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Title: Insurrection in Algeria
Author: Wolfi Landstreicher
Date: 2002
Language: en
Topics: Kabylia, Algeria, anarchist analysis
Source: Willful Disobedience , Vol. 4, No. 1 December 2002

Wolfi Landstreicher

Insurrection in Algeria

An uprising began in Algeria in April, 2001. Riots began after police

murdered a high school boy on April 18 in Beni-Douala, an area of Tizi

Ouzou in the region of Kabylia about 70 miles east of Algiers. Riots and

demonstrations quickly spread to other villages in the region. Rioters

attacked police stations and troop detachments with stones, molotov

cocktails and burning tires, and set fire to police vehicles, government

offices and courts. Government attempts to quell the uprising failed.

From the beginning, the rebels showed an unwillingness to negotiate and

refused all representation. By the end of April, targets of collective

rage broadened to include tax offices, all sorts of government offices

and the offices of political parties. Rebels blockaded the main roads

and looted government buildings and other property of the rulers. The

entire region of Kabylia was in open insurrection. The state sent in its

guard dogs to repress the revolt, leading to open conflicts with deaths

and injuries on both sides.

By the end of the first week of May, the insurgent movement began to

organize itself in village and neighborhood assemblies (the aarch) that

coordinated their activities through a system of delegates who would be

bound to a very interesting “code of honor” a few months later. The only

political movement that might have had a chance of recuperating the

revolt, the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS) very quickly showed its true

colors by offering to aid the president of Algeria, Bouteflika, in

organizing a “democratic transition”.

The coordination of aarch has been organizing demonstrations, general

strikes, actions against the police and the elections.

By mid-June, the rebellion had spread beyond the borders of Kabylia, and

in Kabylia state control had been nearly completely routed. Offices of

the national police were thoroughly devastated, and the police

themselves were shunned. Because no one in the region would sell them

food and other needs, the government was forced to ship in supplies to

them by helicopter and heavily armed convoys.

At the end of June, the coordination of the aarch refused to meet with a

government representative, clearly expressing the attitude of the

insurgents. In mid-July the coordination of Tizi Ouzou adopted the “code

of honor” which required delegates to pledge themselves “not to carry

forward any activities or affairs that aim to create direct or indirect

links to power and its collaborators”, “not to use the movement for

partisan ends nor to drag it into electoral competitions or any other

possibility for the conquest of power”, “not to accept any political

appointments in the institutions of power” among other things. This

pledge was put to the test almost immediately when unionists and

partisans of the left tried to infiltrate the movement for their own

ends. The failure of this opportunistic attempt to hijack the movement

was made evident during a general strike on July 26, when demonstrators

chanted: “Out with the traitors! Out with the unions!”

Huge demonstrations continued. In mid-August, the insurgents banned all

officials from the Soummam valley. This was not just due to a government

celebration that was to occur there, but also because government

officials had begun to contact certain unidentified delegates of the

coordination who supported the idea of negotiation. Rather than

weakening the struggle this government ploy led the insurgents to ban

all government officials from Kabylia. The minister of the Mujaheedin

had to cancel a trip to Tizi Ouzou, and the minister of the interior was

greeted with a rain of stones when he came to install a new prefect.

At the beginning of October, the government banned a demonstration that

was intended to present a list of demands called the Platform of

El-Kseur to president Bouteflika. A massive array of counter-insurgency

detachments was used to block the demonstrators. These demands mainly

deal with relief of the immediate effects of government repression

against the uprising (end of judicial action against insurgents, release

of prisoners, etc.), but also include the demand for the immediate

departure of all police brigades from the region. The ban of this

demonstration provoked further conflicts between insurgents and the

forces of order. On October 11, the inter-regional coordination (of the

aarch and other self-organized assemblies and committees) decided that

they would no longer submit the demands of their Platform to any state

representative, that the demands were absolutely non-negotiable and that

anyone who chose to accept dialogue with the government would be

banished from the movement. Disobedience was total: taxes and utility

bills are not paid, calls to military service are ignored, the upcoming

elections are refused.

On December 6, some self-styled “delegates” claiming to represent the

aarch planned to meet with the head of government. In protest a general

strike was called in Kabylia. Sit-ins blockading police barracks turned

into violent conflicts throughout the region, some of which lasted for

three days. Offices of the gas company, of taxes and of the National

Organization of the Mujaheedin were burned in Amizour. In El Kseur,

there were looting raids On a court and a judge’s house.

The struggle continued throughout December and January with protests and

road blockades. It intensified when a delegation from the aarch was

arrested in front of the UN office in Algiers on February 7, 2002. On

February 12, a general strike was called throughout Kabylia to protest

the reappearance of police on the streets. The entire region was shut

down. People assembled in front of the police barracks and there were

conflicts.

At the end of February, president Bouteflika announced that there would

be elections on May 30. The movement responded by confiscating and

burning ballot boxes and administrative documents. At the beginning of

March it called for a boycott of the elections throughout Algeria.

Bouteflika tried to appease the rebels by offering compromises which

were refused and by moving police forces out of two major cities, But he

followed this with mass arrests of delegates of the aarch. On March 25,

security forces attacked a theater in Tizi Ouzou that was being used as

the office of the citizen coordination and 21 delegates were arrested.

After police searches many other delegates went into hiding. Soon

conflicts broke out. The government issued 400 arrest warrants against

delegates, leading to further demonstrations. Conflicts continued

throughout April.

Despite government repression, the anti-electoral campaign of the aarch

went forward in May with calls to action, marches and the destruction of

ballot boxes. Students demanding the release of prisoners greeted

president Bouteflika with a rain of stones when he went to the

university of Algiers on May 20. The next day the students occupied the

university demanding the release of their comrades.

On May 30, election day, the entire region of Kabylia had less than a 2%

voter turn-out. People showed their preference for direct action by

barricading the streets, occupying the offices of the prefectures and

the municipalities, and strewing the public ways with the remains of

burned ballot boxes. A general strike paralyzed the region. There were

conflicts with the police and election offices were attacked and

destroyed. In the whole of Algeria, voter turnout was less than 50%,

showing that the refusal of elections had spread beyond the borders of

Kabylia.

All through June, rebellion and social conflict continued through out

Algeria. On June 19, the government again tried to derail the movement,

authorizing movement prisoners to meet to discuss a proposal of a

government emissary arranged through the mediation of two supposed

delegates. The movement disowned these delegates, and the prisoners

refused this government ruse to pressure the movement into negotiation

over the Platform of El Kseur in exchange for the provisional release of

those arrested. Instead the prisoners issued a communiqué conforming

their confidence in the coordination and their unwillingness to

negotiate the demands of their Platform or their release and that of all

the other prisoners.

By August, violent conflicts and an ultimatum issued by the movement

forced Bouteflika to pardon all the arrested delegates of the aarch.

Upon release, the delegates declared that the struggle would continue.

In October another election was called. The movement met it with a

general strike and demonstrations. There were conflicts with the police

everywhere. Once again, about half of the eligible Algerians boycotted

the elections. In Kabylia, in spite of the participation of the FFS in

the elections, 90% of those eligible refused to participate in the

elections, and in the rest of Algeria 50% of those eligible did not

vote.

Toward the end of October, the authorities cracked down. Police raided

various halls where assemblies and coordination groups met and hundreds

of insurgents and delegates were arrested. Some of the imprisoned

insurgents began a hunger strike in late November. This expanded in

December so that insurgents in prisons in Bugia, Tizi Ouzou and Bouira

were hunger-striking. Thirteen of the thirty-nine who started the hunger

strike were still fasting after forty-two days. They were placed in

isolation to prevent them from “infecting” the other prisoners with

their spirit of revolt. Throughout the hunger strike there were a number

of demonstrations in support of the prisoners, but many were severely

repressed. The prisoners ended their hunger strike on January 13 at the

request of comrades and family. It is hard to know where this will go

from here. Repression has been intense, and it seems the many people

grow weary, but the problems that provoked the uprising remain.

This insurrection is of great interest to anarchists. There have been no

leaders, no parties, no charismatic spokespeople and no hierarchical or

representative organizations of any sort behind it. It has been

self-organized by those in struggle in a horizontal way and with

specific guidelines to prevent the possibility of recuperation by

parties, unions, politicians or other unscrupulous individuals, and

these guidelines have been actively reinforced by those in struggle. The

movement has remained equally opposed to all of the contenders for

power: the military, the government, Islamic fundamentalists, the left

and the unions. It managed to keep police “quarantined” to their

barracks for long periods of time. It carried out two election boycotts.

Once it even forced the government to release arrested comrades. And it

carried out the daily tasks of an ongoing insurrectionary struggle. All

through autonomous direct action. Now it is undergoing intense

repression, and solidarity is needed.

Here is a statement of solidarity issued by some Italian comrades at the

end of November:

Insurgent Algerians,

The struggle that you have been carrying forward against all society’s

rulers since April 2001 is an example for us and for all the exploited.

Your uninterrupted rebellion has shown that the terrorism of the state

and the integralist groups, allied for a decade in the slaughter of the

poor to the benefit of the rich, has not lessened your ferocity. You

have understood that faced with the infectious disease of military

dictatorship and the plague of Islamic fundamentalism, the only choice

is open revolt. In the union of two capitalisms, the liberal one that

privatizes and fires people in mass and the socialist-bureaucratic one

that tortures and kills, you have responded with the unity of a

generalized struggle.

We imagine what it means for a state and its police to find themselves

facing a mass of rebels whose posters warn: ‘You cannot kill us, we are

already dead’ as occurred in June 2001.But we can barely imagine what it

means for a region with a few million inhabitants, like Kabylia, where

the police are barricaded in their barracks, ‘quarantined’ by the

insurgent population; in which elections are deserted in mass, the

ballot boxes ond the offices of political parties set on fire; in which

the city halls are deserted and boarded up.

The politicians who sit in the parliament with zero votes obtained have

revealed the lie of representative democracy and the arrogance of a

power that is increasingly mafia-like to all. You have managed to

shatter the plans of anyone who tried to give your struggle a

regionalist or particularist image.

The universal content of your demands — such as that of the immediate

and non-negotiable withdrawal of the police — can no longer be hidden.

The autonomy of your movement, organized horizontally in the aarch

(village assemblies), can only unite all the leaders of Algerian society

and their accomplices in other countries against you. A revolt without

leaders and without parties won’t even find favor among the

professionals of international solidarity who are deprived, in this

case, of charismatic figures or sub-commandantes to idealize. Up to now,

you have only been able to count on yourselves. And the repression

presses hard, with hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, people

disabled for life, so many missing, the torture and arrest of many

delegates of the aarch and many demonstrators. With prisoners on hunger

strike and many insurgents forced to go underground.

Now the radicality of what you have already done finds other accomplices

in the world, in order to break the information embargo and the

murderous violence of the state. The bullets that strike are also given

by the Italian government and Italian industries, Eni in the lead. The

weapons that are used against your demonstrations are often of Italian

manufacture.

COMRADES, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. MAY YOUR REVOLT EXPLODE EVERYWHERE.

Some friends of the Aarch