For more than two years, there has been a climate of general repression, even terror, in Algeria. Arbitrary arrests of activists of all political sides and journalists, closure of press organs, obstruction of the freedom of movement of artists and intellectuals, series of hasty trials and convictions…

Of course, this situation concerns all of Algeria and any autonomous political, intellectual or artistic expression. The regime was seriously shaken by the chaotic end of Bouteflika’s reign (2019 – 2020). But it took a completely extreme turn in Kabylia, the main Berber-speaking region of Algeria.

The turning point dates from the spring of 2021 when the government classified the MAK(1) (and the Rachad Movement(2) as “terrorist organizations” and arrested hundreds of their activists and independent opponents accused of belonging to these organizations. This last episode is reminiscent of the practices of Erdogan’s Turkey which tend to muzzle any opposition by qualifying it as “terrorist”.

The wave of arrests in Kabylia ended in November 2022 with a parody of justice at the end of which were pronounced, in less than three days, 102 sentences including 54 death sentences (5 in absentia) and many other heavy verdicts up to life imprisonment. We have therefore just reached a completely unprecedented degree in repression in Kabylia, no doubt symptomatic of a deep crisis within the regime and of a desire to liquidate all significant political opposition in Algeria by criminalizing them.

These practices are in fact nothing new in Kabylia. From the direct military intervention against the FFS of Hocine Aït Ahmed (1963 – 1965) to the bloody repression of peaceful demonstrations (2001 – 2002: 130 dead and thousands injured), through the countless condemnations of activists and demonstrators (1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1985 and 1998) and the targeted assassinations of personalities, we would never stop listing the acts of violent repression that the region has suffered.

Without forgetting the structural cultural ostracism, for about thirty years, officially inscribed in the ideological orientations, the constitutions and the laws of the Algerian State which defined Algeria as an exclusively Arab and Muslim country. The Berber parameter being considered as having disappeared or having to disappear, because likely to undermine the unity of the Nation.

There is therefore an old and multifaceted relationship of tension between Kabylia and the central state. Opposition which, moreover, has not only had paroxysmal forms: it suffices to look at the electoral sociology of Kabylia since 1963, to see, on the very basis of official figures, that there is in this region a tough mistrust on political power. During all the electoral consultations, we noted in Kabylia very high abstention rates often exceeding 80% and an almost systematic rejection of official candidates. During the last presidential election (2019), turnout was almost nil in Kabylia (0.001% in Tizi-Ouzou and 0.29% in Béjaïa). This quasi-boycott undoubtedly explains the relentlessness of the authorities against Kabylia which we want to make pay for this scathing disavowal.

Kabylia therefore appears to be the preferred target of repression since the country’s independence. The Algerian regime, like all authoritarian regimes, structurally needs enemies, external and internal, to maintain itself and legitimize its authoritarianism and its repressive practices. Since 1963, the main external enemy has been the Moroccan brother and neighbor and its allies. If we consider the long term, this enemy from the outside is now a red rag that is waved to mobilize the nationalist fiber of the population in the face of external danger. But in fact, it is rather a rhetoric without concrete implication because one can seriously doubt that the Algerian generals take the risk of engaging in a war with Morocco. This military and political bet would be very uncertain and would risk jeopardizing the very survival of the system.

On the other hand, Kabylia, the internal enemy, is a much easier prey than one can easily designate as an enemy of the Nation and its Unity. This is why this spring has been systematically used since 1963. This anti-Kabyle practice has much older roots and dates back to the 1930s within the radical Algerian nationalist movement. Initially, it was less an ethnic cleavage than an ideological opposition: some Kabyle nationalist militants opposed the Arab-Islamic definition of the Nation and showed a marked tropism towards a secular conception of the State. Hence the recurring condemnations and stigmatization of “Berberism and Berber-materialism”. This ideological divergence quickly evolved into widespread anti-Kabyle suspicion in ruling circles.

We can therefore legitimately fear that the regime will come to use the most extreme repressive methods against Kabylia if it is convinced that this would allow it to maintain itself and reproduce itself. Admittedly, the fight against colonization was legitimate and necessary, but the socio-historical context in which Algerian nationalism was formed led to ideological options and lasting political practices: the obsessive reference to the Arab and Muslim identity of the Nations; an exacerbated nationalism as well as a strong tendency towards unanimity and the rejection of all diversity.

These fundamentals have resulted in a marked authoritarianism not hesitating to resort to all forms of repression, a justice totally subject to the orders of the executive power, a press under surveillance in the best of cases, an omnipresence – even an omnipotence – security services and political parties, since they were authorized (1989), under close control of the Executive.

It is undoubtedly an illusion to think that Algerian radical nationalism was of a progressive and liberating nature. From the outset, it was the bearer of an authoritarian, unanimist, intolerant and, in many respects, retrograde project.

This is why the Berber fight, like all democratic fights, is difficult in Algeria. Difficult, even desperate, to answer the title of Pierre Vermeren’s book. In fact, as long as Algerian society does not become aware of the necessary break with the heritage and the nationalist past, as long as we do not engage in a lucid critique of the foundations of the current nation-state, it is to be feared that it will be impossible to question the power of the oligarchy which rules, exploits, plunders and destroys the country.

If we really want to challenge a “corrupt and corrupting” power, as the El-Kseur platform put it (2001), we must necessarily attack the historical and ideological bases that found this regime.

Translated by Kabylia Blog

Salem CHAKER Professor Emeritus of Universities (Berber language)

Notes:

(1) Movement for the autonomy of Kabylie at its creation in 2001, it became Movement for the self-determination of Kabylia in 2013.

(2) Rachad is a political movement with Islamist tendencies, founded on April 18, 2007 in London by seven Algerians, some of whom are from the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) banned by the Algerian authorities in 1992.

3) Maghreb, democracy impossible? Paris, Fayard, 2004.

(4) Document drawn up by the Coordination of the Movement which shook Kabylia during the bloody clashes of 2001-2002.