Algeria
A Woman’s Life on an Algiers Stage
Algeria’s Islamist challenge to secularism and the populist revulsion against the corruption of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) form the background to “Fatma”, a one-woman show which premiered May 23, 1990, at the El-Mouggar theater in Algiers. “Fatma’’ recounts a day in the life of an Algerian washerwoman who is a maid and a servant to the state, to her employers and to her family.
Algeria’s Elections Show Islamist Strength
The June 12 municipal and provincial elections, the first multi-party election held in Algeria since independence in 1962, delivered a stunning defeat to the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN). The victorious Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has now emerged as the leading opposition party and principal threat to the regime of President Chadli Benjedid.
Algeria’s Food Security Crisis
On October 5, 1988, fierce rioting broke out in Algeria’s capital, Algiers, and spread to many of the country’s other urban centers. The government proclaimed a “state of siege” and responses with heavy force. By the end of the week, when an uneasy calm had been restored, the dead numbered in the hundreds, with thousands wounded or in jail. [1]
Human Rights Briefing
Since the regime of King Hassan is a long-time ally of the United States, what little attention Morocco’s human rights record receives in this country is usually hidden under a haze of comparisons with egregious violators like Iran and Iraq. Yet Morocco detains hundreds of political prisoners. Some have been held incommunicado since 1972. Arrests of student activists continue, and judicial and legal proceedings remain perfunctory at best.
State and Gender in the Maghrib
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco constitute a geocultural entity. They all went through a period of French colonization and they became independent during roughly the same period in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Despite the similarities, though, the three countries engaged in markedly different policies in regard to family law and women’s rights from the time of national independence to the mid-1980s. Tunisia adopted the most far-reaching changes whereas Morocco remained most faithful to the prevailing Islamic legislation and Algeria followed an ambivalent course.
Chadli’s Perestroika
Until October 1988, the most severe challenge to Algerian President Chadli Benjedid’s perestroika came not in industrial plants or in party forums. Instead, it came in the form of street protests by masses of disaffected, unemployed and marginalized young people refusing to be manipulated by the state. The most important was the November 1986 protests of students in Constantine which led to riots throughout the eastern region. [1]
Algeria’s Facade of Democracy
Mahfoud Bennoune, a contributing editor of this magazine, is a veteran of the Algerian war of independence and currently teaches at the University of Algiers. He is the author of The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830-1987 (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Nabeel Abraham spoke with him in Detroit in December 1989.
Was the FLN [National Liberation Front] party congress in November 1989 a special event, an outgrowth of the October 1988 riots?
North Africa Faces the 1990s
The startling changes that have transformed the political landscape of Eastern Europe in 1989 may have no equivalent in the Middle East exactly, but that region has seen some remarkable developments nonetheless. The Arab versions of perestroika, or restructuring, while less profound in comparison with those of Czechoslovakia or Poland, reflect certain realignments of political forces. No regimes have toppled — yet. But from Palestine and Jordan in the Arab east (the Mashriq) to Algeria in the west (the Maghrib), a phenomenon of intifada, or uprising, is challenging the static politics of repression that have prevailed for many years.
Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria
Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830-1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.)
Mahfoud Bennoune has written a rich and highly informative book on the political economy of Algeria, both under colonial rule and since independence. The Making of Modern Algeria is a thoughtful and challenging study of social change in the Arab world and post-colonial societies in general. Bennoune provides an important synthesis of Algeria’s political economy that should interest scholars and policy makers concerned with the social dynamic that has emerged in the Third World out of the process of modernization.
Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria
Karen Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
The analysis of contemporary Algerian politics is a matter of considerable controversy. [1] Karen Pfeifer’s excellent study will certainly not put an end to argument; indeed it contributes to the debate. She provides useful and hitherto not accessible empirical evidence concerning agrarian change in Algeria during the 1970s in constructing a more general analysis of the dynamics of “state capitalism.”
Interview with ‘Abd al-Nur ‘Ali Yahya
The driving force behind the original Algerian Human Rights League is ‘Abd al-Nur ‘Ali Yahya, 66, a lawyer who has spent all of his adult life struggling for democratic causes in Algeria. He began as a school teacher in his native Kabylia, joined the Algerian People’s Party in 1945 and the National Liberation Front (FLN) 10 years later A founding member of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA), he was arrested by the French in 1956 and spent the next five years in detention. Upon his release, he became secretary-general of the UGTA. After independence, he was elected deputy from Tizi-Ouzou. For a time he served as a minister in the Boumedienne government, but he resigned in 1968 and took up law.
Letter from Algiers
Walking past the video stores, jewelry shops and fashion boutiques in Riad al-Fetr, the large, modern shopping mall in Algiers, an American could almost feel at home. Local radio, heard over the PA system, plays songs by Phil Collins and Van Morrison. Madonna, Elvis and James Dean posters festoon shop windows and add a touch of American chic. The stores in the mall are privately operated. There is even a thriving fast-food restaurant called Rauli Burger that on first glance could pass for a Burger King — french fry makers, color-coordinated costumes and all. The fresh-baked pastries, however, are definitely a local touch.
Ghalem, A Wife for My Son
Ali Ghalem, A Wife for My Son (trans. G. Kazolias) (Chicago: Banner Press, 1985).
Algerian Migration Today
Richard Lawless and Allan and Anne Findlay, Return Migration to the Maghreb: People and Policies, Arab Papers 10 (London: Arab Research Centre, 1982).
Philippe Adair, “Retrospective de la Reforme Agraire en Algerie,” Revue Tiers-Monde 14 (1983).
Jean Bisson, “L’industrie, la ville, la palmeraie au desert,” Maghreb-Machrek 99 (1983).
Origins of the Algerian Proletariat
In the first part of this essay, not included here, Bennoune notes that in pre-colonial Algeria’s rural sector land was the basic factor of production, consisting of four predominant subsistence activities: agriculture, animal husbandry, fruit tree plantations and horticulture. Ecological conditions fostered a broad regional specialization of production. The precolonial rural population consisted of big landowners, peasant producers, and impoverished, landless cultivators. Both the economic structure and legal system regulating the property relations generated differential access to property before the French conquest. All the urban classes — rulers, merchants, artisans — depended on the land for their food and primary raw materials.
