In Algeria's Killing Fields A Hidden Governmental Role?

Hardly one week passes without scores of Algerians being killed. The ongoing Algerian civil war, pitting nationalist and secular government forces against Islamists, has claimed 80,000 lives since it began in 1992. "Not only do we know the identity of the dead but we know who the killers are as well," said the Algerian novelist Wassini al-Araj recently, referring to the Islamist groups that have claimed responsibility for the massacres of civilians.

It is true that most of the killings are the work of the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Arme or GIA), which sprang from the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut or FIS). But an increasing body of evidence is pointing to another hidden hand on the gun--that of the government's security forces and some of its backed militias, which use the violence of the Islamists to mask another agenda. The nationalists, led by the National Liberation Front (NLF), came to power in 1962 after winning the war for independence against France. But their rule was authoritarian, benefiting a narrow state bureaucracy. Deteriorating social and economic conditions, coupled with repression, paved the way for a popular uprising against the NLF in 1988, during which 150 to 300 youths died.

For a moment, the uprising appeared to shine a new dawn over Algeria, producing a new constitution--popularly approved in 1989--giving the people the right to form political parties and enjoy individual freedoms, like the right to strike. But the constitution's true test did not come until the June 1990 local elections, the freest in Algeria's modern history. The FIS was the major winner, garnering 65 percent of the popular vote. When a repeat showing appeared imminent as the 1992 legislative election neared, the government moved to cancel the election, triggering the current relentless cycle of bloodshed.

The FIS had put its faith in the electoral process, only to be robbed of victory. This seemed to leave the gun as the only means to effect change. The resulting civil war continued unabated through the rise to power of Algeria's current president, retired general Liamine Zeroual, who in 1996 pushed through a repressive new constitution banning any parties based on religion. Unexpectedly, Zeroual has called for early presidential elections in April 1999, thus cutting his term of office some twenty-one months short. The official line is that the election is a step toward democracy. However, at this writing, few find reassurance in the candidates being discussed. Zeroual's decision is viewed by many observers of Algerian politics as a staged event designed to pave the way for another figure from the ranks of the military-dominated Algerian power structure.

Meanwhile, the raging cycle of violence has taken on apocalyptic dimensions--with images of slaughter, decapitation, and even the immolation of men, women, and children. Western media have largely bought into the Algerian government's claims of "liberalization" and that the Islamists are the sole perpetrators of the worst violence.

Typical of this group is Roger Kaplan, who in the August 1998 Atlantic Monthly challenges the mounting evidence of a hidden government role in Algeria's civil war. He also attacks other Westerners who give credence to the increasing contentions that either the government's "death squads" or its agents are responsible for much of the violence. In his article, Kaplan reiterates testimony of the former U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Ronald Neumann, given before a congressional subcommittee in February 1998, rejecting claims of government death squads. According to Neumann, Algeria's vast territory--"the size of the United States east of the Mississippi"--is apparently a major factor in the inability of the Algerian army to protect the population because it is "self-evident that a relatively small army could not be everywhere."

Many, including Amnesty International Secretary General Pierre Sane, are perplexed by the Algerian government's reluctance to aid massacre victims when governmental forces are reported to be nearby. According to a report by Sane that appeared in European and Arabic-language publications in December 1997, government security forces were close enough to hear cries and calls for help and to see flames from burning homes in several of the massacres.

In mid-January 1998, when 428 people were massacred in Sidi Hamad, questions again centered on "Where was the government?" Rajih Khoury, a columnist for the Lebanese daily An Nahar, wrote:

   After the massacre, survivors said the killers went to a coffee shop to eat
   and drink and then killed the patrons and the workers and left. How much
   time does this take? Crude calculation suggests that slaughtering 100
   persons requires one or two hours at least.... Then to prepare the fire to
   burn another 100 persons ... axing and cutting ... the trip to the coffee
   shop to eat and drink ... killing the patrons and workers.... The horrific
   operation of massacring must have lasted more than five hours. Where was
   the government during this time?

The fear of mines exploding is often cited as an excuse for the lack of intervention by security forces. "But when the killing is over, the mines do not explode," Algerian journalist Salima Ghazali, editor-in-chief of Le Nation newspaper, was quoted as saying in the January 8, 1998, An Nahar.

The evidence also shows that some of the killings were directed at those who supported or voted for the FIS. Abed Sharef, author of the 1998 French book Algerie Autopsie D'un Massacre (Algeria: The Autopsy of a Massacre), writes about one massacre in the village of Wadi al-Had in which 100 villagers were slaughtered. Sharef interviewed survivors who told him that most of the victims supported the Islamists. While there is no consistent pattern of killings, many Algerians have discovered telling aberrations. Algerian intellectual Asia Musawi, for example, speaks of massacres occurring increasingly in the least expected places--such as al-Balda, al-Madiya, Ayn Dufla, and al-Mizian, which are Islamist-dominated areas. Sand's Amnesty International report corroborates Musawi's conclusions.

As in all wars, violence breeds more violence. State violence gave birth to the opposition's violence, and the opposition's gruesome atrocities appear to have tempted government supporters to commit copycat crimes. It is unclear, however, whether government forces are directly involved or are working through proxies that deflect blame from the government.

The Algerian authorities have certainly encouraged various groups hostile to the Islamists to arm themselves for "selfdefense" purposes. According to George Rassi, an academic expert on Algerian politics, the government has armed 100,000 volunteers as part of a "self-defense force." This force has been criticized for waging war against people rather than terrorists. The Algerian government has also founded and armed the alWataniyyun (the Patriots) battalion and other self-defense groups to defend remote villages and small residential areas. This official policy has resulted in the proliferation of weapons, with little control over their destination.

And all post-independent Algerian governments have exploited the ethnic division between the ethnic Arabs and the Berbers, who have their own language, Tamazight, and who constitute one-sixth (or five million) of Algeria's population. Thus it is no coincidence that the Algerian government extended its hand to the Berbers, as well as some secular parties hostile to the Islamists, in order to establish armed militias to confront and counter the opposition.

Perhaps most sinister of all is the fact that some of the massacres have taken place in agricultural areas--fertile lands close to the capital, Algiers--and that a flight of farmers has followed each massacre. These lands, currently owned by the state, will soon be privatized, with priority of purchase given to the farmers who have worked them for years, as dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Since removing the farmers peacefully would require high compensation, some powerful economic and political leaders may have exploited the cycle of violence, using "Islamist massacres" as a way to drive the farmers off the land. There is increasing evidence that the killers--determined to eliminate even potential heirs to the land--are slaughtering the youngest children.

Also pointing to the link between massacres and the sale of agricultural lands is Amnesty International. Sand's report asks, "Who is to benefit from having massacres push the farmers off the fertile land?" Clearly, economic greed is fueling the violence much more than the goal of establishing an Islamic state.

There are two reasons why many want to believe that Algeria's government has nothing to do with its country's violence, exonerating it from any responsibility: the anti-colonial legacy, which has long provided Algeria's regimes with their legitimacy, and the exploitation of the violent record and reactionary programs of the Islamist opposition.

However, the continuation of the violence has failed to vindicate the present regime. There is an alarming convergence of evidence and motive that demands that those concerned with the suffering in Algeria turn their attention to a rigorous investigation into the possible role played by government in the present tragedy.

Elie Chalala is editor of Al Jadid, a magazine of Arab culture and arts, and teaches Mideast politics at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California. His e-mail is [e-mail].