ALGIERS, 19 July 2005 — Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has ordered the dissolution of local councils in the restive Kabylie region as part of a peace plan agreed with the Berber ethnic minority earlier this year.
The Berbers, who make up a fifth of the country’s 33 million people, largely boycotted local elections in 2002 because of a long-running standoff with the government in Algiers.
The Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa before the Arab invasion in the 7th century. In Algeria they complain of discrimination by the Arab majority.
Bouteflika signed a decree late on Sunday to dissolve municipal and local assemblies in the provinces of Tizi Ouzou, Boumerdes, Bejaia and Bouira east of the capital Algiers. Partial local elections will be held later this year. The government and tribal leaders agreed in January to a wide-ranging peace deal, which includes new elections, officially recognizing the Berber language and investing in the long neglected northeastern region where most of them live.
The Kabylie-based party Socialists Forces Front (FFS), which will now lose several local seats, threatened protests.
“(It’s a project) by the regime to weaken democracy in this region,” FFS spokesman Karim Tabou said. “The actions we’ll take will be political and peaceful.”
The unrest in Kabylie has made it difficult for the authorities to clamp down on hundreds of rebels based there. Most belong to the Al-Qaeda-aligned Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) who stage frequent deadly attacks.
Unrest has been fanned by decades of mistrust between the ethnic minority and the government. Berbers have often protested through civil disturbances, including election boycotts, strikes and clashes with police. Bouteflika, re-elected last year, has made the Berber question part of his “national reconciliation” drive to bring stability to the oil producing country weakened by more than a decade of a separate militant uprising. The Berbers have campaigned for greater rights since Algeria gained independence from France in 1962.
