The Algerian revolution: the struggle for decolonization continues

Algeria is going through a revolutionary phase. The mass-scale uprising that started in February 2019 has been sustained for more than a year now and is showing an incredible resilience and soumoud (steadfastness in Arabic). Hundreds of thousands are still in the streets, joining huge weekly protests every Tuesday and Friday (and recently some Saturdays and Sundays), demanding radical democratic change and the demilitarization of the republic.

On February 22, 2020, the first anniversary of the popular movement’s emergence onto the political scene, millions of people renewed their belief in the revolution and expressed their determination to continue the struggle by organizing massive marches in various parts of the country. In reaction to the current President Tebboune’s announcement of marking the date as a national day of “cohesion between people and the army,” protesters chanted “We didn’t come to celebrate; we’ve come to kick you out!”

The people reasserted their demand for a civilian state in a powerful slogan that has become symbolic of the uprising’s core aim, especially since the electoral masquerade of December 2019: “Tebboune is a bogus president. He was imposed by the army and has no legitimacy…The people were liberated and it’s them who decide…A civilian state now!”

Achievements and victories

Throughout the year, the popular movement (Al Hirak Ach’abi) accomplished a lot. The Hirak forced the Military High Command (MHC) to distance itself from the presidential clan and effectively deposed Bouteflika, president for the last 20 years. It also aborted two presidential elections: the first one in April, in which Bouteflika was running for a fifth term and the second one on July 4, which was seen as a front to maintain the primacy of the MHC. Whatever we think about the regime’s highly mediatized anti-corruption campaign — which is largely smokes and mirrors and settling of accounts between various factions — the fact that high profile oligarchs and once-powerful individuals, including former prime ministers, chiefs of security services and the deposed president’s brother, are in jail, is a big achievement in itself. This would not have happened without the popular mobilizations and calls for accountability and an end to corruption: “You devoured the country…Oh you thieves!”, “You will be all punished”…

Despite all the odds stacked against it and the state’s efforts to divide, co-opt and exhaust the movement, it maintained an exemplary unity and peacefulness. This was demonstrated in various slogans such as: “Algerians are brothers and sisters, the people are united, you traitors.” Perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the popular uprising is the change in political consciousness and the determination to fight for radical democratic change. People discovered their political will and realized they are in control of their own destiny. This liberatory process unleashed an unequaled amount of energy, confidence, creativity and subversion.

After decades of curtailing civil society, silencing dissent and atomizing the opposition, the fact that the movement is still going strong after more than one year on the streets, not retreating or subsiding but pushing forward, is truly remarkable and inspiring. The Hirak succeeded in unraveling the webs of deceit that were deployed by the MHC and its propaganda machine. Moreover, the evolution of its slogans, chants and forms of resistance is demonstrative of processes of politicization and popular education. The re-appropriation of public spaces created a kind of an agora where people discuss, debate, exchange views, talk strategy and perspectives, criticize each other or simply express themselves in many ways including through art and music. This opened up new horizons for resisting and building together. Those who pronounced the Hirak dead, got their rebuttal. The popular movement is here to stay and signaled its resolve to force the system to yield: “The people want independence!”, “It’s either us or you, we swear we are not stopping!”

Cultural production took on another meaning because it was associated with liberation and seen as a form of political action and solidarity. Far from the folkloric and sterile productions under the suffocating patronage of some authoritarian elites, we are seeing instead a culture that speaks to the people and advances their resistance and struggles through poetry, music, theater, cartoons and street-art.

Women also played — and still play — a crucial role in the uprising, as can be seen in their strong presence in marches and protests all over the country, including very conservative areas. They are actively involved in the students’ movement that managed to maintain its Tuesday marches for more than a year now. Some of them faced repression and even jail but they continue to show their unflinching dedication to the struggle. Some feminist organizations are doing their best to put women’s liberation at the center of this democratic revolution and the presence of revolutionary figures such as Djamila Bouhired and Louisette Ighilahriz denotes that the struggles for popular sovereignty and women’s liberation are interlinked and ongoing. On International Women’s Day (8th March), Algerian women chanted in the streets: “We are not here to celebrate, we are here to uproot you!”

This is not just a middle-class uprising. The popular classes from marginalized neighborhoods, the unemployed youth, the working poor are all involved, marching for freedom and equally voicing their indignation at their socio-economic exclusion and anger at the processes of pauperization they are subjected to. “Antouma Asbabna!” they shout, roughly meaning “You are responsible for our misery!” Many of the famous and poignant slogans and chants were the invention and creation of this “youth without horizons” that suddenly saw a light at the end of the tunnel. La Casa d’El Mouradia (in reference to the popular TV series La Casa de Papel) is one hymn of the revolution that originated from football fans and went beyond stadiums to embrace and embolden the Hirak.

It is a revolution!

Algeria has not witnessed such momentous events since independence from French colonial rule in 1962, and that is what makes this a revolutionary moment and a conjuncture full of potential for radicalization and escalation of the struggle.

The ongoing Algerian revolution might not fit the dominant imaginary about revolutions, that of mass-scale insurrections led by a vanguard revolutionary party toppling regimes and taking power, affecting a kind of a rupture with the past inevitably leading to the instauration of the new political and economic order with different ruling classes. These tend to be violent processes shaped by bloody confrontations with the state’s repressive apparatuses, sometimes through armed struggle.

In Lenin’s words, “For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for the lower classes not to want to live in the old way; it is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to live in the old way.” When we apply this to Algeria, we can see that this is in fact what is happening: people are no longer accepting the status quo and the current ruling class is struggling to contain the movement, despite all the means at their disposal towards that purpose: repression, physical violence, arrests, imprisonment, restriction of freedom of movement, suppression of media freedoms, divide and rule tactics through hate propaganda, deceptive ploys to give the impression that change is happening, etc.

It is true that there is currently no revolutionary vanguard party representing the interest of the working poor and the popular masses capable of leading the revolution. It is also true that the workers are not actively participating in the revolution as workers due to the weakness and fragmentation of the independent trade union movement. And it is true that the uprising has not overhauled the system yet or managed to create a radical break with the ancien regime as the oligarchic-military elites are still in power, albeit with some reshuffling in the configuration of the ruling classes. However, the revolutionary character of the popular movement is there for all to see.

Over the past year, this movement has overcome so many obstacles and avoided dangerous polarizations and showed undeniable genius in seeing through the manoeuvres of the regime; always responding with very creative, flamboyant, clever and radical slogans and tactics. For example, the youth made it really difficult for the presidential candidates to carry out their campaigns in various places of the country by blocking access to their towns as well as disrupting meetings. People actively boycotted the elections of December 12 by closing down some electoral bureaus in the Kabylie region and organizing protests on the day of the elections. When results were announced the next day, people took to the streets once again to denounce the electoral charade.

Following the announcement that the multinationals-friendly hydrocarbon draft law would be discussed in parliament in November 2019, the people spontaneously went to the streets for a first time on a Sunday (the start of the working week in Algeria) to protest in front of the parliament denouncing the compardore elites’ attempts to further undermine their country’s sovereignty. And a similar reaction took place when president Tebboune announced in January that Algeria will be exploiting its shale gas potential. The people responded: “You frack in Paris, not here!” in reference to French multinationals like Total interested in exploiting shale resources in Algeria.

Algerians know what the military are capable of and despite the trauma of the black decade (the odious war against civilians of the 90s), they are bravely still insisting: “A civilian state not a military one!” By doing so, the Algerian system is exposed for what it is: a military dictatorship hiding behind a “democratic” façade.

Anti-colonial and sovereign at heart

So beyond the largely semantic arguments around whether it is a movement, uprising, revolt or a revolution, one can say for sure that what is taking place these days in Algeria is a transformative process pregnant with emancipatory potential. The evolution of the movement and its demands specifically around “independence,” “sovereignty” and “an end of the pillage of the country’s resources” are fertile ground for anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and even ecological ideas and can open the way for a progressive struggle by mobilizing the relevant social forces: workers (formal and informal), peasants, unemployed youth, popular masses, etc.

What reinforces this assertion is the fact that this Algerian revolution, like its precedent in the 1950s, is deeply anti-colonial. This is a unique feature that differentiates it to a certain extent from the other uprisings in North Africa and West Asia, and in my view warrants more attention and analysis. Given their experiences suffering under one of the most cruel genocidal and racist settler colonialisms, many argue that Algerians have bred a deep sense of social justice, still present and noticeable till today. Algerians are making a direct link between their current struggle and the anti-French colonial struggle of the 1950s and see their efforts as the continuation of decolonization. When chanting “Generals to the dustbin and Algeria will be independent”, they are laying bare the vacuous official narrative (around the glorious revolution) and reveal that it has been shamelessly used by anti-national bourgeoisies to scandalously pursue personal enrichment.

Algerians are thus recovering the revolutionary credentials and reaffirming their desire of being the true heirs of the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of this country. We have seen so many slogans and chants that captured this desire and made references to anti-colonial war veterans such as Ali La Pointe, Amirouche, Ben Mhidi and Abane: “Oh Ali [la pointe] your descendents will never stop until they wrench their freedom!” and “We are the descendents of Amirouche and we will never go back!”

These anti-colonial sentiments and the reaffirmation that formal independence has no meaning without popular and national sovereignty are reasserted by a staunch hostility to any foreign interference and imperialist intervention. And that goes from Western powers to Russia, China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. Suffice to say that the Algerian Hirak is an anti-systemic movement with anti-colonial politics.