Algeria’s crises after the earthquake

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/15_07_03_d.asp

The May 21, 2003, earthquake that took some 2,200
souls, wounded 10,000 and left 150,000 homeless has
failed to jolt Algeria’s political system out of its
paralysis. The state’s slow reaction to the disaster
has further eroded President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika’s
authority, with the result that a growing list of
rivals may contest his bid for re-election in April
2004.

Still, the fragmentation of the opposition, coupled
with a sense of hopelessness and cynicism in the wider
population of 30 million (75 percent of whom are under
30), means that Algeria’s rulers will face little
pressure to redefine the essential lines of the
country’s politics.

In the year prior to the quake, Bouteflika’s authority
had been repeatedly challenged. Although he was
elected in 1999 in a highly flawed poll, many
Algerians hoped he would help their country exit the
morass of civil war. Crucially, the all-powerful
military had backed him in the expectation that he
would restore Algeria’s international standing.

However, the military soon lost faith in Bouteflika.
He not only questioned the cancellation of the January
1992 legislative elections to prevent the Islamic
Salvation Front (FIS) from taking power, but, more
importantly, he initiated a series of limited
political and economic reforms which ­ as the high
abstention rate during the May 2002 parliamentary
elections clearly showed ­ satisfied no one. Alarmed
by his declining legitimacy, the military threatened
to withdraw its support.
“The army,” Chief of Staff General Mohammed Lamari
declared, “is ready to accept any candidate, even an
Islamist.” The military’s disenchantment encouraged
Bouteflika’s rivals to challenge his authority. Prime
Minister Ali Benflis declined to back the president’s
plans to run for a second term. Bouteflika dismissed
him and replaced him with Ahmed Ouyahia. But then the
new prime minister declared that the “time for
dialogue with Islamists is over,” an implicit rebuke
of the president, who had floated the idea of widening
the scope of his controversial “amnesty program” for
Islamic militias.
The government’s failure to bring quick relief to the
earthquake victims further eroded Bouteflika’s
standing. When he visited Bourmedes, a town severely
damaged in the quake, his entourage was greeted with
stones and insults. Seeking to put the best face on an
awkward moment, the president praised the
“spiritedness” of Algerian youth, but this could not
undo the damage to his shaky reputation.

The military might now back another presidential
candidate, possibly Ouyahia, while the split between
Bouteflika and the military is encouraging others to
challenge the president. Possible contenders include
the leader of the Islamist Islah Party, Abdullah
Djaballah, veteran populist Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, who
has close ties to the remnants of the FIS, and two
former prime ministers, Mahmoud Hamrouche and Ali
Benflis. But it is doubtful that any of these men
commands sufficient support to win a popular mandate.
Indeed, Bouteflika may still recover ­ a possibility
highlighting the sad state of political leadership in
Algeria.

As for the secular and Islamist parties, they are not
sufficiently united or organized. Among the secular
parties, the once-dominant Front de Liberation
Nationale is rent by internal squabbles, while the
mainstream Berber political parties ­ the Socialist
Forces Front and the Rassemblement pour la Culture et
la Democratie ­ have seen their support in Kabylia
plummet in the wake of a two-year rebellion. The near
irrelevance of the mainstream Berber parties has
deprived secular Arabs of a potential ally, thus
increasing the secularists’ fears of Islamist
domination.

Still, given the splits within the Islamist camp, a
zero-sum confrontation between secularists and
Islamists similar to the one that tore Algeria apart
in the 1990s is unlikely. Islah’s influence is
growing, but it might face more competition in the
future from the more moderate Harakat Moudjtamaa
al-Salam (HMS). The death in June of Sheikh Mahmoud
Nahnah, the leader of the HMS, could strengthen the
party by opening space for a new leadership.

The recent release from prison of former deputy FIS
leader Ali Belhadj will further muddy the Islamist
arena, especially if Belhadj tries to reconstitute the
FIS in some form. But the military will oppose such a
development, even as its leaders promise to stay out
of politics. Thus while Lamari has stated that he will
not oppose lifting the emergency laws that hamper
political expression, he adds that such an action
would “not signify a return of the army to its
barracks.”
Popular anger at the government’s poor handling of the
earthquake emergency should have been a wake-up call
for Algeria’s leaders. In fact, it did not elicit a
coherent attempt to address the many challenges facing
the country. Instead of significant political reform,
in the coming year we can expect more fragmentation in
the opposition and more internal political warfare
within and between the civilian elite and the
military.
As for the economy, oil and gas will prop it up,
easing the pressure for the kinds of market reforms
that might loosen the grip of the powers that be. The
system will muddle along, buffeted by crises yet
surviving another day.

Lamine Chikhi is the director of public relations for
Al-Khabar newspaper in Algiers. Daniel Brumberg is a
visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. This is a revised version of an
article reprinted with permission from the Arab Reform
Bulletin #2 (July 2003) (www.ceip.org/ArabReform) (c)
2003, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace


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