Algeria's islamist revolution: The people versus democracy?

Middle East Policy

Volumn 5, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 82-103

  Amirouche, Hamou ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0032341508     PISSN: 10611924     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4967.1998.tb00371.x     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Mohamed Harbi, "L'Algérie prise au piège de son Histoire," Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1994.
2. George J. Andreopoulos, "The Age of National Liberation Movements," The Laws of War, Michael Howard, George Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulma, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 207.
3. Ibid.
4. Hamou Amirouche, "La Démocratie et l'Algérie des Occasions Manquées," El Watan, December 1-5, 1992.
5. Ataturk in Turkey may be cited as an exception, but even there sociology might be catching up with politics.
6. Gareth M. Winrow, "A Threat from the South? Nato and the Mediterranean," Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 1, Summer 1996, pp. 50-51.
7. The New York Times, January 21, 1996.
8. El Watan, January 8, 1992.
9. Financial Times, January 9, 1992.
10. Gilles Kepel, "Violence islamiste et crise sociale en Algérie et en Egypte," El Watan, February 21, 1994.
11. El Watan, October 23, 1994.
12. Samuel Huntington, "A Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, p. 3; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 107.
13. Samuel Huntington, "A Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, p. 3; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 107.
14. an interesting comparison with Gamel Abdel Nasser, see Mohammed Heikal, Iran: The Untold Story (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), p. 107.
15. the question of relevance to the ideology of socioeconomic transformations, see Mahmood Monshipouri, "Ideology, Economics and Social Transformation: The Iranian Revolution in Perspective," The Muslim World, Vol. LXXXV, No. 1-2, January-April 1995.
16. Michael Clark, Algeria in Turmoil (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959), p. 17.
17. Ben Youcef Ben Khedda, Les Origines du premier Novembre 1954 (Alger: Edition Dahleb, 1989), p. 263.
18. Ibid., pp. 60-61.
19. Youseef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism (Boston: Twaine Publishers, 1990).
20. On Victory Day, May 8, 1945, peaceful demonstrations organized by the nationalists waving Algerian flags in several cities degenerated into riots in which 100 Europeans and between 12,000 (French sources) and 40,000 Algerians (Algerian estimate) were killed.
21. Pierre Devoluy-Mireille Duteil, La Poudrière Algérienne (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1994), pp. 119-121.
22. Harbi, op. cit.
23. "L'Algérie aura un socialisme à la Castro," declared Ben Bella in April 1963. Quoted by Jean Ganiage, Histoire Contemporaine du Maghreb de 1830 à Nos Jours (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 620.
24. "L'Algérie aura un socialisme à la Castro," declared Ben Bella in April 1963. Quoted by Jean Ganiage, Histoire Contemporaine du Maghreb de 1830 à Nos Jours (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 620.
25. Ganiage, op. cit., p. 711.
26. A coup staged in 1967 by Tahar Z'Biri, Army Chief of Staff, was swiftly crushed by the Air Force.
27. Stanley Meisler, United Nations, The First Fifty Years (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), pp. 209-210.
28. the use of religion for political purposes, see Choueri, op. cit., p. 71.
29. Bashir Hadj Ali, a well known Marxist, proclaimed, without getting his throat slashed, that it was possible to adhere to socialism with the Quran in one hand and Das Kapital in the other.
30. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 448.
31. Saadi Djamina, La Charte Nationale (Algiers: OPU, n.d.), p. 223.
32. 30"Peuple Algérien, un Conseil de la Révolution a été créé....Il s'attachera à réunir les conditions pour l'institution d'un Etat démocratique sérieux, régi par des lois et basé sur une morale, un Etat qui saura survivre aux gouvernements et aux hommes." Ministere de l'Information, Documents: Les Discours du Président Boumediene (Algiers: Imprimerie National, 1966), p. 5. It was only in 1976 that Boumediene Lahouri Addi revived a semblance of an institutional apparatus, under popular pressure.
33. Daniel Yergin, The Prize (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1992), p. 792.
34. The Algerian minister of energy demanded a revision of signed contracts to include an indexation of the prices of gas on the sky-rocketing prices of oil. The partners refused and the contracts were cancelled.
35. Between the disruption of oil supply by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the early 1980s, OPEC's share of the world's oil production (excluding the Soviet Union) had fallen from 60 percent to 40 percent, and its market share had gone from 53 percent in 1975 to 30 percent in 1984. Furthermore, due to technological innovations, the ratio of 1:1 (in which one percentage unit of GNP growth entails the equivalent in additional increase in energy consumption) was reduced to 0.4. In 1984, in the OECD countries, GNP grew by 5 percent while oil demand increased by only 2 percent. See R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 210. The oil factor was recognized by former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev as having also played a major role in the Soviet Union's "imperial overstretch," and the subsequent implosion of the Soviet block. See Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 468.
36. Between the disruption of oil supply by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the early 1980s, OPEC's share of the world's oil production (excluding the Soviet Union) had fallen from 60 percent to 40 percent, and its market share had gone from 53 percent in 1975 to 30 percent in 1984. Furthermore, due to technological innovations, the ratio of 1:1 (in which one percentage unit of GNP growth entails the equivalent in additional increase in energy consumption) was reduced to 0.4. In 1984, in the OECD countries, GNP grew by 5 percent while oil demand increased by only 2 percent. See R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 210. The oil factor was recognized by former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev as having also played a major role in the Soviet Union's "imperial overstretch," and the subsequent implosion of the Soviet block. See Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 468.
37. One lone general, Rachid Benyelles, "invited" Chadli to hand in his resignation in the aftermath of the devastating riots in which several hundred people had been killed. Chadli fired the general from his post as minister of transportation, and was re-elected for a third mandate two months after the riots. 35El Moudjahid, November 28, 1988.
38. FIS gained a majority (55.42 percent) in 853 out of a total of 1,539 municipalities; 487 (31.64 percent) went to the ruling FLN, and 87 to the RCD (Rally for Culture and Democracy), while independent candidates won in 106 precincts. See El Moudjahid, June 15-16, 1990.
39. El Watan, June 5, 1991.
40. by Hamrouche for 1991, the market economy hinged on reforms identical to those prescribed for Russia by economist Ed Hewett of the Brookings Institution. These included stabilizing the economy by cutting the state's budget deficit and introducing real competition by suppressing state monopolies and freeing prices. Successive devaluations of currency, coupled with the eventual privatization of the public sector were to achieve the total convertibility of the Algerian dinar by 1993. International Herald Tribune, June 4, 1990.
41. The FIS made two costly errors. First, it created a parallel labor union, the SIT (Syndicat Islamique du Travail). Second, it broke a strike of garbage collectors called for by the UGTA (the national labor union) two months earlier by mobilizing its followers to clean up the streets of the capital.
42. Ramazani, op. cit., p. 205.
43. The "Armed Islamic Groups" are sometimes bitterly referred to as the "Army Islamic Groups."
44. In 1745, a religious scholar named Muhamed Ibn Abdaal Wahab supported Muhamen Ibn Saud, ruler of Central Arabia, in his bid to spread what is known as Wahabi Islam, or a return to the pristine Islam of the Quran and the sunna, as practiced by the Prophet Muhammed.
45. El Moudjahid, November 29-30, 1991. The attack against the border post occured on the anniversary of the death of a famous veteran, Azzam Abdellah, assassinated by a car bomb in Pakistan. See John K. Cooley, "Algeria: Has Cold War Blindness Struck Again?" The International Herald Tribune, July 2, 1992.
46. El Moudjahid, November 29-30, 1991. The attack against the border post occured on the anniversary of the death of a famous veteran, Azzam Abdellah, assassinated by a car bomb in Pakistan. See John K. Cooley, "Algeria: Has Cold War Blindness Struck Again?" The International Herald Tribune, July 2, 1992.
47. François Burgat and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), p. 308.
48. complete and official election results, see El Moudjahid, December 31, 1991.
49. Le Matin, January 22, 1992.
50. Le Quotidien d'Algérie, December 27-28, 1991.
51. El Watan, December 28, 1991.
52. Le Matin, January 6, 1992.
53. Established by Article 162 of the 1989 Constitution, and spelled out by Presidential Decree #89196 of October 24, 1989, the "High Security Council," chaired by the president, is comprised of the prime minister, the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, agriculture, justice, the interior, and the economy, and the army chief of staff. Its constitutional prerogatives are purely advisory.
54. Le Matin, January 13, 1992.
55. thousand FIS followers marched daily for almost two weeks, chanting such phrases as "We want to settle accounts and not elections ... Political Strike is the beginning of the Islamic State ... the People and the Army are for Islam," etc. Le Monde, May 29, 1991.
56. Devoluy-Mireille Duteil, op. cit., p. 119.
57. IbJd., p. 121.
58. El Forkane, January 22-28, 1992.
59. El Moudjahid, June 19, 1991.
60. El Watan, May 27, 1991.
61. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation And Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 36-37, 97-100.
62. Like Cotton Mather who claimed that "democracy was never ordained by God," Ali Benhaj decreed it as "heresy." Benhaj shares support with Malcolm X for an unremitting challenge to the socially unjust "establishment."
63. Lahouari Addi, "Dynamique et Contradictions du Système Politique Algérien," Le Monde, November 29, 1995.
64. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992), p. 347.
65. Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1990.
66. Lahouari Addi in El Watan, January 7, 1992. See also Graham Fuller, Algeria: The Next Fundamentalist State? (Santa Monica: Rand, 1996). Pp. xi-xii.
67. Lahouari Addi in El Watan, January 7, 1992. See also Graham Fuller, Algeria: The Next Fundamentalist State? (Santa Monica: Rand, 1996). Pp. xi-xii.
68. The "BTS," as they are popularly known. This refers to the Batna-Tebessa-Souk Ahras triangle in the eastern part of Algeria, which has controlled the army and, by extension, state power since independence.
69. Ghazi Hidouci, Algérie: La Libération Inachevée (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1995), p. 251.
70. Two of the signatories of the Rome Convention, the Movement for Islamic Society (Hamas), and the Algerian Renewal Party, fielded presidential candidates in 1995. The two candidates earned 25 percent, and 3 percent of the vote respectively. In the June 5, 1997 legislative elections, and the October 23, 1997 municipal and provincial elections, only the FIS, banned since March 1992, did not participate.
71. The Economist, February 18, 1995.
72. Jeffrey Donovan, "Algérie: Les Principaux Opposants Proposent Un Plan," Reuters, January 10, 1995.
73. "With its constitutional referendum ... the Algerian government went far towards the wrecking job on democracy it began nearly five years ago," The New York Times, December 4, 1996.
74. El Watan, March 8, 1994.
75. Reuters, January 23, 1997.
76. According to Paris-Match (October 9, 1997), this land Mafia is literally cleansing premium lands of peasant occupants entitled to it in anticipation of the privatization of all the land in 1998. This would explain the killing of would-be inheritors, and their infants and children. It so happens that the slaughter occurs primarily in Islamic strongholds, and it continues even though the "Islamic Salvation Army," controlled by the FIS, has been observing a truce since October 1, 1997.