Can Jacques Chirac Fill Charles De Gaulle's Shoes?

By Aicha Lemsine

Will newly elected French President Jacques Chirac prove to be the new Charles De Gaulle? Observers predict Chirac, like De Gaulle, will follow a more pro-Arab foreign policy than that of his predecessor, Francois Mitterand. Others say the arrival of Chirac may reshuffle the Algerian deck just as De Gaulle's return from political exile in 1958 marked a turning point in the Algerian revolution and eventual independence for the country in 1962. Nearly everyone agrees that substantive changes—with serious repercussions for the Middle East—are in store for French policy.

Jacques Chirac's Gaullist political vision will be implemented by his prime minister, Alain Juppé, who established a reputation for competence, pragmatism and political honesty as foreign minister in the cabinet of outgoing Premier Edouard Balladur, Chirac's conservative rival during the recent presidential race. Juppé has promised "profound changes, implemented gradually" for French foreign policy, and appears to share his president's worldview.

Like De Gaulle, Jacques Chirac stands for a strong, independent and united Europe—with France playing a leading role, of course. Another of Chirac's priorities, though, is the Middle East and North Africa, which he sees as vital to France for both geostrategic and economic reasons.

For many years, Jacques Chirac has tried to understand the Middle East not simply by talking to its political leaders, but by studying the region's history and culture. This is in marked contrast to Mitterand, who concerned himself with sub-Saharan Africa and had little interest in the Arab world (which returned the favor). One of Mitterand's close friends, lawyer Gisele Halimi, once told me, "Mitterand likes to be amused and the Arab heads of state, according to him, are boring."

Chirac, on the other hand, posseses an immense intellectual interest in great world civilizations. It is this curiosity which helps explain Chirac's fascination with Chinese and Japanese culture.

"Sheikh Iraq"

While he is now billed in the French press as a Sinophile, in the 1970s Chirac enjoyed a reputation as an amateur Arabist. The rising Gaullist star went so far as to take Arabic lessons and, in a clever twist on his name, earned the media sobriquet "Sheikh Iraq" for his close personal ties with Saddam Hussain. This was the era of the Iraqi economic boom and Saddam was in favor in other world capitals besides Paris, it should be noted.

The Arab world, so close geographically to France, poses three important issues for Chirac. First, there is the question of the Middle East peace process and particularly continued French support for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority in the face of rising religious extremism. Aside from bilateral relations, France has significant input when it comes to European Union activities, including EU economic assistance for the occupied territories.

Second, Chirac must tackle the United Nations' economic blockade of Iraq. Given Chirac's past ties to Baghdad and Alain Juppé's continual pressure as foreign minister to lift the four-year-old embargo, the future tack of France's Iraq policy seems clear. French economic concerns, including the Elf and Total oil companies, are chomping at the bit to sign lucrative reconstruction contracts with Iraq once the embargo is lifted and Baghdad can resume its petroleum exports.

Finally there is the crisis across the Mediterranean. Algeria and France again find themselves confronted with ghosts from the past—a staggering trade imbalance, errors of judgment, political posturing and chilling violence—some 40 years after the outbreak of the Algerian revolution. Back then, the French military response to the rebellion was crafted by a young interior minister named FranÇois Mitterand, who recently departed the Elysée Palace as the longest-serving president of the Fifth Republic.

When Charles De Gaulle assumed power in 1958, he set about freeing France from unwinnable conflicts in Vietnam and Algeria in the belief that the nation's efforts should be devoted to establishing France as a leader in Europe. Chirac arrives at the Elysée with similar ambitions of grandeur. He understands that to realize his goals, France must repair its damaged credibility around the globe. This means, in part, ending the Mitterand era's close ties to repressive and corrupt regimes in Rwanda, Zaire, Chad—and Algeria.

In recent months French policy has begun to swing to the American point of view, which recognizes that there are differences among the various strands of Islamism in Algeria. Washington agrees that radical violence must be combatted, but also believes there should be dialogue with moderates in the movement—which, after all, won parliamentary elections fairly and squarely in 1991.

French pundits have been quick to note that no American has been killed in the three-and-a-half years of civil conflict in Algeria. Some have gone so far as to allege that Washington struck a secret deal with the Islamist opposition: support for dialogue in return for the protection of Americans! There seems to be an air of regret in these reports that the violence has not claimed victims from all of the Western world. Yet there is a tacit acknowledgement that France's hard-line tactics and unstinting support for the junta in Algiers have endangered the lives of Frenchmen on the ground in Algeria.

With Jacques Chirac at the helm, the convergence of French and American policies toward Algeria will continue, offering a glimmer of hope for peace in that troubled country. (Similar Franco-American cooperation in the Balkans would provide similar hope to beleaguered Bosnians, assuming either Chirac or Clinton voices a clear policy.) Already the change of administrations in Paris has had an impact on events in Algeria, since as liberal Algerian leader Hocine Ait Ahmed told a Carnegie Endowment audience recently, "The keys to peace in Algeria are to be found in Paris."

Real Movement or Just Maneuvering?

There is increased activity on the Algerian political scene, yet it remains to be seen whether this is real movement toward a solution to the country's crisis or simply political maneuvering. The government of Algerian President Liamine Zeroual, no doubt having taken stock of the change in French governments, has embarked on a measured campaign to divide the Islamist opposition, splitting armed radicals from moderate politicians. Stated simply, the policy is to rehabilitate the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in order to further isolate and then eliminate the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). By encouraging rapprochement with the FIS, perhaps even allowing the party to participate in the presidential elections promised by year's end, the regime hopes to have a free hand to crush the armed GIA commandos, some 20,000 of whom have been killed to date, according to some estimates.

The policy appears to be paying dividends, at least in its early stages. In mid-June, jailed FIS leader Abbasi Madani released a letter condemning violence on all sides, including armed Islamist attacks. The amorphous leadership of the GIA responded by denouncing Madani as a traitor and rejecting his leadership of the Islamist movement. Some analysts say FIS moderates would secretly like to see the GIA eliminated, as the armed groups threaten their own political position and could split their constituency, irrevocably weakening a reconstituted FIS.

The Algerian opposition has been busy as well, and is increasingly dividing into two broad factions: those parties who favor political reconciliation and dialogue as outlined in the opposition's Sant'Egidio conference earlier this year, and the "eradicator" parties which support the military regime's hard line against Islamism. It is the pro-dialogue grouping which is the more formidable, bringing together disparate parties like Ait Ahmed's Front of Socialist Forces, the former ruling National Liberation Front under Abdelhamid Mehri, former President Ahmed Ben Bella's Algerian Democratic Movement, and the leftist Workers' Party led by the brilliant and courageous Louiza Hanoune. These leaders have rejected the government's repressive policies and its "eye for an eye" mentality of revenge against the Islamists, calling instead for national reconciliation to unite Algerians of all political persuasions.

The "eradicators" are made up of marginal parties which claim to represent the "republican" and "modernist" sectors of society. While numerically weak, these groups receive the support of the government and have been allowed greater organizational freedom and enjoy a heightened media profile. The papers are full of news of former Prime Minister Redha Malek and his new party, in addition to the Ettadi party of former communists and the Berber-dominated Rally for Culture and Democracy led by Said Saadi. Aside from the Algerian press, glib spokesmen like Saadi also have captured the ears of Western correspondents, few of whom dare get closer to events in Algeria than their desks in Paris.

There have been several new Algerian parties formed since the 1992 declaration of a state of emergency, almost all of which are creations of the regime designed to bolster the ranks of the eradicators. This profusion of mini-parties recalls the time before the cancellation of elections when nearly 60 parties were active. The joke at the time was that the most profitable business in Algeria was the creation of a new political party, since you were rewarded with government money, a party headquarters and a car and driver! The same may hold true today.

The Daily Grind

The question remains: how relevant is all of this for the Algerian man or woman in the street? What good is a press statement or party declaration in the face of the 50,000 Islamists, soldiers, police, intellectuals, foreigners and ordinary Algerian citizens who have been killed since 1992?

Algerians believe they are faced with two alternatives. The first is an Islamist regime which, in the name of religion, will impose a society along the lines of Hassan al-Turabi's Sudan or the mullahs' Iran, by violence if necessary. This kind of "fundamentalism" is totally opposed to the customs and character of Algerian Islam, and represents a radical break from traditional norms.

The second alternative is a secular-military regime which brandishes the threat of the "Islamic peril" to maintain its authority and to distract the people from the three decades of corruption and incompetence which produced the nation's $26 billion debt, despite Algeria's tremendous natural and human resources. This group is ready to sacrifice national sovereignty in the interest of "economic restructuring," the beneficiaries of which will be the multinationals and the "intermediaries" who line up the contracts.

Ordinary Algerians are well aware that they are the victims, not the actors, in this brutal political drama. Stripped of any power to change their situation, Algerians have taken refuge in a grim fatalism and go about their daily lives as if playing a game of Russian roulette. The country's beaches are full of men and women in bathing suits this summer, and the offices, schools, hospitals and other places of business are staffed by some women wearing headscarves and some bareheaded, some men wearing "Islamic" beards and some clean-shaven. The sidewalk cafes are packed on Thursdays (Algeria's equivalent of Saturday), just as the mosques are packed on Fridays. Still, everyone in the crowd knows that the country is seething with violence which could reach out and strike any of them down at any moment.

Algerians' maintenance of a daily routine in the face of unspeakable horror reminds me of Lebanon a decade or so ago. Despite the massacres carried out by sectarian militias, the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the wholesale destruction of their homeland, the Lebanese continued to work and play as best they could. Now it is the Algerians' turn to pretend everything is fine while the walls collapse around them.

At the moment, no party and no leader can lay claim to be "the people's choice" to lead the country. Perhaps the upcoming presidential balloting will tell a different story, if the people are truly free to vote their consciences. The government is promising free elections at year's end, but it also is promising price hikes for bread and milk, cutbacks in free medical services and layoffs for 250,000 government workers as part of International Monetary Fund and World Bank restructuring plans. With their country in the grip of terrorism and counter-terrorism, which Algerians have the will to protest these moves? The carrot of multiparty elections and the stick of continued economic collapse represent the dilemma of the ordinary Algerian today.

Faced with such a demoralizing set of facts on the ground, it is important for the international community to resist the urge to turn away from Algeria. Jacques Chirac has promised to "assist the Algerian people to return to peace and prosperity," and the Clinton administration should also clearly demonstrate its support for negotiations and national dialogue involving all streams of Algerian popular opinion—including the FIS. Policymakers in Paris, Washington and elsewhere should remember that the longer Algeria's present instability continues, the greater the threat to regional and global security.

Aicha Lemsine is an Algerian journalist, author and vice-president of Women's WORLD, the World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development.