Robert Fisk on Algeria : why Algeria's tragedy matters

232 Pages·2016·0.98 MB·English

ROBERT FISK ON
ALGERIA
— 1992–2013 —
Contents
Foreword
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
2001
2002
2008
2010
2011
2013
Copyright
ROBERT FISK ON
ALGERIA
1992-2013
A new front has opened in the global "war on terror", in the deserts of north
Africa. Islamic extremists, loosely affiliated to al-Qa'ida, are attacking
Western interests in an "arc of insecurity" stretching from Senegal to
Somalia, with the fiercest recent action in Algeria and Mali.
Such outbreaks can be traced in part to the Arab Spring, and the side-effects
of, for example, the fall of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. But there is also another,
darker source: the legacy of years of horrifying sectarian bloodletting in
Algeria.
Rarely has a nation's suffering been so under-reported. More than 150,000
people have been killed by their fellow Algerians, mostly with sickening
cruelty, since a general election won by the Islamic FIS party was annulled
in 1992. The violence has slackened since 1999, when an amnesty induced
many rebels to lay down their arms, but it has never stopped, and the scars
on the national psyche will take decades to heal.
Meanwhile, the power and influence of the fighters who call themselves Al-
Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb has been growing inexorably. Finally, with the
insurgency in Mali and the hostage-taking and massacre at the In Amenas
gas field in January 2013, Western leaders – and the Western public – have
been forced to confront a problem that has hitherto passed under their
radar.
For those seeking to understand why Algeria's tragedy matters, and what it
means, there is no better place to start than here: a collection of
contemporary reportage by the world's pre-eminent Middle-East
correspondent, Robert Fisk, who raised the alarm about what was
happening in Algeria while the rest of the world looked away.
The edited collection of articles that follows spans two decades, chronicling
first-hand what happened when a nation's failure to reconcile its ideological
differences led both sides to descend into barbarity.
Much of it is harrowing to read: a catalogue of man's inhumanity to man,
punctuated with shining instances of courage, kindness and humour but no
less tragic for that.
But it is the truth. And for anyone who wishes to understand the problems
confronting us today, it is essential reading.
1992
13 January 1992
AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY ENDS
THE STOLEN ELECTION
ALGERIA'S government last night in effect introduced martial law and
stripped its Islamic opposition of a democratic election victory by cancelling
Thursday's second round of voting. Their decision – officially taken by the
"Higher Security Council" formed yesterday after President Chadli
Bendjedid's resignation on Saturday – takes Algeria to the brink of civil
conflict and ends its experiment with democracy.
Only hours earlier, Algeria's Islamic leaders – stunned at finding the army in
effective control of the country they thought they were about to rule – had
warned they would not tolerate any attempt to cancel the second round of
elections, which they expected to win. But the government has undergone a
quiet coup d'etat, which has left generals, rather than politicians, in charge.
The largest political party – the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which won
three million votes in the first round of elections last month – is now in open
confrontation with the army.
Late last night, paramilitary police roadblocks were set up on motorways
leading to the capital, with military checkpoints on other roads. All day,
armoured personnel carriers and troops had been positioned around the
principal government buildings in Algiers – the Prime Minister's Office, the
Foreign Ministry, the Post Office, Treasury and radio stations – and Algerian
commandos with fixed bayonets on their rifles could later be seen patrolling
streets in the south of the city.
Supporters of the FIS, whose impressive victory in the democratic elections
on 26 December provoked the constitutional crisis, cancelled a rally at the
Martyrs' Memorial on the hills above Algiers and carefully avoided any
conflict with the army.
But last night's demand from the FIS's acting leader, Sheikh Abdelkader
Hachani, suggests that now the party has been cheated of its election
victory, violence is almost inevitable between the army and the Muslim
fundamentalists who want to create an Islamic republic. Describing Mr
Chadli's resignation as "a piece of theatre" intended to cancel the election
results and prevent the second poll in three days' time, Sheikh Hachani told
his supporters to "stay vigilant and ready to abort any plot aimed at
liquidating our project of an Islamic state ". The imprisoned FIS leadership
should be freed, he said, and the government – the "professionals [sic] of
despotism" – should not be allowed to steal the jihad [holy war] from the
FIS.
He was no more specific than that, although few doubt the FIS – despite its
denials – possesses some form of military organisation. FIS suporters
sometimes refer to their "Islamic commandos". The 170,000 strong Algerian
army contains two commando divisions trained to put down civil disorder…
The leader of the "Higher Security Council" is a figurehead, Abdelmelek
Benhabyles, a 70-year-old former diplomat and judge who presided over
the Constitutional Council which took over the functions of the head of state.
Not only did he decide to cancel the elections, but he made no mention of
the presidential poll which, under the constitution, should be held within 45
days. Sid Ahmed Ghozali, still nominally Prime Minister, was at one point
said to be considering standing.
However, the "Security Council" includes two powerful army generals – the
Ministers of Defence and Interior – and it is they rather than the gentle ex-
lawyer who officially runs the emergency cabinet, who must now be
regarded as the decision-takers.
The fact remains that the FIS has sworn it will not be deprived of its election
victory and is now bound to take action against the authorities. Neither last
night's destruction of Algeria's fragile democracy nor the blighting of the
Islamic party's electoral hopes will help leaders in other Arab states – in
Egypt for example – who have always insisted fundamentalism should
channel its energies through the ballot box rather than through violence.
The election victory – internationally regarded as fair if politically
unfortunate – has been taken away from the FIS, so what other means does
it have to gain power?
13 January 1992
THE WAR OF MYTHS
HAND-OVER THAT SHOWS WHERE THE REAL POWER LIES
AROUND the walls of the Museum of the Martyrs, beneath the massive
concrete wings of the memorial to more than 1 million Algerians who were
killed in the War of Independence against the French, the stranger to Algiers
can see all he wants of cruelty and oppression.
The museum curator plays Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Brahms's
violin concerto over the audio system as if it were necessary to soften the
evidence of barbarity. There are French military documents demanding the
arrest of guerrilla leaders. There are shackles, whips and guns. Thirty-year-
old posters, printed in secret by the National Liberation Front (FLN), inform
the resistance movement that it is "the beacon of African socialism". There
are monochrome photographs of Algerian "marchers" and tortured men,
their faces shattered or running with blood at the hands of General Massu's
10th Parachute Division. And there is a showcase filled with the
paraphernalia of the French military police, of bullets and cartridges and a
small metal object in the shape of a pineapple, neatly labelled: "US Mark 2
Defensive Fragmentation Grenade".
Take a yellow taxi from the memorial down to a shabby ground floor room
in Rue Larbi ben M'Hidi and you will find another exhibition, more popular
than the museum on the hill, Beethoven and Brahms replaced by a
grotesquely amplified voice reciting verses from the Koran. Yet this display
of much more recent history provided by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) –
the putative winners in the Algerian general elections – contains some
chilling parallels with the "Museum of the Martyrs".
Here, again, are the broken faces of dead and beaten men – in colour this
time – yet they are victims not of the 1954-62 war against the French but of
their own army, of the Algerian showdown in the streets of Algiers in June.
There is even a showcase – ironically of the same size and layout as the case
in the museum – containing bullets and cartridges fired by the Algerian
army. One of the cartridges is clearly labelled: "Federal Laboratories INC
Saltsburg Pennsylvania 15681 USA."
It is not the Western provenance of these weapons that is important –
though the anti-Western resentment within the FIS has been growing daily
– but the pattern of repression which they represent. It is as if French
colonial rule bequeathed not independence but military force to the
Algerians.
Under the FLN's post-independence dictatorship the Algerian secret police
practised many of the same tortures as its French predecessors –
"electricity with oriental refinements", as one victim put it; the French, of
course, had learned how to make men and women talk in the dungeons of
the Gestapo. In the words of a French writer, it was "a genealogy of horror".
For its part, the Algerian army controlled society even more thoroughly
than the French.
No wonder the largest Islamic party was so silent yesterday in the aftermath
of President Chadli Bendjedid's resignation. His Prime Minister had called
upon the army – "always an asset to our nation" – to "protect" the people. In
effect, he was telling Algerians that the army would protect them from the
FIS, whose 3 million votes in the first round of national elections last month
was to be consecrated in a victorious second round on Thursday. For once,
there was no talk of "democracy" from the Algerian government. The FIS
had participated in this dangerous process and had made the mistake of
winning. So much for democracy.
Of course it was not that simple. The FIS sought power without
responsibility. Its repeated demands for an Islamic republic alienated the 22
million other Algerians whom it would have to represent once it achieved
power. And its assumption of "rightness" – its unquestionable faith in the
Islamic path with all its social Sharia laws – could be breathtaking. It was a
disgrace for FIS members to refer to their feminist opponents as "Massu's
daughters". But their grasp of history was already flawed. "All our martyrs
against the French died for Islam," a young FIS acolyte told me outside the
Bab el-Oued mosque. "The independence war was an Islamic struggle." If
the FIS is indeed non-violent, it is certainly capable of hijacking history.
In reality, the "body politic" of Algeria was not threatened in the way it first
appeared to be. The Algerian constitution was so cleverly devised that even
if the FIS had dominated parliament, the party would not have been able to