Article published on June 4, 2001 by The Estimate
The Kabylie Erupts: Algeria’s Berbers Are Heard From
Algeria’s violent Islamist insurgency has been somewhat less intense in the past two years (though one press report claimed 40 soldiers were killed in an ambush recently), and President ‘Abdelaziz Bouteflika has sought to portray Algeria as being in a period of recovery and reconciliation, though not always successfully. The fact that the largest Islamic movement, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), has been honoring a ceasefire has contributed to a gradual normalization. But for two weeks now, the population of the largely Berber mountain region known as Kabylia (or Kabylie in French) has been in ferment, with numerous dead - 30 according to the government, 80 according to the protesters, 40 according to other reports - and this is a protest unrelated to the Islamist insurgency, except insofar as economic and social problems have been exacerbated by nine years of troubles. It is the first major social crisis to confront Bouteflika since his election in 1999, and his response so far has been criticized as inadequate.
Algeria’s Berbers are the largest Berber community in North Africa, though as is often the case with minorities in the region, their exact numbers are difficult to assess with confidence: the last census to ask the question was in 1966. Though the Berbers are the indigenous peoples of all of North Africa, today the term is used for those who speak Berber languages rather than Arabic; for Algeria estimates range anywhere from 15% to 35%, with most experts choosing a figure somewhere in between. (For a general overview of Algeria’s Berbers, their political activism and other issues, see the two-part Dossier, "Algeria’s Berbers: Third Force in a Complex War", in The Estimate for July 17 and July 31, 1998, published during the last major expression of Berber discontent.)
The current wave of Berber protests began after an 18-year-old died in a gendarmerie post on April 18. What began as demonstrations protesting that fact and alleged discrimination soon became a broader protest of a wide range of grievances: economic as well as linguistic and cultural.
This issue’s Dossier looks at the latest round of trouble in the Kabylie within the context of Algeria’s present situation.
On April 18, an 18-year-old Kabyle youth named Mohamed Guermah was killed in a gendarmerie station in Beni Douala, near the Kabylie capital of Tizi-Ouzo. The gendarmes said initially that he died when an officer’s gun went off accidentally, though a Gendarmerie officer later claimed he had been arrested for attacking police, though subsequently it was stated that the officer whose weapon was fired had been held for manslaughter. As various versions of the official story were put out, the demonstrations spread.
On April 19, the Berber Cultural Movement (MCB), an activist group which seeks to promote recognition of the Tamazight language as an official Algerian language alongside Arabic (and which has close links to the two main Berber political parties), staged major demonstrations in Tizi-Ouzo, bringing some 10,000 marchers into the street.
As demonstrations spread, the Gendarmerie arrested more young people, some of whom were allegedly beaten or mistreated in custody; that led to new demonstrations. By April 22 the trouble had spread to the town of Amizour near the other major Berber center at Béjaïa, and a day later, after Guermah’s funeral, riot police in Beni Douala fired tear gas at the crowd.
Outrage spread, and by April 24 the authorities closed the lycée at Beni Douala. At Amizour the demonstrations turned to a violent riot with buildings and cars set afire. The government announced that the gendarme who killed the youth had been arrested, and in Béjaïa, a deputy police chief was fired, but by now the demonstrations had spread throughout much of the Kabylie and other Berber areas.
As the troubles spread, fatalities began to build, and while the police have claimed that policemen have been killed at least as frequently as demonstrators, what had begun as protest seemed to be turning into something far more serious. The main national highway through the Kabylie was blocked by demonstrators, and trucks were set afire.
Although at Friday prayer on April 27 there were calls for calm, and Berber partisan leaders called for peaceful demonstrations instead of rioting, the troubles continued.
On April 30, President Bouteflika addressed the nation on television, reportedly reading his text in a rather uninispired manner, but promising a commission to investigate the events, as well as efforts to use increasing oil revenues to offset the severe economic hardships of many parts of the country, particulalry the Kabylie. Bouteflika also acknowledged that "a crisis of identity" was also involved in the Berber troubles, and that these identity issues could be addressed in the context of a constitutional reform.
The economic issues are clear enough, and they affect the country as a whole. Unemployment is said to affect about a third of the country, and the years of violence, insurgency and political confusion have been devastating economically. Critics have also complained that Bouteflika is a maverick who likes to make dramatic if symbolic gestures on his own and refuses to work with the political parties in Parliament. Despite some dramatic moves in his program for national reconciliation, Bouteflika is perceived as having done little if anything to improve the economy or equalize social injustices.
But Bouteflika’s speech did venture into controversial territory when he acknowledged that "identity issues" are at stake as well. For years, any discussion of Berber aspirations has often been met with warnings against the "Lebanonization" (or in more recent years, "Yugoslaviazation") of Algeria, that is, promotion of ethnic divisiveness.
"Identity Issues"
Those "identity issues" go to the heart of the problem: the longstanding tension between government efforts at "Arabization" and Berber aspirations to enhance their identity. (For fuller background on these issues, see the two-part Dossier cited in the introduction, in The Estimate of July 17 and 31, 1998.) While economic and social frustrations certainly fueled the outbreak, longstanding grievances over the government’s Arabization policies lie at the heart of the troubles, along with frustration that nothing has been done since the 1998 demonstrations, despite a new President who has spoken of new directions.
As noted in the introduction, even the exact number of Berbers in Algeria - persons for whom Tamazight or other Berber languages are their first language - is debatable, since the question has not been asked on recent censuses. They may constitute as much as a quarter or more of the population, however, not to mention another half million living in France. There are also Berber populations in the other Maghreb states. The modern Berber identity movement, disdaining the term "Berber" which ultimately comes from "barbarian", has embraced the name used by the largest Algerian group, the Kabyles, for themselves: Amazigh for the singular and Imazighen for the plural, from a word meaning free or noble men. The language is called Tamazight, properly the name for the Kabyle language, one of many Berber tongues, but today often used by activists to mean Berber languages generally. So too, activists refer to the Maghreb as Tamazgha, the land of the Imazighen.
The official Algerian attitude towards Berber identity is a complex one. It is not as extreme as Turkey’s attitude towards the use of the Kurdish language, but from time to time it seems to be trending in that direction.
During the French colonial period, there were periods when French administrators favored Berbers over Arabs (though the colons settled in the country looked down on both), and this led to a classic divide-and-rule colonial system in which many Arabs resented Berbers even though the Berbers were not particularly favored either.
But the colonial period did see more Kabyles entering the French educational system rather than the Arabic-based kuttab Islamic schools, and as a result the Berber population was likelier to have functional French, while Arabic-speakers tended to identify themselves more thoroughly with Islam (though the Berbers are also, of course, Muslims).
Among some Algerian nationalists there came to be a stereotyping of the Kabyles as somehow more pro-French, though in fact Kabyle leaders were involved in the revolutionary movement from its beginnings. In fact, the only one of the chefs historiques of the national movement who is still a major player today is the Berber leader Hoçine Aït Ahmed, still head of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS; See Profiles, this issue). He was one of the three "external" leaders who, with Ahmed Ben Bella and Mohamed Khider, led the movement from Cairo until they were intercepted and imprisoned in France.
Aït Ahmed led a revolt against Ben Bella after Algeria’s 1962 independence, and was imprisoned; escaping, he fled to Europe and lived there for 23 years.
At independence, some 60% of Algeria’s population was not literate in Arabic, and therefore under President Houari Boumedienne (who overthrew Ben Bella in 1965) a major Arabization program was begun. Although in part this amounted to a Quebec-style set of regulations about street signs and the like, and a shift in the educational system to emphasize Arabic in the early years and only introduce French later, the program had a dual effect: it not only discouraged the use of French, but also of Tamazight. The Kabyle population had tended to favor French, as noted, and resisted the imposition of a language not their own.
Some aspects of the Arabization program were seemingly petty. Tamazight had been taught at the University of Algiers this was canceled. Tamazight radio programing was cut back and one Berber group was required to sing its songs in Arabic. A list of "approved" names for Algerian children omitted many popular Berber names.
After Boumedienne’s death in 1978, the pressure for Arabization continued. In 1979, students at the University of Algiers, backed by Islamists, pressed for a reduction of the use of French. New Arabization measures were introduced. At the University of Tizi-Ouzo in the Kabylie, students began a strike to protest Arabization, and it spread to secondary schools in the Berber-speaking region. The government cracked down hard in April 1980, and every April since, the Kabylie has commemorated the "Berber Spring" (or sometimes "Amazigh Spring") of 1980. That helped fuel the outburst this year.
Although the FFS of Aït Ahmed continued as a movement, it was not legally recognized and its leader was in exile. After "Berber Spring", a new movement, the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) was formed; today it is led by Sa‘id Sa‘di (also in this issue’s Profiles). Although it and the FFS were rivals for Berber support, they also joined together in backing the Berber Cultural Movement (MCB; also sometimes Amazigh Cultural Movement).
When Algeria began to liberalize in the late 1980s, the movements came out of the shadows; both the FFS and RCD were recognized political parties by 1990. Both movements were secular; the FFS sought a secular Algeria, while the RCD was more explicitly a Berber ethnic movement. since Islamists were often among the most avid proponents of Arabic and the Arabization program, the Berber parties became natural enemies of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), and Sa‘di and his RCD, in particular, became vocal opponents of the Islamist movement. (Many Arab Islamists seem to almost subconsciously equate Arabic with Islam, because the Qur’an is in Arabic; Berbers suspect many Islamists consider them not-quite-real-Muslims as a result.)
In January 1990 the government allowed the establishment of an institute in Tizi-Ouzo for the teaching of Tamazight.
The liberalization period, of course, came to an end in early 1992 when President Chadli Benjedid was deposed; that marked the beginning of the long Islamist insurgency. During the past nine years of troubles, the FFS had tended to support negotiations with the FIS and other Islamists, while the RCD has usually been strongly opposed.
Meanwhile, the government never abandoned its Arabization campaign, though often it passed unenforceable laws. A 1990 law demanded complete Arabization of higher education, though French still dominated in some fields; a 1993 law also sought to fully Arabize communications and government operations.
During the Islamist insurgency, the military-backed governments of the 1990s recognized that the Berbers were natural allies, particularly the RCD. The RCD joined many governments; the FFS was usually in opposition.
With the Berbers as allies against the Islamists, the government made some new concessions. In 1994 the government began to study the introduction of Tamazight in the schools. In 1995 it set up a High Commission for Amazighité (Amazigh-ness or Berber identity). But even so, Tamazight would be an elective course, not a required one, though pilot programs were begun in 16 of the 48 provinces (wilayas). In the 1995 Presidential elections, Sa‘id Sa‘di won a little under 9% of the vote, mostly in Berber areas.
Meanwhile, however, the government began to cultivate a moderate Islamist party, the Movement for an Islamic Society, and also to restructure the political system. The new constitution of 1996 identifies the "fundamental components" of Algeria’s national identity as "Islam, Arabism and Amazighité"; but it emphasizes that only Arabic is the national language.
In 1997, a new political parties law banned parties based on religion and ethnicity. The ban on religious parties was no surprise; the ban on ethnic parties seemed to be a blow to the government’s Berber allies in the RCD. Though the two Berber-based parties managed to amend their charters so as to survive the new law, it was a sign that the emphasis on Arabization had not been reduced. In fact, a version of a law first passed in 1990 was implemented in 1998, making Arabic not only the sole language of government and public administration, but also of most business transactions, and radio and television. Tamazight-language radio had been eroded gradually for years, but now it was effectively illegal. Public performances had to be in Arabic; Latin-script computer keyboards could not be imported without a permit; doctors (mostly educated in French) were required to write all prescriptions in Arabic.
The 1998 law came into effect at the same time a popular Berber singer was killed, presumably by Islamists; that sparked the 1998 wave of riots and demonstrations in the Kabylie. An "Armed Berber Movement" (echoing the name of the Armed Islamic Movement) even threatened to resist violently.
Like most Arabization laws, enforcement has been spotty. But little change has been seen since the troubles of 1998, further fueling the recent troubles.
What Next?
In the 2001 troubles, which had calmed at presstime, Aït Ahmed’s FFS was a leader in calling for peaceful demonstrations, and Sa‘di’s RCD threatened to withdraw from the coalition government over the killings. (In addition, Berbers in Morocco turned out to demonstrate solidarity with their Algerian fellows.)
Bouteflika’s April 30 speech received mixed reviews at best. The newspaper El Watan criticized him for speaking in formal classical Arabic, not the colloquial Algerian that everyone (including most Berbers) would understand; other critics saw his speech as stiff and formal, from a man who likes to appear daring and innovative. His remarks that these "identity issues" would have to be addressed within the context of constitutional reform suggested that they would be addressed, particularly the fundamental demand of recognizing Tamazight as a national language and permitting greater Tamazight-language media and education. But his promises were vague, and one of the key reasons for the present troubles seems to be that nothing was done after the 1998 demonstrations; the killing of an 18-year-old was the spark which lit an already dry tinderbox.
Of course, some Algerian nationalists believe that the Islamist insurgency must be dealt with before Berber aspirations are addressed, and many Islamists now being courted by the government are the strongest advocates of Arabization. But the Berbers of the Kabylie have been heard from once again, as in 1998 and the "Berber Spring" of 1980, and have sent a message.
