Fw: [FI-P] IV333 Algeria

["Johannes Schneider" <Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxx>]

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FI-press-l                                    Fourth International
Press-List
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Algeria: Kabylia's unarmed insurrection
Chawki Salhi*

For two months now the Kabylia area has been in a state of insurrection and
recently revolts have broken out in ten cities in the east of the country,
in particular Annaba and Constantine.
In an Algeria numbed by the dizzying cruelty experienced during the bloody
years of a brutal war and battered by the program of economic dismantling
demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the name of the
imperialist creditors, despair was everywhere.
The Kabylia revolt started around two completely ordinary incidents under
the state of emergency in a country where deaths are counted in the tens of
thousands and the 'disappeared' in the thousands.
At the end of April, a young high-school student, Massinissa Guermouh,
arrested at random, died in the police station at Beni Douala (near Tizi
Ouzou), while at the same time, the police in Amizour (near Béjaia) removed
three youngsters from their school and mistreated a teacher who opposed
this violation*1.
In a rebellious Kabylia, spared by the Islamist wave, and which on its
Bédjaoui side practically experienced neither the war nor the despondency
of the post-war period, the response from the youth was of an extraordinary
radicalism.
Like a powder trail, the revolt spread to the entire Kabyle area, over
seven wilayas (departments), expressing the hatred of hogra (an Algerian
expression meaning to be excluded and held in contempt), the rejection of
poverty and denouncing the murderous regime.
The demand for the recognition of the Tamazight (Berber) language is always
present but social slogans are to the fore, contrary to the strongly
identity-based explosion of June 1998, at the time of the death of (leading
Berber singer) Lounes Matoub. The youth in revolt attacked all the public
buildings, all the symbols of the central State and all the dignitaries
suspected of corruption, but they also attacked the symbols of the parties
- the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS) and the Rally for Culture and
Democracy (RCD) as well as those of the establishment National Liberation
Front (FLN) condemning their appalling municipal management, their
membership of the liberal consensus and their bourgeois political practice.
Youth besieged police buildings, set fire to police residences and
exhausted the reinforcements of riot police, in spite of their use of live
ammunition. At the end of 40 days, there were 60 dead and hundreds wounded.
The regime announced nearly 3,000 wounded, the majority among its own
troops. Doctors testified that the majority of victims were shot in the
back and that the snipers shot to kill.
Police officers acknowledged on television that the repressive forces were
operational only during the first week, being satisfied thereafter with
protecting their quarters, their residences and their families from the
popular anger. A police spokesperson admitted to demoralisation and there
are reports of desertion or self-mutilation in order to flee the
confrontations.

A revolt against poverty and political oppression

With 50% of the population below the poverty line, 30% unemployment, an
economic structure in the course of collapse and the impending
privatisation of the rare profitable sectors (oil, telephones), the
neo-liberal policy imposed by Algeria's creditors has brought youth to
despair while for the working class dismissals amount to hundreds of
thousands and the retired are threatened with non-payment of their
insufficient pensions.
To implement this unprecedented aggression against the Algerian people, to
carry through this process, which will restore to imperialism,
hydrocarbons, electricity, the mechanical engineering industry, the airport
in Algiers and the management of the luxury hotels, a malleable regime was
needed - rendered incapable of defending local interests against
re-colonisation.
However, this regime should be able to come down with an iron hand on a
population with a populist tradition in order to subject it to the new
norms of capitalist exploitation.
Supported at the beginning of his reign by an immense popular hope around
its promises of a return to "the golden age" of the 1970s and the populist
dictatorship of Boumedienne, President Bouteflika had the political means
to impose this wrenching turn on the people. This is why the Europeans and
the US support him.
The Algerians had, as a whole, consented to his national concord and his
amnesty for Islamic war criminals. Kabylia had not erupted in September
1999 when he had dared to say in Tizi Ouzou that the Tamazight language
would never be official.
Bouteflika's aggressive authoritarianism sought to remove all those who
dared to express their social distress. Acting like a megalomaniac, he had
prohibited the political parties from access to television, which he
reserved for his own expression
The managers and administrators of public companies were put on the
defensive, demonstrations and strikes were threatened by police deployments
and the military hierarchy was publicly accused of corruption. Dreaming of
changing the Constitution to increase his power, without really knowing
how, he tried to concentrate everything in his hands.
Indecisive, Bouteflika has for two years fed us with erudite and useless
declamations, travelling the world to request improbable massive
investments in a country where "everything is up for sale" in the words of
the then economy minister Temmar.
While higher oil prices doubled public income, social conditions did not
cease to worsen and society threatened to break down. While the
discrediting of the representative parties weakened the institutions,
restrictions on popular expression turned the page on the "democratic"
opening conquered by the popular explosion of October 5, 1988.
The regime was deprived of any security valve.

>From riots to popular organisation

>From the first days, in the Béjaia region, the education workers' union
tried to organize the protest and called for a demonstration on April 28 in
Amizour. Immediate repression led to violent confrontations.
The attempt by the FFS, the principal Kabyle party, to organise a meeting
in Béjaïa fell flat, because the youth stoned the speakers, while the
attempt at a march initiated by its members was dispersed by the immense
procession of young rebels. Everywhere, throughout Kabylie, village
committees were set up which multiplied initiatives, marches and
delegations to the authorities.
In Béjaia, the economic metropolis, and in the valley of Soummam, more
urbanized than upper Kabylia, in this area where the Socialist Workers
Party (PST) has traditionally been strong in the social movements, the most
interesting process unfolded. A co-ordination was built around the teachers
trade-union, involving village and neighbourhood committees, trade-union
structures and a university collective.
Within the grass roots structures, for the most part set up by left
activists, there was insistence on the integration of young people who were
more representative of the popular anger. This organisation, which
progressively extended its representation to the immediately bordering
wilayas, continues the tradition of the village committees of 1980, the
gigantic mobilisations of the Berber Cultural Movement of 1989 to 1993, or
the  front against poverty in 1991.
In July 1998, the young rioters revolted by the assassination of Matoub
Lounes set up the forums of rebels for freedom, directed by the current
leaders of the popular committee of the wilaya of Béjaia. This committee
tirelessly repeats its calls for demonstrations in spite of repression.
Thus on May 3 it said: "Our march was repressed in blood and was stopped
but our determination remains to impose the withdrawal of the police from
all the areas and communes which demand it, to impose our right to march,
to have work and housing and to pursue the Amazigh combat in all its
dimensions. We call on all citizens to designate their representatives in
all the neighbourhoods, villages, factories, universities, schools. We call
for a general strike, except for transport, on Monday May 7 and for massive
attendance at the popular meeting"*2.
On Monday May 7, after the meeting seen on the TVs of the whole world, an
immense procession of tens of thousands of people passed through the
streets of Béjaïa, deserted by the police. The right to demonstrate was
reconquered by Algerians.
But as far as the media was concerned, the demonstration of April 3, called
by trade unions and popular committees was described as "disorders in
Béjaia", that of May 7 as "a small event". Occasionally it would be
announced that the organisers were "former far left militants", without
further precision. However certain Arabic-language newspapers mentioned the
PST.

The Co-ordination of the Aarouchs of Tizi Ouzou

In Tizi Ouzou, the symbolic capital of Kabyle resistance, the radical youth
does not find in the preceding generation militant personnel full of
left-wing traditions.
The structuring has come later, the degree of representativeness is
imperfect, the debates are less rich, but eyes of the press and the elites
are on Tizi, the historical centre of the Berber movement. Contradictory
calls for strikes and protest actions initially sowed confusion.
Then, an initial meeting took place in Beni Douala, to honour the memory of
a murdered youth. The village committees which have been set up virtually
everywhere decided to federate by tribe (Aarch, plural Aarouch), stressing
ethnic identity rather than the social aspect and founding their
co-ordination in Illoula around a platform which does not give much place
to social concerns*3.
The youth have succeeded with difficulty in being accepted and integrated
into the neighbourhood committees. The immense march on May 14 in Tizi
Ouzou, established the representative nature and leading role of the
coordination of the aarouchs, even if the youth maintained some distance
>from the organisers.
A march of 10,000 women in Tizi expressed eloquently a rejection of the
patriarchal universe built on the right of seniority and the exclusion of
the women. The women of Béjaia and Azazga also demonstrated in the
thousands.
The demands of the demonstrators and the committees are, in Béjaia as in
Tizi, the withdrawal of the police and anti-riot militias, a second sitting
of the baccalaureate examination, the punishment of those responsible for
repression, the satisfaction of social needs, and Tamazight as a national
and official language.

Inter-wilaya coordination and the June 14 march

This movement of popular self-organisation was supported by a student
mobilization in Oran (a city in western Algeria) and Algiers, the capital,
which is also the largest Kabyle city (just ahead of Paris).
Symbolic in Oran, although it constitutes the hard core of the democratic
expression there, the student mobilisation, initiated by a coordination of
autonomous student committees, was decisive in Algiers.
Competing, on May 3, with marches called in the capital by the apparatuses
of the FFS and the RCD, the students held their own, courageously, in spite
of a hundred casualties, with an impressive police presence.
The following day 10,000 of them, acclaimed by the population, went to the
government palace where they read out their platform to the television
cameras. It was small beer compared to the bloodthirsty drama in Kabylia,
but it nevertheless had a considerable importance.
The spectre of the extension of the revolt to the inhabitants of Algiers
paralysed the regime and to some extent reconciled the Kabyle youth with
their country.
Several neighbourhood committees were set up by the inhabitants of Algiers.
The demonstration at Ain Benian ended in confrontations. A local
coordination prepared the liberation of the 'Club des Pins' (a tourist zone
reserved for the dignitaries of the régime and off-limits to ordinary
citizens). A national inter-wilayas coordination was set upon June 7 and
announced a march on Algiers for June 14.
The debates on platform confirm the lack of synch between the structures of
Tizi with the concerns of the youth in revolt but unity was achieved on a
common minimum by restricting the democratic and especially social
concerns.
The aarouchs do not intend to replace the political parties. Thus, out went
the demands for freedom of the press, women's rights, the maintenance of
free medicine and public education, employment and housing and the lifting
of the state of emergency. This retreat was necessary so as not to be cut
off from the structures of the real movement but it offered us the chance
for a splendid educational campaign around these slogans.
The gigantic demonstration of June 14 was the biggest in the history of the
country although the mobilisation by the inhabitants of Algiers itself was
disappointing. A further march is planned for June 29 or July 5.

Popular control or dual power?

The demand for the withdrawal of the police and riot squads has not
weakened in spite of the renewal of forces and the restriction of the
police to their barracks.
For several weeks, committees have negotiated temporary truces, obtaining
the withdrawal of the police force to allow the population to sleep for a
night or two. At the time of the baccalaureate examinations, the police
were rejected by the wilaya committee of Béjaia and were replaced by
tolerated local police officers.
Because their position is intolerable, the regime prefers to withdraw its
police from confrontation. In Béjaia, deprived of telephone communication,
there is a threat to cut off electricity.
Everywhere citizens deal with the committees rather than the police. But
the popular committees are not organised as a counter-power.
Certainly, their authority is immense and binding even on the
representatives of the state but if the question of the monopoly of weapons
arises in general assemblies around the question of the police, the
committee does not organise itself like a local authority either on the
administrative or on the military level.
It is primarily conceived as a committee organising around the demands,
even if the collapse of the official institutions, the sympathy of civil
servants and the support of notable local FFS and RCD politicians opens up
this possibility.
For sure, the committees decree boycotts, requisition vehicles and order
all kinds of work done without payment. In spite of an undeniable popular
legitimacy and the unexploited availability of the turbulent strike force
of the radicalised youth, the committees, embryos of dual power, are still
far from posing themselves as an alternative.
The extension of the revolt to other areas, which have neither the
tradition nor the depth of the Kabyle revolt, also leads to caution from a
leadership concerned that the area should not be isolated. However, in the
Kabyle cities deserted by the police and abandoned to the anger of the
youth, a qualitative step must be taken if the movement is not to collapse.


A regime at bay, discredited parties

The regime's initial response was with truncheons and live ammunition. They
even dared to justify this on the grounds of the unavailability of rubber
bullets. Bouteflika made an immense economic speech without the least word
of compassion for the victims of the tragedy. He then flew to Nigeria to
chair a meeting on AIDS in Africa.
But the determination of youth has not been blunted and this contempt
consolidates it. The word was then given to the notables of the region to
call for calm while the regime continued to attack the demonstrators.
Badredine Djahnine, the secretary-general of the teachers' union responded;
"the regime is responsible, you want calm, stop repression, recognize
Tamazight, give us work and housing".
After twelve days of violence, Bouteflika spoke finally, to say practically
nothing. The regime tried to avoid the irreparable, to prevent a blood
bath, which would generate a process of inescapable separation. But its
police continue to fire with "normal" bullets, says an official anxious to
deny the use of explosive bullets.
The discontent continues to spread.
Breaking with the RCD, which has finally left the government, the regime
tries to use the FFS as responsible interlocutor. Unfortunately the
FFS-organised march in Algiers, which gained strong media coverage, did not
interest anybody in Kabylie and the postponement of the baccalaureate (bac)
exams in the region at the request of Ait Ahmed's party led to new
demonstrations: "No to the regional bac! For a second national sitting!"
With his fourth speech Bouteflika finally discovered the will of Kabyle
youth to be identified with all the youth of the country and granted a
second baccalaureate examination sitting to all Algerians.
Bouteflika announced that he would no longer seek intermediaries and would
negotiate with the interested parties themselves and prepared to establish
contact with the popular committees.

A new élan for the left

On March 28, the impressive general strike of the oil workers, supported by
numerous sectors like the metalworkers, met with much popular sympathy.
Bouteflika, discountenanced by the audacity of the workers, was forced to
slow down the locomotive of neo-liberalism and to consider some measures of
reflation of the economy.
One month later, the Kabyle insurrection began and upset all the political
givens: it practically re-conquered the right for all to demonstrate, in
spite of the state of emergency.
The television has been partially opened up whereas Bouteflika had closed
it to the opposition, the police have got water hoses and their firearms
have been removed, high-school pupils throughout the country obtained a
second session of the bac, three ultra-neo-liberal ministers have been
dismissed or marginalised to make way for house apparatchiks. And
Bouteflika even has some reproaches for those who wanted to sell everything
off.
Hope has returned to the popular masses.
The regime's chauvinistic game of opposing Kabyles to other Algerians has
no purchase now that all the cities of the East have seen demonstrations
around the same social slogans and the same denunciation of hogra.
In the Arabic-speaking areas, the Islamists had expressed the revolt of the
dispossessed. Their defeat is also the defeat of the people. The Islamic
revolt's impotence and its barbaric practices discredited armed Islamists,
Islamicism, the armed struggle and even the notion of revolt.
This demoralisation and distress do not affect the younger generation, who
fulminate against an unjust social order and explode on the streets in
Annaba, Constantine, Guelma, and so on.
If an organised framework is to be created, however, the absence of adult
reference points similar to the Kabyle example will weigh heavily. However,
the iron and steel industry in Annaba, the mechanical complexes in
Constantine, the mining tradition in Tébessa, the ailing cycle factory in
Guelma, have constituted the vanguard of the working class protest.
The challenge is to coordinate working class resistance, the growing revolt
of the youth and the structured popular movement of Kabylia.
If the popular pressure does not succeed in imposing its own solutions, it
will be used to implement one of the scenarios, which are now being
discussed with the imperialist protectors.
They involve the dismantling and plundering of the public sector, the loss
of social rights embodied in a labour code now decreed to be too rigid and
a huge worsening of poverty in the name of competitiveness.
We will not let them get away with it.

*Chawki Salhi is spokesman of the Socialist Workers Party (PST), an
organisation of the revolutionary left whose activists are particularly
active within the popular committees.


ENDNOTES
1.      Béjaïa, a city of 200,000 inhabitants, outlet of the valley of
Soummam, is an oil port and tourist zone with various industrial
establishments (oil, packing) and a thousand-year-old urban tradition. Tizi
Ouzou, with 130,000 inhabitants, is a crossroads of communication in the
centre of a very mountainous area with a big and active university.
2.      Appeal of the university community and the civil society, Bgayeth,
May 3, 2001.
3.      A mountainous zone to the east of Algiers, the area of Kabylia was
through the ages a place of refuge. Here the Berber language, Tamazight,
has been preserved more than elsewhere. Despite massive emigration to the
great urban areas of Algeria and to France, Kabylie remained for a long
time outside the process of urban modernisation.  Karl Marx, passing
through Algiers, noted the survival of the pre-capitalist community
organisation.
The Tajmaath, in Arabic the djemaa, literally the assembly, gathers
together the representatives of village families, the wise old men, and
manages the village, organising collective work and solidarity and
resolving conflicts. Based on a reality of collective agricultural
exploitation, this organisation has existed through the various phases of
our history, the Arab occupation, the Turkish domination and French
colonisation, before progressive urbanisation and the generalisation of
wage labour sapped its bases and reduced its authority.
During the Berber spring of 1980, village committees set up by young
radical militants, often students, supplanted them and the tajmaath which
survive unequally through the region were reduced to the policing of morals
and a formal existence. This strong community-based culture underlies the
tradition of the village committees, which re-appear with each new
radicalisation. It is often militants of the 1980 village committees who
have come back into activity in the area of Tizi Ouzou. The reference to
Aarchs, strongly marked by an identity-based assertion, does not correspond
to sociological reality as urbanisation has substantially mixed up the
populations.