50 years down, when is the UP?

Yesterday marked the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Evian Accords to end the eight-year war of Independence that the Algerians started in November 1954 to oust the French after over 100 years of French colonial occupation of Algeria. The Evian accords paved the way for a referendum on Algeria’s independence, which was held in July 1962 and in which the Algerian people were asked to vote on whether Algeria should become an independent state cooperating with France.

A bilateral ceasefire was declared to stop the bloodshed; however, a terrorist organization named OAS , which was created with the aim to prevent Algeria’s independence, waged blind terrorist attacks between March and July of 1962 against civilian Algerians and even against French citizens on French territory and in Algeria. Although the independence became inevitable some time before the Evian treaty, this organization felt a lot of bitterness and decided to adopt the scorched earth approach to destroy the existing infrastructure. Also, OAS was hoping that the FLN would retaliate and break the ceasefire. 

This occasion has been marked by media coverage and exhibitions in France; the French public national  TV channel France 2 decided to air a two-hour documentary, which was a first in the history of this channel, and the history of France. For a long time France decided to put the Algerian war of independence or “la guerre d’Algérie” in the drawers of amnesia and classify it as taboo. For a long time, the French authorities and history books decided to call this war les événements d'Algérie (incidents  of Algeria) a mere keeping of public order in Algeria. Sending 400,000 soldiers and losing 30,000 of them  in battlefield, and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Algerian civilians, in the opinion of the French, does not qualify for war. This reflects France’s uneasy relationship with its colonial past, which showed a dark, and violent side of this ’civilized’ nation,  the land of the French revolution which was a battle to achieve equality and remove oppression.  Only this equality was reserved for those who were of European descent and Christian faith.

This documentary presented the French view of the conflict, which is quite different from the way it has been portrayed in  Algerian media. I must admit that the documentary showed  an even-handed picture of the conflict. It was well prepared and well researched. It has opened my eyes for the first time  to the impact  this war has had on French politics (the collapse of the Fourth Republic) and on Metropolitan France, which was the scene of many armed attacks. One of these is an attempt to kill President DeGaulle and the overthrow of the French government on a couple of occasions,  by the OAS.

However, as if in an attempt to counter the balanced view of the documentary the channel decided to hold a debate and invited: an Algerian who was a member of the FLN, the revolutionary body that led the  war, he was also an ex-MP and minister in 1970s and 1980s; a priest, who was a soldier posted to Algeria  during the war, three pieds- noirs, one of whom is Benjamin Stora a leading authority on Algerian history from 1830 to 1962 (the period during which Algeria was under French rule and was part of French territory); and a woman who was the daughter of a harki. Harkis are Algerian traitors who decided to side with the French during the war and who were later abandoned by the French to meet their fate at the hands of angry Algerians in act of revenge. Of course, inviting one Algerian who was denied the freedom of speech on multiple occasions and was attacked by the others who felt that the story should concentrate on the violence of the Algerian side and ignore the violence the French committed for 130 years of rule says a lot. One of the pieds- noirs decided to justify the violence of this war, by the fact that Algeria had been violent by nature during thousands of years, and that it had been a terra nullius without rule of the law...

Anyway, after watching the debate, the admiration I had for the French for coming clean about their past vanished. I thought to myself how naïve of me to expect this nation and its citizens to discuss their colonial past openly on TV without trying to repeatedly interrupt a citizen of the old colony and prevent him from airing his opinion. I also felt sorry for the man, he was alone trying to justify why Algerians wanted to be independent from a nation which left the country impoverished on all levels, and left a country with 98% rate of illiteracy, and a population living in shanty towns. The French want Algerians to apologize for having started a war to say to the French no we cannot continue to live like animals, whilst the minority Europeans are exploiting the resources to enrich themselves and France.

Having said that, Despite all the flaws of this nation and its evasiveness about its past history vis a vis Algeria, It had the guts to talk about it openly in the documentary. Nevertheless, I am still skeptical given that this is an election year and Sarko  wants to lure immigrants of Algerian descent and the French leftists by showing his non-racist side; he is after all opening dossiers that remained top secret for a long time.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, however, our rulers have decided that this event is not worthy of any attention and took a very low-key approach to the event. They probably were instructed by their superiors in France to leave it to them to show history as they see fit.  Or, be it an election year, they are afraid that a celebration may remind young  Algerians of their revolutionary past, induce the expression of  a dormant revolutionary gene in the population, or ignite a spark , which would lead to an uprising of the population i.e. an Algerian spring. Our rulers maintain power through revolutionary legitimacy. This means that they are the sole authority fit to run the country because they fought for its independence over 50 years ago. So we will have to wait until they die to hold democratic elections and open the door for the new generation to have a say in the way their country is run.  

It is ironic how our rulers keep reminding the new generation of thier heroic past and their 'zealous' patriotism, and at the same time receive their orders from France regarding many issues. The French are considered top tier in our rulers’ eyes. They are the ones who benefit from investment contracts. It does not matter that there are other countries willing to enter this market and do better than the French, who still regard us as a dominion country. It is also sad to hear claims of patriotism in French, this language that our rulers decided to make the only foreign language worthy of study and use. Algeria remains one of the few countries in the world where movies, which are a mean of learning the English language for some, are dubbed in French. Also it is the sole country where rulers use foreign and French media to address their citizens and prefer to do so in the French language, the language of the 'elite' -or so they believe.

Western Sahara: What's in it for us?

It is not my intention to present all the details of the conflict, but since it is one of the main reasons halting the unification of the countries of the Maghreb, I believe that it deserves some attention.

I came to learn about this conflict when I was a child, camping in one of the coastal towns of Algeria. I was surprised to see a group of children, who did not speak our language, benefit from luxuries we would have never dreamed of in the camp. Driven by curiosity I decided to visit their dormitory to watch a cartoon on TV (it was a luxury to have a TV in a camp in the eighties). The kids and some adults who accompanied them explained to us that they were from Western Sahara, a colonized country, and they used to talk of torture and war. I was very surprised to learn that the enemy was no other than Morocco.

The conflict has its origins in the seventies (some Moroccans claim that it goes back a long way), when the Spanish decided to hand over the power to the Polisario. Both Morocco and Mauritania seemed to have historical claims over the country. The same argument used by the 19th century colonizers of "terra nullius" or un-owned land was used by Morocco and Mauritania to annex the country to their territories. Major incidents in this dispute include the march of 350,000 Moroccans into Western Sahara, and the armed conflict between Polisario and the Moroccan army, which started in 1975 and ended in 1991.

A UN mission, which was sent to Western Sahara, announced that the Sahrawi people were in favor of independence. However, this has not materialized. The Houston agreement suggested holding a referendum on independence, or unification with Morocco. It still puzzles me that to this day, no referendum was held, but useless negotiations are held sporadically from time to time which lead to no tangible results.

After Mauritania dropped its claims over the country, the parties in conflict remain Morocco and Western Sahara. However, Algeria has pledged it full support for the Sahrawi people to gain their independence. It remains a mystery to many, including myself, as to what Algeria will gain from the conflict. The following are possible reasons, reiterated by the Algerian government, and views of people in forums:

1. Algeria, a country that suffered from 132 years of colonization, which left the country impoverished economically, culturally, and socially, rejects all forms of occupation and supports the right of people to decide their own destiny. Following its independence in 1962, Algeria supported various countries to gain their independence. Therefore this claim is in line with the Algerian policy, which it adopted in 1962 and still stands today.

2. The Moroccans (both rulers and people) believe that Algeria's support for the Sahrawi cause is a demonstration of bitterness felt by the Algerian generals "who were bitterly defeated in the war of sands". The war of sands was between Algeria and Morocco over the borders. The Moroccans waged an attack on Algeria in 1963, a few months after the country gained its independence, claiming that Tindouf  and Bechar were Moroccan territory and that France annexed it to the then French Algeria. It is believed that the Algerian president Ben Bella used his famous “hagrouna” which means we are being bullied to  describe the action of the Moroccans.

3. Another claim circulated by the Moroccans and adopted by some Algerians in the street is that Algeria wants fishing concessions and access to the Atlantic Ocean.

A program on Aljazeera was dedicated to the issue. This program featured an academic from a university in Mauritania, who seemed quite Knowledgeable on the subject, But he was careful enough not to present any facts that would offend any side in the conflict. Interestingly, he claims that in the seventies (cannot quire remember the date precisely) Boumediene was about to drop his support for the Polisario and accept the division of the western Sahara between the two countries (Morocco and Mauritania), however, something happened that no one seems to know, which made him change his mind radically and drop his original agreement to the solution proposed then.

I find it interesting how the average Moroccan in the street views the conflict and how the Moroccan people fully support their government's decision to annex the country. Even the so called "intellectuals" often criticize the Algerian government for supporting the Polisario. One cannot deny that Algeria has fully supported the Polisario in this conflict; but at the same time, Morocco is not short of tricks either. By using the media in the West and the support they get from the US and France, Morocco seems to have held the upper hand in the conflict so far. In addition, they have waged a media war on Algeria, with the latter not failing to respond but in its usual cold manner.

Regardless of the gains or losses that will be incurred by the Algerian government, following a solution to this problem, I fully support the idea of a fair referendum; the Sahrawi people have the right to decide their own destiny. If they decide to be annexed to Morocco, then let it be.  This conflict has been dragged on unnecessarily far longer than it should have been. It is high time a solution is found that will satisfy the parties concerned.