KARIMA BENNOUNE - Algeria: the real lessons for Egypt
For all its problems, Algeria never became an Islamic state. Like Algerian progressives in the 1990s, Egyptian progressives now have to carve out the space to construct a credible alternative under the shield of the new transitional process, and simultaneously challenge the military’s human rights abuses
“Enough is enough,” insists Cherifa Kheddar, whose brother and sister were murdered by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in June 1996, and who is the President of Djazairouna, the Algerian Association of Victims of Islamist Terrorism. She is right. One of the consequences of recent events in Egypt has been a renewed cascade of misrepresentations and misinformation about what happened in Algeria in the 1990s. Though each context is unique, the lessons that can be learned from Algeria then for the situation in countries like Egypt now make it critical to challenge the misinformation. So much blood was spilt in the fundamentalist assault on Algeria that it is immoral not to remember what actually happened.
I have just finished three years of research on progressive opposition to fundamentalism across Muslim majority countries from Afghanistan to Mali, for my forthcoming book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. But I began in Algeria by interviewing scores of survivors of the 1990s Islamist violence in places like Kheddar’s hometown Blida inside what was then-called “the Triangle of Death.” The voices of the people I spoke to must be heard to understand their history. Instead, we are treated to boilerplate accounts. Almost no one seems to talk to the many Algerians who challenge that narrative. And no one seems to bother to talk to women. You cannot understand what happened in Algeria, and what it means today, without doing both of these things.
Post-independence socialist rule waned when Chadly Benjedid became President in 1979. Like Sadat, he used the rising fundamentalists to scare critics on the left, a game which got out of control. Benjedid’s unregulated privatization generated a huge gap between haves and have-nots. This provoked a youth-led revolt in October 1988; the army killed 500 in a week. Afterwards, the government placated the public by launching an ill-conceived electoral process and legalizing opposition parties, including the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) whose composition violated Algeria’s constitutional ban on parties based on religion. This moment of “democratization” - which did unleash independent media and fostered tremendous optimism - was exploited by the FIS whose precursors had been militating in mosques and had a considerable head start.
The FIS participated in the electoral process while its leaders said they did not believe in democracy except as a means to come to power, and its associates were already engaging in violence against women and young conscripts. Most of this was overlooked by outsiders too busy celebrating the advent of a multi-party system. One summary version of Algeria’s 1990s trajectory is reiterated in the West – the fundamentalists were participating in the elections, their victory was stolen and that was when trouble started. This is a gross oversimplification.
Openly declaring they would abolish democratic institutions, the FIS leaders proclaimed that they would rule through a majlis al-shura, a cabal of clergy. They described the mixing of the sexes a “cancer,” and besieged women’s college dorms. Their prescription was simple. “Islam is the solution.” Their words and deeds terrified liberal and leftwing Algerians. The FIS second in command Ali Belhadj asked, “if we have the law of God, why should we need the law of the people?” About non-fundamentalist Algerians, he raved “one should kill these unbelievers.”
One of the worst fallacies today about this time period is that there was no popular support for the Algerian army’s subsequent action. “Millions of Algerians did not pour into the streets either to demand or denounce the cancelling of elections in 1992,” writes Hicham Yezza in an article on openDemocracy. This completely obscures the reality that there were in fact mass protests calling for the interruption of the electoral process.
In the opening days of 1992, as documented inter alia by journalists Hassan Zenati and Ricardo Ustarroz at the time, at least three hundred thousand people demonstrated on the streets of Algiers, long before Facebook, Twitter and cellphones. Some who took part estimate this number to have been much higher – up to 500,000 or even a million. They called on the government to save the republic when it looked like the FIS would win, establish an Islamic state, and never relinquish power. At the time, Usatarroz wrote about the first round of voting, that “fresh elections for many of the seats won by the fundamentalists may have to be held because of complaints of ballot rigging and other irregularities in 140 constituencies.”
Cherifa Kheddar, who participated in protests then, reminded me last week that “a million citizens – women first among them – took to the streets of Algiers. We asked the authorities to stop the electoral masquerade. We refused the Iranization or Sudanization of our country.” In response, these opponents of theocracy received threats from Islamists telling them their only choices were a boat or a grave... read more: http://www.siawi.org/article5769.html
