Remembering Black October

In October 1988, Algeria witnessed a major upheaval that may well be considered the first case of what has become known as the “Arab Spring”. Immense demonstrations filled the streets, with young and old, protesting for numerous reasons, all of which contributed to increasing social despair: rising prices in basic goods, population increase, living standards deteriorating rapidly, food, water and electricity shortages, widespread unemployment, especially among youths who felt that the benefits of a cautious liberalization had passed them by; at that point, fifty-seven percent of Algeria’s population of 23 million was under 21. In addition, disenchantment with the political system in place, characterised by growing corruption, lead to calls for the democratization of a corrupt, autocratic, and inward-looking regime. A regime, run by the military-dominated Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) party, that had held power since Algeria’s independence in 1962. The Algerian people demanded change.

The protests were violently repressed, with the army opening fire and killing some 500 to 800 people, torturing and arresting thousands. Nevertheless, the demonstrations proved effective in spite of this violent oppression. The  FLN’s reputation  of ‘fighting for freedom and resistance’ against the French colonialists was damaged beyond repair. In order to save the regime, President (and army officer) Chadli Benjedid  embarked on a series of political and economic reforms that brought about the downfall of the single-party system  and widened political participation. His new policies included lifting restrictions on freedom of expression, association and organization. As a result, several independent national and regional newspapers as well as diverse civil-society organizations were established. These reforms demonstrated a turning point in independent Algerian history, with many preparing themselves for the road to democratic rule. However, this promising political liberalization process was tragically short-lived when it became evident that the Islamic Salvation Front/Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) was about to achieve a sweeping victory following the first round of elections in December 1991 (which were won by the FIS at around 84% of seats) , consequently invalidated by the military-dominated High Security Council.

Although Algeria has yet to join the rising tides of revolution in the Arab world, out of sheer terror masterminded by the corrupt regime, it is no longer a matter of whether Algeria is immune to the Arab Spring, but a matter of when the Algerian people will rise up again and end this rule once and for all.

The Ugly Truth About Algeria

John R. Schindler | July 10, 2012

Despite not really being in the news, Algeria still appears in the Western media intermittently. As the Maghreb’s last dictatorship, the recent wave of regime change and democratization has passed this important country by, at least so far. Algeria is the key state in Northwest Africa—by virtue of its size, position, natural wealth and regional influence—yet has missed out on the trend that has overtaken so much of the Arab world for the past two years. It remains notable that Algeria’s bloody civil war, which began twenty years ago, never really ended. And now with the help of Al Qaeda, the conflict may be spreading across the Sahel region.

Events in Algeria have long been underreported in the U.S. and Western media (with the exception of France), and there is a general lack of understanding of what ails the country. Certainly the terrible fratricide there in the 1990s got little coverage in Western media, despite the fact that it probably claimed twice as many lives as the Bosnian conflict, which ran concurrently and received nonstop Western attention.

Algeria’s nightmare years of 1993–1997 were a focus of the international human-rights community, which correctly pointed out that the conduct of the government was hardly better than that of Islamist terrorists trying to take over the country. But since 9/11, the Algerian narrative has been subsumed into the West’s counterterrorism effort, to the extent it is reported at all. Enormous poverty, inequality, and the regime’s rapacious and brutal conduct get little attention from Western experts, who seem more interested in speculating about potential Al Qaeda attacks in the Maghreb.

The Real Story

The official story is straightforward. Two decades ago, the military-led junta, which had governed the country since independence from France in 1962, cancelled a democratic election that likely would have brought Islamists to power, and mujahidin took up arms against the secular regime. By 1993, the supremely violent Armed Islamic Group (GIA) emerged as the implacable foe of the regime and the local Al Qaeda affiliate. Although GIA was not the only Islamist resistance group in the country, it was unquestionably the bloodiest. It conducted brutal attacks not just in Algeria but in Europe as well, including a wave of bombings in Paris in the summer of 1995, remembered by terrorism gurus as Al Qaeda’s first attacks on the West. Failing to achieve victory, GIA fell into mass murder, slaughtering Algerian civilians by the hundreds, causing Al Qaeda to break ties with the group in early 1997. Largely killed off by the Algerian security forces, by 1998 the remnants of GIA had coalesced into the GSPC, a far smaller group which posed no serious threat to the regime and spent most of its time on kidnappings and robberies.

In 2006, after almost a decade hiatus, Al Qaeda reinitiated Algerian mujahidin into its ranks, renaming the local franchise Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). While AQIM has been more active in terrorism than the GSPC, it also seems more like an armed gang than a bona fide jihadist group. Over the last few years, AQIM’s reach has extended across the Maghreb and into the Sahel, leading some jihad-watchers to posit that it constitutes a threat to the region, a view shared by many in the U.S. government.

While this account is not entirely inaccurate, it leaves out so many important details as to be essentially false. Above all, it omits the role of the Algerian regime in counterterrorism, which has been effective at defeating the jihad even though its methods would make most Westerners shudder. The lead agency in the fight against the Algerian mujahidin has been the country’s military intelligence service, the feared DRS. With a reputation for ruthlessness and efficiency second to none in the Arab world, the DRS is arguably the world’s most effective intelligence service when it comes to fighting Al Qaeda; it is also probably the most cold-blooded. The DRS can be considered the backbone of the military-led junta. General Mohamed Mediene has headed the DRS since 1990, making him the longest-serving intelligence boss in world history—and few doubt that he is the most powerful man in the country.

Trained by the KGB and schooled in the hard fight for independence, Algerian spies have used tactics against homegrown extremists reminiscent of a sinister B-grade movie. Several high-ranking DRS officers have explained what they did to defeat the mujahidin, including violating human rights on an industrial scale, but hardly anyone outside France seems to have noticed.

Simply put, GIA was the creation of the DRS; using proven Soviet methods of penetration and provocation, the agency assembled it to discredit the extremists. Much of GIA’s leadership consisted of DRS agents, who drove the group into the dead end of mass murder, a ruthless tactic that thoroughly discredited GIA Islamists among nearly all Algerians. Most of its major operations were the handiwork of the DRS, including the 1995 wave of bombings in France. Some of the most notorious massacres of civilians were perpetrated by military special units masquerading as mujahidin, or by GIA squads under DRS control. Having driven GIA into the ground by the late 1990s, DRS has continued to infiltrate and influence Islamist groups in the country. To what extent the local Al Qaeda affiliate is secretly controlled by the military—as GIA and GSPC were—is an open question, but its recent record suggests that DRS influence over any Algerian extremist group is considerable.

U.S. Intel Failure?

These realities, understood by Algerians, are little known in the West, particularly in the United States. While French senior officials have hinted they have been wise to DRS games for many years, a similar understanding seems altogether lacking in the Pentagon or the U.S. intelligence community, which have partnered with Algeria in the fight against Al Qaeda since the 1990s. Whether they really are ignorant or simply do not want to know the sordid details is an open and important question.

To be fair to those inside the Beltway, outside “terrorism experts” are just as credulous about Algeria’s “official story,” and an entire subindustry has arisen in recent years that seeks to explain Algeria and its violent homegrown jihad without any reference to basic realities inside the country.

Yet Algeria’s neighbors, who fear the country’s outsized influence in Northwest Africa, are appropriately skeptical of the Algiers-created narrative that portrays AQIM as a major threat to regional stability. They reject the idea that extremists can be combated only by greater Algerian involvement in regional affairs that is implicitly supported by the United States. African officials are known to drop unsubtle hints that AQIM is not quite what it seems to be and ought to be viewed within the broader context of Algerian foreign policy. In one of the rare cases where such doubts were aired openly, Mali’s head of state security, who is charged with keeping Algerian mujahidin out of his country, told the press in June 2009 that “at the heart of AQIM is the DRS.” Shortly thereafter, he was shot dead at home by “unknown gunmen.”

U.S. interest in the Sahel has only grown in recent years, roughly in tandem with the alleged rise of AQIM in the region. It is no coincidence that the U.S. Army is aligning a combat brigade with U.S. Africa Command—which heretofore has had no combat units permanently assigned to it—and the Pentagon’s interest in the region is rising fast. “Terrorist elements around the world go to the areas they think has the least resistance,” explained army chief of staff General Ray Odierno, “and right now, you could argue that’s Africa.”

While Al Qaeda unquestionably has a great deal of interest in the Maghreb, and would surely like to see the Algerian junta fall and be replaced by a Salafi regime bent on rebuilding the imaginary caliphate, the chances of this outcome are virtually nil. DRS methods, plus the usual extremist tone-deafness, have successfully soured the vast majority of Algerians on the jihadist message. While most Algerians want an end to what they simply call le pouvoir (“the power”), the corrupt military elite that has run the country since France left in 1962, few pine for any sort of Islamist dictatorship.

Unsolved Mystery

Last weekend, Algeria celebrated fifty years of independence. But for most Algerians, buffeted by poverty, instability, corruption and war, there is little to celebrate. Mid-May parliamentary elections resulted in a surprising win for the junta, leading to accusations of fraud as well as despair for those hoping for change via the ballot box. It is clear that the military has no intention to bowing to any sort of peaceful regime change, but infighting among the elite may undo the system. When the junta falls, as someday it surely will, the change will rock those who have waged Algeria’s dirty war against terrorism. The effects on the junta’s foreign supporters, who have turned a blind eye to massive human-rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism, will be serious too.

It is time for the U.S. government to follow the lead of human-rights groups: Washington should start asking important questions about what Algiers has really been up to since 1992, and to what extent the junta and the DRS have been engaged in mass repression and state terrorism under the guise of fighting Al Qaeda—all possibly with U.S. assistance. The saga of Algeria over the last twenty years constitutes “one big murder mystery,” said one of the few writers in the Anglosphere to take notice. It’s time to get to the bottom of it.

John R. Schindler is professor of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College as well as chair of the Partnership for Peace’s Combating Terrorism Working Group. He is a former counterintelligence officer with the National Security Agency. The views expressed here are entirely his own.

Source: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-ugly-truth-about-algeria-7146?page=2

Algerian blogger faces jail for inciting protests

The Algerian prosecutor general filed a complaint with the Algiers court against young blogger Tareq Memari for inciting violence and calling for mass protests. Memari was arrested shortly thereafter. 

Memari, who could face up to three years in jail if found guilty, had posted a video on You Tube right before the recent parliamentary elections. In the video, Memari addressed Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and complained of the rising rates of unemployment amongst the youth. He told the president that he is boycotting the elections and called upon Algerian youth to do the youths. 

Memari then got out his voting card and burnt it in front of the camera ─ an act which drove the prosecutor general to ask for his arrest.

"Yes, I destroyed electoral placards and burned my voter's card... I opted to do that rather than immolate myself," the young blogger told the state prosecutor last month.

According to Amin Sidhom, coordinator of the Lawyers’ Network for the Defense of Human Rights and Memari’s lawyer, the accusations leveled at his client are all fabricated and his client’s actions are a normal reaction to government policies.

“Because citizens’ freedom is repressed and they are deprived of voicing their opinions through regular media, they resort to online means like what Memari did when he addressed the president from You Tube,”.

The action of burning the voting card, Sidhom added, is not punishable by law.

“This is his own card and he has the right to do with it as he pleases. Plus, what he did was a symbolic action to voice his discontent.”

Memari also faces charges for tearing down election posters which, Sidhom noted, does not imply insulting any government institution like the complaint claims.

“This does not even insult the Elections Commission.”

As for calling upon Algerians to protest, Sidhom pointed out that this is only a charge in “uncivilized” countries.
“In all civilized countries, citizens have the right to protest and cannot be prosecuted for doing so.”

The verdict in the case is expected on June 27.

Critics of last month's election say the ruling National Liberation Front's victory was never in doubt.

Other contenders in the election were widely seen as bogus parties recently founded to create an illusion of democracy or older parties co-opted by the regime.

Many Algerians opted to boycott the vote as a way of protesting the status quo in the oil-rich north African nation at a time when the Arab Spring was bringing sweeping political change to other countries in the region.

Official election results put the turnout at 43 percent, a figure that opposition parties and experts argued was grossly inflated.

An Algerian court last month sentenced a Yemeni Salafist imam to six months in jail, a $1,300 fine and a 10-year ban on visiting Algeria for having issued a religious edict urging voters to boycott the election.

Algeria is Opec’s new über hawk

By Javier Blas, Commodities Editor

Iran and Venezuela shoulder the moniker of the price hawks at the Opec oil cartel, but in their shadow, Algeria is emerging as the über hawk.

Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Youcef Yousfi, the Algerian oil minister, warned that “Opec faces a real risk”, suggesting the country is in favour of a production cut.Algeria’s growing hawkish voice is important because it is giving firepower to the other countries calling for higher oil prices at Opec. Take the acrimonious collapse of the cartel’s meeting in June 2011. The disagreement was largely blamed on Iran, but in fact it was the north African country which led the opposition against Saudi Arabia’s call to lift production to lower oil prices.

Algeria’s interests used to be aligned to that of Saudi Arabia. The change in its position is due to two main factors: first, after a decade of rapid increase in oil production, output is now falling; second, higher prices are needed to shore up Algeria’s deteriorating financial situation.

During the last decade, Algeria was one of the main stars of the Opec oil cartel, raising its output steadily – so much so it often violated the group’s self-imposed production limits.

The country pumped 800,000 barrels a day in early 2000. Following large investments by state-owned Sonatrach and foreign companies, oil output rose until it peaked at 1.4m b/d in early 2008. Since then it has fallen back to 1.1m b/d, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.

Algerian oil production has been paralysed following the corruption scandal at Sonatrach in January 2010, which cost the jobs of almost all the company’s upper management, including its chief executive. Soon afterwards, Chakib Khelil, one of Opec’s most respected policy makers, was ousted as Algeria’s oil minister after more than a decade in the post.

“Bureaucratic delays within Sonatrach appear to have become entrenched as new management grapples with institutional inertia, which is further delaying long-planned expansion projects,” the IEA said in a recent report.

Algeria made things worse after it changed the provisions of its contracts with international oil companies, triggering complaints of “uncompetitive contract terms”. The country’s last three rounds of exploration contracts have attracted lacklustre interest from international companies. As a result, the IEA believes Algeria’s maximum oil production capacity would continue declining until at least 2016.

Worse still for the country, the kind of oil it produces is no longer in high demand, leading to lower prices compared to other streams. During the last decade, refiners bid up Saharan Blend, the main export grade of the country, because its low sulphur content made it attractive to produce environmentally friendly fuels such as gasoline. The stream sold at premiums as high as $3 a barrel over Brent in 2008. But the increase in US shale oil production and the closure of refiners in the Atlantic has led to a big rise in supplies of crude oil of similar quality. Thus, Saharan Blend is selling now at its biggest discount to Brent in at least a decade, trading $2.10 a barrel below Brent.

After years of rising public spending, exacerbated by the Arab Spring, the International Monetary Fund has warned that Algeria’s financial outlook has “seriously weakened”. The IMF believes that oil prices would need to rise to $100 a barrel to balance the budget – excluding salary back payments. This is more than double the $44 a barrel in 2006.

Last year, Algeria registered the second biggest budgetary deficit among oil producers in the Middle East and north Africa with a shortage equal to 3.6 per cent of its GDP. Only Yemen, with a deficit of 4.4 per cent of its GDP, fared worse.

The rise in the budgetary break-even oil price has prompted Algeria to break away from its old allies, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and to defend prices alongside fellow-hawks Venezuela and Iran.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfd38c02-b559-11e1-ab92-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1xzmMnL2j

Algerian elections 'fraudulent'

(UKPA) – 

Algeria's legislative elections last month were fraudulent and the final results have no legitimacy, according to a long-awaited report by a multi-party election monitoring panel.

The National Commission for the Surveillance of Legislative Elections cast doubt on the May 10 parliamentary contests which were marked by low turnout, a dominating victory for two pro-government parties and a relatively poor showing by Islamist parties.

The results at the time were described as Algeria's bucking of the trend in the Middle East of Islamist parties doing well in elections during the Arab Spring uprisings.

"The electoral process was marred by multiple violations and excesses," said Mohamed Seddiki, chairman of the commission in a press conference. "These elections are completely unlawful."

Mr Seddiki accused the government of pressuring police officers, troops and other security forces into voting for two parties allied to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. He said authorities also thwarted monitoring efforts by the panel.

The two pro-government parties together took 273 seats in the 462-person parliament, greatly expanding their presence and taking a comfortable majority. Islamist parties actually lost seats. Opposition parties have also condemned the election as fraudulent.

The 44-member commission was composed of representatives from several of the country's more than 40 political parties and but only 35 of those signed the report. Those from the pro-government parties refused. The commission is a consultative body and has no power to cancel the elections.

Mr Seddiki also complained that the government was hostile to its mission, and did not give it sufficient means to observe the elections.

A European Union observer mission reported that the elections took place in an atmosphere of calm efficiency, but did not describe them as free and fair.

Oil and gas-rich Algeria was largely spared the unrest that swept Middle East and North Africa in 2011, with a few protests quickly crushed by police. The government has raised wages and spent heavily to keep the population satisfied.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iNIzQQHmfNxQaEPeYJDUrgWq0lww?docId=N0058971338668325257A

Algeria: The revolution that never was

Does 'progressive leadership' or something more complex and sinister explain why Algeria's 'Spring' never materialised?

The 'Arab Spring' of 2011 brought down autocratic governments across North Africa and the Middle East. But, despite widespread street protests that initially threatened to spark a Tunisian or Egyptian style revolt, an expected uprising in Algeria failed to materialise. President Abdelazziz Bouteflika's regime - often accused of being one of the most repressive in the region - promised modest political reform and managed to hold onto power. Earlier this month it claimed to have delivered on these promises when parliamentary elections were held, in which the ruling National Liberation Front (or FLN) won an overwhelming majority of the votes. Although opposition groups were quick to deride the poll as a sham and to accuse the government of manipulating the results, European and American observers called the poll a step toward democracy. So what has been going on in Algeria for the last year? Did it genuinely, as the government would claim, avoid the upheaval that swept through the rest of North Africa last year because of the Bouteflika regime's 'progressive leadership'? Or has something darker and more complex been going on - a story that opponents and human rights activists say has more to do with a wary population traumatised by the country's violent past and living in fear of its secret police?  People & Power wanted to find out, but getting into Algeria is difficult - not least because Al Jazeera has been denied official access to the country since 2004. Nevertheless, when our requests for journalist visas were ignored, our filmmakers managed to get in unofficially and were able to work discreetly. Producer Caroline Pare describes what they found. Producer's view In the capital Algiers at least, life seemed freer and more lively than we expected. The shops and cafes were full and, superficially at least, this did not seem to be a place on the cusp of revolution. It felt like a country coming out of something very bad and now quite determinedly making the best of a difficult situation. Why did the expected uprising fail to materialise in Algeria?[EPA] But when we began meeting human rights activists, we got a much better sense of what ordinary Algerians are up against and what they really think. To start with, the military and intelligence people, the DRS, are omnipresent, so meetings had to be arranged surreptitiously. On one occasion, for example, a contact identified himself at a street corner by using pre-arranged code words. Then he asked us to follow him very discreetly and at a distance to the Metro, past the police and the surveillance cameras, onto a train and out to his tiny apartment in the suburbs. Only when safely behind closed doors did he feel able to speak freely about the repression and the many economic problems the country faces - a housing crisis, rocketing unemployment and spiralling food prices. He told us things were so bad that desperate young people were burning themselves alive. There were around 130 self-immolations in Algeria last year. Indeed just before the election in the seaside town of Jijel, a 25-year-old man, Hamza Rechak, set himself on fire, in despair at having been prevented by police from selling cosmetics from his small stall and then at being taunted by them. His death caused outrage in the town and sparked a riot as young men attacked the police station in fury. Other Algerians told us that theirs was actually the first country to have an 'Arab Spring'. In 1988, the people took to the streets and forced the government to hold a free and fair election. After the first round of voting it became apparent that the opposition Islamic FIS party was set to win. But it was not to be because the military intervened. The country turned in on itself and entered a 'dark decade' of bloody violence that saw an estimated 200,000 people killed. To this day it casts a fearful shadow. The chaos enabled the DRS to get a stranglehold on the country and the body politic that democracy activists say persists to this day. So the elections that were held this month do not seem to have much credibility among voters. Indeed we heard from various political analysts before the election that they could predict the turnout - based on what the government required to make the process acceptable in international eyes - and sure enough they were pretty close to the 43 per cent officially announced. The governing party won overwhelmingly. In Algeria, we are told, everything is preordained by the powerful shadow state, the DRS. And it does not brook criticism. Algeria is a country rich in oil and gas reserves, earning it perhaps $200bn each year. But there are few jobs in the oil industry for Algerians and unemployment and poverty are real problems. Youth unemployment is at over 40 per cent. The level of desperation on the ground is such that discontent boils up into street protests on a daily basis - we were told that there were 40,000 such protests last year alone against housing, food prices, police corruption etc. Yet Algerians have not yet turned to outright revolution. We began to understand why when talking to people about the 'dark decade' and the terrors they lived through that still traumatise their lives. To put it simply, people are scared. We spoke to families whose loved ones were killed or vanished during those years. As many as 20,000 of these 'disappeared' are still being sought by their families, according to a group called SOS Disparu that supports families looking for their loved ones. They introduced us to one woman whose husband was snatched from their doorstep 18 years ago. She has heard nothing officially of him since then, despite writing and visiting all the government offices she could think of. The only information came from fellow detainees who tell her he was probably horrendously tortured. All these years later the memory of her husband still moves her to tears. Will all this change? We were taken to see Dr Salah-Eddine Sidhoum, an orthopaedic surgeon and one of Algeria's most respected opposition figures. As we sat in his study, the TV in the corner was showing a live broadcast of the funeral of Algeria's first post-independence president. We asked Sidhoum why the events that shook the rest of the Arab world in 2011 seemed to have passed his country by. His response was emphatic. "Algeria is not an exception," he said. "The revolution will come here in Algeria sooner or later - it's just a question of time." http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/05/2012516145457232336.html

Islamists walk out of Algeria parliament in protest

By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS | Sat May 26, 2012 3:02pm EDT

(Reuters) - Islamist lawmakers walked out of the inaugural session of Algeria's parliament on Saturday to protest against an election they say was rigged to hand a majority to the ruling elite's party.

Algeria, supplier of about a fifth of Europe's imported gas, is the only country in north Africa left largely untouched by last year's "Arab Spring" revolts, but some analysts predict unrest if the establishment does not loosen its grip on power.

Islamist members of parliament held up placards reading "No to fraud!" during the session, the first time the chamber had met since a May 10 election, and then walked out.

The lawmakers who left were from the mildly Islamist Green Algeria Alliance and two smaller Islamist parties who between them have about 60 seats in the 462-seat parliament.

It was not clear if the members of parliament who walked out would later return. A prolonged boycott by the Islamists could complicate a reform of the constitution which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has promised for this year.

Changing the constitution requires the support of three-quarters of parliament. Many of the Islamists voted with the government in the previous parliament, but if they are absent, the authorities could find it harder to get over the threshold for constitutional amendments.

In the May 10 election, the National Liberation Front - Algeria's ruling party since independence from colonial ruler France half a century ago - won 220 seats, and the allied RND party came second with 68 seats.

The result was at odds with the trend elsewhere in north Africa, where uprisings have pushed out entrenched leaders and handed power to once-outlawed Islamists.

Algeria's Islamist parties failed to inspire much enthusiasm in this month's election. Their leaders have long-standing links to the ruling establishment and many people were skeptical they represented a genuine opposition force.

One specialist on Islamist politics said anger over the election could give the Islamist parties a momentum they lacked before the election.

"This could be a mistake (for the authorities) because it may unify the Islamists who are very divided now," Mohamed Mouloudi told Reuters.

Algerian officials deny any manipulation of the election result, and European Union observers, who monitored the vote, did not offer any evidence of ballot fraud

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-algeria-parliament-walkout-idUSBRE84P0G820120526

Algeria elections look good abroad, bad at home

The Associated Press

Thursday, May 24, 2012 | 3:39 a.m.

Algeria overturned the Arab Spring's revolutionary narrative with elections that bolstered the longtime ruling party and dashed Islamists' hopes of gaining power. The vote did something else, too: It burnished Algeria's democratic image with Western allies who rely on it to fight terrorism and supply natural gas.

Few people turned out to vote in last week's elections, and the result did little to boost Algerian rulers' legitimacy at home. But analysts say Algeria needed to hold elections to show it was at least somewhat democratic in the midst of a region-wide push for greater freedoms.

"Algeria has satisfactory relations with Washington and Paris," said Hugh Roberts, an expert on the country at Boston's Tufts University. "It needs to do well enough (with reform) not to embarrass its Western partners, and that's what it's done."

In contrast to the uprisings and game-changing elections that have taken place elsewhere in North Africa over the past year, the political system in Algeria has been remarkably stable, if not stagnant.

The regularly scheduled parliamentary elections produced a win for the ruling party, the National Liberation Front that won independence from the French in 1962, giving it the most seats since Algeria began experimenting with multiparty politics in 1990.

The results have prompted outraged cries of fraud from opposition groups across the Algerian political spectrum, including Islamists parties, which did uniformly poorly. And that further lowers popular confidence in a political system wracked by apathy.

Still, the contests have received moderate praise internationally. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called them a "welcome step" and noted especially that thanks to new election rules, nearly a third of the 462-person parliament is female.

The European Union, in a statement, called it a "step forward in the reform process" that would consolidate democracy. The reviews haven't been exactly glowing, but the overall outcome represents a welcome break from the usual Algerian news about attacks by al-Qaida terrorists or labor unrest.

As protests broke out across the Arab world in 2011, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced a series of reforms and promised free elections this year.

For the first time ever, the Algerian government even invited in international observers, including a 150-person team from the EU. The European mission said the elections took place in an "atmosphere of general calm and order," though it did not describe them as free and fair.

The decision to hold elections were clearly in response to European and American expectations for reform in the region, explained Antonin Tisseron in a piece for the French Institute of International Relations written just before the vote.

Clinton visited Algiers during a North Africa tour in February, and her message "was unambiguous about this desire of Washington to focus on relations with countries that are clearly committed to the path of democratic reforms," he noted.

Clinton's brief stopover of a few hours in Algiers was in marked contrast to praise-filled overnight stays in neighboring Tunisia and Morocco, which held elections last year that brought Islamists to power.

The importance to Europe of a stable and somewhat politically palatable Algerian regime cannot be underestimated.

Algeria has enormous natural gas reserves and sends nearly all of its exports to the European Union by boat and underwater pipeline. It supplies the EU with a fifth of its gas needs and is the third largest source after Russia and Norway.

Washington and Europe value Algiers' cooperation in fighting terrorism, especially in the sprawling desert wastes of the Sahara, where a branch of al-Qaida has become deeply enmeshed in local smuggling networks and is targeting foreigners.

Compared to poorer African nations to the south, Algeria's military is widely seen as the best equipped to take on al-Qaida.

In the aftermath of the elections, however, there have been warnings of renewed instability in Algeria, which plunged into a decade-long civil war in 1992 after the military stepped in and cancelled elections an Islamist party was poised to win. At least 200,000 people are believed to have died during that time.

Charismatic Islamist politician Abdallah Djaballah said Sunday in an interview that the only option now was a Tunisian-style popular uprising. His deputy later said he was misquoted.

"The regime, which has refused all change through the ballot boxes, has opened the door to other possibilities, including the kind of change that took place in our neighbors," the deputy, Lakhdar Ben Khelouf, told The Associated Press.

Since the May 10 elections, small protests by different groups calling for greater benefits and salaries have started up again, including retirees calling for higher pensions and health workers wanting better working conditions.

Like the monarchies in the Gulf, Algeria has been freely spending its hydrocarbon wealth to keep a lid on dissent, allowing it to keep from implementing real changes as long as the price of oil stays high.

"The people don't want to go back to a period of turbulence," said Hafid Chafik Kadri, a vice president of the commission that oversaw the elections. "Many people will say better to have the FLN (the ruling party) we know that wants stability rather than parties we don't know."

Kadri's commission, composed of representatives of the different political parties, has said the process of counting and collating of votes the night of the election was riddled with irregularities. He warned that the overwhelming win by parties linked to the state will quash any lingering interest Algerians have in politics.

The new parliament, which has a 62-percent majority with the ruling party and a sister party filled with pro-regime figures, will rewrite the constitution with the president, ensuring that any reforms will be carefully controlled.

Part of the problem with changing Algeria, explained Roberts of Tufts University, is that there isn't any clear alternative that everyone can agree on. "Everybody will agree the system stinks, but no one has a positive proposal how we will get out of here," he said.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/may/24/ml-algeria-elections/

Algerian separatist leader’s visit to Israel stirs controversy

Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Leader of an Algerian separatist movement, Ferhat Mehenni, has said his visit to Israel is aimed at establishing ties with countries all over the world. 

By RAMDANE BELAMRI
AL ARABIYA

The visit of the leader of an Algerian separatist movement to Israel stirred controversy and raised concerns over destabilizing the security of the country.

Ferhat Mehenni, leader of the Paris-based Mouvement pour l’autonomie de la Kabylie (MAK), French for the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabyle, visited the Israeli capital Tel Aviv and called for the support of what he called “the honorable members of the Knesset.”

The visit, scheduled to last for four days, is part a plan by MAK, which calls for the independence of the tribal northern region of Kabyle, to establish strong ties with countries all over the world especially with U.N. member states like Israel, said Mehenni.

“I am sure the Kabyle people will support me in such a move,” he told Israeli and Algerian media

Algerian political parties slammed Mehenni’s visit and accused him of attempting to destabilize the security of the country. For Qassi Eissa, spokesman of the socialist National Liberation Front, Mehenni’s action only represent him and a small group of people.

“This group does not enjoy any popular support in the Kabyle region, which is an integral part of Algeria and whose people are Algerian citizens,” he told the Algerian news website Tout Sur l’Algerie (All about Algeria).

“This is an absolutely irresponsible action,” he added.

Abdullah Gaballah, head of the Islamist-oriented Front for Justice and Development accused Mehenni of attempting to undermine the unity of Algeria.

In the same vein, spokesman of the Islamic Renaissance Movement Amohamed Hdeibi called for striping Mehenni of his Algerian citizenship because he is a threat to national unity.

Ferhat Mehenni, a 51-year Amazigh folk singer, bases his demands for the autonomy of the Kabyle on alleged crimes committed against the residents of the region by the Algerian authorities.

Mehenni, known for his advocacy of establishing ties with Israel and opening an Israeli embassy in Algeria, does not have a wide popular support in the region for whose independence he is fighting.

The two main political parties in Kabyle, the Front of Socialist Forces and the Rally for Culture and Democracy, declare their opposition to Mehenni’s plans and their efforts to thwart them through participation in the Algerian political scene.

“Our party has decided to take part in parliamentary elections to prevent the division of the country and counter those who jeopardize its unity,” Front of Socialist Forces spokesman Chafeia Buaich told Al Arabiya in an earlier statement.

According to the Algerian newspaper Annahar al-Jadid, Mehenni’s visit to Israel is the third on one year. He travels to Tel Aviv from Paris via the Israeli airline al-Aal and uses his French passport, the paper reported.

The paper added that statements by Khafiet Mariza, a political affairs bureau official at the Israeli Embassy in Paris, showed the Jewish state’s support for Mehenni and his movement.

“The Israeli government supports Mehenni in his struggle for grating Amazigh minorities in Algeria their autonomy and the same applies to their counterparts in Morocco and Libya,” said her statement.

On the other hand, Zohra Charout, the military attaché at the Israeli embassy in Bucharest, said in a phone interview with Annahar that Mehenni has received one million Euros from the Jewish community in the United States.

“Israel will be the first country to open diplomatic missions in the Republic of Kabyle,” she said. 

Algerians Belittle Elections, but Not Enough to Protest

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

A polling worker on the outskirts of Algiers had little to do in parliamentary elections last week. The government’s resounding victory surprised no one.

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: May 19, 2012

ALGIERS — As Islamists rode the wave of the Arab Spring to power in Tunisia and Libya, it looked as if that same tide would lift religious parties in this much larger nation in North Africa, too.

Mohamed Messara/European Pressphoto Agency

Ballot counters in Algiers. Anywhere from 60 percent to 80 percent of citizens boycotted the vote, and about one in five ballots cast were spoiled.

But the Arab Spring is not happening in Algeria, at least not now.

Barely a week after a vote derided by much of the population as a sham, there are no protests in the streets of this capital city. In a volatile region, there are no marches, no rallies and no demonstrations. The long-entrenched military-backed government proclaimed resounding victory, and the response was disbelief — mingled with yawns.

Most Algerians — anywhere from 60 percent to 80 percent — boycotted the vote for a legislature that even officials here concede is do-nothing. They took the day off, went to the beach, then went quietly back to work. When the official results were announced Friday, Islamist parties, expected to do well, had been crushed.

And the party in power since independence half a century ago, the FLN, or National Liberation Front, consolidated its aging grip, increasing its majority in the new Parliament.

“These were not elections — it was a piece of theater staged by the government,” said Abdallah Djaballah, leader of a major Islamist party, which was a big loser.

A finely tuned mix of cash and crackdown, money and repression — a mix unique to the region — has muted demands for change and allowed the ruling elite to retain its grip. In Algeria a young person can easily get a government loan of up to $300,000 to start a small business, on terms beyond generous. Like the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf, Algeria has been able to neutralize calls for reform with oil-generated cash reserves — $180 billion — and a government program to dole out money to restive youth.

At the same time, demonstrations are banned in Algiers; a short-lived protest movement in February 2011, a distant echo of Tunisia’s revolt, was quickly overwhelmed by security forces. The police are everywhere, and though criticism flows freely in the street, it is sometimes delivered anonymously, and with a glance over the shoulder.

But while there is palpable frustration with the ruling gerontocracy, there are also long memories of the 1990s, when 200,000 people died in the bloody suppression of an Islamist revolt. Tales of mutilated corpses and mass graves remain common currency.

“They lived it in the flesh,” the interior minister, Daho Ould Kablia, said of his fellow Algerians. “They don’t want an Islamist adventure here.”

Today, the capital’s hilly streets are clogged with new cars and aggressive drivers. To government officials, the apparent vote of confidence in the status quo was to be expected. “They see what is going on in the other countries,” Mr. Kablia said, with evident disdain. “The movements in these other countries, they are movements of desperation.”

A fit-looking 79, Mr. Kablia was already a prefect — a high regional official — at Algeria’s liberation in 1962; before, he was a senior officer in the rebel movement of the 1950s that expelled the French.

The government has remained largely silent about the role of the security forces in the crackdown of the ’90s, which served as a potent warning to the people, just as its “opacity,” as a Western diplomat here put it, prevents ordinary citizens from seeing which direction, if any, the country is moving in.

“I’m not expecting anything from these people,” said Mohammed Halyoun, 56, an engineering technician at the counter of a cafe on the seedy Rue Tanger downtown. “You look at what they’ve done over 50 years, it’s hardly satisfying.”

“Everything here happens in the corridors,” he said, adding that he did not vote in the recent elections.

Yet mindful of discontent, the state has dug deeply into its cash holdings. After the protests last year, the government turned on the spigots, analysts here say. “There was a massive injection,” said Mohammed Saïb Musette, an employment specialist at the University of Algiers. “This has had an impact on the reduction of tension,” he said. “Without it the youths would have nothing.”

Paul Schemm/Associated Press

Many Algerians took the opportunity to go to the beach, like this one in Algiers that sported campaign posters, during the parliamentary election last week.

The newspapers here have been full of stories about applicants all over Algeria filling the offices of the specialized youth-loan employment agency. “Submerged by the flood of youth,” El Watan wrote recently of the office at Relizane. Dr. Musette said that in the last year, “the agencies were practically invaded.”

On highly favorable terms — rock-bottom interest rates, eight to nine years before repayment of principle — millions of dollars have been handed out to 19- to 40-year-olds who present plans to start, say, bus services, fast food restaurants or small-scale trucking operations. Sometimes the money simply disappears, through fraud.

At a youth-loan office in the seaside suburb of Zeralda, Souad Gharbi, a 35-year-old lawyer, was signing off on a government loan of nearly $7,000 merely to help her pay the rent — “rent is very high in Algiers,” she explained — a loan she would not have to begin repaying for two or three years, and then, only a portion at already low interest. She was entitled to a similarly generous government grant of $1,400 to buy office equipment.

“The state has invested to the maximum,” Dr. Musette said. Civil service salaries have been raised 50 percent since 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund; overall expenditures are also expected to grow by 50 percent, and there are subsidies for powdered milk, soybean oil and sugar.

“People see there is the $200 billion,” said Hammouda Naccredine, another economist at the university, referring to Algeria’s cash reserves. “And they say, ‘How do I get it?’ ”

The country cut its unemployment rate in half from 2000 to 2007, largely by public spending, making the rate “unsustainable,” the World Bank said in a recent report. And it is indeed unclear — there are no good statistics, Dr. Musette said — how many of the government youth loans actually create permanent jobs.

For now, though, the state is either “acting like a good father of the family,” as the head of the youth-loan employment office, Mourad Zemali, put it, or it has “succeeded in corrupting lots and lots of people,” said a human rights activist, Yacine Zaïd, of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights.

Yet, in the upper echelons there are signs of unease with the current strategy, including the use of cash to reduce youth unemployment. Mr. Kablia, who spoke of “institutional reforms,” changes in “mentalities” and “dialogue with society,” said change was “absolutely necessary.”

“Algeria cannot continue to live closed in on itself,” he said.

On the street after the vote, there were few hopes for the new Parliament and its huge FLN majority. After all, about 18 percent of the vote consisted of spoiled ballots — an unusually high number, indicating discontent.

“There will be nothing,” said Mourad Benchellal, a fruit vendor off Didouche Mourad Street, gesticulating angrily. “They’ve been running the country since ’62. Once they are in power, they forget the people.”

Such sentiments appear ominous to some analysts here.

“The situation has been aggravated by the elections,” said Mohamed Chafik Mesbah, a former Algerian intelligence officer and now a well-known political commentator here. “They have opened up a wide boulevard for the Islamists.”

When the explosion comes, he said, “I think it will be more violent than in Tunisia.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/world/africa/in-algeria-belittling-elections-but-no-arab-spring.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1