Algeria Has Proved a Political Disappointment

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
When Algeria achieved independence, there were great hopes the country, but it has proved a disappointment.

The struggle by the Arab population of Algeria to gain independence from France became a cause célèbre of the anti-imperialist left in the 1950s and early 1960s.

It was a bloody affair that lasted from 1954 to 1962, one that brought down the Fourth French Republic and returned General Charles de Gaulle, the hero of the Second World War, to power.

It also divided the country; left-wing intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus supported Algerian independence, while those on the French right, like Maurice Bardèche, defended the colons, or French settlers, in Algeria.

The slogan of the million colons, more than 10 per cent of the overall population, was “Algérie française,” and indeed the whole Mediterranean region was administered as an integral part of metropolitan France.

The insurrection was led by the National Liberation Front (FLN). By 1956, about 512,000 French soldiers were in Algeria but victory eluded them. De Gaulle was brought to power in May 1958 after an attempted coup by the French army.

The colons assumed de Gaulle was on their side, but by 1959 the general realized that Algerian independence was inevitable.

Die-hard opponents considered him a traitor and formed the Secret Army Organization (OAS), which attempted to assassinate him. An aborted military putsch in Algiers in April 1961 was quashed.

It was the last gasp of resistance. The Evian Agreements of March 1962 set the stage for an independent Algeria, and the country became a sovereign state four months later. By the time the war ended, as many as one million people had been killed.

The FLN became the ruling political party and a corrupt autocratic machine. Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, was deposed by Colonel Houari Boumedienne in 1965. Boumedienne’s successor in 1978, Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, was another military officer.

By the late 1980s, popular discontent led to a law allowing opposition parties to contest future elections. The main beneficiary was the newly-formed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which looked certain to win power in the 1991 general election.

The military intervened and annulled the vote, heralding a bloody civil war in which perhaps 200,000 people died. Of course the FIS didn’t believe in democracy either.

 Former foreign minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president in 1999, and opened secret negotiations with the FIS. An amnesty led many rebels to lay down their arms.

Although political violence in Algeria has declined, and the Arab Spring bypassed it, the country has been shaken in recent years by bombings carried out by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The group said it was behind an ambush in July in the area that killed nine soldiers.

President Bouteflika won a fourth term in 2014 but, following a stroke, he is now near death. Fears that a power struggle within the regime, or an attempted Islamist coup, will unleash a new cycle of violence have gripped the nation.