| Behind the horror in Algeria |
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By John Tully
Since last month fundamentalist killers have butchered well over 1000 Algerian civilians in cold blood. In one instance the Algiers suburb of Haouch Rais was surrounded by fanatics and the men and boys slaughtered with axes and knives. The women were pressed into service as 'temporary wives' for the murderers before their throats were cut. Their evil and cowardly work done, the assassins stole away like hyenas into the hills, leaving behind them over 400 corpses. Algerian socialist Salhi Chawki has described their attacks as 'local genocides'.
Although this was not the first act of terror in a civil war that has to date claimed the lives of as many as 100,000 people, it was the most spectacularly awful to date - and all the more so because the victims were apparently chosen at random. Not since the danse macabre of 1962, when the French terrorists of the OAS randomly cut down Muslims, has there been anything to match the latest round of horror.
What, then, can explain such behaviour and who are the major players in the Algerian tragedy?
Violence is not new to Algeria. Between 1954 and 1962 the Algerian people waged a bitter struggle for independence against France. Algeria embarked into independence with high hopes. More recently, however, the country has suffered from internal economic stagnation coupled with a high overseas debt. This led the IMF to impose a 'Structural Adjustment Programme' (SAP) as the price of further economic aid. This has meant widespread privatisation and austerity measures and a spiral of poverty and despair. Widespread disillusion with the authorities and the secular parties led a substantial slice of the population to embrace religious fundamentalist parties. In December 1991 the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won 188 seats out of 430 in the first round of the national elections. Whilst this did not give it a majority in its own right, it was by far the single largest party. Had it persuaded some of the minor parties to join with it, it could have formed a government.
The FIS's triumph sent shock waves throughout secular circles. FIS leaders boasted that they would emulate Khomeini's Iran and set up a theocratic dictatorship. The army, for its part, decided to cancel the election results and set up a military dictatorship. In this, they had the backing of France, still Algeria's major trading partner and most important aid donor. In January 1992 FIS leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Benhadj were gaoled and their party was banned.
The military's actions enraged the fundamentalists, a section of whom formed the GIA (Armed Islamic Groups) and declared war on the dictatorship. From the start, the GIA targeted civilians, particularly those who ignored their narrow-minded ideas. Women and girls were murdered for failing to wear the veil or for sporting jeans and make-up. Secular intellectuals were singled out for death. Later victims have included seven Trappist monks, who were kidnapped and beheaded, along with the Christian Bishop of Oran, despite his history of dialogue with Muslims. In 1995, Nabila Djahnine, a young socialist feminist with links to the international Trotskyist movement, was murdered. Djahnine had also annoyed the fanatics because of her advocacy of Berber language and cultural rights.
*In January 1994 the army appointed a retired general, Liamine Zeroual, as President. Zeroual was closely aligned with the more moderate 'conciliators' in the military leadership and it seemed at the time that a negotiated settlement might be possible. This was not to be. As the years passed and the blood flowed as a result of the intractable civil war, Zeroual moved closer to the policies of the 'eradicators' in the military.
Zeroual rebuffed a significant initiative by the major political parties for peace in January 1995 - the so-called 'Platform of Rome'. The Platform, which was signed by the FIS along with the National Liberation Front and Hocine Ait Ahmed's Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and a number of smaller orga nisations, called on the government to restore the FIS's political rights in return for a declaration by the FIS that it would respect democratic rights and practices.
Since that time there have been two elections, one for the presidency and another for the national parliament in 1996. These elections, which resulted in massive majorities for the government, were however, boycotted by the major parties, and there have been allegations of widespread ballot fraud. Nevertheless, it is true that voter turnouts were high, despite, and perhaps because of a threat by the GIA to 'turn the ballot boxes into coffins' for voters.
Although it is probable that most voters cast their ballots for Zeroual as the person most likely to be able to end the violence, the President took the results as a endorsement for a hard line. The government has drifted further and further into authoritarianism, with the power of presidential veto widened and Zeroual able to pass new legislation by decree. According to one observer, Zeroual seems 'immobilised by the extremists of both camps: the terrorists of the GIA and the "eradicators" within the military.'
Since the 1996 general elections, the GIA has intensified its campaign of violence, with car bombings and assassinations almost a daily event. Civilians are subjected to entirely random terror, and even mosques have been bombed by the GIA. The military has retaliated pitilessly, hunting down and slaughtering the terrorists wherever it can find them.
Whilst Zeroual's government is authoritarian and arbitrary, socialists can have no truck with the medievalists of the GIA. The mindset of these people is straight out of the Middle Ages. They are not susceptible to reason and tolerance is not in their vocabulary, hence their liking for slitting throats and raping their victims - all justified by a twisted appeal to religion which regards an entire population as ettekfir or unbelievers. The GIA is not strong. It is increasingly desperate in the face of a relentless manhunt and is being torn about by internal disagreements. It has been calculated that the life-span of a GIA member is no more than three months - and less for squad leaders. In the summer of 1994 their leader, Djamel Zitouni, was killed by members of a rival faction. His successor was 'yet another enraged young man', Antar-el-Zouabri, who might already have lost his position (and his life) to Slimane Maherzy, a veteran of Afghanistan and Bosnia.
In the meantime, the murderous war goes on, with innocent civilians as the major victims. Although the police have distributed arms to the people in some instances, in general the regime is as suspicious of the people as it is of their killers. Most of the popular self-defence squads hastily set up in the wake of the massacres are armed only with sticks and the people are delivered up like lambs to the knives of the fanatics.
As Sahli Chawki has observed, 'Armed self-defence is the only way to fight the type of aggression Algerians are suffering' for this is 'the only act of civil dignity which can respond to the horror facing Algeria.'
*Although the official language of Algeria is Arabic, a substantial number of people speak the older Berber language. Ironically, both the government and the fundamentalists are intolerant of the rights of the Berbers.