Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, by John Phillips and Martin Evans

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed by John Phillips and Martin Evans (U.S.A.)

Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed by John Phillips and Martin Evans (Canada)

Publication date January 28, 2008

"After liberating itself from French colonial rule in one of the twentieth century’s most brutal wars of independence, Algeria became a standard-bearer for the non-aligned movement. By the 1990s, however, its revolutionary political model had collapsed, degenerating into a savage conflict between the military and Islamist guerillas that killed some 200,000 citizens.

In this lucid and gripping account, Martin Evans and John Phillips explore Algeria’s recent and very bloody history, demonstrating how the high hopes of independence turned into anger as young Algerians grew increasingly alienated. Unemployed, frustrated by the corrupt military regime, and excluded by the West, the post-independence generation needed new heroes, and some found them in Osama bin Laden and the rising Islamist movement.

Evans and Phillips trace the complex roots of this alienation, arguing that Algeria’s predicament — political instability, pressing economic and social problems, bad governance, a disenfranchised youth — is emblematic of an arc of insecurity stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. Looking back at the pre-colonial and colonial periods, they place Algeria’s complex present into historical context, demonstrating how successive governments have manipulated the past for their own ends. The result is a fractured society with a complicated and bitter relationship with the Western powers — and an increasing tendency to export terrorism to France, America, and beyond."

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed by John Phillips and Martin Evans (U.K.)

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria simmering

March 16, 2008 -- The chapter entitled "Political Islam" in John Phillips' and Martin Evans' Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed will be of value to anyone interested in the intertwined issues of identity, religion and political development in the Arab-Islamic world. It is a succinct and fact-filled summary of the phenomenon called Islamism or fundamentalism in the 1990s that swept across the "crescent of crisis" from Morocco to Pakistan (and even Indonesia), and that affects the whole world.

As in other countries, Algerian fundamentalist leaders claimed their country had been hijacked by impious front-men for the former French colonizers. Change a few terms, fill in the social background, and — even in relation to the Saudi regime with its built-in fundamentalism and its oil riches — you have the outline of what Mr. Phillips and Mr. Evans call the "anger of the dispossessed."

According to the authors, the "dispossessed" felt their country was stolen from them twice — first by the foreign colonizers, then by the treacherous heirs of the martyrs who got it back and got rich while they stayed poor. The affront was all the more humiliating in that their new masters introduced infidel and corrupt ways to their part of the umma, the trans-national community of the Muslim faithful.

The anti-colonial war was led by a "front" — the famous Front of National Liberation — that included religious leaders. But the anti-colonial struggle was also led by men (and in Algeria perhaps more than elsewhere, women) who were also seeking to enter modernity as they perceived it. Here, not surprisingly, the mid-20th century offered them contradictory models.

The FLN included socialists, Stalinists, liberals, Algerian nationalists, pan-Arabists and, already, pan-Islamists in all but name. The contradictions that resulted from this brew created political and governance problems, to put it mildly. Algerians fought and killed other Algerians as soon as the French left (actually, they had been killing one another even during the French war).

The charismatic Ahmed Ben Bella overthrew the first post-colonial government and was himself overthrown by his minister of defense, Col. Houari Boumediene, who sought to industrialize and modernize quickly, while at the same time making concessions to Islamic and Arabist aspirations. Note, by the way, there is nothing in these aims that, in theory, could not have been reconciled with an essentially liberal society. Israel, for example, successfully pursued linguistic, religious and rapid-development policies.

Mr. Phillips and Mr. Evans raise this issue: How do you build a modern nation-state, and what do you do when your building develops structural problems? The authors mention, perhaps without probing deeply enough, that the balancing act that was required to attain Boumediene's goal of a modern nation was undermined by some of his methods, perhaps most importantly the simple fact that his was a dictatorial regime.

Boumediene, whose foreign minister was the current president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, compromised, sought to please different currents, which is essential to governing. But he also rejected accountability. Himself incorruptible, he ruled through narrow cliques that were open to the temptations of corruption (notably after he passed away) and closed to ordinary methods of good governance and sound management. The secret police on which he relied for muscle became a law unto itself, as these organizations usually do.

Those who thought nation-building in Iraq would be a breeze could do well to study Algeria's travails in this realm. All nations are built, but too many "new nations" in the post-colonial decades thought they could, in the French idiom, brûle les étapes, skip a few classes. This holds for countries with a strong national consciousness — Egypt of course comes to mind — as well as those where religious or tribal loyalties trump nationalism, such as Pakistan.

Another interesting point of comparison with countries like Egypt and Pakistan is the preponderance of youth. Under Boumediene, young people benefited from educational opportunities the French had denied the Muslim nine-tenth of the population. These advantages, unfortunately, were not matched by job-creation, which is one reason why many of Algeria's best trained professionals make their contributions in other countries.

In this regard, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Evans perhaps understate somewhat the unintended consequences of the blessings of vast energy reserves. Riches are fine if you turn them into wealth, which in economic terms means growth and the accompanying job creation. After some two decades of independence Algeria was rich but not wealthy — and its legions of young unemployed men could not but feel, in the authors' term, "dispossessed."

This feeling was not the same as the sense of religious heresy that so angered the Muslim extremists, and here the authors may overstate the degree to which the latter recruited among the former. However, it is certain that the widespread frustration that built up during the 10-year presidency of Boumediene's successor in the 1980s, was, in the circumstances, explosive. Many Algerians saw an increasingly secular society, and they viewed democracy, which the government began to introduce, as a messy system and worse, a religious heresy. (If God has given us a way to live, why do we need to debate it?)

However, it is not certain that the revolt of Muslim radicals against regimes in their own countries and against the "West" was based quite as much as Mr. Phillips and Mr. Evans believe in the dispossessed classes in the economic sense. The anger that is channeled into political extremism surely has social causes, but is it really among the "poor" or the "proletarians" or the "marginalized" that revolutionaries find their cannon fodder?

The Algerian radicals formed the FIS in the late 1980s, Islamic Salvation Front, referring to their broad appeal, as well as to their own claim of completing the unfinished business of the war of independence. But are the voters who supported Islamist candidates in the several Algerian elections that have been held since the late 1980s the same people who took up arms against anyone with whom they disagreed or disliked, as well as many they did not even know? Which young men become terrorists, which older men motivate and manipulate them?

To their credit, Mr. Evans and Mr. Phillips do not claim to know the definitive answers. Often, perhaps most of the time, incitement to mass murder is just that. But are there really Pakistani or Algerian, or for that matter French and U.S. secret agents who have brought their dark strategies into police work with murderous results? My personal answer is no, but my caveat is that as a journalist I say this because I have not seen convincing evidence.

But then again, and the authors are quite honest and useful here, there are hints here and there of twisted tactics at second-, third-, and even-fourth removes which leave doubts in one's mind. Well, that's journalism and that's history, and Mr. Evans and Mr. Phillips represent both professions.

However, all the unresolved questions of this West-vs.-East-and-never-the-twain- shall-meet leave us, too, with a question that must be carefully pondered as we observe the evolution toward liberal democracy in the Islamic world.

If the most successful parties are anti-democratic, is democracy a good plan? American policy makers, no more than their Algerian (or Pakistani or Egyptian or Iraqi or for that matter Russian or Kenyan) counterparts, cannot offer a coherent answer. Perhaps there is none and improvisation is the better part of wisdom.

Freedom, or what we call the open society, may have universal appeal, and democracy may or may not be one way to achieve it and make it work. We do not know. But the study of experiences like Algeria's, to which this book is a signal contribution, encourages anyone concerned with the evolution of the non-English-speaking peoples to be very guarded in reaching conclusions.

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria's dirty wars

March 30, 2008 -- As the occupation of Iraq began to unravel in 2003, the State Department and the Pentagon reportedly screened The Battle of Algiers for their employees. While this fictionalized, 40-year-old docudrama about Algeria's struggle for independence might offer some insights into Islamic insurgencies, true understanding of the currents that have convulsed the Islamic world requires the kind of analysis that distinguishes Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. The product of extensive research and courageous reporting, this book combines the best efforts of an academic, Martin Evans, and a journalist, John Phillips, both of whom have many years of experience in North Africa.

Like Iraq, Algeria was largely the creation of colonizing Europeans. On the flimsiest pretext, France invaded in 1830 and imposed its language, laws and tax system. Any resistance to this "civilizing mission" was viewed as an excuse for merciless punishment and military expansion deeper into the mineral-rich Sahara. By the end of the 19th century, the indigenous people were utterly disenfranchised, Algeria had become a département of France, and the largest cities and best land were flooded with European settlers. With all the obligations and none of the privileges of citizenship, Algerians served loyally in both world wars. But after 1945, when the French refused to grant them greater autonomy, insurrection spread and turned into open warfare in 1954.

Viewing Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) as a terrorist organization, France resorted to systematic torture - waterboarding was a frequent method - as the most effective way of dealing with people it considered fanatics. Even Nobel laureate Albert Camus couldn't countenance handing the country over to the Algerians. More than matching France's cruelty, the FLN inflicted unspeakable atrocities on the French as well as on Algerians who sided with the colonizers. To the FLN, violence was not so much a military tactic as a cathartic assertion of identity.

After France capitulated in 1962, newly independent Algeria became the darling of the non-aligned world, theoretically egalitarian and socialist. In fact, as Evans and Phillips show in meticulous detail, it was riven by coups, counter-coups, assassinations and bloody reprisals against collaborators. Algerians who had remained loyal to the French were slaughtered by the thousands. The FLN claimed an inherent, ongoing right to rule, but the authoritarian and anti-democratic regime was also spectacularly inefficient and kleptocratic. Soon dependent on France for financial aid, Algeria became another economic basket-case bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. This didn't, however, prevent an entrenched oligarchy from amassing fortunes through kickbacks from oil and gas deals.

By the 1980s, former FLN combatants questioned whether the war had been a ruse to allow a few generals to seize power. With unemployment rising and essential services in short supply, people took to the streets. As Evans and Phillips describe it, the situation replicated the conditions that preceded the rebellion against France - only now the Algerian government was in the role of oppressor, while a miscellany of disaffected women, disenfranchised Berbers and Islamic fundamentalists demanded recognition. In desperation, the government called elections. When it became clear that the fundamentalists would win, there was a military putsch. The nation spiraled into chaos as terrorists, state provocateurs and government death squads reduced the countryside to a killing zone. An estimated 200,000 people were killed from 1992 to 2002, and, as recent bombings in Algiers demonstrate, the savagery continues.

In chronicling this violence and the racial, religious and tribal frictions that still plague Algeria, the authors provide an implicit warning about what may happen in Iraq. Indeed, the question that hovers over much of this book is: What kind of audacity or arrogance leads another state to try to impose its will, much less its political system, on such chaos?

The darkest irony, Evans and Phillips conclude, is that only 9/11 prevented Algeria from falling into a worse cataclysm. Spotting an opportunity, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika flew to Washington and convinced the Bush administration that he stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the war on terror. That his regime had sponsored terrorism and tortured its own citizens - using the French technique of waterboarding and adding blowtorches for good measure - slipped down the memory hole. Money, military advisers and political support floated in from Washington on bilious clouds of self-delusion, and U.S. officials blessed Algeria as "the most democratic" Arab nation.

In its 50-year quest for a national identity, Algeria, like Iraq and Afghanistan, has passed from colonialism to revolution to socialism to Islamic insurgency. Now it is said to be our partner in combating terrorism. But, as this chilling and important book makes clear, it remains a country controlled by unelected men who have left most of the population disinherited and at continuing risk of political violence.