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What
makes this movement really unique is its massive scale, peaceful
character and national spread, including the marginalized south. The
movement is also characterized by a significant participation of women
and especially young people, who constitute the majority of the
population. Algeria has not witnessed such a broad, diverse and
widespread movement since 1962, when Algerians went to the streets to
celebrate their hard-won independence from French colonial rule.
by Hamza Hamouchene
April 8, 2019
source: Roar
ٌٌWhat
is happening in Algeria is truly historic. The people won the first
battle in their struggle to radically overhaul the system.
AbdelazizBouteflika, president for the past twenty years, was forced to
abdicate after more than six weeks of street protests and a
re-configuration of alliances within the ruling classes.
Since
Friday, February 22, millions of people, young and old, men and women
from different social classes have taken to the streets in a momentous
uprising, re-appropriating long-confiscated public space. Historic
Friday marches followed by protests in several sectors (education,
health, petrochemical industry, students, etc) united people in their
rejection of the ruling system and their demands of radical democratic
change.
The two emblematic slogans of this peaceful uprising —
“They must all go!” and “The country is ours and we’ll do what we wish” —
symbolize the radical evolution of this popular movement that was
triggered by the octogenarian president’s announcement to run for a
fifth term despite dealing with serious health issues; Bouteflika has
not addressed the nation for nearly six years.
What makes this
movement really unique is its massive scale, peaceful character and
national spread, including the marginalized south. The movement is also
characterized by a significant participation of women and especially
young people, who constitute the majority of the population. Algeria has
not witnessed such a broad, diverse and widespread movement since 1962,
when Algerians went to the streets to celebrate their hard-won
independence from French colonial rule.
The uprising caught many
by surprise. In early February, the political mood was still that of
despair and resignation at what the authorities were preparing to do
with the presidential elections scheduled for April 2019. The generally
arid political landscape resulted from the decimation of a genuine
political opposition within the country coupled with the repression
and/or co-optation of trade unions and other such civil society actors.
The
popular mass protests starting from late February, however, upturned
this status quo and created huge potential for change and resistance.
When chanting “We woke up and you will pay!” the people are expressing
their newly-discovered political will. The liberatory process is at the
same time a transformative one. We can witness this in the euphoria,
energy, creativity, confidence, wit, humor and joy that this movement
has inspired after decades of social and political suppression.
This
revolution is like a breath of fresh air. The people have affirmed
their role as agents of their own destiny. Following Fanon, it illustrates how,
in the midst of the worst disasters, the masses find the means of
reorganizing themselves and continue their existence when they have a
common objective of getting rid of their oppressors and emancipating
themselves.
DOMESTIC PEACE, INTERNATIONAL ACQUIESCENCE
This
decisive awakening on the part of the people and their growing
political awareness are harbingers of good things to come and of the
stormy days ahead for the profiteering caste and their foreign backers
who have been scandalously enriching themselves. In the midst of
increasing pauperization, unemployment, paralyzing austerity, the pillaging of resources, uneven development and corruption, the rationality of the current revolt and rebellion becomes absolutely clear.
First
of all, it is important to note that this eruption of popular anger is
the result of an accumulation of struggles and acts of resistance that
date back to the ‘80s, the most recent examples being the anti-shale gas
uprising of 2015 and the unemployed movement since 2012 in the Algerian
Sahara.
The Algerian uprising should also be analyzed within the context of a protracted revolutionary process that
has swept across the Arab region in the last decade, starting from
Tunisia and spreading to Egypt and a dozen other countries. Obviously,
this process has been fraught with contradictions and has seen ups and
downs, gains and setbacks, which materialized in a liberal democratic
transition in Tunisia and bloody counter-revolutions and imperialist
interventions in the remaining countries that have witnessed these
uprisings.
Protest in Algiers on Friday, March 15. Image by Hamza Hamouchene
Nine
years ago, Algeria seemed to be immune to this revolutionary fever and
was viewed as the exception to the rule, despite harboring the same set
of conditions for revolt. At the time, the government suggested that
Algeria already had its “spring” over two decades earlier, referring to
the short-lived democratic transition following weeks of demonstrations
in October 1988 that forced the regime to give way to political
pluralism and an independent press. However, these gains in civil
liberties and the “democratic transition” were aborted by the military
coup and the civil war of the 1990s.
In addition to ongoing forms
of repression, collective memories of hundreds of thousands of deaths
and brutal state violence underpinning the eradication of the Islamist
opposition may help explain the failure of an uprising to take root in
Algeria during the 2010-2011 period. The spectre of the civil war and
the fear of bloody violence have been further exacerbated by the
intervention in Libya, the counter-revolution in Egypt and the carnage
and foreign interference in Syria.
Additionally, oil and gas
revenues — which prices peaked in the late 2000s — were used to purchase
social peace domestically and to secure international acquiescence.
Domestically, the hydrocarbon bonanza was used to pacify the population
and prevent the intensification of popular anger. Externally, by virtue
of being the third largest provider of natural gas to Europe after
Russia and Norway, and given the dwindling production in the North Sea
and the Ukrainian crisis, Algeria hoped it could leverage this position
to play an even more important role in securing Europe’s energy
supplies, and by extension Western collusion and approval.
These
factors do no longer constitute a brake on people’s desire for
meaningful change as popular discontent from below converged with a deep
crisis within the ruling classes leading to the indignation of the
oppressed to burst forth and find its expression in the streets.
A POLITICAL CRISIS AND INTERNAL POWER STRUGGLES
Algeria
has been undergoing an acute multi-dimensional crisis for some time
now. The country has been experiencing a political crisis for decades —
in particular since the 1992 military coup and the ensuing brutal civil
war. The origins of this crisis date back to the colonial era, though
its most recent manifestations are the direct result of the politics of a
parasitic accumulation and entrenched corruption: a militaro-oligarchic
nexus that denies the Algerian people their right to self-determination
and dispenses with popular legitimacy for the benefit of domestic and
international capital.
This crisis has been exacerbated by several
factors, not in the least by the ailing Bouteflika’s general absence
from the political stage. The crisis has been compounded by intra-elite
power struggles, culminating in the fall of Algeria’s long-term king
maker, the Military Intelligence Agency (DRS) Chief in 2015 and the
cocaine scandal of 2018, which led to the sacking of the head of police,
a few generals and other high functionaries in the Ministry of Defense.
In
a context of the failure of the institutionalized opposition and social
movements to articulate and carry out a viable alternative, we predicted in 2016that
the
slump in oil prices may just hammer the final nail in the coffin of a
rentier, non-productive and de-industrialized economy that is highly
dependent on oil and gas exports, the main source of foreign
currency…..With the oil prices plummeting and with foreign currency
reserves (estimated at $179 billion at the end of 2014) deemed to not
last beyond 2016-2017, the 1988 experience could easily be replicated
and the crisis has the potential to escalate into a full explosion that
will threaten the country’s national security and possibly its
territorial integrity.
The recent events come at a
time of an acute economic crisis characterized by crippling austerity
measures following the decline of oil and gas export revenues, coupled
with an intensification of infighting and divisions within the ruling
elites after the imposition of the candidacy of Bouteflika for a fifth
term at the helm of the state.
March
by the medical staff in the streets of Skikda in support of the popular
movement, eastern Algeria on March 19, 2019. Image by Hamza Hamouchene
The triad of power consisting of the presidency, military intelligence (DRS) and the armed forces’ high command showed its first signs of weakness in
2008 when the DRS started clashing with the two other centers of power.
In 2019 the split was complete, when the decisive entrance of the
people unto the political stage effectively forced the armed forces’
high command to distance itself from the presidency. The military
clearly intervened to put an end to Bouteflika’s reign in order to
safeguard the regime in place.
Such public displays of rivalry and
dispute are symptomatic of the deep-seated contradictions and
instability of the current ruling block and the crisis of hegemony
within it, which has opened up new spaces for resistance.
This is a
significant moment in the popular dynamic that started in February 2019
as this is only one victory in the long struggle for radical change
that must include the overthrow of Major General Gaid Salah too; a key
loyal figure in Bouteflika’s regime and a supporter of his fifth term
before backtracking under the pressure of the growing popular movement.
The army leadership is definitely not to be trusted, as was made clear
by Major General Salah’s initial threats towards movement before
adopting a more conciliatory tone. The Algerian people need to be more
vigilant and determined than ever in order to halt the
counter-revolutionary forces from hijacking this historic uprising.
Now
that Bouteflika resigned, it is absolutely necessary to implement a
truly democratic transition, and the people should not yield to calls
for applying article 102 of the constitution, which would allow the
leader of the upper house to take over and to organize elections in 90
days after the presidency has been declared vacant by the constitutional
council (as the incumbent is too ill to exercise his functions).
Basically,
if applied to the letter, this will keep the current system in place
and will not guarantee free and transparent elections. The people are
asking for popular sovereignty which cannot be curtailed by rigid
legalistic and constitutionalist arguments. This is a unique moment in
Algeria’s history to impose a new revolutionary paradigm, which go
beyond legal and constitutional frameworks in order to radically
challenge the status quo and create a fundamental break with the
oppressive system in place.
There are already several proposals to
resolve the crisis and to initiate a kind of a transition that will
satisfy peoples’ demands and give them back their stifled sovereignty.
The army command must not interfere with this process and must stick to
its constitutional role of guaranteeing national security. Algerians did
not revolt to replace some oppressors with others.
For this
reason, the balance of forces must be shifted significantly towards the
masses by maintaining the resistance (marches, occupations of public
spaces, general strikes, etc) to force the army command to yield to
people’s demand for system change entailing the removal of the entire
old political guard.
UNDERLYING ECONOMIC CAUSES
The economic crisis that lies at the heart of the current revolt, has been long in the making.
By the mid 1980s, Algeria’s nationalist development program of the ‘60s
and ‘70s was deemed to be a failure and the attempt to disconnect from
the global capitalist system was halted and replaced by a market
economy. Similar to processes occurring elsewhere in the region, this
new orientation entailed the de-industrialization of the economy, the
dismantlement and privatization of public companies, deregulation and
other forms of neoliberal restructuring. As a result, a military-private
bourgeoisie nexus took the lead in shaping Algeria’s socio-economic
agenda in line with the globally dominant neoliberal doctrine.
In
the 1990s, the Algerian experience was not only one of horrific civil
war but also of forced economic liberalizations dictated by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. It was Algeria’s
turn to experiment with the “Shock Doctrine” by introducing painful and
extremely controversial policies. A course that entailed the break-up of
state-owned companies, borrowing from the IMF, the initiation of the
import-import bazaar economy, not to mention the subjugation of the
Algerian people to harsh austerity measures and further surrendering
national sovereignty.
This process of re-linking the national
economy to international capital resulted in the compradorisation of the
ruling elites by aligning their interests and subordinating national
ones to those of international capital. Yet, by the end of the 90s,
Algeria’s excesses led to its diplomatic isolation.
The
Bush administration’s declaration of a “global war on terror” following
the 9/11 attacks provided a perfect opportunity for the Algerian ruling
classes to garner renewed Western — and especially American — backing.
In late 2002, president Bouteflika penned a letter, titled “A Friend in
Algeria”, which was published in the Washington Times. In it, he pledged
full intelligence cooperation and energy security to the United States.
In a nutshell, over the two decades following the 1992 coup d’état, the
Algerian regime’s reliance on external — as opposed to popular —
legitimacy and support became the modus operandi.
We cannot fully
appreciate the political situation in Algeria without scrutinizing
foreign influence and interference and apprehending the economic
question from the angle of natural resource grabs and energy (neo)colonialism.
This includes the enormous concessions made to multinationals and the
pressures coming from outside to execute further liberalization in order
to remove all restrictions to international capital and fully integrate
Algeria into the global economy in a totally subordinate position.
The
attempts to finalize a new hydrocarbon law in 2019 that will be
friendlier to multinationals and which offers more incentives (read
concessions) for them to invest epitomize this tendency and opens the
way to destructive projects such as exploitation of shale gas in the
Sahara and offshore resources in the Mediterranean.
TOWARDS A TRUE DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION?
If
Algeria continues on this path of liberalization and privatization, we
will definitely see more explosions of popular unrest and discontent as a
social consensus cannot be achieved while pauperization, unemployment
and inequality continue. If maintained, the neoliberal policies will
block the democratization process in Algeria and will end up reinforcing
an authoritarian regime with a democratic façade.
The primacy of
the socio-economic question has been demonstrated by the Tunisian
experience: a neoliberal “democratic” transition that has not resolved
any of the problems that led to the revolution. It was rather a dynamic
process that crushed the revolutionary spirit of the people.
Banner
reads: “Theft, humiliation, embezzlement, corruption, cocaine,
cholera..You must all go.” Picture taken in Algiers on Friday, March 29,
2019. Image by Hamza Hamouchene
Democracy means the sovereignty
of the people and cannot be reduced to mere electoralism. Genuine
democracy can only be constructed when it is opposed to imperialism and
its local lackeys in the comprador bourgeoisie, as well as to neoliberal
capitalism and its dispossessing policies. In order to achieve genuine
national independence, social justice and true democracy, we cannot
separate the democratic (anti-authoritarian), social (anti-capitalist)
and anti-imperialist struggles.
The latter dimension has been
reasserted by a staunch hostility to any foreign interferences by the
Algerian people. They strongly rejected French complicity with the
ruling factions and disapproved of attempts by the former Foreign
Minister Ramtane Lamamra to internationalize the conflict through his
trips to US, Europe, Russia and China.
Following this, it becomes
clear that any transition that will not address questions of social and
economic justice as well as national and popular sovereignty on natural
resources will be vacuous and will sow the seeds of future revolts and
uprisings. We will definitely do better than continuing to implement
more of the disastrous economic policies that led the people to rise up
and revolt in the first place.
After Bouteflika’s abdication a new
chapter has begun in the Algerian uprising; a chapter where
organizations and intellectuals who are highly conscious and armed with
revolutionary principles ought to bar the way to the rule of the
military and the comprador oligarchy. Slogans such as “The army and the
people are brothers” cannot be applied to the corrupt generals that
benefited from and upheld Bouteflika’s rule.
The Algerian people —
especially the popular masses — need to be wary of the interventionism
of such actors in order to avoid a scenario à la Sisi in Egypt. There
too, Sisi claimed that he intervened on behalf of the people when he
executed a coup against Morsi and we all know what happened after. It
could be tactical to profit from the ongoing internal power struggle
among the ruling elites, but it would be a fatal mistake to believe that
the leadership of the army would be on the side of the people or their
revolut
At
this time, the organic revolutionary intellectuals and opposition
leaders and activists need to assume their historic role of engaging and
thinking with the masses, educating them politically, organizing them
and taking their demands forward. In this respect, autonomous trade
unions, students committees, unemployed people’s organizations can play
an important role mobilizing people and channeling their anger.
Some
in Algeria are calling for a three to six months transitional period.
This must be rejected as we need not to rush. Enough time must be given
to the masses to organize themselves locally and for representatives and
leaders to emerge organically in order to fully participate in the
construction of a radical democracy.
Confrontation is at the heart
of every revolutionary practice, so instead of avoiding it, it is
better to prepare and keep organizing and multiplying spaces for debate
and reflection on true democratic alternatives to the current
exploitative and authoritarian status quo. The masses must continue to
mobilize and to reject any foreign intervention. In order not to miss
this historic opportunity, the democratic transition has to take place
upon the initiative and under the guidance of the people.
Hamza Hamouchene
Hamza
Hamouchene is an Algerian researcher, activist and commentator. He is
the coordinator of Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and
co-founder of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC).
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