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Historic Compromise'?
David Cameron looks at the latest turn of events in Algeria. Towards an Demonstrators confront police in Algeria. A COMPROMISE AGREEMENT between the military-dominated regime headed by General Liamine Zeroual and the fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) now seems more and more likely. Negotiations between the two sides are already under way. The clearest sign of a turn in the situation was the transfer in September of the two principal FIS leaders, Abbasi Madani and Ali Belhadj, from prison to house arrest and the release of other leading FIS figures. This was not the first sign that the government was ready for a dialogue with the FIS. When General Zeroual became president in February this year, two FIS leaders were freed and in April prime minister Redha Malek, who was opposed to a deal with the fundamentalists, was sacked. If an agreement is concluded, it could open the way for the FIS to come to power legally, while Algeria 23
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FIS leader Madani.
respecting the vested interests of the present hold-
ers of power.
Superficially this turn of events may seem sur-
prising. In January 1992 the Algerian army intervened to prevent the holding of the second round of legislative elections which would have resulted in certain FIS victory. Without directly taking power the army pushed out discredited President Chadli Benjedid and established the High Committee of State (HCE) fronted by Mohammed Boudiaf, one of the leaders of the independence struggle, later assassinated. The FIS was banned and for two-and-a-half years the government has been engaged in an increasingly bloody civil war with armed Islamic groups. In the process the civilian mask of the regime has slipped more and more, revealing its military face. The official figure of 10,000 dead is certainly an underestimate. Most observers would double it and the Paris daily Liberation, (15 September, 1994) claimed that the Algerian government admits privately that 28,000 people have been killed since the state of emergency was introduced in February 1992 - two thirds of them since November 1993.
On closer examination, however, we can see that the opposition between the two forces is less absolute than it appears. In the first place, Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria is not a force that comes from outside the political and military establishment. It has represented a component of that establishment from the war of independence onwards, although some of its leaders developed in radical opposition to the FLN regime from the late-1970s onwards. Secondly, the army's refusal to
24 • Algeria
accept a FIS victory had very little to do with
defending democracy or secular values, and every-
thing to do with the defence of its own privileges,
which are linked to its control of the state ma-
chine. There is a wing of the Algerian ruling class
that advocates bourgeois democracy and/or secular
values as the way to develop capitalism in Algeria.
But it does not dominate the military hierarchy.
-ODAY'S ALGERIA HAS its roots in the war
of independence from France of 1954-62.
This struggle took place in the context of
the general upswing of the colonial revolu-
tion and in particular of the rise of the Arab
nationalist movement and the coming to power of
radical regimes in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other
countries. The National Liberation Front (FLN),
which led the independence struggle, was part of
the broad Arab revolutionary movement. But ideo
logically it was a poor relation. The Algerian
revolutionary movement produced no coherent body
of ideas as did the Ba'ath Party or Nasserism. The
'socialist' ideology of the FLN was a mixture of
populism and Islam, and its nationalism was more
Algerian than pan-Arab.
Algerian 'socialism' was based above all on state
control of the oil and gas sectors which accounted
for 98% of revenue from exports, the development
of a state industrial sector with these revenues,
and links with the Soviet bloc. On this basis,
Algeria could have a foreign policy largely independent of imperialism. There was no attempt to accompany this economic development by building a modern democratic secular state.
Newly independent
Algeria was never
formally secular.
Indeed, newly independent Algeria was never even formally secular. The partisans of a secular state within the FLN were defeated and Islam was declared to be the state religion at independence in 1962. The state took direct control of religious affairs, and the FLN used the services of both reformist and fundamentalist Islamists. However, some Islamic currents who objected to this state control, remained aloof from the regime and there was the development of a 'parallel Islam'.
The FLN pursued a policy of 'cultural restoration' , inspired by the idea of going back to an idealised vision of Algeria's Arab amd Muslim roots after 130 years of colonisation. This implied the introduction of religious education in schools, exclusion of women from public life, promotion of the Arabic language, a programme of mosque-building. This Arab-Islamic' orientation was defended both by Algeria's first president Ahmed Ben Bella and
[page 26]
by Houari Boumedienne, who overthrew him in a
miltary coup in 1965.
Boumedienne was an authentic Bonapartist fig-
ure. He balanced between the nascent bourgeoisie
and the worker and peasant masses, but also be-
tween the military hierarchy, the overlapping
bureaucracies of the FLN and the state, and the
different factions within them. Especially in the
period when he was consolidating his power, he did
not hesitate to use the fundamentalists to counter
the influence of the left-wing of the FLN and the
(illegal) Communist Party, whom he used in turn
when the regime radicalised its policies in the
1970s.
During the Boumedienne years fundamentalist
Islamic currents developed their influence in Alge-
rian society from below', as the 'parallel Islam'
attracted "all the individuals and groups hostile to
the economic transformations directed against pri-
vate property" (Mohammed Harbi, a leader of the
left-wing of the FLN in the 1950s and 1960s,
writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1994).
But the fundamentalists also penetrated 'from
above', ', taking advantage of the policy of 'cultural
restoration'. They came to dominate the fields of
education, culture and law. Madani himself taught at the Institute of Social Sciences in Algiers - a breeding ground for future fundamentalist activists.
In the 1970s the FLN regime had a real legitimacy in the eyes of the masses - a legitimacy which came from its leadership of the independence struggle, from its development of the economy and from its independent foreign policy and radical anti-imperialist rhetoric. But although Algeria went a long way towards the establishment of a statecontrolled economy, it never took the Cuban road, never completed the break with imperialism, especially French imperialism, never established a workers' state. The contradictions in Algerian society started to manifest themselves, particularly after Boumedienne's death in 1979. The population became more and more conscious of the fact that behind the facade of Algerian 'socialism' lay an important and increasing social differentiation between the privileged elite and the mass of the population, and also of the degree of corruption within the regime.
N THE COURSE of the 1980s the economic
base of the regime was undermined, first gradu-
ally and then drastically in 1985-86, by the
collapse of the prices of oil and gas and consequently of the state's revenues. The standard of living of the population began to fall, unemployment rocketed to 25% of the active population - the government would have to create 200,000 jobs a year just to absorb all the youth coming onto the labour market. During the 1980s Algeria's foreign debt rose steadily to its present level of $26bn. Simply paying the interest on this debt now absorbs 30% of Algeria's income from exports. 'Independent' Algeria's dependence on imperialism
became greater and greater - not only for credits
and access to technology but even for food imports
to feed the population.
In this context the regime became more and
more discredited, especially in the eyes of the
youth who constituted two-thirds of the population
- Algeria's population has doubled since inde-
pendence - and who had limited patience with a
corrupt and inept regime ruling more and more in
the name of its past achievements.
These changes in the popular attitude towards
the regime began to find their expression in move-
ments from below. In April 1980 mass
demonstrations took place in Tizi-Ouzou, capital of
the region of Kabylia, inhabited by Algeria's Berber
minority which makes up about 20% of Algeria's
population. This Kabyle Spring' demanded the rec-
ognition of tamazigh, the Berber language, and in
general of the Berber identity within Algeria. This
was the biggest mass movement since the immedi-
ate post-independence period. The Kabyles, who
played a key role in the independence struggle,
Boudiaf - installed by the military in 1992.
were challenging head-on the official 'Arab-Islamic ideology which denied their separate identity.
In the course of the 1980s there were major riots in two of Algeria's biggest cities, in Oran in 1982 and Constantine in 1986. At the same time the more extreme fundamentalists attempted to launch guerrilla movements in rural areas. Ali Benhadj, today number two in the FIS leadership, took part in one such attempt.
All these movements were repressed by the FLN regime, but under the surface of an apparently uniform one-party state independent organisations began to develop. The Berber movement continued after 1980 in spite of the repression, a 'co-ordination' (composed of delegates elected by the students in each university) independent of the official student union was created during the big student
Algeria 25
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FIS spokesperson Ait Ahmed.
strike of 1987, the PAGS (the illegal Communist Party) had substantial influence in the unions and among intellectuals. Above all there was the development of powerful but diffuse Islamic currents.
Under the presidency of Chadli Benjedid, who succeeded Boumedienne on the latter's death in 1979, the FLN moved, cautiously at first, towards pro-market and pro-imperialist policies. This orientation was known as the 'infitah' (opening). It paralleled the evolution of a series of other radical regimes in the Third World faced with the effects of the capitalist crisis and the weakening of the Soviet bloc. Now all the regime's enemies were on the left - those who defended the gains of the preceding period - and it was looking for an ideology to replace Boumedienne 'socialism' Increasingly, it turned towards Islam, and consciously used the fundamentalists against the left and the Berberists, especially in the universities. Already in 1986 a group of generals, advised by a future leader of the FIS, Ali Djeddi, proposed the proclamation of an Islamic state.
LL THE UNDERLYING tensions in Alge
rian society exploded in October 1988.
Faced wih riots by unemployed youth
which devastated the centre of Algiers, the state reacted with unheard-of violence, sending in the army and killing hundreds. But it was too late. In the wake of the riots the FLN was forced to abandon its monopoly of power. Chadli remained in office, but a new constitution was promulgated and approved by referendum in February 1989. It provided for the separation of the FLN from the state, free elections with freedom for other political parties, independence of the mass organisations, including the unions, from the state and the FLN October 1988 opened up a three-year period of the broadest political liberty Algeria has ever known. Political parties and associations mushroomed and
26 Algeria
there was a wave
strikes.
October 1988 opened up three-year period of the broadest political liberty
Algeria has known.
This new period enabled the fundamentalist
forces which had been strengthened under Chadli
and had played a key role in October 1988 to come
out into the open. The FIS, legalised in September
1989, organized the bulk of the fundamentalist
currents. There were also more moderate Islamic
parties, like the MDA of Ben Bella, and Hamas.
The FIS is indeed a front, with many currents
within it. What unites its components is the desire
to establish an Islamic state. Differences exist over
precisely what an Islamic state is and even more
on how to achieve it. In fact, most of the debates
have been not on questions of policy, but on the tactics for winning power.
The electoral base of the Front is extremely loose. What welds it together is a mixture of hatred of the present regime and the illusion that an application of strict Islamic principles can solve Algeria's problems. The leadership of the FIS is conscious of this. The party has never adopted a programme - social, political or economic - for fear of losing part of its support. It has never held a congress. Madani declared in May 1991: "The congress will meet after the proclamation of the Islamic state". A congress, of course, would highlight the lack of a programme and the divisions and incoherences within the FIS. The party's discourse is therefore limited to a broad defence of Islamic principles of solidarity, equality and justice, linked to violent denunciations of a corrupt and impious regime and the cultivation of its own image of moral rectitude. At the same time, the FIS has also built its base by organizing through the mosques practical help to the poor, the homeless, and the unemployed, who felt themselves to be and were - abandoned by the government.
The main debate in 1989-91 was on whether or how to use the democratic process. Broadly speaking, the fundamentalists are opposed to the principle of democracy because it advocates that society be run by citizens and not by God's law. Within this general framework, there are those who are prepared to use elections to win an Islamic state and those who reject any road except a violent one.
The FIS stood in the municipal elections of June 1990 and got 54% of the votes. This success was something of a poisoned gift for the fundamentalists. The FIS could not deliver the houses and jobs it had promised, its mayors were often incompe-
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tent, and the first taste of Islamic puritanism in the towns it controlled did not please all those who had voted for it. The FIS also lost support during this period because of its embarrassed position during the Gulf war. Its links to Saudi Pakistan (important sources of revenue for the FIS) prevented it coming out clearly in defence of Iraq, while the Algerian masses demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands against imperialism. Nevertheless, the FIS could hardly refuse to in the legislative elections fixed for participate 1991, which it would not necessarily have won. The government resolved the FIS leadership's problem by introducing an electoral law highly unfavourable to the Front, which promptly called a general strike demanding the annulment of this law and an immediate presidential election. When the strike began to falter, Madani went for double or quits. The fundamentalists organized violent street demunder the slogans onstrations "Down democracy! 'An Islamic state without a vote!"', Neither Charter nor Constitution, the Word of God, the Word of the Prophet!'. They succeeded in mo- FIS prisoners guarded by Algerian police. bilizing the pent-up anger of the urban youth and provoking the intervention of the army. In this way regained the initiative, in spite of the the FIS arrest of its leaders, and the elections were postponed. When they were held six months later the FIS won, though with a million votes less than in When the army refused to accept the verdict of the electorate, it was supported by not insignificant sectors of the urban middle classes and civil servants who depend on the state for their livelihood. The regime thought in January 1992 that by leaning on this base and smashimg the FIS through repression it could re-consolidate its power. It gravely underestimated the determination of the fundamentalists and the extent of mass hatred for its own rule.
The imperialists are ready to live with the FIS.
HE EXTREME VIOLENCE of the confrontation between the regime and the FIS has exaggerated the extent of the differences between them. Interviewed in Le Monde (27 September, 1994), Said Sadi, general secretary of the Berber-based bourgeois anti-fundamentalist party RCD, said that there were only two ways forward for Algeria - (bourgeois) democracy or the 'national-Islamist' road. There is a large degree of agreement between the dominant wing of the regime and the FIS on the 'national-Islamic' line. Having tried wholesale repression and failed it was inevitable that the regime would turn towards a compromise and it was predictable that the leadership of the FIS would react positively. What is pushing the two sides close together is not only the failure of the government to smash the FIS and forge a coherent alternative from the non-fundamentalist parties, but also the depth of the economic crisis facing Algeria today and its consequences. The government has signed, and is applying, a 'structural adjustment programme' with the IMF and will have to impose ever harsher sacrifices on the Algerian masses. For that it needs a government with a broader popular base than it Algeria • 27
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has or can have.
It is now clear that the imperialists are ready to live with the FIS. According to The Economist (24 September, 1994), the fundamentalist opponents of an agreement "see the release of the FIS leaders as a Western-inspired conspiracy to prepare the way for the sort of moderate Islamic regime that the West can live with - an interpretation that does indeed capture the thought at the back of many Western minds"
. And in fact the imperialists have shifted their policy. Britain and the USA have for some time had a more open attitude towards the FIS and now France, principal backer of the present regime amd its repression, is moving towards acceptance of an agreement. On September 26 the European Union welcomed the steps taken towards dialogue with the FIS and called for 'political reconciliation'.
By a 'moderate' Islamic regime the imperialists mean one that does not threaten their interests. They do not mind whether it holds elections, represses the Berbers, pushes women out of employment, or curbs independent working-class action. And Madani has always been most explicit that an Islamic state in Algeria would not change the country's links with imperialism. It is of course not certain that the FIS will conclude an accord with the government, but it is becoming probable, and it is certain that this is the objective of the central FIS leadership and of the dominant sector of the regime. They want to end the civil war and govern together.
Opposition, however, can come from two sources. In the first place, the most radical wing of the fundamentalists will refuse any truck with the army. But it would be wrong to see this refusal as potentially progressive. This wing is also the most reactionary and obscurantist and largely organized by veterans of the Afghan counter-revolution. Secthe army fundamentalism could ally with the bourgeois opposed to 'democrats' and try a coup to prevent a deal. But even if it succeeded it would then have no more solution to the war than Zeroual, other than more and more repression.
It is not sure that the FIS would still win elections, if these are held: but it would certainly represent a force that couldn't be ignored. If the FIS comes to power, alone or in coalition, it will certainly disillusion riven by dissensions itself. But there is no easy road from popular disillusion to organized resistance and the development of an alternative. And there is no sign of any progressive wing emerging from the fundamentalist movement.
HE ONLY REGION where there is mass popular opposition to the FIS and the regime is in Kabylia, although the political leadership is in the hands of bourgeois parties, the populist Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and the liberal RCD. On 21 September Kabylia was 28 • Algeria paralyzed by the first in a series of general strikes for the recognition of the Berber language, and a demonstration of hundreds of thousands took place in the city of Bejaia. This massive show of force was not only for the defence of the rights of the Berbers: it represented a rejection by the Kabyles of the regime and the FIS, together or separately. Clashes are occurring between Kabyle villagers and fundamentalist guerrillas and selfdefence militias have been formed in certain areas. An agreement between the FIS and the regime could lead to a Kabyle uprising and moves towards secession.
A key task for Algerian Marxists is to support the Berber movement in its demands for cultural rights - in particular the central demand for the recognition of their language and for it to be taught in schools - while opposing the movement's bourgeois leadership and arguing against secession and for unity with Arab-speaking workers and peasants.
The situation facing the Algerian workers and peasants today is difficult, as is the intervention of Marxists. Independent working-class activity has to confront both the security forces of the regime and the gangs of the FIS. In this situation all left political parties are in crisis.
The PAGS has broken up: its main successor group, Ettahadi, peddles illusions in the High Committee of State and in bourgeois democracy.
But the tasks of Marxists in Algeria are clear. They fight for the political independence of the working-class: for the independence of the unions from the state and for the building of a mass workers' party. They give no support to the present regime which is the instrument of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism. On the contrary they are the best fighters against the diktats of the IMF, for the cancellation of the debt, for real national independence, for the re-nationalsation of all privatised companies, for workers' control, for a price freeze. They are the best defenders of democratic rights, in particular the rights of women and of the Berbers and for the separation of religion from the state. In fighting for this programme there can be no alliance with the fundamentalists, who represent a mortal danger for the working-class. The task is to break youth, workers and peasants from their illusions in fundamentalism.
The pro-imperialist Said Sadi is wrong when he says that the choice for Algeria is between bourgeois democracy and national-Islamism. There is no room for a stable bourgeois democracy in Algeria. The only choice capitalism offers Algeria today is a military-police dictatorship at the service of imperialism, with or without the FIS.
The only alternative is to fight for a workers' and peasants' government, to take the genuine socialism. This road will probably be long and difficult but it is the only way to free Algeria from the stranglehold of imperialism and from indigenous reaction and obscurantism.
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