AFTER LAST weekend’s huge demonstrations in Algiers, no one can be in any doubt that something momentous is happening in Algeria. This was people power on the grand scale. What was an anti-government revolt limited to Berber speakers in Kabylia, in the northeast of Algeria, has mushroomed into a nationwide movement against the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. It is of such serious proportions that despite the government’s ban on marches in the capital, it is difficult to believe that it is going to fade away. It will either end in major political change or in a military clampdown.
This is the most dangerous crisis that the Algerian authorities have ever faced, even more so than the mass protests following the decision to annul the 1991 elections won by the Islamic opposition. The various different groups opposed to it, with their different objectives, have come together: The young unemployed without hope, the Berbers of Kabylia, and all those Algerians of an older generation tired of official corruption and who no longer trust the ruling party; and those who want Algeria to become an Islamic republic.
They have made common cause. The young alienated now support the Berbers. So do Islamic activists; and, as with the rest, the Berbers want change. Previously, the authorities played off one against the other. The government tried it again this week, pinning the blame for the riots in the capital on protesters from Kabylia — a short-sighted move which can only fuel bitterness in Kabylia. The tactic no longer works. In any event, although thousands of Berbers had descended on Algiers to demonstrate, the overwhelming proportion of those on the streets, and those arrested for pillaging from shops, were young Algerians from the capital.
For President Bouteflika, this coming together of disparate opponents is an awesome development. It makes a showdown almost inevitable. His extraordinary admission that the country is in a crisis, coupled with a refusal to step down but a willingness to start talks to find a peaceful solution, has raised suspicions he is being set up as a scapegoat for the unrest, or is allowing himself to be made into one.
But that is to forget that he is a skillful operator, who knows that the best way to take the sting out of a crisis is by sounding conciliatory. He used the same tactic both during the 1999 presidential election campaign and afterward, when his victory was disputed because of the boycott by the opposition and the low turnout. It worked in the sense that the mainstream Islamic opposition has been tamed.
But the authorities have not even begun to deliver on the economic and social fronts. That is why popular resentment has not gone away. The authorities have themselves to blame. Algeria is rich in mineral wealth. It could have been as prosperous as Saudi Arabia.
Incompetence, maladministration, and corruption, allied to a dogmatic espousal of Socialist central planning and ownership, has robbed Algerians of what should have been. The demand for change is fast reaching the point of no return — the point at which it becomes unstoppable. For the Algerian government, it is make or break time.
