The protesters’ efforts in Algiers and other Algerian cities and towns seem to grow in the face of the approaching presidential elections, which the military vehemently backs, and which people in the streets now march against in their months-long weekly protests.

Last Friday, November 29, marked the 41^st time Algerians took to the streets in peaceful defiance of the country’s ruling elite. The protests, colloquially called “Hirak”, began during the second half of February 2019, after the former president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, announced he was to run for a fifth presidential term.

Once backed by the army, Bouteflika, who had been the country’s president since 1999, was soon compelled to resign early in April, some six weeks after the Hirak started. The protests were expected to peter out after the former president’s departure.

Yet people still took to the street in dissatisfaction with the new caretaker government and the interim president, Abdelkader Bensalah. The elections that were to be held on April were postponed to July following Bouteflika’s departure.

Amid further demonstrations, though, the Algerian Constitutional Council postponed the elections again to December. But people are still taking to the streets every Friday afternoon and in other days, such as Tuesday for students, as the December 12 elections approach.

Although seeking a “true democracy,” the protesters have objected to the upcoming elections, as they see in them an opportunity for the ruling elite to remain in power. They demand a thorough purge of the ruling hierarchy. The “they should all leave” catchphrase is still one of the demonstrations’ most recurrent.

Five candidates were promptly presented on the ballot, with the campaign having officially started by mid-November. But each of these candidates had been either prime minister or minister or senior official under Bouteflika.

“There will be no vote with the gang,” the people now chanted, deeming the candidates’ run but another ploy of the regime to save the status quo.

The protesters say the elections cannot be fair and free as long as the military and senior officials from the old ruling hierarchy, once represented by Bouteflika, remain in power.

The Hirak is leaderless and only aims at a radical change within Algeria’s politics, demanding that corruption ends and that the military quits politics.

The army, now the main actor in the country’s affairs, said the elections were the only way to restore normality, by making an end to the protest movement, and to escape the constitutional limbo that followed Bouteflika’s departure.

With only a few days ahead of the elections, the protesters appear to be stepping up demonstrations, even as the authorities ramp up the number of arrests. Late in November, protesters in Algiers and other cities took to the streets at night, defying the repression that has recently grown in regular daytime protests.

An alarming number of individuals were recently arrested in links to the Hirak, many of whom were detained after they protested against the upcoming elections or the army’s ever more patent interference in Algerian politics.

While some protesters hang garbage bags in places reserved for electioneering, others vandalized those spaces with anti-government graffiti or hanging posters of opposition figures who currently stand behind bars. Many were sentenced to 18-month prison terms on accusations of “disrupting the elections.”

Causing a sweeping controversy in Algeria, the European Parliament recently said it worried about issues of human rights and freedom in Algeria. (An overwhelming majority of Algerians on both sides – anti- and pro-government – agreed that there should not be any foreign interference in such tense times.)

Other protesters were arrested after they held Berber – an Algerian ethnic group – flags during demonstrations, and were detained on accusations of “undermining the integrity of national territory.”

Many others, coming from other cities to the capital Algiers, were often deprived of their freedom of movement, as they were denied access to Algiers during days of protests so that they would not add to the capital’s massive rallies.

The Human Rights Watch and other NGOs also said that the growing number of recent arrests aimed at weakening the people’s aspiration for democracy. The army and the establishment hope for enough participation to legitimize the new president, who would then act to bring an end to the Hirak.

L'articolo In Algeria, Tensions Flare Up as Unwanted Elections Approach proviene da InsideOver.

“Tell them they won’t fool us with football. We will attain our liberty no matter what,” chanted demonstrators in Algiers on Friday, July 12, marking the 21^st week of the ongoing weekly protests of Algeria.

The day before, the Algerian national football team qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations semifinals, and Algerians took to the streets to celebrate their team’s victory over the Ivory Coast national football team. Yet, less than 24 hours later, they took to the streets again, this time to express objection, demanding for a long-awaited political change.

As football often is, this year’s Africa Cup of Nations proved, once more, mingled with politics, not least because it is held in Egypt. It exerted an unprecedented pressure on the Algerian national football team – even unequal to that of the World Cup –  as the Algerian selection is expected to appease demonstrators back home.

“It is our duty to make [Algerians] happy,” said Djamel Belmadi, the Algerian national team manager, after the quarterfinals qualification on July 7. “The players know they are responsible and they really want to do something for this country,” he added.

From preposterous conspiracy theories of Algeria “buying off” the continental tournament to images of Algerian players celebrating their goals with the military salute —as the contested army heads the country now and seeks to improve the image of it— some fear that the game is maneuvered to placate political objections in Algeria.

Yet Algeria’s elation in the streets after the qualification for the semifinals soon turned into the unyielding Friday protests, leaving no comprise between a football match victory and a months-long disapproval of the Algerian political élite.

“La Casa del Mouradia”

It remains noteworthy that football was, in a way, at the beginning of the Algerian February-22 uprising. The movement’s popular symbols and catchphrases have their roots in stadium chants, long nourished by youth who suffer unemployment and social grievances and can only find their voice at sports venues.

On April 2018, Ouled el Bahdja, a supporter organization of the Sports Union of the Medina of Algiers (U.S.M.A.), one of the most important football clubs in the country, released a song titled La Casa del Mouradia. About a year later, that song was to be intoned in almost each of the Friday protests.

The title of the song is a reference both to the Algerian Presidential Palace, situated in el-Mouradia in the heights of Algiers, and to La Casa de Papel, a Spanish television series featuring a band of professional robbers —the analogy being that the Algerian leadership has long robbed the country.

La Casa del Mouradia, like many other stadium songs, owes its popular success to its relevance in expressing the youth’s discontent and the country’s political appalling circumstances. It takes a virulent tone from its very beginning: “It’s dawn and sleep does not come. I’m consuming [drugs] in small doses. What is the reason for this and who is to blame? We are growing tired of this life.”

Even before any rumor that the former president was going to seek a fifth term, the song galvanized the anti-Bouteflika sentiment in the most explicit of ways.

“The first [term], we let it pass. They had us with the decade” —in reference to the 1990s civil war. “In the second, the scenario was clear, La casa del Mouradia. In the third, the country became emaciated due to self-interest” —referring to misappropriation of funds and wealth by the élite. “In the fourth, the doll is dead, but the case goes on…”

U.S.M.A.’s arch-foe M.C.A. (Mouloudia Club of Algiers) also has its musical group called Torino. In January 2019, weeks before the beginning of protests, Torino released a song titled “3am Said” (“happy new year”), but which holds much less optimism than acerbated critiques toward Said Bouteflika, the brother and special advisor of the former president.

Supporters of the Sports Union of Madinet El-Harrach (U.S.M.H.), another main football club from suburban Algiers, were also famed for a song titled “Chkoun Sbabna?” (“who is to blame?”). The song was released on June 2018 and forthrightly blamed the Algerian State.

Vox Populi

Clandestine migration to Europe, drug use and addiction among youth, “hogra” (injustice and contempt of the powerful), unemployment, corruption and state authoritarianism constantly nourish these stadium chants, which animate in turn the most hostile of anti-authority discourse —one that is even more explicit than that of opposition media, as the latter still stands in censorship.

Almost half of the population of Algeria is under 25 of age. According to the Algerian National Office of Statistics, 29% of this class are unemployed.

The overwhelming majority of these engaged football supporters come from deprived and underprivileged social backgrounds. The punchlines and political slogans they chant in stadiums —and in the streets since February— draw from their day-to-day grievances. They strive for a betterment they believe they are being kept back from.

For lack of social infrastructures, these youngsters made of football a common cause, which —although often said to be the “new opium of the people”— provides them with an independent voice. Its insolence and rawness plainly depicts their authenticity in expressing routine hardships and standing as a counterpower to central authorities.

Presently claiming over 5 million fans countrywide, M.C.A. was the first football club to embody antagonism toward central power during French colonialism, being the first Algerian Muslim team. Founded in 1921, its nomination draws from the word “mawlid”, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Alarmed, French authorities had then made it obligatory for Algerian teams to enroll European players.

During the 1950s Liberation War, about 40 Algerian fighters were said to have played for U.S.M.A. Yacef Saadi, a F.L.N. and military leader during the Battle of Algiers, had played under the black-and-red colors of the club as well. (But Saadi was particularly more renowned for his playing, as Yacef Saadi, in the movie The Battle of Algiers, under the direction of the Italian Gillo Pontecorvo —besides being a notable historical figure of the war.)

Post-Colonial Disobedience

The stadiums’ anti-power sentiment would not be appeased even after Algeria’s independence in 1962. Supporters often railed against Boumediene in the 1970s and Bendjedid in late 1980s —when they chanted “Bab El Oued el-shuhada” (“Bab El Oued of the martyrs”) in reference to the bloody crackdown on protesters in 1988.

In May 2018, it was Ouyahia, then prime minister, who had to endure mass verbal assault during the Algerian Cup final. The insubordinate chants were of such insolence that the Algerian Public Television cut off the sound during live broadcast.

On occasions, gatherings in stadiums and over sports led Algerian supporters to organize in quasi-political movements called “ultras”, transcending the mere aspect of football. The ultras culture emerged in the late-1960s social unrest in Italy, in which young protesters of left-wing aspirations took to stadiums with attitudes akin to those of radical political organizations —culture of anonymity, solidary between members, self-financing and independence from and defiance toward official institutions.

In Tunisia, ultras of E.S. Tunis and Club Africain were at the forefronts of the 2011 uprisings. In Egypt, that same year, Al-Ahly and Zamalek ultras stood against the Baltaguiyas (pro-government militias) in the Tahrir Square of Cairo.

The ultras movement swept across North Africa in the 2000s by dint of Internet and social media. The M.C. Algiers ultras are called Verde Leone, whereas U.S.M.A.’s Ouled El-Bahdja claim kinship to Milano, sharing the black-and-red colors of A.C. Milan.

On March 14, in the midst of protests against Bouteflika’s then ongoing rule, the Algiers two rivals were to play in the country’s biggest derby. The game was expected to draw a significant number of supporters, as it remarkably does per usual. But in the match-day morning, walls in the capital read, “We cannot go to a wedding feast while our mother is unwell.” For the ultras’ being “about more than football,” the game was widely boycotted, as the 5-Juillet Stadium 80.000 seats were almost empty.

The Algerian national football team qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations on Sunday, July 14. The Algerian Army previously promised it would make available six military aircrafts to convey some 600 Algerian supporters to Cairo to attend the final game, which will take place on Friday — customary day of weekly protests.

L'articolo Football at the Heart of Algerian Protests, Again proviene da InsideOver.

(Algiers)  On Wednesday, June 12, a motorcade reportedly carrying Algeria’s former head of government, Ahmed Ouyahia, rushed through El Harrach in the suburbs of Algiers. Images of the escort were repeatedly broadcast on television that day, shared by thousands on social media, as the previous prime minister, yet again, broke the news.

But Ouyahia’s convoy was slightly altered now and appeared to be lacking in its usual governmental air. Rather, he was driven in a police van, bound for El Harrach Penal Institution.

A group of local residents, some cheering, clustered about the prison’s entryway in the meantime. They awaited the coming of the unprecedented escort and chanted almost in unison, “You have looted the country, you thieves!” It was the first time in Algerian history that a former prime minister was to be detained on accusation of corruption.

Ouyahia is, by all accounts, one of the most disdainful – and resented – politicians in Algeria. As the police van dashed through the prison gates, bystanders hurled yoghurt pots at it. The former five-time minister (thrice under President Bouteflika) once raised controversy when, in response to rising prices after initiating austerity measures, he had declared that Algerians were “not obliged to eat yoghurt”.

The following day, June 13, Abdelmalek Sellal (one of Ouyahia’s forerunning premiers) was in turn taken to El Harrach prison. Their provisional detention followed those of a number of other political and economic figures that had thrived during the Bouteflika era – all involved in cases of fraud or corruption.

“Operation clean hands”

In the beginning of May, the country’s most powerful troika, namely Said Bouteflika (the previous president’s youngest brother), Major General Toufik and Major General Tartag (both intelligence chiefs), were summoned in an extraordinary scenario before the Military Court. They were reportedly put in detention for “harming the army’s authority and plotting against state authority”.

Said, to whom the country’s substantial decisions were attributed, was often said to be “the shadow president”, having to fulfill his ailing brother’s job. General Toufik, once “god of Algeria”, was removed from power in 2015 after the dissolution of the D.R.S. (Algeria’s then intelligence agency), which he headed. General Tartag ran the new-founded D.S.S. (a consequent of the D.R.S.).

The unexampled wave of arrests, which has been propelled by the actual regime – represented by the Algerian army’s head Ahmed Gaid Salah, once Bouteflika’s acolyte – swept over the country’s economic élite as well.

Operation “clean hands”, inspired by Italy’s mani pulite purge of the 1990s, has also brought to heel magnates that were untouchable under Bouteflika – the country’s number-one fortune Issad Rebrab, Ali Haddad, “boss of bosses” and head of Algeria’s topmost construction company ETRHB, the automotive industry front man, Mahieddine Tahkout, and the Kouninef Brothers, among others. These businessmen are accused of having misappropriated public funds to enrich themselves at the expense of public sector, supported by oil rents during Bouteflika’s early presidency.

On April 10, Gaid Salah, who is also deputy minister of defense, declared, “The justice system, which has regained its independence, will now act in complete liberty, with no constraints and without yielding to pressure or orders, undertaking legal proceedings against the whole gang of those who engaged in the misappropriation of public funds and abused their power to illegally enrich themselves.”

Tints of doubt

Yet, critics have noted, it is this same justice system that had left political detainees die in custody. On May 28, an Algerian political dissident and human rights activist, Kamel Eddine Fekhar, died in detention. Other detainees from the Bouteflika era remain in custody for political cases – some, like Hadj Gharmoul, were arrested for having opposed the previous president’s run for a fifth term.

“With this crackdown, they are trying to make us think that the system is capable of being reformed,” declared the Secretary-General of the Workers Party, Louisa Hanoune, in late April, whereas “the same justice system closed its eyes to all of these abuses for decades”. Louisa Hanoune was arrested shortly afterward for “plotting against state authority”.

“We haven’t truly seen the arrests of Haddad and the rest,” said Alaa, a protester taking part in student demonstrations on Tuesday. “But we will not stop until they are all gone anyway, including Gaid Salah. He is just one of them,” added the 19-year-old student.

Alaa is a high-school student. He has just finished the third day of his Baccalaureate exams and hurriedly joined the student demonstrations that take place each Tuesday in downtown Algiers.

The weekly student protests are at their 17th happening, occurring in subsequence to those of Friday, which started on February 22 in response to Bouteflika’s run for a fifth term. Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned in early April, after pressure from the streets and the army that once supported the idea of a fifth term. Demonstrators now demand the departure of the remnant “system” – the current political élite – as a whole.

But as some back Gaid Salah in operation “clean hands”, which goes along with the overwhelming majority’s aspiration, others fear that the purge is but a tacit safeguard of the status quo – a sort of gambit in which, as the journalist and writer Akram Belkaid put it, the actual regime “pretends that things are changing in a sense so that they don’t truly change”.

Gaid Salah’s turanabout

Gaid Ahmed Salah, 79, was appointed as the army’s chief of staff by Bouteflika himself in 2004, and as deputy minister of defense in 2013. He became Bouteflika’s obligé and one of his closest allies. He even endorsed the idea of a fifth term.

On March 6, he had condemned the protests, deeming them menacing and alluding to a likely return of the Black Decade (Algeria’s 1990s civil war), in which the army was insidiously involved. But no more than four days later, as protesters still demanded the end of Bouteflika’s 20-year rule, he declared, “Algeria is lucky in its people, and the army is lucky in its people”.

Ten days later, Gaid Salah saluted the “deep popular consciousness of the protesters”, assuring that “for every problem, there is a solution, if not several”. On March 26, he finally called for the application of Article 102 of the Algerian Constitution, which stipulates the dismissal of the sitting president if proved unfit to continue exercising his duties. Bouteflika, who suffered a stroke in 2013 and had scarcely made any public appearances ever since, was compelled to resign on April 2.

“Gaid Saleh confirms in each of his speeches that justice is under his control,” said Mustapha Benfodil, a writer and journalist at the Algerian newspaper El Watan. “The incarceration of the opposition figure Louisa Hanoune under the false pretext that she was undermining state security shows that he is more bent on a settling of scores than on the desire for justice,” he added.

The Algerian National People’s Army has historically scarcely – if not never – been apolitical. In June 1965, Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, was toppled by Colonel Houari Boumediene (then minister of defense). In 1978, Boumediene died and the army intervened to replace him by Chadli. In 1992, the army forced Chadli to resign to break the parliamentary elections, following a large victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

The army was also involved in the October 1988 killings and the Black Decade that followed. Opponents of the army’s current interference in politics today claim that the army is trying to befriend the people so that it will not have to do the “dirty work” again.

“As long as General Gaid Salah is in charge, which may unfortunately last a long time, Algerians are far from seeing the end of the tunnel,” said Benfodil. “The fight is just beginning,” he added.

This Friday marks the 18th week of protests. No new date has been set for the forthcoming presidential elections, following the postponement of those planned for July 4 due to a lack of candidates.

L'articolo Post-Bouteflika Pandemonium: the Army Comes Into Play proviene da InsideOver.