The National Liberation Front, party of ruling Prime Minister Ali Benflis, has won 199 of the 389 seats in Algeria’s National Assembly after controversial elections marred by violent attacks on civilians and allegations of fraud last Thursday. Just hours before the polls opened, 25 people, reportedly nomads and including several children, were killed in the village of Sendjas in western Algeria. The attackers were allegedly Islamist separatist guerillas. The massacre is the latest round of bloodshed in a civil war that has claimed at least 100,000 lives in the last decade.
In the lowest voter turnout since Algeria won its independence from France in 1962, only 47 percent of the country’s 17 million registered voters went to the polls. The electorate’s disenchantment with the economic policies of the current regime, opposition-led boycotts and the threat of violence were all cited as explanations by election observers.
Boycotts and roadblocks orchestrated by Amazigh protesters resulted in particularly low turnout in the Kabylie region, home to many of the nation’s Imazighen. Demonstrators stormed polling stations in Tizi-Ouzou, the main city of the region, and clashed with government security forces. Amazigh leaders also called for a three-day “anti-vote” strike, effectively shutting down much of Tizi-Ouzou and the surrounding area. Opposition leaders in the secular Socialist Forces Front and the Rally for Culture and Democracy, both pro-Amazigh bodies, predicted widespread fraud and refused to take part in what they claimed would be a rigged process.
The dispute over the legitimacy of the ruling regime has fueled a bitter struggle between government forces and Islamist rebels since the 1992 elections - in which the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front had a commanding lead - were cancelled. Supporters of the Front rose up in protest against the military-backed government. Poor farmers, unwitting civilians and nomads caught in the crossfire have been the primary casualties of this war, which had shown signs of calming in recent months.
Amazigh activists have waged a struggle for recognition of their cultural rights since the Tamazight Spring of 1980, in which thousands of Imazighen clashed with military police after a renowned scholar was prohibited from lecturing on ancient Amazigh poetry at the University of Tizi-Ouzou. In April of 2001, the death of a high school student at the hands of paramilitary gendarmes sparked a series of riots throughout Kabylie. At least 100 people have died in this general uprising in the past year, with thousands more seriously injured in encounters with the gendarmes. Amazigh leaders have since issued a set of 15 demands to the government, relating to measures for cultural protection, official recognition of the Tamazight language and increased economic opportunities for Imazighen citizens. This week’s boycott is in part a response to a perceived lack of government action in addressing those demands. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s refusal to meet one of those demands – the withdrawal of the gendarmes from Kabylie – has met with widespread condemnation from Amazigh leaders.
The Amazigh are the indigenous inhabitants of northern Africa, with significant populations in Algeria, Morocco, Mali, Libya and Egypt. It is estimated that at least a quarter of Algeria’s population are Imazighen. They have been the victims of persecution and repression in many of these states, with their calls for recognition of their cultural autonomy often perceived by those in power as threats to national unity. Many Imazighen in more remote communities have successfully preserved their tribal traditions of self-government and use of Tamazight, their ancestral language.
