Demilitarizing Algeria
Carnegie
PAPERS
Middle East Program
Number 86 n May 2007
Demilitarizing Algeria
Hugh Roberts
About the Author
Hugh Roberts is an independent writer, lecturer, and consultant based in Cairo. From 2002
to 2007 he was the Director of the North Africa Project for the International Crisis Group,
in which capacity he was responsible for the production of reports on Islamism and on the
problems of political reform in North Africa and for initiating a series of reports on Islam
and Islamism in Europe. He is the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002, Studies in
a Broken Polity (Verso, 2003) and is currently working to complete books on the Berbers of
Algeria and on Islamism.
Introduction
The Algerian state constituted at the end of the eight-year war of independence
by the victorious Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) exhibited
an impressive degree of continuity and stability during its first 26
years, from 1962 to 1988. In February 1989, however, the regime of
President Chadli Bendjedid abruptly introduced a pluralist constitution
and legalized parties which, based on rival Islamist and Berberist conceptions
of identity, polarized public opinion by advocating mutually
exclusive Islamist and secularist conceptions of the state. In doing so,
the regime set in motion a process that profoundly destabilized the state.
Instead of restoring order, however, the army's eventual intervention in
January 1992 precipitated a descent into armed conflict which, while
greatly reduced since 1998, has still not entirely ended.
The violence that has ravaged Algeria since 1992 has expressed
and confirmed the ascendancy of the military in Algerian political
life and the weakness of all civilian forms of politics, both on the progovernment
side and among those opposed to the regime. The civilian
leaders of the Islamist movement were almost entirely outflanked by the
Islamist armed movements and, within the regime, the army's General
Staff and intelligence chiefs became the main source of decision making.
In particular, successive presidents proved entirely unable to impose their
authority. The deposing of President Chadli Bendjedid in January 1992
was followed by the assassination of President Mohammed Boudiaf six
months later, the brief and ineffectual interim of Ali Kafi (July 1992 to
January 1994), and the eventual failure also of Liamine Zeroual (1994-
1999), who, despite his impressive electoral endorsement in 1995, was
unable to secure a consensus within the regime in support of his efforts
to resolve the crisis.
Since becoming president in April 1999, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has
achieved substantial success in several key areas where his predecessors
had failed. The main armed Islamist organizations that dominated the
insurgency during the 1990s-the Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS) and
the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA)-either disbanded or were largely
eliminated, and security was restored to most of the country. The virtual
quarantine in which Algeria had been confined since 1994 was broken as
Bouteflika spearheaded the country's return to the international stage, renewing
relations with Paris and Washington while also recovering some
of Algeria's former influence in broader African affairs. Bouteflika has also
| Demilitarizing Algeria
enjoyed that indispensable quality-luck. Since the events of September
11, 2001, Algeria has been seen as an especially useful and welcome ally
by the U.S. government in its "global war on terrorism." As for the state's
financial position, this has been transformed as a result of high oil prices;
in desperate straits in the early 1990s, Algeria has recently been able to
pay off its once-crippling debts and accumulate unprecedentedly ample
reserves.
In terms of internal reform, however, the balance sheet is, at best,
ambiguous and controversial. The system of formal political pluralism
introduced in 1989 was preserved by the military-dominated regime
throughout the 1990s, and remains in being today. Formally contested
elections have been held at regular intervals, in 1995, 1999, and 2004 for
the presidency of the republic and in 1997 and 2002 for the national, regional,
and municipal assemblies. Fresh assembly elections are scheduled
this summer. Widely perceived as authoritarian in his personal outlook,
Bouteflika has chosen to live with this pluralist system while working
around it. A variety of parties, some of them Islamist, remain legal and
are represented in parliament, but their capacity to offer an alternative
to the regime has been reduced to zero. At the same time, Bouteflika's
determination to restore the authority of the presidency has entailed the
curbing of press freedom-a number of outspoken journalists have been
jailed as a lesson to others-and of other freedoms (notably of trade
unions), while the state of emergency introduced in February 1992 has
been routinely renewed and is still in force.
It would be one-sided, however, to consider these developments as
a simple regression. Bouteflika's principal purpose has been to restore
coherence to the executive branch of the state by reestablishing the presidency-
in place of the army high command-as the supreme arbiter of
policy debates and conflicts of interest. In doing this he has been taking
on the vested interests of the coterie of senior generals who became a law
unto themselves during the 1990s, and he has been steadily maneuvering
them off the political stage.
The central issue is whether his success in this endeavor will prove
permanent-and thereby open up the possibility of a progressive and
eventually definitive demilitarization of the state-or whether it will be
merely temporary. With Bouteflika's health now in question, his chances
of securing a third term in 2009 are in doubt and arguments over the
succession have already begun to preoccupy and divide the politicalmilitary
elite. Moreover, the onset of a factional dispute over this since
the summer of 2006 has coincided with a striking-and quite unexpected-
recrudescence of terrorist activity. The main armed movement still
active, the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour
la Prédication et le Combat, or GSPC) was previously noted for confining
Hugh Roberts |
its attacks to the security forces and sparing civilians. Under new leaders,
it has recently reverted to the indiscriminate terrorism formerly associated
with the GIA while re-branding itself as a branch of Al Qaeda. With
the unprecedented attack by a suicide bomber on the principal government
building in central Algiers on April 11, Algerian politics has once
more entered a period of uncertainty and anxiety.
The Failure of Premature Reform, 1989-1999
The generally uncritical welcome given to President Chadli's liberalizing
reform by Western governments and observers at the time was predicated,
among other things, on a misconception of the problems of authoritarianism
and arbitrary rule in the Algerian context. It was assumed
that these problems were rooted in the formal political monopoly of the
Party of the FLN (PFLN)1 and that ending this monopoly through the
introduction of political pluralism was the indispensable point of departure
for political reform in the direction of democracy and the rule
of law. That assessment ignored the fact that the Party of the FLN was
not the source of power in the Algerian state and that the problem of
authoritarianism was not a function of its formal monopoly, but rather
of the preponderance of the executive branch of the state over the legislative
branch and the judiciary and the fact that the executive branch as a
whole has been subject throughout to the hegemony of the military.
Instead of strengthening the civilian wing of the political class as the indispensable
precondition of a sustainable process of political liberalization,
the premature introduction of formal pluralism gravely weakened it. Prior
to 1989, the PFLN had functioned as a constraint on the power of the military
commanders; by licensing and even encouraging challengers to it, the
regime disabled its own civilian wing and freed the army's commanders from
all institutional constraints. By legalizing parties based on rival conceptions
of identity, the regime simultaneously disabled public opinion, by arranging
for it to be polarized between mutually exclusive and above all bitterly intolerant
cultural and ideological outlooks, and ensured that political debate
was fixated on alternative-and largely utopian-conceptions of the proper
constitution of the state instead of alternative programs for government. And
by allowing the Islamist party, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), to contest
and win local elections in June 1990 and legislative elections in December
1991 on a platform calling for an Islamic state, the government provided the
army commanders, fearful for their own prerogatives, with the pretext for
finally intervening in January 1992 to depose President Chadli, abort the
electoral process, violate the constitution, and suppress the FIS in the name
of ... democracy.
| Demilitarizing Algeria
The result was a conflagration that has proved extremely difficult to
bring to an end. Algeria since 1992 has been a battlefield disputed not by
two clear-cut sides but by a welter of distinct Islamist groups on the one
hand, as inclined to fight each other and to terrorize the population as
to pose a real threat to the state, and, on the other, a military-dominated
regime whose internal divisions have at least partially mirrored those of
the Islamists notionally opposed to it. It was only when the factional
conflict within the Algerian army was provisionally resolved with the
resignation of President Liamine Zeroual in September 1998 and the accession
of Abdelaziz Bouteflika to the presidency the following April that
the necessary minimum of consensus was reached and the regime at last
exhibited, at least for a time, a unified approach to curbing the violence
and restoring order.
This approach has involved inducing the main armed Islamist organizations
to end their campaigns and dissolve themselves in return for a
qualified amnesty, while at the same time refusing any rehabilitation of
the banned FIS and, equally if not more controversially, any investigation
into the army's conduct of its counterinsurgency campaign (notably,
the resort to torture and extrajudicial executions). These measures, presented
by the regime as necessary to promote "national reconciliation,"
seem to have enjoyed general popular approval even though they have
been vigorously criticized by both human rights groups and associations
representing the families of the "disappeared" (people arrested by the
security forces and never seen since) as well as by the families of victims
of Islamist terrorism. But they have clearly been insufficient to end the
violence completely.
The most important armed movement in recent years has been the
GSPC, which broke away from the GIA in 1998 in protest at the GIA's
targeting of civilians. (The GIA, although now reduced to a small rump,
has never disbanded.) Under its original leader, Hassan Hattab, the
GSPC confined itself to attacking the security forces throughout the
1998 to 2002 period and even expressed interest in negotiating an end
to its campaign. Bouteflika appears to have considered extending the amnesty
formula to the GSPC in return for its dissolution, but the majority
of the army commanders were opposed and Hattab's loss of control of the
group to rival leaders in 2003 put paid to that possibility. While current
Western attention has focused on the GSPC's decision to rename itself
"Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghrib," the most striking aspects
of its recent mutation are: its reversion to the indiscriminate terrorism
that was the hallmark of the GIA and its increasing targeting of the police,
that is, the civilian rather than military wing of the security forces.
The failure to end the violence completely has thus been closely connected
to the persistence and resurgence of factional conflicts within the
Hugh Roberts |
regime. This factionalism-the motor of change in the informal sector of
the Algerian polity-also profoundly vitiated the introduction of formal
party-political pluralism from 1989 onwards. It is in fact the heart of the
problem of Algerian politics, and it has dominated the country's political
life to a degree that has always distinguished independent Algeria from
the other states of the region.
The Peculiarities of the Algerian State
Algeria between 1962 and 1988 has almost invariably been described as a
one-party state and accordingly placed in the same category as other authoritarian
regimes based on single-party rule. Unlike the Baath parties in Iraq
and Syria and the Néo-Destour in Tunisia,2 however, the Party of the FLN
was not created on the basis of a particular program or ideology by freely
acting political entrepreneurs but, rather, was established by government
fiat. It was, from the outset, a state apparatus rather than a genuine political
party. It performed legitimating functions for the regime-whatever
programs and policies the latter adopted-and supervised the so-called
"mass organizations" (trade union, peasants' union, women's union,
youth union, etc.) to ensure their loyalty. It was not itself a source of decision
making and, in fact, during the presidency of Houari Boumediène
(1965-1978), it possessed neither a central committee nor a political bureau
and not a single congress of the party was held.
On Boumediène's death in December 1978, a concerted attempt was
made by senior figures in the regime to establish the PFLN as a serious
institution in its own right. This attempt met with impressive initial success.
A party congress was, at last, held in January 1979, and approved
Chadli Bendjedid's candidacy to become president. The same congress
at long last endowed the party with a large and representative Central
Committee, a 17-man Political Bureau containing genuine heavyweights,
and a number of policy commissions. The purpose was to equip the
PFLN with the formal organizational structures, powers, and capacities
that would enable it to supplant the informal coterie of army commanders
as the principle locus of strategic decision making in the state. In
short, it was a major effort to promote the badly needed institutionalization
and demilitarization of the Algerian power structure.
But its success was short-lived. In May 1980, in a climate of turmoil
bordering on panic in the wake of sensational unrest in Kabylia,3 a resolution
inspired by senior army commanders was railroaded through
the Central Committee giving President Chadli, as general secretary of
the party, full powers to appoint members of the Political Bureau. The
Central Committee, in other words, was induced to emasculate itself and
the Political Bureau, from which several major figures were immediately
| Demilitarizing Algeria
dropped. The result was that, from that point on, President Chadli was
formally accountable to nobody but informally accountable to the army
commanders. The capacity of the army commanders to abuse their power
was limited by their own membership of-and consequent obligation
to respect the procedural rules governing-the party's leading instances.
But this curb on the arbitrary power of the military was itself limited. In
line with this change of direction, Chadli dissolved most of the PFLN's
new policy commissions; established a disciplinary commission to intimidate
dissenting voices; reduced the size, representativeness, and role
of the Political Bureau; and organized a purge of independent-minded
personalities from the Central Committee. The attempt to endow the
party with real functions and powers and a real inner life had clearly been
defeated, to the benefit of the military, the informal sector of the polity,
and the syndrome of arbitrary rule.
The Algerian state has thus more closely resembled Egypt. In both
cases, the revolution that constituted the state was military in character
and the nominally ruling party has in reality been little more than a
façade for the executive branch of the state dominated by the officer corps
of the armed forces. In both cases, the development of substantive political
pluralism requires a prior reform to empower the legislative branch so
as to curb the executive branch and replace military primacy with civilian
control. To introduce formal pluralism in breach of the party's monopoly
was in itself, therefore, merely to replace a monolithic façade with a
fragmented one. But the fact that the premature introduction of formal
pluralism in Algeria had disastrous consequences owes much to the way
in which the Algerian case has differed from the Egyptian prototype.
The Problem of Factionalism
The contrasts between the Algerian and Egyptian revolutions are at least
as important as the formal parallels. The Egyptian revolution of 1952
was in essence a military coup largely planned and led by one man,
Gamal Abdel Nasser, such that revolutionary legitimacy was the preserve
of a tiny coterie of co-conspirators (the "Free Officers") and the leadership
of Nasser was unchallenged. But the Algerian revolution was a protracted
war, conducted in a highly decentralized manner all over the country
and even outside it, and mobilized the support of the Muslim population
as a whole and the active participation of scores of thousands. Thus
revolutionary legitimacy has been widely diffused, with many thousands
of Algerians able to claim some share in it and a corresponding share in
political power for themselves and the coteries or clienteles they represent.
The result has been an exceptionally intense factionalism within the
power structure of the independent state.
Hugh Roberts |
Three developments have served to perpetuate and, if anything, aggravate
the problem of factionalism since independence. The first was the
emergence of hydrocarbons as the principal source of foreign earnings
and state revenue. The Algerian state assumed the character of a "distributive
state," and its role in allocating these resources guaranteed that the
stakes in the factional competition remained high and even expanded.
The second was the onset of identity conflicts and ideological divisions,
a development that started in the 1980s and was in turn exacerbated by
the advent of formal pluralism. The third was the belated decision in
1993-1994 to bow to external pressure to reschedule Algeria's debt and
accept its corollary, structural adjustment and the concomitant policy of
privatization of state enterprises. Because all decisions concerning these
matters continued to be taken within the executive branch, controversies
over these issues constantly galvanized factional mobilization and the
rough-and-tumble of factional conflict remained the principal medium
of policy making.
This factionalism has been ambiguous in its implications. On the one
hand, it has contributed to the state's capacity, inherited from the wartime
FLN, to co-opt a wide range of interests, viewpoints, and personalities,
since it is through informal factional recruitment and alliancebuilding
that the co-optation process primarily occurs. Thus the activity
of the factions4 has enabled the state to get and keep a grip on the
diverse social interests and ideological trends in the country and so has
contributed to the state's own stability and capacity to survive. It has also
contributed to another important way in which Algeria differs from the
Egyptian case: the relative weakness-or at any rate porousness-of the
elite-mass dichotomy. But, at the same time, the role of the factions and
the salience of factional allegiances have persistently prevented coherence
in government policy making and the functioning of the administration.
More generally, they have tended to preclude political accountability, vitiate
political debate, and inhibit political institutionalization. The factions
have thus been the chief guardians, as well as the chief beneficiaries,
of the primacy of the informal sector of the Algerian polity over the formal
sector, the corresponding backwardness of Algerian political culture,
and the inadequacy of the current state framework to the requirements
of a dynamic society and a modern economy.
The Problem of Presidential Authority
This exceptionally complex and intense factionalism has been all the
more difficult to control because the revolution had no undisputed leader.
There was no Algerian Nasser (or Ho Chi Minh or Castro or Mandela,
let alone Mao Zedong). And the revolutionary elite-composed of the
senior echelons of the historic FLN and above all the Armée de Libération
| Demilitarizing Algeria
Nationale (ALN)-has consisted of individuals who have been generally
disinclined to recognize the claims to preeminent leadership of any one
of their own number.
As a result, the position of president, at the apex of the pyramid of
power, has usually been a relatively powerless one. The most powerful
men in the FLN-ALN during the war neutralized each other's presidential
ambitions and accordingly agreed on relatively weak figures (Ferhat
Abbas, Benyoucef Ben Khedda) to act as civilian presidents of the
Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA) from 1958
onward. These civilians were essentially figureheads or front men for the
real power holders and they performed little more than ceremonial and
public relations functions. Both of the strong-willed historic revolutionaries
who briefly became president-Ahmed Ben Bella (1962-1965) and
Mohamed Boudiaf (January-June 1992)-came to grief for lack of solid
military support. Only Houari Boumediène was able to exercise the full
powers and prerogatives of the president of the republic as defined in
the constitution. But his success in establishing his authority as president
was due to his unique position as the architect of the unification
of the scattered forces of the ALN in his capacity as its chief of staff
and as the organizer of the ALN's transformation into a modern regular
army, the Armée Nationale Populaire (ANP), in his capacity as minister
of defense after 1962. He thus brought his unrivaled authority over the
armed forces with him into the presidency and made a point of retaining
the defense portfolio and preserving his control over the army thereafter.
While he never wore military uniform after becoming president in 1965,
his political power was in reality a function of his military power.
None of his successors has been able to emulate him in this respect.
And the prospect that any one of them might eventually accumulate
decisive political authority over the executive branch as a whole was profoundly
damaged by Chadli Bendjedid's decision in 1984 to reestablish
the ANP's General Staff.
The Problem of the General Staff
The creation of a unified General Staff of the ALN under Colonel
Boumediène in 1960 was a victory for the most political wing of the
ALN over the centrifugal tendencies inherent in a liberation army that
had been extremely decentralized from its inception in 1954. The accumulation
of authority that Boumediène's General Staff achieved through
its unification of the ALN enabled it to arbitrate the power struggle
within the FLN at independence in 1962 and equipped Boumediène to
transform the ALN into a regular army from 1962 onwards. As defense
minister, Boumediène continued to act as chief of staff as well until Ben
Bella appointed Colonel Tahar Zbiri to the position behind Boumediène's
Hugh Roberts |
back-a move that spelled the end of the Ben Bella-Boumediène alliance
and led to Ben Bella's eventual overthrow in 1965. As president,
Boumediène retained the defense portfolio but was able to consolidate
his position fully only after getting rid of Zbiri following the latter's abortive
putsch in December 1967, at which point the General Staff was
abolished. In other words, from 1968 onward, Boumediène's presidential
authority rested not only on the fact that he was his own defense minister,
but also the fact that, in the absence of a General Staff, the defense
ministry was the sole, unrivaled apex of the military power structure.
The reestablishment of the General Staff in 1984 changed all that.
Its immediate effect was to qualify the defense ministry's control over
the ANP officer corps and so dilute President Chadli's personal authority
over the armed forces. That in turn diminished Chadli's ability to
arbitrate and limit factional disputes within the military, especially the
conflict between the coterie of former officers of the French army (the socalled
"Déserteurs de l'Armée Française," or DAF) and the rival coterie of
officers who had emerged from the ALN's guerrilla units and then graduated
from various Arab military academies (in Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan).
As a result, this conflict became more intense and uninhibited. But the
longer-term significance of the institutional change was to establish an
autonomous center of political power and decision making within the
army. The implications of this became apparent only under the dramatic
stresses and strains of the 1989-1992 period.
Following the ratification by referendum of the pluralist constitution
in February 1989, the ANP withdrew its representatives from the
Central Committee and Political Bureau of the PFLN. The move was
declared-and naïvely believed-to signify the army's total withdrawal
from the political stage. In fact, however, having ended its involvement
with the PFLN, the army command began to engage in relations with all
parties in the new pluralist dispensation. A special office to handle formal
liaison with the various political parties was established under the aegis
of the General Staff, and the intelligence services discreetly infiltrated all
the main parties as a matter of course. Thus the army commanders-acting
independently of the defense ministry-were equipping themselves
to negotiate their own, autonomous, relations with the various factions
of the civilian political class. The consequences for the authority of the
presidency were enormous.
Immediately after the FIS's first victory in the municipal and regional
elections in June 1990, Chadli was induced to surrender the defense
portfolio to the then Chief of Staff, Major General Khaled Nezzar. In
June 1991, Nezzar and the General Staff forced Chadli to agree to the
brutal repression of FIS demonstrations in Algiers and the eviction of
the head of the government, the reformer Mouloud Hamrouche and,
10 | Demilitarizing Algeria
in addition, to give up the presidency of the PFLN. By this point, then,
the army commanders had become an independent force in the political
arena, dictating terms to the president and progressively stripping him
of his prerogatives. Chadli's abdication of presidential authority and responsibility
can thus be seen to have taken place in several stages, beginning
as early as 1984, and to have been largely completed seven months
before Nezzar and his colleagues finally applied the coup de grâce in
January 1992.
Each of Algeria's successive presidents since 1992 has been confronted
with an army commanded by officers he did not himself appoint and
whom he cannot easily replace. Neither of the two presidents of the
Haut Comité d'État (HCE)5-Mohamed Boudiaf and Ali Kafi-was
even nominally his own defense minister; both were cramped from the
start by Khaled Nezzar's occupancy of the position. When Nezzar was
finally obliged to stand down in favor of Liamine Zeroual in July 1993,
Zeroual's ability to choose his own military staff was fatally constrained,
even after he assumed the presidency in January 1994 in addition to the
defense portfolio. In his last act as defense minister, Nezzar had appointed
as chief of staff the ambitious and forceful General Mohammed Lamari,
previously commander of the "Special Forces" spearheading the counterinsurgency
campaign and known for his preference for "eradicating"
the rebellion rather than seeking a negotiated end to it. The result was a
situation of dual power, with Lamari's General Staff contesting and neutralizing
Zeroual's authority over the armed forces, security policy, and,
indeed, the political situation as a whole. Instead of the defense ministry
tending, as under Boumediène, to enable the presidency to control the
military, the army's top echelon, organized in the General Staff, was now
tending to control the defense ministry. From this position, it was able to
box in and hamstring the presidency, sabotage its peace initiatives, and
dominate the political arena, where it possessed important civilian relays
in the shape of secularist political parties enthusiastically committed to
the "eradicator" policy6 and influential daily newspapers.7
The power of the General Staff was such that Zeroual was even unable
to dispose of the defense portfolio as he wished. When he sought
to appoint his ally, General Mohamed Betchine, to the position, Lamari
and the General Staff successfully blocked the move. And when, as a second-
best ploy, he tried to win control of the newly formed-and statesponsored-
Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND)8 as a reliable
party-political relay by promoting Betchine and Betchine's nominees
within the RND leadership, the General Staff and the intelligence services
went onto the offensive, mobilized their civilian relays, and organized
a virulent press campaign against Betchine in the summer of 1998.
Hugh Roberts | 11
Zeroual accordingly decided that it had become impossible for him to
exercise his constitutional prerogatives as president of the republic and
announced his intention to call an early election so that a successor could
be found.
This move apparently surprised the army power brokers, who were
obliged, with audible reluctance, to agree to retired Major General Larbi
Belkheir's proposal that former foreign minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika be
invited to run for president with the army's tacit backing. This backing
was far from total, however. Only Belkheir and his protégé, the head of
counterintelligence, General Smaïl Lamari (no relation to the chief of
staff ), were positively committed to Bouteflika. The General Staff advertised
its own lack of enthusiasm by publicly insisting that the regular
armed forces were strictly neutral, and the decision makers authorized no
fewer than six plausible candidates9 to run against Bouteflika. The prospect
of a genuinely contested election was destroyed at the eleventh hour,
however, by the sensational collective decision of the six other candidates
to withdraw from the race in protest at what they claimed was evidence
of election rigging. The result was that Bouteflika became president by
default through a procedure that fell far short of being an election. From
the army commanders' point of view, this was, of course, the ideal result.
They had the man they preferred in the presidency, but so mal élu (badly
elected) that he possessed no electoral legitimacy or popular mandate
and so could be presumed to pose no threat to their domination of the
political scene.
It was to take Bouteflika five years to bring the General Staff, at least
provisionally and conditionally, under control. He finally achieved this
when Mohamed Lamari and his supporters in the army command were
forced into retirement in the summer of 2004 following Bouteflika's triumphant
reelection the previous April. Lamari himself was replaced as
chief of staff by the self-effacing Major General Ahmed Gaïd Salah. With
the General Staff provisionally tamed, Bouteflika was able to restore
the authority of the defense ministry over the armed forces as a whole
by his appointment of retired Major General Abdelmalek Guennaïzia
to the newly created post of minister-delegate of defense. Guennaïzia,
Lamari's predecessor as chief of staff and a close associate of both former
president Chadli Bendjedid and former defense minister Khaled Nezzar,
carried influence with the army commanders but, having retired, was
technically a civilian as well as (in principle) answerable to Bouteflika
in the latter's capacity as titular minister of defense. But there is reason
to doubt that this fully secured Bouteflika's authority over the defense
establishment, since this authority still did not extend in practice to the
intelligence services.
12 | Demilitarizing Algeria
The Problem of the Intelligence Services
The enormous power of the intelligence services has long been the open
secret of Algerian political life. Created by Colonel Abdelhafid Boussouf,
the commander of wilaya V (Oranie) in the wartime FLN-ALN and subsequently
minister of armaments and general liaisons in the GPRA, they
were renamed la Sécurité Militaire (SM) after independence and, while
officially called the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS)
since 1990, they are still widely referred to as "la SM."
Already a pervasive presence in Algerian political life under Presidents
Boumediène and Chadli Bendjedid, the intelligence services acquired
even greater influence during the 1990s. The exigencies of the counterinsurgency
campaign led, in particular, to the expansion of the activities
and personnel of the Direction du Contre-Espionnage et de la Sécurité
Interne (DCE) within the DRS. The conduct of the DCE in combating
the Islamist insurgency has long been a matter of the greatest controversy.
That it actively infiltrated the Islamic armed movements is common
knowledge and not, in itself, surprising. What has been at issue in the
controversy is whether this infiltration has sought to bring the insurgency
to an end or, rather, on the contrary, manipulate it for unavowed
and unavowable ends.
What is certain, however, is that the political power of the services since
the onset of the violence in 1992 has been greater than at any previous
point in the history of independent Algeria. Since 1990, Algeria has had
five heads of state (Chadli, Boudiaf, Kafi, Zeroual, and Bouteflika), eleven
heads of government10 and four defense ministers,11 but throughout
this entire period the DRS has been commanded by General Mohamed
Mediène and the DCE has been commanded by General Smaïl Lamari.
During the protracted "dual power" impasse of 1993-1998, when the
Zeroual presidency was engaged in a continuous trial of strength with the
General Staff, it was Mediène who was the effective arbiter of the conflict.
That the DRS eventually arbitrated in favor of Bouteflika against
Chief of Staff Mohamed Lamari in 2004 is clear. But it is by no means
certain that the provisional taming of the General Staff signified a reduction
in General Mediène's influence to the presidency's benefit or that
any real progress has been made toward holding the intelligence services
accountable to anyone other than their own commanders.
The Restoration of the Presidency and the Reining
In of Pluralism
The consensus that existed among the decision makers at Bouteflika's
accession in April 1999 concerned two main points. The first was the
pressing need to break out of the debilitating "quarantine" that Algeria
Hugh Roberts | 13
had been confined in by the attitudes of its main Western partners,
France above all, since January 1992 and especially since the hijacking of
the French Airbus at Algiers airport in December 1994. In this respect,
Bouteflika's accession to the presidency fitted precisely the tradition of
the military using civilian chargés de mission to front for them. As a former
and most effective foreign minister, Bouteflika was the ideal choice.
He scored early successes with the Organization of African Unity summit
held in Algiers in July 1999 and with his flamboyant state visit to Paris
in May 2000. But the public relations problem was of enormous dimensions.
For the Algerian state to be perceived once again as a legitimate
partner, it was essential to reduce the violence very appreciably.
This was the second point of consensus. It meant providing a political
and juridical framework for the deal that had already been tentatively
struck by the ANP with the Armée Islamique du Salut, and a number of
smaller armed groupings that had associated themselves with the AIS's
cease-fire since October 1997. Thus Bouteflika was authorized by the
army commanders to do the honors at home as well as abroad, by securing
the passage of the Law on Civil Concord in July 1999, which
encouraged members of armed groups to give themselves up in return for
certain guarantees, and by promulgating a decree in January 2000 providing
for a qualified amnesty for the AIS and associated armed groups
in return for their dissolution.
The controversial nature of these measures worked to Bouteflika's advantage,
since he was able to argue that the Algerian people as a whole
should be consulted. He was accordingly able to call a referendum in
September 1999 in which the electorate was invited to say whether it approved
the president's "approach" or not. The resounding "yes" vote both
secured approval for the Law on Civil Concord and for the subsequent
amnesty decree and, by endorsing Bouteflika's policy, compensated him
for his "bad election" the previous April.
While this strengthened Bouteflika's hand, he was unable to get his own
way on the composition of the new government, which was formed only
in December 1999, after months of haggling. The army commanders
vetoed his choice of Noureddine Zerhouni for defense minister (obliging
Bouteflika to retain the portfolio himself while making Zerhouni minister
of the interior) and insisted that the new government should reflect
the party-political composition of the National Assembly. Since the army
commanders effectively controlled the leaderships of the main parties (not
only the PFLN and RND but also the Berberist RCD and the Islamist
MSP), they were in effect using the system of formal political pluralism
to constrain the president and buttress their own power. The truth of the
matter was clearly stated by Bouteflika when he declared, apropos the
new cabinet: "I am forced to accept a mosaic that does not suit me."
14 | Demilitarizing Algeria
This framework of political maneuvering endured throughout
Bouteflika's first term. On the one hand, Bouteflika sought continuously
to milk the "national reconciliation" agenda to bolster domestic popular
support while seeking external endorsement and legitimation (especially
from Paris and Washington) through his orchestration of Algeria's return
to the world stage and his support for the neo-liberal agenda of economic
reform.12 At the same time, he presented himself to the army as its champion
and defender, the main, if not sole, guarantor that its commanders
would not be held to account for the "dirty war" they had conducted
against the Islamist insurgency. The persistence of international pressure
on this point, fueled by a series of sensational revelations,13 enabled
Bouteflika to bargain with the army commanders. In return for shielding
the army, he sought to get it to withdraw from the political stage
and also to reshuffle the high command and push into retirement the
generals responsible for the 1992 coup and its bloody aftermath. On the
other hand, the generals in question had no intention of going quietly
and maneuvered constantly against the president, blocking the extension
of the "national reconciliation" amnesty measures to those armed groups
still active (especially the GSPC),14 exploiting the U.S.-led "global war
on terrorism" to develop their own relations with external partners and
sources of support and legitimation in the Pentagon and NATO, provoking
lethal riots in Kabylia in the spring and summer of 2001 and then
seeking to channel the massive Kabyle protest movement that resulted
into attacking the presidency,15 quietly encouraging extraordinarily vitriolic
attacks on Bouteflika in the secularist press (notably le Matin) and,
finally, encouraging the new general secretary of the PFLN, Ali Benflis,
to run against Bouteflika in the presidential election of April 2004.
In behaving in this way, the army commanders, and Lamari and the
General Staff in particular, were acting to preserve the commanding political
power they had acquired since deposing Chadli in 1992. Seeing
the power rivalry with the presidency as a zero-sum game, they were
determined to prevent Bouteflika from securing a second term and consolidating
his position at their expense. The fact that they failed was of
historic significance. Bouteflika's success in getting reelected in April
2004-the first Algerian president to complete his first term and get a
second since Chadli Bendjedid achieved this in December 1983-was
a crucial moment in the restoration of the presidency as the substantive
and not merely formal apex of the Algerian power structure. It led directly
to the retirement of Lamari and his closest supporters in the army,
and thus the taming of the ANP General Staff, at least for the time being.
But the coalition of factions and other interests that Bouteflika put
together to support his reelection bid was an extremely heteroclite one,
and that, too, has had implications and repercussions.
Hugh Roberts | 15
A fundamental handicap for Bouteflika throughout this relentless trial
of strength was his lack of a reliable party-political relay for his position.
The two state-sponsored façade parties, the PFLN and the RND,
were coalitions in which all the main factions in the power structure
were represented, but they were ultimately controlled by the army commanders
through Major General Mohamed Mediène's DRS. Of the notionally
"opposition" parties, the docile Islamists of Mahfoud Nahnah's
Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix (MSP) and the Berber-secularists of
Saïd Sadi's RCD were, as a matter of public notoriety, inclined to take
their bearings from the military décideurs. The more independent parties,
Hocine Aït Ahmed's Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS), Abdallah Djaballah's
Mouvement de la Réforme Nationale (MRN), and Louiza Hanoune's Parti
des Travailleurs (PT), were generally supportive of Bouteflika's national
reconciliation agenda. But they were among his sharpest critics on other
issues and neither disposed nor able to support him in his duel with the
army commanders.
To drum up electoral support, Bouteflika has accordingly been inclined
to rely on organized forces outside the party system-the administration,
the state-controlled television and radio, various voluntary associations,
and the Sufi orders (which Bouteflika openly courted during his
reelection campaign)-and to rein in rather than encourage pluralism in
the formal political sphere. His national reconciliation agenda, which is
popular and which he has been intent on monopolizing, has entailed a
strategy of co-optation on the regime's Islamist and Berberist flanks, with
the docile Islamists of the MSP kept inside successive coalition governments
throughout and Thamazighth (the Berber language) at last recognized
as a national language in the constitutional revision of April 2002.
This strategy has been consistent with the tacit promotion of the recovery
of the PFLN, which regained its old status as the country's principal
party in the legislative elections of 2002. A corollary of this has been the
regime's hostility to the principled opposition parties such as Aït Ahmed's
FFS and Djaballah's MRN. The regime's concern to regain lost ground
in Kabylia has led it to promote the PFLN there at the expense of the
FFS, which is now in possibly terminal crisis. And, as part of Bouteflika's
drive to co-opt the "Islamic-nationalist" trend in opinion-an ambition
symbolized by the appointment of Abdelaziz Belkhadem to replace Ali
Benflis as the PFLN's general secretary16-the interior ministry has recently
been facilitating the takeover of the MRN by an anti-Djaballah
faction willing to accept co-optation by the regime.
This draining of vigor and combative dissent out of the party-political
sphere has had its counterpart in the press. With the end of the General
Staff vs. Presidency duel, journalists can no longer insult the president of
the republic with impunity. That was made brutally clear in June 2004
16 | Demilitarizing Algeria
when le Matin editor Mohamed Benchicou, who had been especially
virulent in his attacks on Bouteflika in the run-up to the 2004 election,17
was jailed for two years and the newspaper was forced to close. Numerous
other journalists were subsequently either jailed or subject to other forms
of harassment (notably lawsuits), especially those with the temerity to
publish articles-or even cartoons-critical of officeholders.18 And measures
taken under the "national reconciliation agenda" have gone so far as
to criminalize critical discussion of the army's behavior during the "dirty
war."19
The Uncertain Prospect
The central thrust of Bouteflika's project and impact has been the reconstruction
and rationalization of authoritarian government on the basis
of presidential power. A secondary, but very important, aspect has been
the curbing of the ferocious identity politics of the period from 1989 to
1999 by means of the effective assertion of a more inclusive conception
of the Algerian national identity. In both respects, Bouteflika has been
continuing aspects of the course charted by Liamine Zeroual, although
with more success than his predecessor. In addition, with the recovery
of the state's financial position, the regime has been able to resume in
some degree its old developmental role, notably in the renovation and
extension of the national infrastructure, a fact that has contributed to its
partial recovery of popular legitimacy.
The restoration of the power of the presidency has been premised on
a new balance between the military and civilian wings of the Algerian
oligarchy. The excessive power of the regular army commanders has been
curbed; the influence of the interior ministry has increased; the role and
size of the police force have grown; and the president's personal authority
over the government has been reasserted. In sum, the main trend has
been for the form of government in Bouteflika's Algeria to approximate
(notwithstanding certain differences) that of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, as
Boumediène's regime at least formally approximated Nasser's.
The trend may well continue if Bouteflika secures a third five-year
term in 2009. But that would require a revision of the 1996 constitution,
which limits presidents to two terms and is accordingly controversial. In
addition, the president's health has been giving cause for concern since
his 19-day stay in a Paris clinic for treatment of an undisclosed ailment
in late 2005. Given the absence of an obvious alternative, however, a
consensus within the military and administrative elites could crystallize
in support of Bouteflika's continuation in power, at any rate for as long
as his health permits.
Hugh Roberts | 17
Reasons for doubting that the "Egyptianization" trend will continue
for long are furnished by the two most significant ways in which Algeria's
social structures and political traditions have differed historically from the
society of the Nile valley. The first is the size and political importance of
the country's mountain-dwelling populations, who furnished the human
bedrock of the national liberation struggle. The second is the comparative
weakness of the central power and, in particular, the absence of anything
resembling the pharaonic tradition of commanding personal rule.
The continuing vitality of the rebellious political traditions of the
countryside has been evident in recent years in the propensity of ordinary
Algerians to riot in protest at misgovernment and abuses of power (as in
October 1988 but also, if on a smaller scale, since then).20 It has been
particularly evident in the remobilization of the tradition of the maquis21
by the Islamist revolt of the 1990s and in the remarkable protest movement,
rooted in the mountain villages, in Kabylia from 2001 to 2004.22
But the vigor of insurgency and protest movement alike was matched
in both cases by their political incoherence and ultimate failure, and the
trend of social change, above all the relentless dynamic of urbanization, is
steadily eroding the traditional political weight of the countryside. This
trend is reflected in the composition of successive governments over the
last fifteen years as well as in the military high command, where members
of both old and new urban elites now predominate, in sharp contrast to
the patterns of the 1960s and 1970s.
More important is the absence of a tradition of strong personal power.
The accumulation of power that Boumediène brought to the presidency
was quickly dissipated under his successors. The arduous accumulation
of power that Bouteflika has been able to achieve has owed a great deal to
two very specific factors: his own remarkable talent for political maneuvering
and the fact that circumstances-the bad odor in which the army
commanders found themselves and the interest of Paris and Washington
in providing external endorsement to his position-favored his enterprise.
There is little reason to expect Bouteflika to be able to bequeath
to his successor the authority he has built up, and cause to fear that the
succession would be the occasion for a fresh intensification of factional
conflict within the political-military elite, which only the army commanders
would be able to arbitrate.
In this context, two features of the present conjuncture are especially
disturbing.
The first is Bouteflika's reported intention to use the planned revision
of the constitution not only to authorize a third presidential term but
also to reduce the already severely limited role and prerogatives of the national
parliament. The danger is that his drive to consolidate his personal
position as president will be at the expense of, among other things, the
18 | Demilitarizing Algeria
much-needed institutionalization of Algerian political life and the development
of the civilian component of the political class. Such a turn of
events could only favor the continued primacy of the informal sector of
Algerian politics over the formal sector and the preeminence of factionalism
and thus the absence of any serious possibility of progress toward the
rule of law for the foreseeable future.
The second is the recrudescence over the last nine months of the terrorist
activity of the GSPC coupled with its recent change of name. The
danger in this is not only that it rules out any question of a negotiated
end to the GSPC's campaign but also that it may turn out to imply the
effective end of Bouteflika's "peace and national reconciliation" agenda
and the crisis of his political project as a whole. For it could furnish a pretext
for the army commanders to try to reassert their general hegemony
over the Algerian state in the name of the global war on terrorism and at
the expense of presidential authority, the improved military-civilian balance,
and the relative order that Bouteflika had provisionally secured.
This point is of special salience in regard to the intelligence services.
The extraordinary importance and power they have acquired over the
last fifteen years has been in large part a function of their role in combating
the Islamist insurgency. A clear implication of the definitive ending
of the violence is the reduction of their influence to its previous, more
limited, proportions. Equally clearly, the resurgence of terrorism, if it
continues, will have the effect of sustaining and buttressing the political
power of the intelligence services indefinitely. That can only work to
postpone or subvert the possibility of real political reform in the medium
and longer term, insofar as it hinges for the time being on the restoration
of the presidency. For the complete recovery of presidential authority
unquestionably requires the president of the republic to be able to exercise
to the full his constitutional prerogatives as commander in chief of
the armed forces, including the power to appoint the heads of the intelligence
services-a power he still does not possess in practice.
Conclusion
In view of the terrible damage done to the Algerian polity by the events
of the 1990s, the relative restoration of peace and order that has taken
place under President Bouteflika was arguably as much as could realistically
be hoped for. Given the weakness of the democratic current in
Algerian political life and especially the salience of mutually antipathetic
forms of identity politics, it was inevitable that this restoration would
exhibit an authoritarian aspect. Insofar as this has involved at least partial
curbing of the power of the military, it has opened up the possibility of
interesting political reform in the medium to longer term.
Hugh Roberts | 19
There can be no doubt that the demilitarization of the Algerian polity
is a fundamental precondition of the advent of law-bound government,
let alone democracy. That is something Western governments and media
appear to have overlooked in the period of 1989 to 1991, when the precipitate
introduction of formal pluralism was greeted with a degree of enthusiasm
in Western capitals that it most certainly did not warrant. The
pluralism in question was above all that of competing forms of identity
politics, which fell far short of offering plausible programs for government
but succeeded very well in splitting public opinion into sharply opposed
camps and thus sowing the seeds of the subsequent violence. While
it made possible an unprecedented degree of public debate and press freedom
for a while, it had no other democratic implications and throughout
was subject to manipulation by the military decision makers.
At present, it would be extremely unrealistic for Western governments
to suppose that they are in a position to promote progressive political
reform in Algeria. The simplistic recipe of formal party-political pluralism
plus free elections was tried in 1989-1991 with catastrophic consequences.
The extreme crisis of the state's finances, which gave Paris
great leverage over the regime from 1988 to 1998, is a thing of the past.
Algeria's buoyant revenue from hydrocarbons and consequent financial
independence are enabling the regime to re-negotiate its relations with
its foreign partners and enlarge its ability to maneuver once more. That
is likely to rule out Western intervention in Algeria's internal politics for
the time being.
In the longer term, the necessary condition for democratization is that
the Algerian legislature acquire important decision-making powers. Only
if this happens will the legislature be able to hold the executive to account
(and thereby curb corruption) and, by so doing, guarantee the
independence of the judiciary. Only if the national parliament becomes
a real locus of decision making, in which the major interests in society
need to be effectively represented, can social pressure ensure that elections
are wholly free and fair and political parties-the kind necessary
to a democratic system of alternating governments-develop. And only
if the elected representatives of the people become the source of government
mandates can the demilitarization of the Algerian political system
be definitive.
For the moment, none of this is in prospect. The high oil price and
resulting buoyant revenue have given the "distributive state" in Algeria a
new lease on life. As a result, the regime's capacity to co-opt opposition
and buy social peace is high and the effective pressure for fundamental
institutional reform is low. The most that can be expected in the short
term is that Bouteflika's provisional success in restoring order is preserved
and that the Algerian political class and intelligentsia are able to use the
20 | Demilitarizing Algeria
continued breathing space this offers them to reflect on and draw the
right lessons from the dramatic experience of the period since 1988.
It is in the light of these considerations that the U.S. government in
particular should review its own policy toward Algeria. While it should
recognize that it cannot promote rapid positive reform, it can and should
at least abstain from jeopardizing the qualified progress that has been
made in recent years. The danger of a reversal of the recent trend to civilian
government and a remilitarization of the Algerian political system
is intimately linked to the global war on terrorism. It is important that
Washington not encourage Algeria's generals to reassert themselves in the
political sphere. To this end, the U.S. government should review its own
approach to the issue of countering terrorism in general and the Trans-
Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership in particular, and recognize the
need to relativize the purely military aspect of the partnership by enhancing
its developmental dimensions and thus the role of civilian leadership
in its conception and implementation.
1. The full name of the party is "Le Parti du Front de Libération Nationale" (Hizb Jebhat
al-Tahrir al-Wataniyya); thus both French and Arabic versions of the official discourse-
unlike most media and academic commentary-distinguish the party, which
was created only after independence in 1962, from the wartime FLN, which was a
front, not a party. I propose to do the same by referring to the party as the PFLN.
2. The Néo-Destour became the Destourian Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste Destourien) in
1964; the PSD became the Democratic Constitutional Rally (Rassemblement Constitutionnel
Démocratique) in 1987.
3. That is the so-called "Berber Spring" (Tafsut Imazighen), the movement of protest
against the official repression of the Berber language in March-April 1980.
4. The French term used for the factions in Algerian politics is clan (derived ultimately,
via English, from the Gaelic clann, meaning an extended family), and the factional
struggle is routinely called la lutte des clans. "Clan" is a misnomer; the factions are not
constituted on the basis of kinship ties at all. The Arabic word used for faction, jama'a
(literally "group"), does not carry this misleading connotation of kinship.
5. The HCE was the five-member directorate set up, without any constitutional warrant,
by the army commanders in January 1992 to function as a collective leadership filling
the vacant presidency for the rest of Chadli's term in office, that is, to the end of 1993.
(Its term was actually extended to end January 1994 to give the army commanders time
to agree on the succession.) Its members were Boudiaf (chairman), Nezzar, Ali Kafi, Ali
Haroun, and Tedjini Haddam. After Boudiaf 's death, Kafi succeeded him and Redha
Malek was co-opted to make up the numbers.
6. Notably the Berberist Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD), the
ex-Communist Ettahaddi (Defiance) party, subsequently renamed the Mouvement
Démocratique et Social (MDS), and Redha Malek's Alliance Nationale Républicaine
(ANR), a secular-modernist splinter from the PFLN.
7. Namely Liberté (close to the RCD) and le Matin (close to Ettahaddi-MDS), in addition
to the generally pro-army El Watan.
8. The RND was established in early 1997 to function as an alternative pro-regime façade
party to the PFLN, at that time regarded as discredited. The RND duly won a plurality
of seats in the legislative elections of June 1997 and absolute majorities in the local and
regional elections the following October. For a discussion of the amount of rigging this
involved, see Hugh Roberts, "Algeria's Contested Elections," Middle East Report 209
(Winter 1998), pp. 21-24.
Notes
22 | Demilitarizing Algeria
9. Namely two former heads of government: Mouloud Hamrouche and Mokdad Sifi, former
foreign minister Dr. Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, the FFS leader Hocine Aït Ahmed, the
prominent Islamist Abdallah Djaballah, and Colonel Youcef Khatib, the commander of
ALN wilaya IV (Algérois) in 1961-1962.
10. Mouloud Hamrouche (1989-1991), Sid Ahmed Ghozali (1991-1992), Belaïd Abdesselam
(1992-1993), Redha Malek (1993-1994), Mokdad Sifi (1994-1996), Ahmed
Ouyahia (1996-1998), Smaïl Hamdani (1998-1999), Ahmed Benbitour (1999-2000),
Ali Benflis (2000-2003), Ahmed Ouyahia (2003-2006), Abdelaziz Belkhadem (2006 to
present).
11. Chadli Bendjedid (1979-1990), Khaled Nezzar (1990-1993), Liamine Zeroual (1993-
1999), Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999 to present).
12. Bouteflika's chief success in the composition of the December 1999 government, apart
from getting Zerhouni into the interior ministry, was the appointment of three supporters,
Abdellatif Benachenhou, Hamid Temmar, and Chakib Khelil, noted for their
espousal of the "Washington consensus" in economic policy, to the ministries of Finance,
Participation (i.e., privatization), and Energy, respectively.
13. Notably books by ex-officers of the ANP: Habib Souaïdia, La Sale Guerre (Paris, La Découverte,
2001); Hichem Aboud, La Mafia des Généraux (Éditions J.C. Lattès, 2002);
Mohammed Samraoui, Chronique des Années de Sang (Paris, Denoël, 2003). A Web site
launched by the Mouvement Algérien des Officiers Libres (MAOL), a group of officers
who had deserted from the intelligence services, was the source of numerous dramatic
allegations concerning the real strategy and tactics of the DAF coterie commanding the
ANP during the 1990s. The allegations, which concerned the assassinations of President
Boudiaf and others, the use of death squads and torture, the manipulation of the
Islamist armed movements, and the implication of senior generals in massive corruption,
etc., although never properly documented, were sufficiently detailed and plausible
to be taken seriously by the Western media, in France in particular.
14. The leader of the GSPC, Hassan Hattab, was undoubtedly interested in negotiating
an end to his campaign as the AIS had done earlier. He lost control of the GSPC in
the summer of 2003 and his successors began stressing their links to Al Qaeda, which
tended to rule out any question of a negotiation.
15. That the riots, in which gendarmes killed over 100 Kabyle youths (an unprecedented
and traumatic event), were deliberately provoked is clear from the evidence documented
by the report of the Independent Commission of Enquiry chaired by distinguished
lawyer Mohand Issad. For an analysis of the Kabyle protest movement and the manipulations
that were involved, see International Crisis Group, Algeria: Unrest and Impasse
in Kabylia, Middle East/North Africa Report No. 15, Cairo/Brussels, June 10, 2003.
16. Belkhadem emerged as the leader of the Islamic current-the so-called Barbéfélènes
("the Bearded FLN")-within the party at its congress in November 1989.
17. It should be noted that, in the view of many Algerian commentators who have strong
democratic credentials, some of the attacks on Bouteflika went far beyond the limits of
fair comment and represented an abuse of freedom of speech.
18. See the report "Nouvelles peines de prison pour la presse: un autre mardi noir," El
Watan, June 15, 2005.
Hugh Roberts | 23
19. Article 46 of the decree of February 27, 2006, on the implementation of the Charter
of Peace and National Reconciliation states: "Anyone who, by speech, writing, or any
other act, uses or exploits the wounds of the National Tragedy to harm the institutions
of the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, to weaken the state, or to
undermine the good reputation of its agents who honorably served it, or to tarnish the
image of Algeria internationally, shall be punished by three to five years in prison and a
fine of 250,000 to 500,000 dinars." See the Joint Statement by Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the International
Federation for Human Rights. Algeria: New Amnesty Law Will Ensure Atrocities
Go Unpunished, Muzzles Discussion of Civil Conflict (Paris, March 1, 2006).
20. Ordinary Algerians regularly complain about la hogra, meaning the contempt with
which they are treated by office holders at every level, and local level riots against instances
of this still occur with great frequency. This refusal of la hogra is rooted in the
egalitarian code of honor characteristic of the independent tribes of the Atlas mountains.
21. That is, the tradition of guerrilla warfare. The Algerian term that translates the French
word maquis is jebel, "mountain."
22. See ICG, op. cit.
27
About the Carnegie Endowment
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a private, nonprofit
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For more about Carnegie's Democracy and Rule of Law Program, visit
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Carnegie Papers
2007
86. Demilitarizing Algeria (H. Roberts)
85. Fighting on Two Fronts: Secular Parties in the Arab World (M. Ottaway and A. Hamzawy)
84. Sufism in Central Asia: A Force for Moderation or a Cause of Politicization? (M. B. Olcott)
83. China's Economic Prospects 2006-2020 (J. He, S. Li, and S. Polaski)
82. A Face of Islam: Muhammad-Sodiq Muhammad-Yusuf (M. B. Olcott)
81. Requiem for Palestinian Reform: Clear Lessons from a Troubled Record (N. J. Brown)
80. Evaluating Political Reform in Yemen (S. Phillips)
79. Pushing toward Party Politics? Kuwait's Islamic Constitutional Movement (N. J. Brown)
78. Protecting Intellectual Property Rights in Chinese Courts: An Analysis of Recent Patent Judgments
(M. Y. Gechlik)
77. Roots of Radical Islam in Central Asia (M. B. Olcott)
2006
76. Illusive Reform: Jordan's Stubborn Stability (J. Choucair)
75. Islamist Movements in the Arab World and the 2006 Lebanon War (A. Hamzawy and D. Bishara)
74. Jordan and Its Islamic Movement: The Limits of Inclusion? (N. Brown)
73. Intellectual Property Rights as a Key Obstacle to Russia's WTO Accession (S. Katz and M. Ocheltree)
72. Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations in the Post-9/11 Era (F. Grare)
71. Morocco: From Top-Down Reform to Democratic Transition? (M. Ottaway and M. Riley)
70. Islam, Militarism, and the 2007-2008 Elections in Pakistan (F. Grare)
69. Reform in Syria: Steering between the Chinese Model and Regime Change
68. The Saudi Labyrinth: Evaluating the Current Political Opening (A. Hamzawy)
67. Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World (N. Brown, A. Hamzawy, and M. Ottaway)
66. Evaluating Egyptian Reform (M. Dunne)
65. Pakistan: The Resurgence of Baluch Nationalism (F. Grare)
64. Lebanon: Finding a Path from Deadlock to Democracy (J. Choucair)
2005
63. The Dangers of Political Exclusion: Egypt's Islamist Problem (B. Kodmani)
62. Why Did the Poorest Countries Fail to Catch Up? (B. Milanovic)
61. Legalism Sans Frontières? U.S. Rule-of-Law Aid in the Arab World (D. Mednicoff )
60. The Complexity of Success: The U.S. Role in Russian Rule of Law Reform (M. Spence)
59. Evaluating Palestinian Reform (N. Brown)
58. Judicial Reform in China: Lessons from Shanghai (V. Hung)
57. Lessons Not Learned: Problems with Western Aid for Law Reform in Postcommunist Countries (W. Channell)
56. Evaluating Middle East Reform: How Do We Know When It Is Significant?(M. Ottaway)
55. Competing Definitions of the Rule of Law: Implications for Practitioners (R. Belton)
2004
54. E.U.-Russia Relations: Interests and Values--A European Perspective (R. Schuette)
53. The Political-Economic Conundrum: The Affinity of Economic and Political Reform
in the Middle East and North Africa (E. Bellin)
52. Political Reform in the Arab World: A New Ferment? (A. Hawthorne)
51. Cambodia Blazes a New Path to Economic Growth and Job Creation (S. Polaski)
50. Integrating Democracy Promotion into the U.S. Middle East Policy (M. Dunne)
49. Islamists in the Arab World: The Dance around Democracy (G. Fuller)
48. Democracy and Constituencies in the Arab World (M. Ottaway)
47. Development and Foreign Investment: Lessons Learned from Mexican Banking
(J. Steinfeld)
For a complete list of Carnegie Papers, go to www.CarnegieEndowment.org/pubs.