MER WeekEnd Reading:

'I cannot remain silent' - The role the Algerian army played in the massive killings of innocent civilians during the last 10 years is exposed by a former officer

[Ha'aretz 20 April 2001]:

"La Sale Guerre: le Temoignage d'un Ancien Officier des Forces Speciales de l'Armee Algeriennes, 1992-2000" ("The Dirty War: The testimony of a former officer of the special forces of the Algerian army, 1992-2000"), by Habib Souaidia, preface by Ferdinando Imposimato, La Decouverte, 203 pages, 95FF.

This book contains shocking testimony about what is happening inside a country where, according to reliable estimates, more than 150,000 of its citizens have been slaughtered during the past decade.

"My name is Habib Souaidia, and I am 31," writes the author at the beginning of the book. "I served as an officer in the special forces of the Algerian Army. When I enlisted in the army in 1989, I never imagined that I would be a direct witness of the tragedy that has befallen my country ...

"I have seen my colleagues set fire to a boy of 15, who burned like a living torch. I have seen soldiers slaughtering civilians and blaming 'the terrorists.' I have seen senior officers murdering in cold blood simple people who were suspected of Islamic activities. I have seen officers torturing Islamic activists to death. I have seen too many things. I cannot remain silent. These are sufficient reasons for breaking my silence."

There is a huge argument raging in Algeria and elsewhere about the identity of those responsible for the killings, the massacres and the mass liquidations. It is hard to believe, but the fact is that even after more than 150,000 people were massacred, there are only rare cases in which the identity of the killers has been made known. The army claims that armed Islamic fighters associated with the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) are the ones who have perpetrated the mass killings of innocent people. The Front claims that it is the army that is behind the horror that has been raging in the country for over a decade.

Habib Souaidia's book is the first to expose the part the army has played in the work of liquidation. The testimonies that could embarrass the military regime in Algeria and undermine the international legitimacy of the regime headed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Immediately after the book came out in France in February of this year, the heads of the army hastened to deny its contents, and defined the author as a criminal and traitor who is not to be believed. Even before the book came out, the fleeing officer was granted political refuge in France.

When he was young, Habib Souaidia dreamed of enlisting in the army. The smartly pressed uniform and the respect accorded military service sparked his admiration for the army. There was an additional reason for a young man like him to enlist: In 1980 the country suffered an economic crisis that threatened to paralyze it. Unemployment skyrocketed to rates unprecedented since Algeria received its independence.

"The army, the police and the presidential guard looked to us like a lifesaver against unemployment," he writes. "This is the reason many of my friends chose to go into uniform immediately upon completing school."

Habib comes from a different background. According to him, he did not need the army's money. It was his patriotic sentiments and the love of his country that impelled him to volunteer for the army in the hope that one day he would become a fighter in one of the special units. He never imagined that his intensive training would qualify him to fight to the death against members of his own people, the Islamic fighters.

This happened faster than expected. In October 1988, a few months before he was inducted, bloody demonstrations took place in the capital, Algiers. At the end of the week of demonstrations, it turned out that 500 young demonstrators had lost their lives to army bullets. The mass killing shocked the nation. The religious background of the victims led to the strengthening of the status of the religious leaders. Not five months went by, and in March 1989 the birth of the Islamic Salvation Front was declared.

According to the author, the appearance of the Islamic movement in the public arena stirred the emotions of millions of inhabitants. Many of them, especially young people, were sick of the blunders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), which headed the country after Algeria won its independence from France. The discourse of the FIS "conquered" the poor suburbs, the distressed neighborhoods where the inhabitants were barely scraping together a living.

"The poor behaved as if they had been bewitched by the preachers and speakers of the FIS," the author explains.

A year later, in June 1990, an incident occurred that could have changed the history of the country that had been ruled by the French for more than 130 years, until Algeria became independent in the 1960s. The FIS ran in the elections for local authorities and won a sweeping victory in many parts of the country. Immediately thereafter, plaques of the former ruling party were ripped off the facades of municipal buildings and new signs along the lines of Baladiya Islamiya (Islamic Municipality) were affixed.

Barely a day had passed and the new local authorities, wearing white robes, hastened to inform the nation that it was their intention to prohibit women from bathing at the beaches, and that men had to wear bathing suits.

After the people of the FIS proclaimed their victory, Algerians walked the streets stunned, as if stricken by lightning. Though they were glad that the regime of the partie unique - the sole party - had come to an end after 30 years of rule, they feared the atmosphere of chaos that hovered in the air.

"One thing was clear," writes Habib. "The Islamists were determined to go all the way and take political control in the general elections as well. To many citizens it was clear that the era of freedom in the country was about to end: Women would stop going out to work, studying and advancing their liberation; men would have to change their habits and learn to live without smoking cigarettes and without drinking alcohol."

The seeds of the civil war began to sprout at every street corner. The army did not intend to sit idly by and see Algeria march along the Islamic route on its way to becoming a north African version of Khomeini's Iran. The day after the Front's victory in the local elections an alert was declared in the ranks of the army.

"The country must not fall into the hands of the Islamists," General Mohammed Bousharab exhorted cadets at the officers' academy. "Algeria is relying on you. You are the pillars of the homeland and you must save it from its enemies."

Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia stood at attention with his friends and took the words of the senior officer to heart: "The truth is that we didn't really understand what he was talking about," he writes. "They prepared us for a war against a foreign invader and now we found ourselves getting ready for a war to the death against Algerians, members of our own people."

In 1992, the year the army revoked the FIS' victory in the general elections, there was a hunt for any sign of religion in army bases. Any soldier who held secret or open sympathies for the Front movement was immediately discharged from the ranks of the army or put in prison. Soldiers and officers were forbidden to pray at the mosques on their bases. According to the author, the army command operated mercilessly against any evidence of hesitancy or doubt regarding the iron fist policy against the Islamic party. Officers and soldiers were thrown in jail and harshly tortured. Others were murdered.

"Suspicion poisoned the atmosphere at the army bases," he writes. "Everyone was afraid for his life, everyone was afraid he would be informed against, everyone was afraid to talk to his fellows lest it turn out he was an agent of military intelligence."

This dirty war knew no limits. Hundreds and thousands were slain using brutal methods reminiscent of the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia. The slayers showed no mercy toward old people, women, children or infants. Throughout that period, the big question reverberated: "Who is behind these shocking killings?"

Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia acknowledges that most of the acts of killing were carried out by Islamic Front people, but in his story he also relates the part the army played in this bloody scenario. He became aware of this directly. "It happened one night in March, 1993," he relates. "After I finished my shift I was summoned to my commanding officer, Major Daoud. He ordered me to take my people to guard a truck on its way to one of the villages. I went outside and I saw the truck. I peeked inside and saw the silhouettes of dozens of commando fighters from one of the special units. They were carrying knives and grenades. I was told that they were on their way to a 'special mission.'

"I drove behind the truck until it stopped in the village of Dawar Azatariya where the inhabitants were suspected of supporting the FIS movement. I was asked to remain with my men outside the village. Two hours later the truck came back. One of the officers took a blood-stained knife that he held near his throat, making a sweeping side to side motion. I didn't need any additional signs to understand what had happened in the village. Two days later there were headlines in the Algerian press: 'Islamic attack in Dawar Azatariya. Dozens killed in the massacre.' I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt that I had been an accomplice to a terrible crime."

On his way to a military opearation against Islamic activists in the city of Tiz-Ouzu east of the capital, the writer received explicit instructions from General Mohammed Laamri: "The Islamists want to get to Paradise, so we'll help them get there as quickly as possible," the general said. "I don't want prisoners, I want dead people only." This order gave Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia no rest: "I realized that I had nothing more to do in the Algerian army," he writes. "I wanted to be a soldier, not a murderer."

But events followed one another at a dizzying pace. Dead and wounded every day in a horrendous cycle of violence. The author admits that he was shocked by the death-lust that filled the "armed fighters for Islam," which is the military wing of the FIS. "They were not afraid of death," according to his account. "They even hastened toward it. That was their belief. They were sure that their death would bring them to Paradise. As for us, we were trapped in hell."

The author documents the reciprocal slaughter with surgical precision. There is no torture that was not tried by both sides. The Islamic liquidators slew entire villages, and eradicateurs from the army cruelly eliminated anyone suspected of belonging to or aiding the armed Islamic groups. The behavior of his fellows in the army disturbed him so much that Souaidia began to think of deserting to the West to expose what he calls "the dirty war."

Things reached their peak when his fellow soldiers arrested a 15-year-old cigarette seller. He was suspected of passing information to Islamic activists in the city of Sidi-Bal-Abbas, which is to the west of Algiers. Lieutenant Abdelhak ordered him to kneel. He poured fuel over him, pulled a lighter out of his pocket and set the boy on fire.

"No, I said to myself," writes the author. "I don't believe that he is going to do this."

In 1995, Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia was sentenced to four years in prison, after he was convicted of stealing spare parts from army stores. At first the officer denied the charges, but he quickly realized that he was being punished because he had criticized the murders under the auspices of the army and the cruel behavior of his fellow men in uniform.

"They arrested me to silence me," he writes. The author swore that after he was released he would expose to the free world what his state had been doing. A year after he was released with the rank of private, he obtained a passport and flew to France. He tried to interest journalists in his story. Some accused him of spreading lies, others believed him and published things that he said. Within a few months a publisher was found who agreed to publish his memoirs. In November 2000 the French authorities granted his request for political asylum.

With its appearance, the book precipitated a fair amount of embarrassment in the corridors of the government of France. During the past decade, Presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac stood behind the Algerian administration and backed its war against the Islamic fighters. Any time rumors spread in France about slaughter committed under the auspices of the army, the two presidents denied them and described them as "Islamic propaganda."

Now along comes this book to fortify these rumors: "I wanted to write about the dirty war that was directed against innocent civilians, whose only crime was that they were well-disposed toward Islam," he writes. "This war is still going on. Thus far more than 150,000 people have been killed, and those responsible for this crime are the generals who head the army. They are fighting to defend their rule and the enormous amount of property they have accumulated."

At the top of the list of countries who are aiding the generals he places France. "France has given me political asylum," he writes, "but this cannot prevent me from declaring that it has abetted the murderous generals to protect its interests."

If he were to be asked about a possible solution, he would say that his country's problem is not religion, nor is it Islam.

"The main problem is injustice," he states at the end of the book. "If an end is put to the injustice, peace will come to Algeria. Therefore it is necessary to stop the corrupt individuals who are continuing to rob the huge assets of the Algerian people.

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/4/179.htm