A terrible reign of gruesome torture and fierce bloodletting has resulted from that military coup 10 years ago now. Over a hundred thousand Algerians have been killed. At the moment there's no end in sight. And indeed it has all lead to "Algeria in Crisis".

[The Guardian - Wednesday June 20, 2001]: Algeria's military rulers are facing an unprecedented challenge after two months of protests against police brutality and poverty in the Berber-dominated Kabylia region culminated last week in the largest demonstrations in Algiers since independence.

Rioting spread last weekend beyond the main Kabylia towns of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia to the southern town of Biskra and to Annaba and Khenchela in the east. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has proved unwilling or unable to assert his authority, remaining uncharacteristically silent.

Demonstrations have been banned as the government braces for protests in the Kabylia next Monday to mark the third anniversary of the murder of a Berber nationalist singer, Lounes Matoub, attributed to Islamic groups. A second mass demonstration is planned in Algiers for July 5.

The protests were sparked by the shooting in police custody of a Berber youth on April 18th, and by mounting resentment over the strong-arm tactics of the special police forces. The demonstrations have been led by urban youths alienated by rising unemployment, mounting poverty and a chronic housing shortage.

At least 60 people have died in two months of protests that culminated in last Thursday's riots in central Algiers, in which four people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in clashes after several hundred thousand Berbers converged on the capital.

They demanded the withdrawal of paramilitary gendarmes from the Kabylia, swift action on Berber poverty and official recognition for their language, Tamazigh.

Algeria's 6m Berbers are concentrated in the Sahara and Kabylia regions, but the Kabylia is no poorer than other parts of the country. Last year saw rioting in the western city of Sidi Bel Abbes in protest at local government corruption, and there are fears of similar unrest in cities such as Constantine, Setif and the western port city of Oran.

Fearing a repeat of the 1988 nationwide protests which destabilised the FLN govern ment which had ruled the country since independence, the authorities have sought to divide and rule. Officials have attacked the latest protests as a Berber nationalist revolt influenced by outsiders, knowing that many Algerian Arabs suspect that France is behind the Berber national demands.

The protesters accused the police of encouraging Arab youths from the impoverished Belcourt district of Algiers to attack last week's march, and claim that the gendarmes deploy minimum force against protests outside the Kabylia.

With strong liberal and secular political traditions, the Berber community has been torn between resenting the Arab-dominated military elite and opposing the Islamic rebels in the civil war in which 100,000 people have died.

However, the Islamist warlord Hassan Hattab has launched a poster campaign in Tizi Ouzou urging the protesters to join the renegade GSPC (Salasi Group Preaching and Combat), raising the new, if unlikely, spectre of an alliance between the Islamic and Berber movements.

A defiant speech by Bouteflika to a rally in southern Algeria came after his government announced measures that would open the way for troops to move against demonstrators, and press reports said more violent protests had claimed another seven lives.

It also notably came after an ethnic Berber-led anti-government march by almost a million people last week in Algiers, which turned riotous and bloody, and which presented the biggest challenge yet to Bouteflika's leadership.

"I am not a captain who abandons a sinking ship -- I am here, I am staying, in line with the will of the people who elected me," Bouteflika told the rally in Tamanrasset.

He admitted "Algeria is in crisis," but said he was willing to start talks to find a peaceful solution.

"Reforms and change must be undertaken calmly. I will not accept a revolution against public property and the people," he said.

Bouteflika's government late Monday announced it was banning all protests in the capital "until further notice" -- a move that enables soldiers to be used to put down further riots.

The violence in the capital last week claimed at least four lives and left 946 injured, according to official figures, and followed two months of serious unrest in the Kabylie region to the east.

Meanwhile, Tuesday's press said seven people were killed, including two paramilitary policemen, in disturbances in Kabylie.

These deaths brought to 87 the unofficial tally of people killed in the past two months. Official figures put the toll at 56 people killed and 2,300 injured. The riots were triggered April 18 when a Berber youth was shot dead in police custody on April 18.

Veteran opposition leader Hocine Ait Ahmed on Tuesday urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to go to Algeria and called on the world body to send an international team to probe the unrest.

Earlier, he handed a list of 130 names of people, mainly youths, declared missing since the Algiers riots, to a top aide to UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

Ait Ahmed heads the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), which is strong in Kabylie.

Apart from the former ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) and the now outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), it was the only party to win parliamentary seats in December 1991.

The second round of that general election was called off by the military the following month when it became clear that the fundamentalist FIS would sweep the polls. This move triggered a guerrilla war that has since claimed some 100,000 lives.

Proposals for a political transition addressed by Ait Ahmed last month to Bouteflika -- and the generals in charge of the army and the political police, Mohamed Lamari and Tewfik Mediene -- drew scorn in Algiers.

Officials have also rejected calls for international intervention.

The government action drew a mixed response Tuesday from the powerful General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) confederation. In a statement, UGTA General Secretary Abdelmadjid Sidi Said expressed a commitment to "defend the country, the republic, freedoms and the democratic ideal" and warned against all "protests in the shape of violence, destruction of public and private property and looting".

However, the UGTA, which opposes privatisations undertaken by the government for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also said the unrest was "the inevitable outcome of a series of thoughtless economic and social policies, which are fundamentally unjust and blindly wreck all the workers have gained."

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/6/254.htm