Fourty years after gaining independence, "how is Algeria to be governed" remains a central question, writes Hugh Roberts* Click to view caption This Friday is the 40th anniversary of the proclamation of independence in Algeria by the leaders of the victorious National Liberation Front (FLN). It is unlikely that the anniversary will be the occasion for enthusiastic celebration, unlike the historic event it commemorates. The days when the Algerian people were able to take wholehearted pride and satisfaction in their independence are long gone. The great achievements of the Algerian state in its first two decades, the rapid reconstruction of a devastated country, the adoption and determined pursuit of an ambitious development strategy, the provision of undreamed of opportunities to the younger generation, all these have long since been largely undone. The same is true of Algeria's success in renegotiating her relations with her international partners, the example she set to other developing countries, not least in the Arab world, in nationalising her hydrocarbons wealth in 1971, the effective solidarity she provided to other national liberation struggles, and the remarkable leadership she briefly gave to the Non- Aligned Movement. To invoke these past achievements is to conjure up memories of a lost world, the world in which the equilibrium between American and Soviet power gave room for manoeuvre to the nationalist South (as well as to social-democratic Europe), room the politically competent leadership of the historic FLN knew how to make the most of. With the crumbling of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War, the main external premises of Algeria's successful assertion of her claim to national self-determination disappeared, and the survival of the Algerian state was put in question. And if the state can be said to have survived, after a fashion, thus far into the post-Cold War era, its substantive sovereignty has been so severely diminished on the internal as well as the external front that it has all but ceased to constitute a political framework for social development. It is not reasonable in these circumstances to expect the Algerians to exhibit enthusiasm on the occasion of this anniversary. The question is whether it will be an occasion for reflection. For it can be safely said that unless the Algerians begin to reflect on their trials and misfortunes to some purpose, the state which will be going through the motions of commemoration on Friday will not be able to offer its people cause for genuine celebration for a long time to come. Ever since the fateful decision was taken by former President Chadli Bengedid to tear up the constitution of the one-party FLN state in 1989, the Algerians have been tearing themselves apart over the question of who has a right to power. That this is what has been at issue testifies to the fact that the Algerian political class was entirely unprepared for the transition thus engaged 13 years ago. No debate or consultation preceded the introduction of the pluralist constitution in February 1989, and no general agreement obtained on the ground rules of the new system of political competition. The result was a kind of free-for-all in which the factional conflict, which is a permanent feature of the Algerian power structure, dovetailed with the intensely ideological competition between the newly legalised parties -- the Islamists, the secularists, etc -- with all and sundry advancing exclusive claims to power and denouncing the claims of their rivals. As a result, disputes over legitimacy and identity filled the air to the exclusion of virtually everything else. The question which needed to be debated the moment a departure from the established routines of the FLN-state was envisaged was an entirely different one: not "who should have power?" but "how is Algeria to be governed?". To a very great extent, the fact that the atrocious violence in which Algeria has been embroiled has gone on for much longer than the original war of liberation testifies to the failure of the political class, the opposition parties as well as the regime, to address this question properly. It cannot be said that the outside world has been much help to the Algerians in encouraging them to focus on this fundamental problem. On the contrary, virtually all external commentary has tended to do the precise opposite, endorsing the competing claims of the Islamists or the secularists, defending the army's repression as the lesser evil or attacking it as the greater one, and so on and so forth, and thus in most if not all cases aggravating existing polarisations and fuelling the fire. The same can be said of a view now going the rounds concerning what happened in 1962, which contents itself with emphasising the contrast between the innocent rejoicing of an united people in July 1962, with the divisions and manoeuvres which were at that very moment tearing the FLN's leaders apart, as if the fact that the latter were divided after eight years of a gruelling liberation war was some sort of scandal that needs to be ventilated. The significant fact about the political situation in July 1962 and the political situation since February 1989 has actually been the same. This is not that the Algerians have been divided, but that they have lacked a functional framework for handling their political differences effectively. In both cases, moreover, this has been because they casually abandoned a previous framework without preparing its successor. Between September 1958 and June 1962, the FLN was led by the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA). Whatever the GPRA's failings may have been, it preserved the FLN's overall unity and led the movement to victory. It measured up to what was primarily required of it. And while the FLN-state of 1962- 1988 left much to be desired, it too managed, at any rate after Houari Boumediène took over in 1965, to establish order in the country, restore a sense of unity and collective purpose to the political, military and administrative elite, and chart a course of national development which consolidated and extended the liberation which had occurred and accommodated the aspirations of ordinary Algerians. There is no doubt that the recklessness with which Ahmed Ben Bella pursued his personal ambitions in the summer of 1962 was a major factor in the disintegration of the GPRA, since he more than anyone envenomed the already strained atmosphere at the FLN's Tripoli Congress in May-June 1962 and provoked its chaotic break-up, and thus precipitated the crisis which was only resolved after hundreds had been killed in clashes between opposed units of the National Liberation Army. But the parallel ambitions of Boumediène's general staff, which concluded a tactical alliance with Ben Bella and brought him to power, were also a major factor. In the same way, the respective attitudes of Chadli and his supporters and the army leadership between 1988 and 1990 were major factors in the way the current crisis began, since it cannot be doubted that the Chadli faction's self-serving decision to abandon the framework of the FLN- state had the approval of the army general staff. The difference is that Boumediène and his colleagues were themselves revolutionary nationalists who possessed a developed political vision and the ability as well as the inclination to restore order on the basis of a coherent project of nationalist state-building, at Ben Bella's eventual expense if need be. None of this can be said of the generation of officers who have been in command of the Algerian army since 1988, and their subsequent decision to overthrow Chadli, far from restoring stability, led to the catastrophic aggravation of the disorder which Chadli had allowed to develop. Composed primarily of former officers of the French army -- that is, career soldiers, not revolutionaries -- who changed sides towards the end of the war, the army leadership since 1988 has been vulnerable to the charge that it lacks legitimacy, and has been particularly concerned to rebut this charge. But the fact that former Defence Minister General Khaled Nezzar and his associates played only minor roles in the war of liberation is not really the point. The point is not that they have not had a right to the military commands they have held, but that they have not known how to exercise their political influence in such a way as to enable order to be restored to Algerian political life. They have refused to take responsibility for governing the country, unlike Boumediène and Co, while simultaneously refusing to allow civilian political forces to do so. The result is that Algeria has not been governed these last 10 years and more. A major aspect of the disaster which has overtaken Algeria since 1992 is that it has demonstrated the unfitness of technocrats to rule. The take- over of the army by career soldiers whose claim to senior rank rests on their technical expertise has been mirrored by the rise of civilian technocrats in the political sphere. In part this has been a consequence of the intense faction- fighting which has been going on and the consequent instability at the highest levels. Since the crisis began with the riots of October 1988, Algeria has had 10 prime ministers and 11 governments, each government lasting on average under 15 months. In these circumstances, ministers have rarely been able to get a grip on their departments, and the civil servants have been effectively in charge, for good or ill. This trend climaxed with the concoction of a political party, the Democratic National Rally (RND), by the military decision-makers in February 1997 in order to ensure that the legislative elections the following June would yield a National Assembly controlled by safe pairs of hands. From its inception, the RND was led by civil servants and, because it was perceived as "the party of the administration", its capacity to evoke popular support was slender and its electoral success depended on fraud. But the political ascendancy of the technocracy has had wider consequences. Like its colonial predecessor, the Algerian administration has always been perceived by the population as self-serving and arrogant, and it has relied on links with local notables as a surrogate for genuine popular acceptance. This tendency to alienate popular sympathy was moderated during the Boumediène era by the actions of the FLN, whose populist roots and nationalist outlook disposed it to transcend local divisions, not aggravate them. But once the administration became its own party, and this party, the RND, took over the vast majority of Algeria's municipalities in the rigged elections of October 1997, the conditions of nation-wide disorder -- owing little or nothing to the Islamist rebellion -- were in place. The result has been a nationwide resurgence of tribalism and a wave of riots against local misgovernment. At the same time, the ascendancy of the technocracy has seen the hegemony of an endless series of economic and political recipes imported from abroad. The proclivity of the army's leading lights to think in terms of dubious analogies and models -- the Turkish model, the Chilean model, etc -- has been mirrored by the tendency of civilian technocrats to function as the peddlars of Western economic dogmas, the approval of the IMF and the World Bank legitimating their claims to expertise. It is against this background that we should evaluate the victory of the FLN in the legislative elections on 30 May. Although the FLN gained an overall majority, with 199 of the National Assembly's 389 seats, its come-back is a severely qualified affair in several respects. The unprecedentedly low turn-out of 46 per cent limits its electoral legitimacy for one thing. The fact that the composition of the new government announced on 17 June was largely decided by President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika rather than the FLN's general secretary, Ali Benflis, immediately relativised the significance of the party's parliamentary majority. And the fact that only 14 of the 39 portfolios in this government have gone to FLN members, and that many of the other portfolios have gone to technocrats without any political standing, suggests that little has changed. The FLN will now bear primary responsibility in the public eye for the conduct of government while actually lacking real control over the levers of power. It has no control over the defence establishment or security policy, its historic links with the trade unions and other mass organisation have long since been abolished, and it does not even control the Ministry of Religious Affairs. With the best will in the world, Benflis and his ministerial colleagues will still fall far short of being a government in much more than name. But the qualified recovery of the FLN may yet prove a positive turning point, if it transpires that it reflects a belated revival of political realism in the power structure as well as the population. For a fundamental fact about the last 13 years is that the attempt to modernise and liberalise the Algerian state against the popular nationalist tradition embodied in the FLN has been a massive if not criminal mistake. Modernisation against the Algerian people cannot work, as the French found out the hard way. And pluralism which is not grounded in a shared national tradition is a recipe for the destruction of a state, not its reform, let alone its democratisation. Some years ago I asked an Algerian friend, a veteran of the guerrilla struggle who had gone into exile in opposition to the Ben Bella and Boumediène regimes, what he now thought of the Boumediène era. I expected him to lay much of the blame for the present situation on Boumediène's shoulders. To my astonishment, he replied that "it was the time when Algeria did her own thinking." And I agreed with him. If Algeria is to recover from the breakdown she has suffered, and salvage as much of her former sovereignty as is possible in the new merciless era in international affairs, she needs to recover her intellectual independence and do her own thinking once more, and reflect above all about how she is best to be governed. This thinking can only be done within the medium of the nationalist tradition. If that tradition is beginning at last to revive, a measure of hope is in order. * The writer is a research fellow at the London School of Economics, and currently visiting scholar at AUC.
