really ended." December 2010 marked the beginning of a period of frequent and nationwide protests inspired by the so-called "Arab Spring" and sparked by widespread anger over high unemployment, a serious housing shortage, high food prices, extensive corruption, and severe restrictions on freedom of expression and other human rights. The National Coordination Committee for Change and Democracy (CNCD) is an umbrella group of opposition parties, unions, and human-rights groups that was formed in January 2011 in the wake of the violent suppression of protests in which several people were killed and hundreds injured or arrested. The CNCD planned a march in Algiers on January 21, 2011, to demand an end to the state of emergency and a restoration of democracy and freedom. The government sought to prevent the demonstration by blocking roads to Algiers, stopping trains to Algiers, setting up checkpoints and barricades within Algiers, refusing visas to representatives of the international media, detaining government opponents and journalists, and shutting down the Internet. Still, the protest went on, with authorities estimating the number of participants at 800 and the organizers estimating the number at 2000. Many protesters were beaten and cameras confiscated. The state of emergency was lifted in February 2011, but extensive restrictions on human rights remain. In April 2019, president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been in the role since 1999, resigned following mass protests after he announced his intention to run for a fifth term. Bouteflika was succeeded by Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who spoke in favour