Winter 1996
The Algeria-France Impasse
by Cody Constable

The chronology is long and bloody. August 5, 1994: Five French citizens are assassinated in Algeria. Christmas 1994: An Algerian hijacks an Air France plane bound for France; three passengers are killed. From July 25 to October 17, 1995, a wave of terrorism sweeps France; seven bombs kill ten people and wound 130. May 23, 1996: Algerian terrorists announce that they have cut the throats of seven French priest they had kidnapped two months earlier. August 1, 1996: Herve de Charette, the French Foreign Minister, arrives in Algiers; the same evening French Bishop Pierre Claverie is assassinated in Oran.¹

The reason for these continued attacks on France lies in the domestic conflict between the authoritarian political regime dependent on French support and the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) that rejects secular Western materialism in favor of traditional Muslim values. The Islamists demand democratic parliamentary elections; the military government thus far has not allowed them. The future of French-Algerian relations depends on France’s ability to stabilize the Algerian regime without provoking more violent reactions from the Islamists.

Roots of the Conflict

In 1962, Algeria gained its independence from France after years of violent revolutionary struggle. The National Liberation Front (FLN) established a single-party socialist state. For the next two decades, Algeria maintained a policy of non-alignment with the superpowers and promoted the development of state-subsidized heavy industry. Isolationist socialism led to economic stagnation. At a special FLN party congress in 1985, President Chadli Benjedid’s new national charter was adopted. It called for limited encouragement of private enterprise and proposed a balance between socialism and Islam as the state ideology. In 1988, amid student protests, riots, and louder calls for governmental reform, Benjedid proposed to separate the state from the FLN by allowing non-party candidates to enter the elections. In 1989, a new constitution was adopted, lifting the ban on labor strikes and permitting the creation of opposition parties.

This liberalization of Algerian politics allowed for expression of dormant Islamic opposition to one-party rule. The FIS gained enormous popularity, won a majority of the National Assembly seats in the first round of general elections in December 1991 and stood poised to win the final round. Benjedid declared the election results invalid, banned the FIS, and dissolved the National Assembly. One week later, Benjedid resigned under pressure form the military. A five-member High Council of State assumed control of the government. General Mohammed Boudiaf, who headed the council, declared that new elections would be held in two years. The FIS rejected this unilaterally imposed arrangement. Boudiaf was assassinated soon after by the FIS.

During the four-year civil war that followed the assassination, the High Council of State, backed by the military, remained in power. FIS radicals attacked innocent civilians in an effort to convert them to their cause and attacked French citizens in order to protest French support for the regime. the military cracked down on FIS activity. The FIS has since tired of war and confrontations have been less frequent, but terrorist attacks continue. Currently the government is headed by President Liamine Zaroual, a moderate FLN party member. In a December 1995 referendum, 61 percent of the Algerian electorate approved of his leadership. although support for Zeroual has been interpreted as a plea for peace, the military continues to support his government and threatens to crush any future uprising. Meanwhile, the FIS and other banned opposition parties continue to demand the right to participate in parliamentary elections. The current relative calm may only be temporary.

There are essentially three classes of FIS party member, each with its own interests: 1) Preachers and religious scholars who desire a return to the "true Islam" that has been subverted by secular forces - atheist socialism and western materialism. This faction stresses direct social action within communities and, for the most part, eschews violence in favor of persuasive speech. 2) "Islamotechnocrats," French-speaking university-educated secular Algerians with science degrees, many of whom are professors, engineers, lawyers, and doctors. These elites view Islam as a means to an end. They are more political than religious, more pragmatic than idealist. To them, Islam is a tool to bring about social and economic reform. They believe in bringing about change through the ballot box. 3) Militant radicals: disaffected youth who speak only Arabic and have been educated in religious studies only to find such knowledge useless in modern, technology-driven Algeria. Unprepared for the job market, they face unemployment and despair. The fundamentalist message appeals to them because they have no faith in the secular government which has failed to help them.²

The ruling FLN is divided in its approach to dealing with the FIS. There are diehard "eradicators" in the military and the government, who will accept nothing less than the total destruction of the FIS and other militant groups. There are others, including Zeroual, who are willing to consider a power-sharing arrangements in the interests of peace.

The FLN recognizes the need for French aid in order to bring Algeria into the modern world. Although the Algerian conflict is obscured by cultural rhetoric about Islamic law and Western cultural invasion, the fundamental difference between the FLN and the FIS is the method of achieving socioeconomic success. The FIS wishes to limit foreign economic influence; the FLN, on the other hand, is completely dependent on French support. France is willing to supply aid, but thus far it has made it contingent on a strict Algerian government policy toward the opposition. France has a vested interest in maintaining a stable pro-French regime in Algeria in order to guarantee a supply of natural gas and oil. In a broader strategic sense, France wishes to preserve the general political status quo in the Maghreb region. However undemocratic and repressive the regimes of Morocco and Tunisia may be, they are capitalist and pro-French. An Islamist-controlled, hostile Algeria could potentially destabilize the governments in Morocco and Tunisia, both of which already face growing Islamist opposition factions.

French Policy

Between the optimism following Zeroual’s election and the anti-Algerian sentiment following last year’s bombings in France, French policy toward Algeria has seesawed between resounding support and condemnation. The French face a dilemma: the more support they give to the current Algerian government, the more terrorism they face on their own soil from radical Islamist groups. The issue involves a tradeoff between ensuring domestic security and, at the same time, maintaining stability in what is undoubtedly the most valuable former French colony. Algeria possesses the world’s tenth largest reserve of natural gas, much of which has not yet been exploited. State-owned heavy industry, has been partially privatized in the past several years and in future could be a recipient of capital influx as cash-strapped European firms search for cheap skilled labor. Although Arabic is the only official language, French is widely spoken. Algeria’s agricultural land could be made more productive with the introduction of modern agricultural technology.

From the Algerian government’s perspective, too much détente with the French will erode support for the regime. They believe that they must keep their distance from France. Too little reconciliation, on the other hand, could leave the Algerian authoritarians isolated. No other Western nation has a particularly strong interest in propping up such a regime. The United States, while opposed to the idea of another Islamic fundamentalist state, is unlikely to intervene with military or economic aid on behalf of the Algerian government. France is the regime’s only hope.

Despite the rhetoric of the Islamists, what Algeria really needs is economic help, in the form of direct investment from France, loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and technical assistance from European economists and engineers in restructuring their markets and industries. France is Algeria's’a largest trading partner and contributes 5 million francs ($1 million) per year in economic aid.³ It could easily contribute more. After the referendum legitimizing Zeroual’s rule, the ten months of a tentative peace punctuated by terrorist attacks, the ranks of the FIS are dividing, as are those of the government. If France can persuade Zeroual and his military government to lift the ban on the FIS and grant them some kind of limited representation in parliament, in exchange for increased French economic aid, there would be potential for a general easing of tensions and perhaps further defections from the radical wing of the FIS and the GIA to a more moderate Islamic coalition.

Possible Solutions

There are varying opinions as to what the Western response to the FIS should be. Some scholars argue that Western nations should encourage a policy of Islamist inclusion, pointing out that while Turkey and Pakistan both have large Islamic parties in their parliaments, these states have remained generally pro-Western.⁴ a former CIA analyst, on the other hand, maintains that granting the Islamists parliamentary power will only encourage their radical attitudes. "What the FIS thinks today about women, freedom of thought, crime and punishment, Jews, Westernized Muslims, France, Israel, and America is no different from the views it held before the military crackdown."⁵ He suggests a strategy of isolation, since extensive dialogue between the West and moderate Islamist factions only weakens their Islamic credentials and encourages the radicals within the party to question their loyalties. One journalist advocates an activist French strategy, including the use of French intelligence services to analyze the internal politics of the FIS, applying pressure on the regime to restore the rights of freedom of press and of assembly, and facilitating direct dialogue between French officials and moderate members of the FIS.⁶

If no agreement between France and Algeria is reached, the potential consequences are serious and by no means limited to the Maghreb region. France will face continued terrorist attacks on its own soil, providing more political fuel for far-right demagogue Jean-Marie LePen, who fulminates against the presence of foreigners in France. If the French withdraw support from Zeroual’s government, the Magrheb might face a spillover of fundamentalist sentiment across the borders into Tunisia and Morocco. Algeria will remain deprived of significant direct foreign investment, since increased security anxieties will force companies to take their business elsewhere. Hard currency outflow means less prosperity, resulting in more unemployment. This leads to more support for the FIS, increasing foreign apprehensions of investing in Algeria. Immigration, both legal and illegal, of unemployed Algerians to France will increase, further exacerbating the tensions between right-wing nativists and the three million Algerians living there. Left unresolved, the Algerian crisis could lead to terrorist attacks on Western nations other than France. "There is a strong temptation to simplify the Algerian situation," laments a French correspondent. The complexities cannot be explored fully enough. The impasse between Paris and Algiers is no longer an exclusively French and Algerian issue; it may become global and potentially very dangerous.

Notes: 1. Lucille Provost, "Paris et Alger entre brouilles et complicites," Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1996. 2. John Ruedy, Islamism and Secularism in North Africa, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. 3. Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1996. 4. Graham Fuller and Ian O. Lesser, A Sense of Siege: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West, Boulder: RAND/Westview Press, 1995, p. 120. 5. Edward G. Shirley, "Is Iran’s Present Algeria’s Future?" Foreign Affairs, May-June 1995, p.31. 6. Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1996.

Mr. Constable, CC'00, is a history major at Yale College.