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

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

Algeria's election was a fraud

If any hopes for democracy remained for the country, widespread election fraud have quashed them. Last Modified: 15 May 2012 19:05

Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has described revolutions of Arab Spring as a 'plague' [EPA]

London, United Kingdom - The results of Algeria's May 10 legislative elections have been met with such fury by Algerians that some analysts believe that these will be the last elections held under the current regime. If there were any hopes for democracy still remaining in the country, these elections snuffed them out. Allegations of electoral fraud have been widespread since the government announced on May 11 that the turnout was 42.9 per cent, with the government's ruling parties winning an overwhelming majority of the votes. The Green Alliance of Islamist parties accused the government of "perpetrating widespread fraud". Similar allegations were made by the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD). The Algerian National Front said it would challenge the results in the constitutional court over what party leader Moussa Touati called "blatant fraud", while Ali Laskri, leader of the opposition Socialist Front Forces (FFS), said that Thursday's vote "was riddled with irregularities". Abderrazak Mukri, a spokesman for the Alliance, said that the results given by the Interior Ministry differ dramatically from those seen by the Alliance's observers. He told reporters: "There is a process of fraud on a centralised level to change the results that is putting the country in danger. … We are not responsible for what could happen." Electoral fraud by Algeria's government is normal practice and expected. All elections since 1992, when the regime annulled Algeria's only truly democratic elections, have been rigged. What seems to have incensed Algerians about these latest elections is the scale and audacity of the fraud, both in the fabrication of the turnout figure and in the distribution of the votes. Fabrication When I forecast the election result on May 9, I said that the government would come up with a much higher turnout. The "official" figure is usually put about three times higher than the "real" turnout. I predicted that the real turnout on May 10 would be in the range of 10-15 per cent, and that the official turnout figure would be 46 per cent (in the range of 40-50 per cent). As it was, the turnout was given as 42.9 per cent. The government would like to have given a figure that could have been rounded up to "about half", hence my forecast of 46 per cent. However, going much higher than 42.9 per cent on such a low real turnout could well have triggered demonstrations and violence. Parliamentary elections in Algeria On the other hand, a figure below 40 per cent would be interpreted as an admission of failure. Thus, a figure in the lower 40s was deemed sufficiently low to avoid unrest, but sufficient to enable the government to claim "success" on the grounds that 42.9 per cent is an improvement on the 2007 turnout of 37 per cent. What was the "real" turnout? On the basis of the government's usual threefold inflation of turnout, the real turnout figure would be 14.3 per cent. In fact, as more information from observers on the ground becomes available, it looks as if a figure of around 15 per cent might be about right. Professor Abdulali Rezaki of Algiers University was quoted as saying that he thought 85 per cent of voters would boycott the elections, while the RCD said the real turnout "did not exceed 18 per cent". Reports from around the country indicate that the vast majority of Algerians stayed away from polling stations in response to the calls of the FIS, AQIM, RCD, the Rachad Movement and countless youth, human rights, trade unions and other civil society organisations - in addition to many prominent personalities - to abstain. For example, a Reuters reporter stood for 45 minutes outside a polling station in Bab El Oued (Algiers) without seeing a single voter enter. The agency also reported that election officers at two other polling stations in the capital had said that about ten per cent of those registered to vote had shown up by mid-afternoon. At Laghouat, on the northern fringe of the Sahara, where the interior ministry gave the turnout figure at 4pm as 38 per cent, local observers, who had been keeping a close watch on the town's polling stations, gave the figure at that time as five per cent. Similar reports have been coming in from all over the country. In addition to this abstention, there are reports that 20-22 per cent of ballot forms were blank or despoiled. I believe that most of these were cast by people who did not want to vote but felt frightened into doing so. If these blank votes are added to the abstention, then the real vote reduces to just 11-12 per cent. Doctoring vote distribution The government's second fraud was to doctor the distribution of votes between parties. With the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) - which would have won the annulled 1992 election - banned from participating in these elections, it was widely believed that other Islamist parties, headed by the "Green Alliance" of Bouguerra Soltani's Movement of Society Peace (MSP), the al-Nahda and al-Islaf parties and followed by Abdallah Djaballah's Front for Justice and Development (FJD), would garnish the largest share of votes. They would be followed by the government's Front de Liberation National (FLN), with the Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND) of the highly unpopular Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, unlikely to get more than one or two per cent of the vote. Unofficial figures released by the Alliance in mid-afternoon were in line with this prediction. The FLN was heading for about 100 seats in the new 462-seat Assembly, with the Green Alliance close behind. The official results, released the next day, were met with incredulity and anger. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's FLN had won 220, or 47.6 per cent, of the seats, a considerable improvement on its position in the outgoing National Assembly, while the RND came second with 69 seats (14.7 per cent), giving the two government parties a massive 62.3 per cent domination of the Assembly. The Islamist parties, in contrast, managed only 59 seats between them. The Alliance won 10.4 per cent of the vote and 48 seats, while the early front-runner, Abdallah Djaballah's FJD, won a paltry 1.5 per cent and seven seats. Even FLN supporters found these figures hard to believe. One reason for that is because the party had been in a state of intense internal fighting for the previous few months. Many of its offices had closed and most of its campaign rallies had been reduced or cancelled in the face of public resentment and disinterest. Many FLN members were of the view that the party was "finished" and that it would be lucky to pick up 20 per cent of the vote. In that light, 47.6 per cent seems beyond belief. They, too, know that this figure has been manipulated. The second reason for incredulity at the FLN vote is simply a matter of political demography. With 21,664,345 registered voters, the government's figures mean that 9.29 million people voted, a figure which not only defies observations at polling stations, but means that 4.42 million of them voted for the FLN. If we add in the RND, then it means that 5.79 million Algerians voted for the two ruling government parties, both of which are resented and hated by the vast majority of citizens. If we reduce this figure by 20 per cent to take account of the spoiled ballots, we are still left with 4.63 million Algerians voting for a government that they are desperately keen to replace. Such a figure makes no sense. The mechanics of fraud Finally, there is the overwhelming question of how such electoral fraud could have taken place when the country, according to the government's version of events, was awash with foreign observers. The obvious point is that it is absolutely impossible for some 500 foreign observers to keep an eye on 48,546 polling stations. Neither can opposition party observers cover this number of stations. The opportunity for ballot stuffing and other irregularities, especially in remote areas, is immense. In addition, the system of "vote par procuration", whereby an estimated 600,000 - 700,000 people, mostly in the police, gendarmerie, military and administrative services, can have their votes cast for them by a designated family relative, officer or official, allows for substantial multiple voting. Moreover, with the Algerian government refusing to make the electoral roll accessible to foreign observer missions, it is impossible for them to check such irregularities even if they had the resources to do so. Reactions from the government The government's reaction to these results has been one of arrogant triumphalism, encapsulated in El Moudjahid's headline: "If there's a winner on this Algerian Spring day, it's undoubtedly the people." It went on to say: "In their millions, Algerians projected a good image of democracy, proving to the world that they are not disconnected from political life." Is real change taking effect in Algeria? Horizons, another pro-government newspaper, said the vote showed an "appeased and reconciled Algeria ... diametrically opposed to those who wreak chaos and support interference". In the run-up to the election, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia described the so-called Arab Spring as a "plague", which, he said, had resulted in "the colonisation of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan and the weakening of Egypt". Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said that the "remarkable" turnout of 42.9 per cent confirmed Algeria's democratic credentials. He explained the large vote for the FLN as a sign that Algerians wanted the security of the government rather than "change", and that they had seen through "the false claims of the Islamists". Foreign reaction Algerians can draw little comfort from the reactions of Algeria's Western and Arab allies, whose support for Algeria since 1992 has been more about maintaining the present regime in power than encouraging democracy. The Arab League's 132-member observer mission said the election was "transparent, credible and well-organised", while the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation praised the "successful and democratic elections... held in an organised, transparent and peaceful manner". Neither recorded any irregularities. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Algeria's elections as "a welcome step in Algeria's progress toward democratic reform", while Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, congratulated the people of Algeria "on the conduct of the elections and the progress they represent". Jose Ignacio Salafranca, head of the EU observer mission said that the vote was satisfactory and that "citizens were, in general, able to truly exercise their right to vote". Based on these readings, Algerians clearly have nothing to worry about. Jeremy Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201251482813133513.html

Algerian Islamic leader opposes election

Al Jazeera interviews Ali Belhadj, the fiery leader who led anti-regime protests of the 1980s, as Algerians go to polls. Yasmine Ryan Last Modified: 10 May 2012 11:29 inShare2 Email Print Share Feedback

Ali Belhadj speaking in a mosque in March, one of many public appearances he has made in recent months [Al Jazeera]

Ali Belhadj is a hardline advocate of political Islam with a history of inspiring protests in Algeria, and he is a vocal opponent of the legislative elections. In 1988, Belhadj became a leader of the street protests that forced the Algerian regime to introduce democratic reforms for the first time. He then became the vice-president of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a party advocating an Islamic form of government which quickly won over disenfranchised Algerians hungry for change. The military staged a coup d’état on the eve of almost certain victory for the party. The FIS has been illegal ever since, but in recent months, Belhadj has once again been rallying supporters in mosques across the country against Algeria's May 10 legislative elections. Al Jazeera spoke to him in a phone interview about why he is calling for a boycott of Thursday's elections, his views on the Islamist parties that work with the government, and whether the FIS is still relevant. Q: What is your stance on the election boycott? A: We are calling for a boycott of the elections. The Algerian regime has denied those calling for a boycott the right to political activities. They were denied access to the media outlets and all other means of communicating their opinions and pointing out the political justifications for the boycott. This is why the only people able to remain active are the participants taking part in the elections, who were given complete freedom for action. Q: What is the mood amongst the Algerian people? A: A huge amount of money has been spent on doing whatever it takes to coax people into taking part in the elections by any means. The majority of the Algerian people, however, are desperate, and view these elections as an absurdity for which public funds are being squandered. Public frustration surges when election time comes, since Algerians will get neither heavenly nor worldly gains from them. The Algerian regime is sticking to the timetable for the elections despite the boycott by politicians and people ousted by the regime. Advocating the boycott does not necessarily mean calling for foreign intervention, chaos, and a return to the years of bloodshed, as the regime falsely alleges. Those of us boycotting the elections are calling for establishing a transitional period in which power would be transferred in a smooth manner, to another generation via an election process. A national unity government would initially be formed, followed by a constituent council which would be formed for drafting a new constitution for the country. General elections would then follow, beginning with the municipalities, the regional, then legislative and presidential elections. By adopting this calm and peaceful plan, the country would be able to resolve the crisis that has plagued the Algerian people for so long. Q: You have been travelling the countryside speaking to the Algerian people, in recent months. Have you been able to do this freely? A: When we went there, we were monitored by security elements, either openly and directly, or covertly. We do not pay heed to such actions, as we expressed our political opinions, even if we were arrested after our political tours. We have faced some restrictions and arrests, but that would not deter us from expressing our political views about what we view as the solution for resolving the country's crisis. Of course, most of the people we encountered [during the past few months of travels] complained that the regime is always absent whenever people are in dire need. This is true to municipalities, the regional government and the presidency of the republic. Q: What is your view of the Islamist parties competing in the elections in the Green Alliance? Would they be able to change Algeria, if they win the majority? Could the FIS work with them? A: Islamic parties in Algeria are different to their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries. This is because Islamic parties in Algeria have allied themselves to the regime and have become part of it. They have defended regime policies, and had practically merged themselves with the president’s political programme, becoming an inseparable part of the regime. Though we hope the Islamic parties will win the elections, we have to remain objective enough to be honest: that Islamic parties in Algeria have supported the regime, have become part of it and defended its cause. So however many votes these parties win in the elections, they will not win the majority of votes. They may only win a number of seats that would not change anything in the regime. We do not oppose these parties, or any other parties. What we oppose is the Algerian regime in the first place. Thus, change would only come after changing the regime, opening the political arena for all parties in an objective and real manner. Then, the Algerian people would elect rulers who would serve their national interests. Q: There was a video published online that shows you condemning French President Nicolas Sarkozy over the burial of Mohammed Merah in France. What do you think about Merah's actions? A: The man was killed, most probably after orders were issued to kill him. Since Merah did not stand trial, we cannot judge whether he was guilty or not. This case has vanished with the man, or will remain stored in the archives of the French security authorities, and the political authority there. We cannot denounce someone whom justice did not convict and was unable to defend himself. What we are criticising is the fact that the French authorities could have captured him, particularly that he was alone. There are lawyers in Algeria and France who have sympathised with Merah and were planning to file a case against French security authorities prior to launching an investigation into Merah’s death. With regard to Sarkozy, I am not interested in France's internal affairs, except for the fact that we do not want France to interfere in our internal affairs. Q: Do you think there is still widespread support for the FIS, given the trauma of the decade of violence in the 1990s? A: If another Algerian party faced what the Islamic Salvation Front has faced, including marginalisation, kidnappings and the expulsion of thousands of members, it would have been wiped out. The FIS will neither praise nor criticise itself. We want to be given official recognition for exercising peaceful political activity. Then we need to have an elections timetable that would reveal if the FIS still had widespread grassroots support, or whether it had lost its support and became weaker. Q: Some of your supporters have been claiming you should be made president. What is your reaction to this? A: The Algerian people are not represented by those who have been forcibly gathered in government halls. Algerians are more honest than those who keep applauding and chanting for the ruling party. We have been ruled for 50 years without any real achievements in the fields of politics, the economy, fine arts, or in the intellectual domain. This is why we have the right to aspire to the presidency, not through secret deals, but through popular struggle. Since ruling a country is based on a political process, as opposed to personal ambitions, feuding factions and army generals, it would be the people who would take us to the presidency. Q: What political system do you believe would be best for Algeria? A: The parliamentary system is the most suitable to Algeria, even though it has some negative aspects, because the presidential systems in the Arab world have turned into dictatorships. We are not picking the parliamentary system, with its flaws, but we would rather make our choices through a national comprehensive dialogue where debate would take place at a constituent authority for drafting a new constitution, with the majority having the upper hand. Q: Do you think the governments in Tunisia, Libya and Morocco are on the right track? What should they do differently? A: We cannot tell them what they should do, since they are more qualified than us to manage their affairs. They are free to do what they choose. But I would note that for observers following the political situation [in these countries], it is clear that it is unlikely that there will be political stability in these countries anytime soon. It will take years rather than months to address their difficulties, since something that was corrupted over 100 years cannot be rectified in hours. This is why it is important to give these events adequate time to evolve, bearing in mind the examples of revolutions in France and the United States and how long it took them to achieve political stability. Such revolutions can only bear fruit after many years, during which remnants of the toppled regimes will keep working in the dark to undermine political reforms and incite divisions among the people. They may fanaticise about setting back revolutionary reforms for a return to the defunct dictatorial regimes. But the freedom of the people is priceless. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/201251052640101562.html