Where all parties are guilty

Algeria is one of the most pitiful of failed Arab states. For ten years and more, the news has been coming in regularly that people somewhere in that country have been butchered. Qui tue qui? is the question Algerians themselves ask. Here is a civil war, all the more sinister for being undeclared and undefined. The ruling elite control the Front de LibZration National, the FLN, and the army, and they say that the killers are Islamists, extremists from the Front Islamique du Salut, the FIS. The Islamists counter-claim that the FLN and the army are responsible for atrocities. The truth is unobtainable, but seemingly all parties are guilty. There are at least 100,000 victims – twice as many by some estimates.

Things ought to have turned out better. FLN credentials go back to its successful rebellion against France, and the gaining of independence in 1962. Nationalism had united the diverse elements of the country, Arabs and Berbers, religious and secular, even and sometimes especially intellectuals brought up on French culture. Accompanied by much good will, Algeria became a pre-eminent symbol of hope and progress for the post-colonial world. It was also a rich country with huge reserves of natural gas and oil. Self-proclaimed socialists, the FLN leaders willingly entered the Soviet orbit.

In the event, nationalism and socialism proved to be bogus in the context, mere covers for strong-arm rule with no prospect of introducing civil society. Power belongs to the FLN and the army, the men with the guns. Rather than devise a constitution capable of sharing power and mediating conflicts of interests, the elite made sure to have a president behind whom they could shelter for the real and serious business of dividing the spoils between themselves.