TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082691/0826004.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.5 KB | 133 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 32

ALGERIA

Searching for Salvation


Lost in a political and economic morass, the country seeks a
middle way between a police state and an Islamic republic

By LARA MARLOWE/ALGIERS


    Ominously recalling Iran in the months before the Ayatullah
Khomeini's revolution, thousands of Muslim worshipers manifest
their desire for an Islamic republic by walking to the Kouba
mosque each Friday morning. The men flaunt their allegiance by
wearing long cotton kamis and beards -- reputedly the dress of
the Prophet Muhammad. The sheik whom they come to hear speaks of
martyrdom and sedition.

    "The Algerian people are Muslims," says the voice on the
minaret's loudspeaker. "The police who prevent people from
coming to prayers are not true Muslims." Security forces
surrounding the mosque listen impassively as the message grows
more strident. "This government ruined the country. It is the
people who suffer from the economic crisis. The government
claims it is Muslim, but if it is, why won't it proclaim Shari`a
((Islamic law))? The people of Algeria want an Islamic state.
They should be allowed to choose this freely."

    Such sermons have galvanized the discontented in a country
mired in political and economic chaos. Earlier this year,
members of the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front issued a
manifesto of civil disobedience and occupied sections of Algiers
to protest electoral laws that they claimed were devised to deny
them victory in parliamentary elections originally scheduled for
June. After some 100 people died in street fighting between the
army and demonstrators, balloting was postponed and President
Chadli Bendjedid declared a state of siege to restore calm.

    How could a nation that is geographically and culturally
closer to Paris than to Mecca or Tehran come to such a pass? For
years the government managed to contain the fundamentalists by
building mosques and passing laws to placate them, then
arresting leaders who became too powerful. But after political
parties were legalized two years ago, the Islamic Salvation
Front won an overwhelming majority in the June 1990 municipal
elections, the first multiparty vote since Algeria gained
independence from France in 1962. Then the gulf war sparked a
fresh burst of anti-Western sentiment. If the fundamentalists
ever come to power, they vow to outlaw alcohol, segregate the
sexes and impose Shari`a, creating a society dramatically
different from the socialist state built more than three decades
ago by nationalist revolutionaries.

    While most Algerians profess to be devout Muslims, they do
not wish to see the tyranny of socialism replaced by a tyranny
of mullahs. But they do want to be led out of the country's
political and economic chaos. Since 1962, the socialist National
Liberation Front, which led the fight for independence, has
ruled. The party lost credibility as its ideology failed to
supply the European standard of living Algerians want.

    The economy is crippled, and many citizens blame the
government's mismanagement and corruption. Unemployment is
estimated at 30% of the work force. Housing and consumer goods
are in scant supply. The drop in world oil prices has drained
petro-revenues by two-thirds, and most of the remaining earnings
go to service the $25 billion foreign debt. "When I see the
poverty in the streets, I feel ill," says Zena Haraigue, who won
Algeria's highest medal as a freedom fighter. "The government
filled its pockets and its stomachs, and now they ask what's
wrong with their young people."

    "Fundamentalism feeds on the crisis, it nourishes the
crisis, and it will disappear with the crisis," says Said Saadi,
leader of the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy. But
neither the opposition parties nor the government has succeeded
in capturing the imagination of the country's disaffected youth
as the Islamic Salvation Front has. Nearly 75% of Algeria's
population of 25 million are under 30, and more than one-third
who leave school have no jobs. The fundamentalists promise to
end corruption and bring prosperity to all.

    For now, martial law has brought a deceptive quiet to the
streets. Some 6,000 people have been arrested, including most
of the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front. An overnight
curfew has been lifted, and the army is in evidence only at the
main radio and television stations and around the
fundamentalist mosques. Last summer Algerians shunned the
beaches to avoid intimidation by Islamic Salvation Front
supporters, who chided men and women alike for showing their
bodies. This year the beaches are again packed with bathers.

    Though political rallies are forbidden, Friday prayers --
and audiocassettes of fiery sermons -- enable the
fundamentalists to spread their message of militancy. "If they
exclude us," says Youssef, a chemistry teacher and Islamic
Salvation Front militant, "we will go underground, and it will
be much harder for them to control us."

    Government officials and centrist opposition leaders claim
fundamentalism is just a phase that will disappear with the
advent of democracy and a free-market economy. They point out
that Algeria's Muslims are Sunni and have no Shi`ite tradition
of radicalism and martyrdom. "Algeria is giving birth to
democracy after nearly 30 years of one-party rule," says
presidential spokesman Amin Zerouk. "It's not easy."

    Because Algerians have little experience in democracy,
their plunge into multiparty politics is exuberant but naive.
There are now 51 registered parties and 118 daily and weekly
newspapers. "We are going through a period of libertarian
childishness," says Zouaoui Benamedi, publisher of the weekly
Algerie Actualite. "Everyone wants to express himself."

    But many are looking for what Hocine Ait-Ahmed, a hero of
the independence war, calls "an alternative between the police
state and an Islamic republic." The government has initiated an
ambitious process of democratic reform, but it is ill-equipped
to control its momentum. "The rest of the world should
understand that we are undertaking a major transformation of our
economic and political systems against a background of acute
crisis," says Foreign Minister Lakhdar Ibrahimi. "My impression
is that there is no likelihood of our becoming an Islamic
republic." In the months to come, Algeria's leaders could find
it difficult to keep to a middle course.