Islamist political parties and movements in Algeria : which prospects for the European Union?

Immediately, this ‘national contract’ is vehemently denounced by the Algerian regime and, very significantly, by all the so-called forces of opposition that the regime had managed to control and coerce.

The impossible ‘escape-route out of the crisis’

By the end of 1998, the Algerian society is deeply riven by nearly seven years of civil war, and in particular by the horrific massacres of the civilian population executed by the GIA ‘made in DRS’. Having neutralised the prospect of any effective opposition, in particular the political Islamist forces, for some considerable time, the army chiefs and the DRS then decide to open a new chapter. They install the civilian Abdelaziz Bouteflika (an old apparatchik of the system from 1962 to 1978) as Head of State. He is, therefore, ‘elected’ in April 1999, through a rigged electoral process. In accordance with the demands of his mentors, Bouteflika introduces the ‘Concorde Civile’ endorsed with a massive majority through a national referendum, on September 16, 1999. In theory, this law should have led to a true ‘national reconciliation’, including the former partisans of the FIS in the negotiations.

But the legislation, like so much else, is only a political ‘sleight of hand’, appearing as a positive reform initiative but actually consolidating the power of a corrupt and divisive regime. Parliament, with little actual power in its hands, is monopolised by a three party ‘presidential Alliance ‘ : the FLN (which the DRS resumed control of, as early as 1996), the RND (a clone of the FLN, created ex nihilo in 1995) and the MSP, of the ‘domesticated ‘ Islamist Mahfoud Nahnah (now deceased). This ‘alliance ‘ is formed for appearances, but it prefigures the type of political structure that the military cabal would want to ‘normalize’ in the long run.

The immovable Chief of the DRS, General Mohamed Médiène, in a more or less unstable alliance with the other strong man of le pouvoir , General Larbi Belkheir (officially announced as a simple ‘cabinet chief’ to president Bouteflika, and from 2005, Ambassador to Morocco, but who in reality was one of the main masterminds during the ‘dirty war’), looks from 1999 onwards, at an escape-route out of the political crisis. He draws inspiration from the South Korean and Romanian transitional models. In these two countries, the chiefs of the secret services (the KCIA and the Securitate) in 1988 and 1989 respectively, succeeded (more so in South Korea than in Romania) to extricate themselves from military-based regimes where they had occupied key positions, instead reinventing themselves as business entrepreneurs taking control of private businesses which would ensure their fortunes. Transposed to Algeria, this scenario implies that the military ‘decision-makers’ will, one day, have to yield their power to a civil administration, as long as three main conditions are fulfilled:

1. Assurances of an unconditional amnesty in Algeria for all the crimes they committed since 1992, including the massive misappropriation of funds over the last twenty years, receiving cast-iron guarantees that they will never face prosecution abroad;

2. construction of an economic infrastructure that would enable them (and their children) to convert the current source of their substantial wealth (occult ‘commissions’ received on imports and exports), for personal benefit, into capital invested in large future business ventures;

3. the successful ascension of Islamo-conservatives to the future dominant political class, able to pacify forms of social unrest and protect the economic interests of today’s military decision-makers.

However, the system is so sclerotic, the political class so corrupted and discredited by more than forty years of domination by the SM-DRS, that this scenario faces many difficulties. President Bouteflika, in trying to widen his room to manoeuvre in negotiations with the generals, initially delayed the promulgation of a genuine amnesty for the crimes committed during the ‘dirty war’. When he finally does so in February 2006, his official edicts contradict the Algerian Constitution and all of the international conventions signed by Algeria. And attempts at siphoning off public funds through legitimate business fronts, spectacularly fail as demonstrated in the case of the corporate group ‘Khalifa’, discreetly promoted by General Larbi Belkheir, ending in the group’s bankruptcy of in 2002, and the fleeing of billionaire Rafik Khalifa to the UK, leaving a trail of scandals in his wake.

From 2000 to 2006, the only notable successes scored by the military ‘decision-makers’ strategy are twofold: the growing support of the regime from large numbers of former members of the FIS opposition, thanks to a systematic deployment of bribes and various sweeteners; the ‘cultivation’ of an ‘Islamist middle class’ rallying to the military regime who have supported the ‘career reorientation’ of many former ‘little chiefs’ from the ‘Islamist’ maquis , whose budding commercial activities allow them to build up small fortunes. This proto ‘middle class’ may form the future political base of a co-opted and toothless Islamo-conservative government, and could potentially replace, much to their disgust, the small minority of French-speaking secularists known as the ‘eradicators’, a label applied due to their unwillingness to negotiate with Islamists and enthusiasm for the State policy of ‘eradication’.

At the same time, despite the unexpected cash bonanza which saw tens of billions of dollars flood the State coffers thanks to the rising price of oil and gas (whose exports account for 98% of receipts of the foreign trade and approximately 60% of the financial resources of the State), wide sections of the population, both urban and rural, continue to live in hopeless misery, surrounded by deteriorating infrastructures. As a consequence, due to the lack of open political frameworks, the opposition manifests itself mainly through the ‘riots of misery’, occurring with increasing and impressive frequency after 2002; but also by the growing wave of activism originating from the new autonomous trade unions, principally in the public sector.

Facing a potentially damaging social revolt, the DRS chiefs have chosen to play the ‘residual terrorism’ card. The GIA were gradually substituted, from 1998 onwards, by a new mysterious armed Islamist terror group, the ‘Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat’ (GSPC). There is little doubt that the DRS has also infiltrated and now manipulates this organisation (even if some factions within it have probably retained some level of autonomy).

The GSPC today fulfils a double role: Since September 2001, its mere existence provides valuable political capital for the Algerian regime, able to reap the benefits of aligning itself more closely to the West. In the name of the ‘Global War on Terror’, the regime is further legitimised in its role as a regional gendarme, integrated within a US (and European) geopolitical and military strategy in the Sahara and in the Mediterranean, aiming to stop the migratory flows of people coming from the South through Algeria and heading North, and to control territory rich in hydrocarbons. Domestically, the armed violence of the GSPC serves equally to justify the State of Emergency and the continuation of laws reneging on international human rights conventions. These measures justify the criminalisation of trade unions opposition and ‘riots of the misery’. More importantly, since the beginning of 2006, the map of the intensified terrorist activities of the GSPC that can be drawn (targeting both civilians and the security forces), increasingly matches the sites of the riots; the bombs that explode at the exact locations where riots have just occurred. In brief, it is highly likely that the DRS exploits ‘Islamic terror’ to curb widespread social anger.

Which criteria for a legitimate representation of Islamists?

The genuine political opposition forces to the Algerian regime have been currently weakened and dispersed. There are extremely few official representatives of the Islamist legalist trends still politically credible, within the Algerian national borders. This situation can be explained by the extreme ‘effectiveness’ of the repression imposed by le pouvoir since 1992, and by the level of sophistication attained with the manipulation of survivors of the massacres: many valuable key players have been physically eliminated, while many survivors (both in Algeria and in exile) have made Faustian pacts and allied themselves, by self-preservation or self-interest, to the military leaders and to their anti-democratic conception of political power.

Within this framework, in gauging the credibility of Islamists as genuine representatives of Islamist trends and legitimate negotiators with the EU the criteria appear to be as follows:

1. their degree of autonomy in relation to le pouvoir , which is both reflective of the strength of their political base and their ‘oppositional’ credibility;

2. their engagement in seeking and finding a genuine political solution to the civil war, and notably their involvement in the 1995 ‘national contract’ of Sant’ Egidio: this ‘Sant’ Egidio criterion’ is reflective of the wholehearted adherence to the principle of the democratic rotation of political parties based on the popular will of the people; considering that the Algerian regime was vehemently opposed to the process (forcing its allies to do the same), this criterion thus reveals the genuineness of the political opponents;

3. their commitment to a transitional framework for justice, establishing the truth behind the massive violations of human rights since 1992, and to ensure those responsible face impartial judgement, whether members of the security forces or of Islamist armed groups.

These three criteria can practically distinguish those, amongst the Algerian Islamist trends who have, more or less clearly, signed up to abide by the basic rules of the democratic process: the two parties granted early political legalisation by the chiefs of the DRS who knew they could control them; and the various survivors of the banned FIS, divided between those that have u-turned and allied themselves to the Generals, and the others.

The official Islamist competitors to the FIS

In 2006, the ‘official’ competitors to the FIS, widely discredited in the Algerian public community, continue to pay the price of their engagement with a thoroughly corrupt system.

The Hamas party, which morphs into the ‘Movement for the Islamic Society’ (then ‘for Peace’), is formed by Mahfoud Nahnah (who died in June 2003), and is currently led by Aboudjerra Soltani. The stranglehold of le pouvoir on this movement has been unremitting from its creation. Nahnah ran for presidency of Algeria in 1995 and was a member of the government coalition and his successor, Soltani, became minister (without portfolio). The fact that Nahnah was initially viewed as the Algerian representative of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement has lead to a paradoxical and unique situation, as regards to the other countries in the region: in Algeria, this strain of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers holds no credibility as representative of the Islamist political opposition. However, the school of thought inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood still occupies an important place in that country.

The party En-Nahda (The Revival) for its part was founded (and is led to this day) by Abdallah Djaballah, on ideological premises close to those of the FIS, and the trend of the Muslim Brotherhood. Born out of a genuine oppositional initiative, En-Nahda very quickly faced political realities and had to pay the price of its legal survival. Present during the Sant’ Egidio meeting, Djaballah did not clearly support the process, although abstained from outright public condemnation. He has since regularly supported the phoney political pluralism pushed by the administration, collaborating, by notably volunteering himself as a candidate in the rigged presidential elections of April 2004, to give them an outward appearance of democratic legitimacy. Since then, his party is prey to internal dissensions, undoubtedly provoked by the DRS.

The heirs of the FIS legacy

It is obvious that the broad social and political constituency that the FIS had managed to build up and mobilize in the early 90s is still the most important component of a potentially effective legalist opposition to the regime. But, as a political party, the FIS is no longer in existence. Since its banning and dissolution in March 1992, its ‘representation’ – with no current legal basis or coherent structure, even at a clandestine level – is reduced to its two historic leaders, Ali Belhadj and Abassi Madani, as well as some of its exiled executives. It is very difficult to seriously evaluate the supporters of each of the players, in the broader context of a population deeply hostile to the military and security chiefs, and who have been largely deprived of any realistic political perspective, despite a genuine will to participate.

As for the EU, the criteria for the identification of credible Islamist interlocutors both in Algeria and in exile is currently less a matter of the political positions that they formerly or currently occupy, than of the cautious evaluation of the public’s trust that one can attribute to each of them with respect to their bases (and, of course, to their degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the regime). Because of the lack of space here for a more (and indispensable) detailed analysis, we will only concentrate briefly on the most notorious personalities.