April/May 1995, Pages 20-21

French-Backed Generals Block Dialogue Hopes in Algeria

By Aicha Lemsine

When it suspended parliamentary elections in January 1992 and then banned the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the party poised to sweep those elections, Algeria's military regime tried to chart a middle course toward political stability. It rejected the Tunisian model, where the government has pursued a policy of "no Islamic religious parties in a 100 percent Muslim country." The regime also turned away from the example of Jordan, which allowed its Islamists to have their brief moment in the electoral sun before the Jordanian electorate turned them out during the next national elections. The Algerian government has not achieved political stability in the last three years, but rather a kind of "political masochism" whose primary victims have been ordinary Algerians.

Judging from the brutality of their 40 months in absolute control, it is clear that the generals who form the backbone of the Algerian regime are more interested in power than human rights. Who are these generals? For decades they languished in relative obscurity in the shadow of Presidents Ahmad Ben Bella (1962-65) and Houari Boumediene (1965-78). It was under Chadli Benjedid (1979-91) that the generals began to emerge as powerful figures in their own right.

The Generals Step Forward

During the popular uprisings of October 1988, in which some 500 young people were killed by military forces charged with stemming the protests, senior officers like Generals Khaled Nezzar, Larbi Belkheir and Muhammad Lamari came to the fore of the political and military structures. The army always has been important in Algerian politics. Both Boumediene and Chadli were senior military commanders before assuming the presidency, and many ministers and officials within the National Liberation Front (FLN, the former ruling party) came from army backgrounds.

After October 1988, though, the army officer corps' influence in political decision-making became more direct and more open. The example of Larbi Belkheir is typical. In the 1970s he served as aide de camp to Chadli Benjedid during the latter's tenure as commander of the military district of Oran in western Algeria, then was elevated in the 1980s to become the director of President Chadli's cabinet. Today he is considered the eminence grise of the military regime.

The Islamists accuse the Westernized, francophile generals of serving the political and economic interests of France, the former colonial power. The pamphlets distributed by the banned FIS declare their "struggle is the second war of liberation against France." The fight is not simply between the Islamists and the "state," but pits the Islamists against a handful of hard-line senior officers referred to as "the eradicators." These generals know that if the Islamists were to come to power their fate would be the same as that of the shah's commanders, who were executed en masse by the new Islamic Republic of Iran.

Algerian President Liamine Zeroual is himself a military man, but with a difference. A combat veteran of the Algerian revolution and a product of independent Algeria's army, Zeroual's opposition to the excesses of the military during October 1988 earned him a ticket to Bucharest, to which he was packed off as ambassador to Romania by then-President Chadli Benjedid. Chadli was ousted from power in January 1992 by the members of the High Council of State, which in turn made way for Zeroual in early 1994. Since that time he has advocated a "national dialogue" within Algeria—including, under certain conditions, the Islamic Salvation Front.

Constant Harassment

Since his succession as president, Zeroual has been constantly harassed by the francophone Algerian press and the eradicators on his general staff. Nevertheless his moral courage is recognized by both the Islamists (extremists and moderates) and especially ordinary Algerians, who believe their president is held hostage by the hard-line wing of his government. Zeroual's insistence on holding presidential elections this year is indicative of his willingness to butt heads with his political and military rivals. By dealing with all of the opposition parties, both legal and illegal, Zeroual is trying to allow the Algerian people to choose their national destiny while at the same time subjecting the scorched-earth military strategy of Generals Nezzar and Lamari to public scrutiny.

This is in contrast to the tactics of the terrorists, who hijacked an Air France Airbus last December, placed car bombs around the capital during the sacred month of Ramadan and continue to kill even women and children without compunction. It also stands in clear opposition to the eradicators' strategy of blind repression, whereby the sophisticated equipment and vast resources of the Algerian military are turned on its own citizenry. Increasingly the repression is dealt out by a secret army of quasi-official death squads.

The Algerian opposition's breakthrough "dialogue" conference in Rome last January profoundly unnerved the regime and the supporters of "repression at any cost," who suddenly saw a group of widely divergent political parties arrayed against them. The truth is that Algeria has had enough of Islamists, secularists, politicians and generals. The upcoming presidential elections, if they take place, will hold plenty of surprises! For the voting to occur, neutral international observers must be deployed to prevent fraud and voter intimidation. However, the likelihood of such a solution by elections is questionable. At the moment, the ball is in the generals' court, and they show few signs of a willingness to compromise.

French Support

One reason for the eradicators' defiance is the support they have had from the French government. In the wake of October 1988, then-French Prime Minister Michel Rocard whispered into the ear of his "friend" and counterpart in Algeria, Mouloud Hamrouche. He counseled Hamrouche on the virtues of an electoral policy which would eliminate any chances for an Islamist victory at the polls and of economic "reforms" which, given the reality in Algeria, only led to a proliferation of black marketeers and, ironically, popular support for the Islamists' campaign against corruption. France was more interested in supporting certain Algerian personalities, not the Algerian people or the unity of the country. Paris manipulated the Berbers, women and emigrés without regard to events on the ground.

Today, faced with the failure of its previous policies, France is beginning to echo the "pragmatism" of U.S. policy toward Algeria, trying to follow the American line without losing face. The results have been decidedly mixed, however. Interior Minister Charles Pasqua continues to favor a policy of confrontation, while Foreign Minister Alain Juppé is at pains to hide his dislike of certain Algerian leaders and his opposition to his government's support for the politics of repression across the Mediterranean. Juppé (like Liamine Zeroual and FIS leader Abassi Madani) is a prisoner of more radical elements in his own camp—those who urge "a policy of non-interference in internal Algerian affairs" while allowing French security services "to operate as usual." Despite diplomatic niceties, the Pasqua policy of support for the eradicators continues.

The politicans in Paris are asking the wrong question. It is not a matter of support for the regime or for the opposition, but rather support for the Algerian people as a whole. France should stop playing petty politics and instead help in the search for a solution to the Algerian crisis, which threatens to degenerate into a national catastrophe à la Rwanda.

The Americans Weigh In

While "independent" commentators in the Algerian press seek to detect subtle shifts in the tack of American policy toward Algeria, the principles of that policy have not changed since January 1992. The U.S. condemned the cancellation of elections and since the beginning of the crisis has called for a "national dialogue" and the resumption of the democratic process. Washington, unlike Paris, learned the lessons of its mistakes in Iran. In the case of Algeria, the U.S. has supported neither the Islamists nor the repression undertaken by the state, but rather has called for national reconciliation based on a popular mandate conveyed through elections. This American formula is beginning to bear fruit as France and the European Union as a whole begin to echo the call for dialogue.

As noted above, though, the sincerity of the French conversion is in question. Paris believes it has too much at stake. Not only do the French fear a massive influx of Algerian refugees, but the "loss" of Algeria would be a devastating blow to France's geostrategic prestige and its "place among nations."

The Americans have nothing to lose. If Islamism is brought under control in Algeria through the democratic process, so much the better for American interests in the region, including the Middle East peace process. If Algerian Islamism can be reintegrated into a pluralistic political system, and if the Algerian military returns to a role of strict political neutrality, fundamentalist politics in Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere will lose much of their virulence. At the moment the repression of one Islamist movement only nourishes the audacity and penchant for destruction of others. Dialogue is the key to the equation, but will the Algerian generals and their French backers allow it to take place?

Aicha Lemsine is an Algerian journalist, author and vice-president of Women's WORLD, the World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development. She recently was awarded a 1995 Hellman-Hammett Grant for Freedom of Expression.