2. The Berber Question in Algeria: Nationalism in the Making?

Note 1: William E. Hazen, “Minorities in Assimilation: The Berbers of North Africa,” in R. D. McLaurin (eds.), Political Role of Minority Groups in the Middle East (New York: Praeger, 1979), p. 152. Back.

Note 2: For a discussion on the roots of the Berber language, see L. Galand, “Berbers: Language,” Encyclopedia of Islam, new edition (hereinafter: EI 2), vol. 1 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960), pp. 1180–1185, and Ernest N. McCarus, “Berber: Linguistic ‘Substratum’ of North African Arabic,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (January–February 1995), p. 31. Back.

Note 3: Ernest Gellner, “Introduction,” in Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud (eds.), Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1972), p. 19. Back.

Note 4: But Moroccan tolerance clearly has its limits as well. A number of Berber activists were imprisoned on 1 May 1995 for publicly calling for the recognition of Tamazight as an official language and for its teaching in schools. They were released in July as part of a large-scale royal amnesty. Back.

Note 5: Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, The Berbers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 3. Back.

Note 6: Salem Chaker, “Constantes et Mutations dans l’Affirmation Identitaire Berbère,” in S. Chaker (eds.), Berbères, Une Identité en Construction, Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, no. 44 (Aix-en-Province: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS], 1987), pp. 28–29. The Touareg Saharan nomads use a script called Tifinagh, which stems from an ancient Libyan script that had thirty-seven geometrical signs written from right to left (McCarus, “Berber: Linguistic Substratum”). The first Amazigh texts written with the Latin alphabet date back to 1889. Before that, the Arabic alphabet was used by those trying to write Tamazight. The father of modern Tamazight, Mouloud Mammeri, developed a writing system during the 1970s based on both the Latin and Tifinagh alphabets. (Amara Lak, “On Tamazight and Its Writing,” The Amazigh Voice 4, no. 1 [March 1975], pp. 7–8). Back.

Note 7: G. Yver-[Ch. Pellat], “Berbers: Distribution at Present,” EI 2, vol. 1, p. 1177. Back.

Note 8: The larger Touareg communities in Mali and Niger face severe repression from the regimes there. The Algerian authorities have shown little sympathy for their cause. Back.

Note 9: William Quandt, “The Berbers in the Algerian Political Elite,” in Gellner and Micaud, Arabs and Berbers, pp. 285–286. Back.

Note 10: . Jeane Favret, “Traditionalism Through Ultra-Modernism,” in Gellner and Micaud, Arabs and Berbers, p. 321. Back.

Note 11: . Hugh Roberts, “The Economics of Berberism: The Material Basis of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria,” Government and Opposition 18, no. 2 (spring 1983), pp. 219–220; Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 266–268. Back.

Note 12: . Abdallah Laroui, The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 342–343; Charles-Robert Ageron, Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present (London: Hurst, 1991), pp. 72–73. Back.

Note 13: . Albert Camus wrote a series of eleven reports, “Poverty in Kabylia,” in 1939 for the newspaper Alger-Republicain, depicting the extreme destitution of the region. Thanks to Rabah Seffal for providing me with this information. Back.

Note 14: . Roberts, “The Economics of Berberism,” pp. 221–223; Quandt, “The Berbers in the Algerian Political Elite,” pp. 288–289; Favret, “Traditionalism,” p. 323. Back.

Note 15: . John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 136–137. Back.

Note 16: . Ibid., p. 154. Back.

Note 17: . Hocine Ait-Ahmed, Mémoire d’un Combattant. L’Esprit d’Indépendance (Paris: Sylvie Messenger, 1983), p. 51, quoted in Amar Ouerdane, “La ‘Crise Berberiste’ De 1949, Un Conflit a Plusieurs Faces,” in Chaker, Berbères, Une Identité En Construction, p. 41. Back.

Note 18: . Roberts, “The Economics of Berberism,” p. 227. Back.

Note 19: . Pierre Monbeig, “Une Opposition Politique dans l’Impasse, Le FFS de Hocine Ait-Ahmed,” in Pierre Robert Baduel (eds.), L’Algérie Incertaine (Aix-en-Province: Institute de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman [IREMAM], Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Mediterranée [REMMM], 1994), pp. 126–127. Back.

Note 20: . Ibid., p. 131. Back.

Note 21: . Hugh Roberts, “The Unforeseen Development of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria,” Government and Opposition 17, no. 3 (summer 1982), p. 328. Back.

Note 22: . Charles Micaud, “Conclusion,” in Gellner and Micaud, Arabs and Berbers, p. 436. Back.

Note 23: . Favret, “Traditionalism,” pp. 307–324. Back.

Note 24: . Tassadit Yacine, “Du ‘Bastion’ au ‘Reduit’ Kabyle,” in Reporters Sans Frontiers, Le Drame Algérien: Un Peuple en Otage (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1994), p. 128. Back.

Note 25: . Quandt, “The Berbers in the Algerian Political Elite,” p. 303. Back.

Note 26: . Roberts, “The Economics of Berberism,” pp. 223–227; Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 65–67. Back.

Note 27: . For the roots and evolution of Berber cultural reaction, see Brett and Fentress, The Berbers, pp. 278–282. Back.

Note 28: . Ibid., pp. 229–230. Back.

Note 29: . Ibid., p. 228; Salem Mezhoud, “Glasnost the Algerian Way: The Role of Berber Nationalists in Political Reform,” in George Joffe (eds.), North Africa: Nation, State and Region (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 153. Back.

Note 30: . Monbeig, “Une Opposition Politique,” pp. 132–133. Back.

Note 31: . Mezhoud, “Glasnost the Algerian Way,” p. 143. Back.

Note 32: . Colin Legum (eds.), African Contemporary Record (hereinafter: ACR), vol. 13, 1980–1981 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), p. 7. Back.

Note 33: . Mezhoud, “Glasnost the Algerian Way,” p. 150. Back.

Note 34: . Legum, ACR, vol. 13, 1980–1981, p. 8. Back.

Note 35: . Mezhoud, “Glasnost the Algerian Way,” p. 144; Colin Legum (eds.), ACR, vol. 14, 1981–1982 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983), pp. 5–6. Back.

Note 36: . Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “The Islamic Challenge in North Africa,” in Maddy-Weitzman and Efraim Inbar (eds.), Religious Radicalism in the Greater Middle East (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 171–188. Back.

Note 37: . Mohamed Arkoun, “Algeria,” in Shireen Hunter (eds.), The Politics of Islamic Revivalism: Diversity and Unity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 173–174. Back.

Note 38: . Definitions of “civil society” are numerous and not always complementary. The Hegelian definition, as used by Bernard Lewis, “denotes those interests, associations, organizations, loyalties and authorities between the family and the state.” In the Middle East context, Lewis extends and redefines the notion of family to include additional “involuntary automatic loyalties by birth ethnic group, tribe, clan, and—in a downward spiral—religion, sect, faction, region and locality.” (Bernard Lewis, “Why Turkey Is the Only Muslim Democracy,” Middle East Quarterly 1, no. 1 [March 1994], pp. 46–47.) As used generally by Western scholars, “civil society” evokes “secularism, citizenship, civism, civility, [and/or] civil liberties.” (Eva Bellin, “Civil Society: Effective Tool of Analysis for Middle East Politics?” Political Science and Politics 27, no. 3 [September 1994], p. 510). Clearly, in the case of the Berbers, the developing manifestations of a civil society drew on, and were complemented by, more involuntary loyalties. Back.

Note 39: . Mezhoud, “Glasnost the Algerian Way,” pp. 159–161. Back.

Note 40: . Hugh Roberts, “Towards an Understanding of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria,” The Maghreb Review 5, nos. 5–6 (September–December 1980), p. 120. Back.

Note 41: . Private communiqué, 1995. Back.

Note 42: . A journalist sympathetic to the RCD, which, he said, “represents a break with the past and openness toward a new future,” subsequently characterized Ait Ahmed as a man “with no political future; he is 70 years old and a constant loser, who misread history.” Interview with Ahmad Fettani, al-Watan al-‘Arabi, 20 November 1992, Joint Publication Research Service, Near East and South Asia, 1 February 1993. Back.

Note 43: . Salem Chaker, “Quelques Evidences sur la Question Berbere,” Confluences Méditérannée: Comprendre l’Algérie, no. 11 (summer 1994), p. 108. Back.

Note 44: . Radio Algiers, 3 April—Foreign Broadcast Information Service, The Middle East and North Africa, Daily Report (hereinafter: DR), 4 April 1990. Ait Ahmed was blamed by opponents for wanting to create “Algerian Kurdistan” (Yacine, in Reporters Sans Frontiers, Le Drame Algérien, p. 128). Back.

Note 45: . Patrick Bishop in the Daily Telegraph, reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, 14 March 1990. Back.

Note 46: . Francis Ghiles, in the Financial Times, 11 June 1990; Algerian Press Service, 31 May—DR, 1 June 1990. Back.

Note 47: . Radio Algiers, 14 June—DR, 15 June 1990, and Algeria Press Service, 21 June—DR, 22 June 1990. Back.

Note 48: . For a sensitive and revealing description of an American-trained engineer’s rediscovery and elaboration of Berber village culture, see Rabah Seffal, “Remember Me?” The World and I, September 1992, pp. 612–623. Back.

Note 49: . Le Figaro, 7 June 1991, quoted in Monbeig, “Une Opposition Politique,” p. 134. Back.

Note 50: . Financial Times, 19 June 1991. Back.

Note 51: . Paris, Inter-Radio Network, 5 June—DR, 6 June 1991. Back.

Note 52: . Monbeig, “Une Opposition Politique,” p. 134. Back.

Note 53: . It is interesting to note that FIS candidates received 1.2 million votes less than in the 1990 municipal elections. The turnout for the two elections was approximately the same. But over 900,000 ballots, nearly 12 percent of the total, were invalidated. Whether these votes would have strengthened or weakened the FIS cannot be known. Similarly, the FLN suffered a drop of approximately 630,000 votes. Fawzi Rouzeik, “Algérie 1990–1993: La Démocratie Confisquée?” in Baduel, L’Algérie Incertaine, p. 44. Back.

Note 54: . It appears that the elections were marked by widespread irregularities, some of which may be attributed to bureaucratic chaos but also to manipulation by FIS-controlled municipalities. Francis Ghiles, “Algeria Again at the Crossroads,” Middle East International, no. 417 (24 January 1992), pp. 3–4. Back.

Note 55: . Financial Times 2, 6 January 1992; Libération, 1 January 1992. Back.

Note 56: . Ait Ahmed’s interview in al-Sharq al-Awsat (London, Jidda, and Riyadh, daily), 9 February—DR, 11 February 1993. Back.

Note 57: . El Pais, 10–16 May 1995. Back.

Note 58: . Le Figaro, 30 March 1994; Middle East Quarterly 1, no. 2 (June 1994), pp. 92–94. Back.

Note 59: . Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 14 January—DR, 18 January 1995. Back.

Note 60: . “Amazighté—Communiqué De La Présidence,” issued by the Embassy of Algeria, Washington, D.C., 23 April 1995. Back.

Note 61: . Meir Litvak, “Algeria,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS), vol. 19 (1995), pp. 220–221; and vol. 20 (1996), pp. 225–234. Back.

Note 62: . Brett and Fentress, The Berbers, pp. 275–277. Back.

Note 63: . Smith, Nations and Nationalism, p. 59. Back.

Note 64: . Chaker, “Quelques Évidences sur la Question Berbère?” p. 110. Back.

Note 65: . Taqiyya is a Shi‘ite doctrine of extreme quietism, stipulating that one may not only submit to illegitimate power, one may also conform and pretend to believe if necessary for survival. Bernard Lewis, “The Shi‘a in Islamic History,” in Martin Kramer (eds.), Shi‘ism, Resistance, and Revolution (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987), p. 23. Back.

Note 66: . Chaker, “Constantes et Mutations dans l’Affirmations Identitaire Berbere,” p. 31. Back.

Note 67: . Joel Donnet, “Renaissance Berbère au Maroc,” Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1995, p. 18. Back.