Part 2
a) Article by a noted Algerian political scientist Lahouari Addi who
was recently visiting professor at Princeton University.
b) A partial chronology of events in Algeria prepared by Paris-based
Algerian journalist Mustapha Hadj-Arab
c) A list of the major massacres ( from the Associated Press)
that occured in Algeria in the past 2 years
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Item 2-a
http://128.220.50.88/journals/journal_of_democracy/v007/7.3addi.html
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Copyright © 1996 National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns
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Journal of Democracy 7.3 (1996) 94-107
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Algeria's Tragic Contradictions
Lahouari Addi
Democratization in the Middle East
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Democratization is the order of the day in the Third World, but aside
from
certain Latin American countries where it seems to have succeeded, it is
everywhere running into difficulties. These challenges need to be
analyzed
in relation to the history of each country, taking into account specific
political, cultural, and ideological circumstances. There is assuredly
no
universal model of democratic transition that one can recommend to all
Third
World countries, which is why we must evaluate obstacles to
democratization
on a case-by-case basis.
Algeria is an interesting case precisely because in February 1989, just
months after the October 1988 riots that cost nearly a thousand lives,
the
ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) embarked on a series of reforms,
changing the Constitution to allow multipartism and alternation in power
by
means of elections. Yet the legalization of multipartism mainly
benefited
the Islamists organized into the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which
carried both the June 1990 local elections and the first round of the
December 1991 national legislative races. The military suspended the
process
and nullified the first-round results in January 1992. Next, it forced
President Chadli Benjedid to resign. Since then, Algeria has plunged
into
murderous strife that already has claimed more than 60,000 lives. 1
In January 1995, six groups (including the three major contenders--the
FLN,
the FIS, and the Socialist Forces Front or FFS) met in Rome to sign a
pact
aimed at ending the crisis. 2 The military rejected [End Page 94] this
Rome
Platform and ordered a presidential election for November 1995. This
vote,
which capped the first contested presidential election since Algeria
gained
its independence from France in 1962, went ahead as scheduled on
November
16. Even though the principal opposition parties (most notably the FIS
and
the FFS) refused to participate, the balloting raised high expectations
among voters, who hoped that incumbent president Liamine Zeroual (a
retired
general and the army's designated candidate) would emerge with
strengthened
legitimacy and be able to make the military accept a political solution
similar to the one outlined in the Rome Platform.
On election day, three-quarters of the country's 16 million eligible
voters
turned out, and Zeroual won a 61 percent majority. Although widely
hailed as
a success, this election actually has solved nothing. Zeroual has not
been
able to assert control over the army, the national dialogue that he
promised
has broken down, and deadly violence continues to rage. In May 1996, the
president promised legislative elections for early 1997, but the
opposition
parties dismissed his announcement as a maneuver to buy time.
In this essay, I will first explain the inner logic of Algeria's
political
system by examining its structure and the crisis in which it is
currently
embroiled, and then look at the dynamics of the various oppositions it
has
set in motion: 1) the internal opposition within the regime, 2) the
Islamist
opposition, and 3) the democratic opposition.
The Logic of the Regime
To comprehend what is happening today in Algeria, one must consider the
historical and ideological foundations of the power of the state as it
emerged from the war of national liberation, which made the army the
country's legitimacy-granting authority. The contradiction that has led
the
regime toward the current violence is its inability to endow itself with
legitimate leadership--an inability that has propelled the Islamists
into
the resulting gap, which has existed ever since the death of President
Houari Boumedienne in 1978.
The legitimacy upon which any system of power rests is a principle that
is
forged in the history of each country. In Algeria, it is inseparable
from
the struggle that the national liberation movement waged against French
colonial domination in the 1950s and early 1960s. The army holds the key
to
political legitimacy by virtue of the very fact that national
sovereignty
was wrested from France by the Army of National Liberation, whose heir
was
the National Popular Army. This situation brought about a splitting of
the
state's power that would have deleterious consequences for the state's
provision of services and the efficiency of its decision making. From
that
time on, there has been, on the one hand, the power of legitimation
retained
by the army, and on the other, [End Page 95] the executive power that
the
army mandates to run the administration and handle the rents from energy
exports. The government's everyday doings are hampered by the
clientelistic
practices of networks that enjoy the support of high-ranking army
officers.
A prefect, even a minister of state, has real authority in the discharge
of
his official responsibilities only insofar as he maintains a privileged
individual relationship with a member of the military hierarchy.
Relationships within the state, as well as those between state personnel
and
individuals in society, are particularistic rather than universalistic,
whether they are based on family or tribal bonds or on common material
interests. The state, then, exists in two dimensions: in one, it is
visible,
official, obedient to rules; in the other, it is obscure, hidden from
public
view, guided by a changing balance of forces that only initiates can
discern.
Reinforcing this two-dimensional structure is the lack of
institutionalization that characterizes the army's legitimating power.
Hence
the gap between the institutions that formalize the relationships of
authority and subordination within the state administration and the
capacity
of informal networks to influence the decisions of various parts of this
administration. Individual military men are among the first to deplore
the
inefficiency and ineptitude of state officials, but few soldiers make
the
connection between such incompetence and the double structure of state
power. Every high-ranking officer considers it as normal as breathing
that
the military hierarchy should have the final say in forming the
government
and the right to approve all the key civilian officials who would be
part of
it. 3 In these officers' eyes, the army has the right and duty to act as
the
source of legitimacy for the governing authorities, since the state's
constitution originated with the army. In view of the traditions
inherited
from the anticolonial struggle, the army would be loath to install an
actual
military regime. The Algerian system, despite the key place that the
army
occupies within it, is not a military regime, and still less a military
dictatorship. It is an authoritarian civilian regime in which the state
draws its legitimacy and strength from the army, which in turn entrusts
it
with the mission of preventing the emergence of a civil society
independent
of state power--the idea being to avoid having to institutionalize
conflict
in the public sphere.
The authoritarianism of the Algerian state flows not from its military
origins, but from the populist ideology that the army champions. It is
as if
the army has been asking the administration since 1962 to create a new
society whose members are socially and economically equal. This equality
is
to be guaranteed by the state; all will depend on the state for
subsistence.
This is the vantage point from which the historical legitimacy embodied
by
the army must be understood, for it is not an ideological justification
for
a military aristocracy. Rather, it is the political reserve or resource
that
authorizes the army to intervene, directly or indirectly, in political
affairs in order to guide the government's [End Page 96] actions, in
keeping
with the mission that the former has entrusted to the latter. It was in
the
name of historical legitimacy that thenDefense Minister Houari
Boumedienne
in June 1965 deposed Ahmed Ben Bella, who had been elected president
just a
scant two years before. 4
Yet Boumedienne, fearing that he in turn would be overthrown by his
successor at the Defense Ministry, resolved the contradiction of the
double
structure of state power by institutionalizing historical legitimacy
through
the fiction of the Council of the Revolution that he headed, and above
all
by fusing the two powers in his own person. Upon his death, however, the
military men had no wish to renew this arrangement, which they thought
had
worked to their disadvantage. They then named to the presidency Chadli
Benjedid, a military-district commander who lacked Boumedienne's
forceful
personality. Benjedid was not able to impose his will on his peers or to
embody legitimating authority while exercising executive power; the
regime
entered a period of crisis that culminated in a paralysis that the
Islamists
would use to their advantage. In order to perpetuate itself, the regime
needs the charismatic authority of a chief, a leader who can ground his
legitimacy in populist discourse. The intrinsic personal qualities of
such a
chief are vital for the reproduction of the system: he must be a tribune
and
must have a passion for his job, which will involve many hours of hard
work
every day. When it came to such qualities, Boumedienne far outshone his
successor. It is true that Benjedid had to govern during a difficult
time.
For one thing, the model that his predecessor had put in place had
reached
its limits; moreover, the bottom fell out of world oil prices in
198586.
The government began reforms to make the productive apparatus
profitable,
but the army rejected them as too liberal, choosing to bank instead on a
future upturn in the oil market.
At bottom, a political regime can rest on the charisma of a leader, on
institutions that regulate the distribution of power, or on both. In the
1980s, however, the regime had neither a leader with whom the citizens
could
identify, nor institutions capable of truly regulating power relations.
The
absence of leadership, then, left a void that helped give rise to the
bloody
crisis that has engulfed Algeria. There were, to be sure, institutional
reforms designed to cover up the contradiction between the two powers.
The
Council of the Revolution was suppressed and replaced by an elected
assembly
that was made the formal depositary of national sovereignty. In reality,
legitimacy continued to be embodied by the army, acting through the
expedient of the presidential office, whose holder is chosen by
universal
suffrage--at the end of an election [End Page 97] campaign featuring a
single party running a single candidate. Constitutionally, therefore,
the
president derives his authority from the electorate, which allows him to
form the government and put it to work on the political and social goals
that he has promised to pursue. Yet this picture is false, since the
president is chosen by the military hierarchy, whose candidate the
voters
merely ratify; hence the president's dependence on this hierarchy. He
can
play one faction against another and can choose his own collaborators,
yet
his room to maneuver remains limited, for he cannot deprive the army of
its
legitimating power. Hence also the peculiar relations between the
presidency
and the Ministry of Defense, with personnel and policy flowing from the
latter to the former.
In this scheme, the choice of the president is important for the
stability
of the regime, for overly strong tensions must not be allowed to arise
between the presidency and the military hierarchy. Moreover, stability
demands not only that the president be a military man, but that he be
committed to respecting the army's preeminence in making important
political
decisions for the regime as a whole. Hence the difficulties that
surround
the naming of a defense minister, who may threaten to eclipse the
president.
Under President Boumedienne, the post went unfilled, and it was only in
1990
that President Benjedid named Khaled Nezzar to assume the position. The
latter's successor, Liamine Zeroual, became chief of state and has been
very
careful not to name anyone to his former position. The question now is
whether the election of 16 November 1995 will mark a rupture with this
arrangement or will reproduce it. Will the elections resolve the
contradiction between the two powers, and give to the regime the
electoral
legitimacy that it has been lacking? Time will tell whether President
Zeroual will act in the name of the electorate from which his formal
mandate
comes, and whether he, like President Boumedienne, will succeed in
uniting
the two powers in his own person.
The Turn Toward Competition
Democratization, begun by the Constitution ratified in February 1989,
has
run up against the double structure of state power that the military men
have been trying to preserve. They agreed to open up the political
system by
introducing multipartism, electoral competition, and freedom of the
press in
order to limit corruption and give the regime more efficacy and
credibility.
Multipartism, they calculated, would be bound to reinvigorate the FLN by
subjecting it to competition. Thus the goal of democratization has been
a
kind of institutional reorganization during which the executive power is
supposed to face electoral testing, but without any question being
raised
about the regime's great unwritten law: The army is the source of power.
The
military men had no fear of [End Page 98] elections, since they expected
that the FLN would end up forming an understanding with the FIS in the
National Assembly, the upshot being a coalition government that would
respect the legitimating power of the army. The victory of any single
party
aside from the FLN would raise doubts about the political preeminence of
the
army, since if such a party enjoyed a majority in the Assembly it could
form
a government without the army's go-ahead and, above all, could threaten
to
select a defense minister from its own ranks, which would put an end to
the
double structure of state power along with the army's political
preeminence.
It would, in short, mean the beginning of a new regime.
For unique historical reasons, the Algerian regime is built around the
splitting--and the confusion--of the legitimating power and the
executive
power, and is organized into an administrative state in which, unlike
the
situation that obtains in a state under law, sovereignty is neither
formally
affirmed nor institutionally localized. The legitimating power is hidden
by
institutions that do not correspond to political reality; it takes cover
behind them in order to keep the nation from becoming aware that it
possesses sovereignty. This power fears public exposure not out of
cynicism
or Machiavellianism, but because the political sphere, which is not
independent of the religious and social spheres, is not differentiated
from
them. The military hierarchy, the purveyor of legitimacy, is not even
aware
that it is substituting itself for the electorate, retaining sovereignty
in
place of that electorate, which in turn does not question whether the
military is making good use of that sovereignty. In its rare ideological
statements, the army invokes the national sovereignty that it embodies
and
has the mission of defending against foreign foes. The military
identifies
itself with the nation and not with the electorate--which does not exist
in
the military's eyes because political conflicts among Algerians are
presumed
not to exist. Rather, there are political conflicts between Algerians
and
foreigners, or between Algerian patriots and Algerian traitors. But this
type of conflict must not be institutionalized, for traitors are to be
physically exterminated. Hence the bloody nature of the current crisis.
The
adversaries see each other, respectively, as traitors to the nation or
traitors to Islam (which, for the Islamists, defines the nation).
Neither
side can acknowledge such modern categories as "the electorate" or
"popular
sovereignty," because these categories presuppose the political liberty
of
the individual and, above all, the idea of a minority that can legally
oppose a majority.
The body politic does not think of itself as sovereign and accepts, to a
certain extent, that the army holds the power of legitimation; hence
there
can be no rule of law, for popular sovereignty is the source of modern
law.
This explains the willingness and indeed the zeal with which officials
violate the juridical rules that they have made and that, in theory,
have
the force of law for everyone. Sundry contending factions and
clientelistic
groups flaunt their ability to violate the law [End Page 99] with
impunity;
it is a way of showing their strength. In sum, whether the law made by
the
administrative state applies or does not apply at any given moment
depends
on the balance of forces among various factions at that time. As for
anyone
among the ruled who belongs to no faction and is delivered up to the
arbi-trariness of the Hobbesian state of nature, he must pay in order to
benefit from laws that accord him certain rights, and must also pay to
avoid
laws that would impose upon him some burden or duty. This is why in
Algeria
officials have exorbitant power; they can make the law pay by applying
it or
not applying it, whichever is to their own advantage.
To defeat the factions and neutralize the pressure groups that
manipulate
the bureaucracy and the economy would require an independent judicial
establishment that could enforce the law against people who abuse the
public
trust for private gain. Yet the notion of the autonomy of justice flows
from
the institutional distinction between the sovereign power and the
executive
power. As soon as the sovereign power fails to assert itself as such,
the
judicial power becomes limited to carrying out the orders of the
executive
power, which is precisely what permits those who hold this latter type
of
power to abuse it. The autonomy of the judge is conceivable and feasible
only if the sovereign power--and the awareness that the various actors
have
of it--is institutionally affirmed. If the sovereign power remains
indefinitely in the hands of one group, if it is not the expression of
the
will of the majority of voters, justice will remain subordinated to the
executive power, which will demand that it look solely to the
executive's
interests. And the interests of Algeria's executive power today lie in
gaining loyalists and securing allegiance at any cost so as to hide its
chronic deficit of legitimacy from the rising generations who are not
old
enough to remember the war of national liberation.
Here, precisely, resides one of the Algerian regime's major
contradictions
and the very source, moreover, of the dynamic that has given rise to
violence. The administrative state is being ambushed by officials who
abuse
their power, and by the corruption to which they are drawn. This
arbitrariness and corruption are not so much results of individual greed
and
wickedness as the unavoidable byproducts of a political regime whose
functionaries wield powers that are very broad and frequently open to
abuse.
Corruption is the general rule, involving not just individuals but whole
networks that reach up to the very highest levels of the state and are
tough
to dismantle. As long as an official does not [End Page 100] question
the
basic rule of the regime--that is, the political preeminence of the
army--he
will not be disturbed even if he neglects his job, misuses public funds,
and
lives far beyond his means. If he is relatively discreet and does
nothing to
arouse the enmity of competing networks that are more powerful than his
own,
this official will have nothing to fear from the law and may even climb
up
through the career ranks. Over the years, corruption became pervasive as
a
means of access to wealth; the struggle to acquire strategic government
posts became a key part of the process of accumulating a private
fortune. In
the absence of the independent administration of justice, the
bureaucracy
has divided society up into predatory fiefdoms, with the citizenry as an
inexhaustible resource. These fiefdoms form a strife-ridden system that
draws its homogeneity and coherence from the regime's constitutive
principle. The Algerian regime, in its operation no less than in its
structure, does not have the means to protect itself against the
corruption
that is eating away at its administrative capacity.
The various clientelistic and kinship networks often come to an
agreement
over economic spoils. When they do clash, their battles can extend to
the
highest levels of the state. Compulsory retirement, a posting abroad, a
transfer to a less important department--all these can temporarily put
an
end to such conflicts, with the settlement sealed by such personnel
reshufflings. Officials are rarely prosecuted for incompetent
management,
misuse of funds, or corruption; when they are brought to book, it is
invariably for political reasons. Formally, the charges are
mismanagement or
corruption, but the real motive is political score-settling. It may seem
as
though the factions and interest groups give the regime its logic and
its
dynamic. In truth, however, those factions are but an effect of the
political regime; they appear and form thanks to the regime. Groups and
factions that thwart the regime's logic are eliminated; those that enjoy
the
regime's favor perpetuate themselves by reinforcing its logic,
accumulating
riches and allies in the process. 5
The contradiction of democratization in Algeria is that the leaders have
sought to introduce, alongside the historical legitimacy embodied by the
army, a principle of electoral legitimacy intended to sanction the
government alone. Their aim was to make the two legitimacies converge,
rendering the regime more popular while decreasing corruption and
increasing
the efficiency of its administration of the country's affairs. The
problem
is that any given system can have only one principle of legitimacy, and
can
obey only one source of power. Seeking to solve the problem of
corruption,
the military exposed the regime to a contradiction that would have
proved
fatal. Instead of shoring up the system, the constitutional reforms of
February 1989 precipitated its decay and confronted it with the violent
crisis from which it is still trying to extricate itself. As currently
constituted, the regime is incompatible with freedom of expression, free
electoral competition, and the independence [End Page 101] of the
judiciary.
Meanwhile, the reforming regime has unleashed a play of opposing forces
that
will be difficult to stop unless radical changes are made.
Three Oppositions
Opposition to the regime appeared as a reaction to disillusionment with
the
postindependence state, an entity in which Algerians had placed a heavy
emotional investment after many years of hardship and sacrifice under
colonial rule. Corresponding less and less as the years went by to the
utopian hopes that had attended its birth, this regime was rejected
because
a majority of Algerians found that they could no longer identify with
it.
Some, who belong to the regime even while calling themselves
oppositionists,
think that they can reform it from within by changing its leadership.
There
are others, the Islamists, who want to refound the regime on the basis
of a
religiously based ideology that they believe will keep the regime true
to
its mission. Finally, there are the democrats, who want the regime to
obey
the institutionalized rules of free government. These are Algeria's
three
currents of opposition: the internal opposition, led by figures who
disagree
with the policy that has been adopted in the face of the present crisis;
the
Islamists, who give voice to the aspirations of the common people and as
such enjoy the largest number of supporters; and the democrats, who are
vigorous enough but on the wrong side of current political
circumstances.
The internal opposition. Represented by figures who have been more or
less
discredited by their past participation in the running of the country,
the
internal opposition is the least credible and the least important in
terms
of its impact on the people at large. It is the expression of conflicts
of
interest among the regime's personnel and of power struggles among
various
factions and clienteles. The feuds among clienteles and factions become
public through the forming of parties that exist exclusively on the
basis of
communiqués that are obligingly published by the press. The different
interest groups, even while being very critical, seek either to
consolidate
the regime by keeping its essence intact, to strengthen their own
positions
by denigrating competing groups, or to improve the efficiency of
administration in order to raise the people's estimation of the regime
while
promising to limit corruption as much as possible and reorganize the
economy. Obviously, these groups, whatever their degree of activism and
their criticisms of past policies, are not really in the opposition. The
true opposition is one that seeks not merely to replace one set of
officials
with another, but to change the institutional forms according to which
the
state is structured and its power is exercised. Consequently, "the
opposition" can mean only those persons or groups who publicly declare
that
they oppose the constitutive principle of the regime--the army's
exercise of
sovereign [End Page 102] authority--and oppose it no matter what
institutional artifices are used to conceal it. If we start with this
definition, we are left with two main currents of opposition: the
Islamists
and the democrats.
The Islamists. As expressed by the FIS, the political ideology of the
Islamists corresponds to the political culture and ideas of the average
Algerian, who blames the regime for its inability to fight corruption.
He
perceives this inability without understanding that it inheres in and
helps
to constitute the regime itself. As he sees it, the government is
incapable
of improving the conditions of everyday life (jobs, housing,
transportation,
and so on) and is dominated by people who seek only to enrich themselves
and
their relatives. He does not understand why the army upholds the
government,
and concludes that some senior officers must have been bribed. Without
realizing that the army retains the legitimating power, he wants to put
institutions on a new footing by entrusting sovereignty to God. Without
ever
putting it clearly in so many words, he is questioning the institutional
bases of the postindependence state. At any rate, he tells himself,
sovereignty belongs to God, and to Him it must return. If those in power
fear God and obey Holy Writ, they will not become corrupt. This
reasoning is
shared by a majority of Algerians, who wish for neither fascism nor
theocracy, but appeal to God in order to limit the arrogance and
arbitrariness of the current government. From this point of view, the
Islamists are a populist authoritarian movement and not a totalitarian
movement.
In any case, this desire for divine sovereignty, which is said to be
linked
inextricably to the cultural essence of Muslim peoples, would not be
expressed with so much force if human sovereignty--whether popular or
oligarchic--had been institutionally established from the beginning. The
popular appeal of divine sovereignty, like the votes that millions of
Algerians cast for the Islamists, signified a desire to name the
sovereign
power, to draw it out of the state of anonymity in which the army keeps
it,
and to abolish the "doubleness" of a power that formally resides in the
institutions of the state but actually is retained by the military and
exercised through hidden methods. The divine conception of sovereignty
drew
as many supporters as it did only because the sovereignty of the army
created a zone of obscurity and the voters wanted to put a face on a
method
of decision making that conceals itself and those who operate through