The dilemma of power
THE imperialist press has placed the current situation in Algeria in the spotlight. The gruesome cycle of repression and fundamentalist assassinations has been worse. And populist leader Bélaid Abdesselam's attempt - until he was removed in August 1993 — to escape IMF
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993 almost totally hostile to the fundamentalist movement. The inaccessibility of certain mountainous regions has simply led a number of fundamentalist groups to seek refuge there; this is true of the Afghan veterans who were found in Bougaie smayl number of ambushes
SALHI CHAWKI - Algiers, 26 November 1993
B Y agreeing to promulga-
te an investment code which favours the imperialists and to eliminate at the year's end the ad hoc committee that oversees imports, the Algerian regime can now rely on the solidarity of a broad international "humanitarian" front against the fundamentalists.
The dramatic increase in repression after the setting up of the High Committee of the State (HCE) and the suspension of the 26 December elections was first met with silence. The fundamentalist camp was powerless and there was no other opposition, in spite of the success of the January 1992 gathering following a call by the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS).
We then became used to the grisly routine of daily assassinations of senior policemen and those close to them and the odious ritual of televised confessions of those arrested - too soon not to suspect physical abuse. And the League for the Defence of Human Rights has spoken of dozens of cases of torture.
The journey to this point has had its dramatic moments. The assassination in June 1992 of Boudiaf, President of the HCE, which led to fears of chaos and civil war, broke the isolation of the government and won it the support of modernist parties and sectors of the popular masses.
The bomb attack on the Airport and the hideous spectacle of human debris shook the public and turned it against the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The murder, in the spring of this year, of the sociologist Liabes, the former Minister for Higher Education, signalled the beginning of attacks on civilians, and a general climate of fear.
It was only the deaths of Francophone intellectuals, from the intellectual and journalist Tahar Djaout to the psychiatry professor Boucebci, which alerted intellectuals in Europe to what was happening in Algeria.
While the government and its friends thought that they had put an end to the attacks, declaring that "the last fifteen minutes have arrived" (using a well-known phrase of a governor-general during the Algerian War), there were fresh victims - including the journalist Smail Yefsah, whose death provoked unanimous anger.
A Sudanese or Iranian plot? A neocolonial undertaking by the French? Destabilisation by the Algerian secret services and the "politico-financial mafia"? An Israeli operation? The fundamentalists themselves advanced the fiction of an Islamic army commanded by "General Chébouti", supported by a civilian diplomatic force abroad — functioning by word of mouth, with a clandestine radio station, newspapers posted at the entrances to mosques, and a list of people to be assassinated.
In reality, the armed branches of the FIS, such as El-takfir wal Hijra, were largely dismantled during the campaign of preventative repression unleashed in June 1991 following the suspension of elections. From the huge FIS activist movement, only a few thousand became involved in military activities. Although some military leaders, like Chébouti, did emerge, groups tended to be unco-ordinated and disorganised.
As fundamentalism is essentially an urban movement, with little rural base, it was not possible to establish guerrilla forces in the countryside. Those in the mountains near Algiers are city dwellers who came and held the local population hostage. While the Kabyle region is often cited as guerrilla territory, it is and the rare well-planned operation -the assassination of Boudiaf, for example, and the attempt on General Neziar, Minister of Defence — are discounted, the assassinations are usually of civilians or individual policemen doing their daily rounds. It is said that there have been 3 thousand deaths in the last two years; among them, there have been as many taxi drivers as journalists.
The attacks are the work of the small autonomous groups which identify with Chébouti and the Armed Islamic Movement (MIA), the leader of each group making decisions and determining the targets. Military powerlessness leads them to select easy prey: policemen on coffee breaks, civil servants shopping for groceries, or local leaders leaving their apartments.
The violence has become commonplace and is increasingly directed at targets likely to provoke maximum media coverage. According to police, the assassination of intellectuals and journalists is the work of one single group, whose leader, Ras el Ghorab, is on the run. Recently, the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA) and Mekhloufi's (an army deserter) movement also became specialists in this kind of operation.
On the purely military level, the fundamentalists are no threat. The attack on a small military post in Bougzoul, south of Algiers, has not been repeated elsewhere. It is in the political sphere that the government is worried. Even though fundamentalist violence has provoked universal scorn, nevertheless it has managed to terrorise the population, which consequently has elected for neutrality. If they often blame assassinations on secret forces within the government, this is usually to avoid having to confront local fundamentalists.
The attacks have obliged the police and representatives of the State to leave their homes and neighbourhoods and only appear in public in well-protected groups. To underline the presence and
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dictates was ignored abroad. ALGERIA
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993 authority of the State, there are numerous blockades and checkpoints, which have deepened already simmering dis-
To the mounting calls of former democrats for the crushing of heavily populated neighbourhoods, which are the fundamentalist strongholds, the government has replied that it does not wish to throw a political and social lifeline to the movement. However, the fundamentalists are already discredited Held responsible for the general fear and insecurity, they will not be forgiven for attacking junior police officers, and the next door neighbour. They will pay a heavy price for the hundreds of hold-ups and the burned down factories.
### IMF demands
The governments which have come and gone since the rise of fundamentalism have all faced the same problem. How can they set up the "market economy" demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and desired by the local propertied classes without destroying the economy? They cannot afford to nourish the social desperation which breeds fundamentalism.
The problem is that with US$7 billion to US$9 billion in annual debt repayments — more than 70% of export earnings - the regime needs massive credits every year. Two thirds of food products are imported and the entire economy depends on imports of spare parts. Devaluations of the dinar provoke increased misery and discontent which strengthens the fundamentalists.
To liberalise imports, as the IMF demands, would provoke the immediate collapse of the industrial sector, as occurred in East Germany and Poland. It may be dependent on some outside imports and not be particularly efficient, but it is still significant. There would be no future for the steel, truck, television and railway car industries, the driving forces of the Algerian public sector. There would be no hope for the textile and shoe industries, which are already suffering from competition from smuggled goods. And it would be the end for the industrial complexes which employ
The various governments have done nothing but make promises in this area, delaying the leap into darkness. It is this refusal to accept the social cost of accelerated liberalisation, within the context of a creeping civil war, which explains the military's appointment of Bélaid Abdesselam, the father of the industriali30 sation of the 1970s, following the Boudiaf assassination.
In opposition, Bélaid proposed, against the liberal reformers, a war economy which could make the minimum required imports without having to go on borrowing. Now in government, he wants imports to be reduced as far as possible over the next three to five years, until the servicing of the debt drops to forty percent of export earnings.
Algeria has spent US$26 billion over four years in interest and capital for a debt that continues to grow, and which does not include the military debt. Bélaid intended to escape this trap by doubling the country's natural gas exporting capacity by 1996. Alas, the IMF and Algeria's creditors would not
In particular the French demanded that the debt was rescheduled, so that the conditions are entirely clear and no escape possible. When Algeria asked that its regular debt payments be taken into consideration, Camdessus replied that, "Wealth comes to those who pay their debts, but the IMF will only help those who have a reform programme." Or rather, a programme of economic suicide and capitulation to imperialists.
In a long speech, which awakened the anti-imperialism weaved into the consciousness of the Algerian masses, Bélaïd listed the unsavoury items spelled out by Camdessus: devaluation which would halve the average working class wage; budgetary equilibrium which would forbid the government from financing public enterprises in deficit; and the disastrous opening of the national market. All for a derisory financial advantage of US$1.5 billion.
Bélaid's promises for the openingup of free trade zones and facilities for foreign investors were not followed up, which greatly displeased the IMF. He then faced an avalanche of attacks from liberals for his proposed tax on estates, ranging from accusing him of Bolshevism to denouncement in the columns of a number of "independent" newspapers.
Despite his actions, Bélaïad's authoritarianism isolated him from the workers, whom, in the State enterprises, he contained and repressed with draconian disciplinary measures. The drop in the price of oil deprived Algeria of US$ 1.4 billion in forecast revenues and his ability to revive the economy gave no reason for hope to the popular masses and unemployed youth.
Without the people his populism could not succeed. Further, his brusque style isolated him from all possible partners at a time went the regime was going through a delicate phase, as December 1993 approached, the end of the HE's "mandate". He was dismissed a few months before.
The government of his successor, Reda Malek, went about reassuring the creditors and the propertied classes. They were calmed by the nomination of Benachenhou, a former IMF administrator, as Minister for the Economy. While he says that he would prefer it not to lead to de-industrialisation, he is a supporter of liberalism and plans to agree to the rescheduling of the debt.
But in the real world, he will not be given a choice; the military cannot accept social chaos on the eve of the ending of the HCE. The taboo word "rescheduling" has been excluded and both the national media and imperialist creditors have abandoned their frenetic campaign, worried by the situation of the Algerian masses.
What is disturbing about the rescheduling is not the delay in payment but the humiliating conditions and the likely consequences. The adjustment plan is ready. An investment code has been promulgated, offering considerable fiscal advantages, guarantees on profit repatriation, and administrative facilities with no requirement for re-investment, or other requirements. It authorises free trade zones, which by definition allow imperialist investors to ignore labour laws, avoid taxes, and "forget" about obtaining authorisation for their activities. The liberalisation of imports has been announced and the dinar will be devalued.
### Smokescreen
The legal smokescreen created in January 1992, after the President resigned, consisted of the designation of a collegiate structure, the HCE, to act during the remainder of his term of office. But, with the term coming to an end in December 1993, accordingly the army decided to set up a "transition" period of three to five years which would maintain the current anti-democratic order. There is no longer a legal smokescreen but to give it moral legitimacy referenda, allparty conferences and bodies to supervise the period of transition are permitted.
On one side there are the "republican eradicators", who do not wish to run the risk of a referendum and call for the banning of the Islamic parties. On the other there are the "reconcilers", who with the FLN, Ait Ahmed's FFS, Ben Bella and moderate Islamicists in Hamas and
Ennahda have called for the government to show signs of openness and involve the FIS in dialogue. It is an unequal struggle as the eradicators (who have marginal electoral support) have the support of the press.
The question of the credibility of the post-HCE institutions' credibility is a central one. For the moment, the HCE and the National Dialogue Committee, made up of several generals and dignitaries from the regime, have managed well. Their communiqués announce that forty-one parties have made representations and that all support the sacred principles of the nation. It remains to be seen whether these purely formal concessions are sufficient to guarantee the support of the FFS and others for the National Conference which is currently being organised.
The political crisis has clearly led to a downturn in social struggle. Those sectors which involve themselves in oppositional activity, in spite of the state of emergency and the draconian circulars, have soon been discouraged by new waves of assassinations of civilians. For example, this led Air Algeria maintenance workers to withdraw their strike
Nevertheless, social conflicts in the hundreds have been counted and all of a sudden, things are accelerating - a national strike of office workers in the SNAPAP trade union: notice of a strike on 6 December by the whole industrial region of Rouiba, which employs several tens of thousands of workers; a week-long general strike by education workers; calls from trade unions for a day of protest; and the campaign against the payment of the debt.
Benhammouda, General Secretary of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA), previously a weapon in the liberal campaigns against Bélaid, has taken up the last, "which was appropriated by the ruling layers."
Were it not for the discrediting of the union leadership, which called for the coup d'etat and supported each successive government, and the wave of trade union repression which did little to define goals for its members, the UGTA would be the ideal framework for political recomposition among the masses and would offer a way out of the crisis.
There is still a long road before us. All the more reason to not lose one more minute — to work with all those who are willing to resist the IMF plan, to resist liberal aggression, and build an alternative for the weakest layers of society. *
31 International Viewpoint #251 December 1993
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