by Guy Arnold
MOROCCO
The Moroccan claim to Western Sahara dominated that country’s relations with its immediate neighbours and Africa through the OAU for most of the 1980s. In February 1976 Spain, in effect, had handed over Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania and both countries had at once sent troops to occupy the parts of Western Sahara contiguous to their own territories. POLISARIO had fought against both countries, so successfully in the case of Mauritania, which was ill-equipped and too poor to conduct a war outside its own territory that it was obliged to give up its claim in 1979 and withdraw. Fighting between the Moroccan forces and POLISARIO reached a climax over the years 1979–81. At issue, once Mauritania had withdrawn from the contest, was the Moroccan claim to a part of the territory, which had a certain historical basis, and the POLISARIO demand for a democratic election to decide the future of the territory. The consequent Sahara War exposed the weakness of the OAU. In 1980 Cuba recognized the Sahara Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as proclaimed by POLISARIO and Cuba’s action was followed by recognition from a further 36 countries, most of them African. The future of SADR was then debated by the OAU and though member countries were fearful of dividing the organization, 26 of the 50 members recognized SADR, and this ought to have meant SADR’s admission to the OAU. Morocco, however, insisted that SADR’s admission required recognition by two-thirds of the membership, yet despite this the OAU did admit SADR to membership in 1982. Morocco and 18 other countries that supported its stand then walked out to present the organization with its greatest crisis since its foundation. The crisis was apparently resolved in June 1983 when the SADR delegation voluntarily abstained from taking its seat and Morocco then ended its boycott. In 1984, however, Mauritania, one of the original claimants to Western Sahara, recognized the SADR whose delegate then did take its seat in the OAU. At this point Morocco left the OAU.
The OAU and the UN now saw the Western Sahara as a colonized territory whose people should be able to determine their future by means of a referendum. Although Morocco again agreed to take part in a referendum about the future of the territory, it subsequently found ways repeatedly to defer the referendum, which it was to do successfully to the end of the century. POLISARIO, which by the beginning of the 1980s had 10,000 troops (although only half of these would be engaged in fighting at any given time), used hit-and-run tactics against centres of population, forcing the phosphate mines at Bou Craa to operate at reduced capacity. At this time (the early 1980s) POLISARIO appeared to be winning the war while Morocco was reduced to maintaining garrisons in the centres of population, yet King Hassan continued to receive wide support for the war which by then had become a Moroccan nationalist crusade. In 1981 POLISARIO switched its bases from Algeria to Mauritania and, following an attempted coup in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian government broke diplomatic relations with Morocco. By 1982, however, Morocco had obtained control over the principal centres of population in Western Sahara – El Aiun, Smara, Bojador – and the huge phosphate deposits at Bou Craa. The Moroccans now built defensive lines in the form of endless sand walls round the triangle of these towns and Bou Craa. The first phase of the walls was completed in 1982. In 1984 they were extended to the Mauritanian border and ran for more than 600 kilometres.
The war became highly sophisticated. Morocco accused Algeria and Libya of providing POLISARIO with Soviet-made missiles, which were used to shoot down Moroccan planes. In October 1981, for example, a Moroccan Hercules transport and a Mirage F-A fighter were brought down by SAM-6 or SAM-8 missiles at high altitudes. The Moroccans suggested that Cuban or East German ‘advisers’ working with POLISARIO were responsible for firing the missiles. The war continued through the decade with varying degrees of intensity. In November 1987, for example, POLISARIO issued a communiqué claiming that 63 Moroccan troops had been killed and 91 wounded in a desert battle. A Moroccan army communiqué, in reply, stated that 245 guerrillas and 72 Moroccan soldiers had been killed in two battles. This fighting immediately preceded the arrival of a UN mission to ascertain the prospects of holding a referendum. POLISARIO then declared a truce. In August 1988 Morocco and POLISARIO accepted a UN plan for a ceasefire and a referendum to give the people of Western Sahara the choice of independence or integration with Morocco, but after nine months the truce and the UN effort broke down. At the end of September 1989 POLISARIO mounted a series of attacks on Moroccan positions and on 7 and 11 October waged substantial battles against the Moroccans at Guelta Zemmour and Hamza. Both sides claimed they had inflicted heavy casualties on their opponents.
The war continued on a reduced scale in 1990. Algeria, the most involved outsider, pressed for a solution according to UN and OAU resolutions. Further negotiations conducted during June in Geneva led the UN to announce that a referendum would be held in 1991 at an estimated cost of US$250 million. By the end of the decade Morocco was no closer to solving the Western Sahara question in its favour and though it had large numbers of troops stationed in the territory at considerable expense, it had fallen out with the OAU as a result of its unilateral action which was in flagrant violation of UN resolutions as well as against the wishes of the inhabitants of Western Sahara. Neither did it appear to be obtaining any benefits from the creation of the UMA even though in 1988 Algeria had suddenly ended its support for POLISARIO to resume diplomatic relations with Morocco as part of a move to make the UMA work.
ALGERIA
President Houari Boumedienne of Algeria died of a rare disease on 27 December 1978 and, following an interregnum, Col. Chadli Benjedid was elected President. Benjedid pursued a less austere policy than his predecessor; opponents of Boumedienne including Ben Bella, who went into exile, were released from prison. The process of switching from the French language to Arabic was speeded up. In the legislative elections of 1982 the ruling FLN received 72.65 per cent of the votes. The Algerian role in obtaining the release in 1981 of the American hostages who had been seized in Iran at the time of the Islamist revolution in that country led to a brief period of good relations with the US but the goodwill was soon dissipated when the US sold tanks to Morocco at a time when Algeria and Morocco were at loggerheads over Western Sahara. During the first half of the 1980s Algeria solved a number of outstanding border disputes with Niger and Tunisia although in the west it continued its support for POLISARIO so that the quarrel with Morocco retarded progress on the creation of a greater Maghreb Union. At least in the early 1980s it appeared that Algeria’s economy would continue successfully along the lines of the socialist revolution established under Boumedienne.
A clash between the secular FLN, which had ruled Algeria since independence, and increasing demands by fundamentalists for a more Islamistoriented state came to dominate the politics of the decade. When the government had tried to appease Islamic sentiment during the 1970s it had met opposition from both the Army, which saw itself as the guardian of the revolution, and the Berbers, who regarded moves towards fundamentalism as an Arab attempt to oppose their own moves towards cultural assertion. Growing militancy culminated in clashes between secular students and fundamentalists in November 1982 when about 200 fundamentalists were arrested. Subsequently 5,000 people attended a Friday prayer meeting in Algiers, which turned into a protest meeting. President Benjedid warned that secular forces could be mobilized against Muslim extremists should this be necessary. This particular crisis ended in May 1985 when 30 of those who had been taken into custody received prison sentences of 3–12 years, 60 were acquitted and the rest released after receiving sentences for less than the time they had already been in detention. Thereafter, Benjedid maintained a low-key approach to the fundamentalists and for a few more years the government appeared to contain the fundamentalist pressures. On the political front Benjedid had won the presidential elections of 1984; he was sole candidate, with 95.4 per cent of the vote. In 1985 Benjedid visited Washington and achieved a rapprochment with the United States. Tension with Morocco was also eased following a meeting in May 1987 between King Hassan II and Presi
dent Benjedid. More emollient than his prickly predecessor, Benjedid managed to improve relations with Libya. However, Algeria’s relations with France were always difficult and in 1987 a dispute over the price of Algeria’s natural gas exports led to considerable friction. By this time Benjedid was moving away from socialism and central planning and embarking upon a series of economic reforms.
Growing discontent with both the political and economic restraints of socialism persuaded Benjedid to begin liberalizing the system; but he had embarked upon his changes too late and in 1988 the worst riots seen in Algeria since 1962 occurred and led to 500 deaths. Although the government blamed the Islamic fundamentalists, the true reason for the unrest was economic hardship resulting from the fall in oil prices. The government used the military to suppress the disturbances but also responded to the unrest by improving consumer supplies. These riots signalled the end of three decades of old-style socialist centralism as Algeria, under a more pragmatic leadership, seemed ready to turn the country into a pluralist society. The government’s commitment to market liberalization and a shake-up of the bureaucracy was deeply worrying to the many people who feared for their jobs in the huge state sector. A new national constitution, published in 1989, dropped all mention of socialism and introduced political pluralism or multipartyism and conceded the right to strike. In July 1989 the National Assembly passed a political associations law that required political parties to avoid programmes based on language or religion while a second law required a political party to obtain a minimum of 10 per cent of votes in a constituency to qualify for registration. However, these laws were regarded as favouring the continuance of FLN dominance at the expense of the Muslims and the Berber minority. In 1990, true to its older radical tradition, Algeria refused to support the US multinational force against Iraq. The process of democratization was speeded up in 1990: exiles were allowed to return home and a large number of political parties appeared – 25 had been registered by mid-year. On 12 June 1990 elections for town councils and provincial assembles were held and the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) (Islamic Salvation Front) made sweeping gains and took 54 per cent of the votes against 28 per cent for the ruling FLN. It now appeared that Benjedid’s reforms – political relaxation and a return to multipartyism – had produced a major confrontation between secular politics and Islamic fundamentalism. The groundwork had in fact been laid for the catastrophe of the 1990s.
The meteoric rise of the FIS was the outstanding event of the last years of the decade. Mouloud Hamrouche had been appointed Prime Minister by Benjedid on 9 September 1989 and, after announcing his government, had promised liberal reforms and a greater say for the opposition. He also admitted that the economy was in a state of disintegration and vowed to improve the investment climate of the private sector. His programme was approved by the Legislature by 281 to three on 30 September. Hamrouche had also changed the composition of his government, replacing ministers with military and party backgrounds with technocrats, a move made easier by the earlier decision of Benjedid (in March) to make the military withdraw from the FLN Central Committee. Although strict conditions had been applied to new parties, which could not be based upon a single region or a religion, this did not hold back the rapid spread of FIS influence. A further law stated that a party gaining over 50 per cent of the votes in a constituency would obtain all the seats. At the time this was seen as favouring the FLN. But by March 1990 Hamrouche was constrained to reverse this law when it appeared that the FIS would obtain a landslide. By then it had become apparent that the FIS posed the old FLN and the reforming government with its greatest challenge. The FIS had widespread support, was suspected of anti-democratic tendencies and was committed to the introduction of Sharia. Many Algerians agreed with FIS demands for a fairer society and more religious observance, but many also feared that polarization of the two sides would take place and did not want to see the curtailment of individual freedoms that went with FIS Islamic ideas, and especially as these applied to the position of women. As the new decade began the ruling FLN found itself on the defensive, the Berber minority, represented by the Culture and Democracy Party, was fearful that government Arabization policies would threaten its own distinct culture while the FIS was garnering nationwide support for an Islamist revival.
The much-lauded socialist experiment that the FLN had launched under Boumedienne appeared to fall apart during the 1980s and determining what went wrong is far from easy. ‘Algeria was once the most admired country in the Arab world. There were few who loved it or enjoyed going there – it was too hard and unsmiling for that – but for what it had achieved it was respected. People believed it was going to be a success.’3 The Algerian struggle against France in the 1950s and early 1960s had been tough and uncompromising and, as such, an inspiration to other independence struggles at that time. But in the process, in which perhaps one million Algerians had been killed, the country had become inured to hardship. The FLN had created the new Algerian nation in the cauldron of the war against France and could subsequently rely upon the sense of unity that had emerged from the struggle. The creation of a centrally planned socialist state under Boumedienne during the 1970s unravelled in the 1980s. ‘What makes Algeria particularly interesting is that it displayed all the different faults of the Arab countries. Its government suffered from the hypocrisy, corruption and ruthlessness of the other Arab governments, and in running its economy it combined inflexible socialism with over-ambitious development schemes and, later, a short-sighted desire to win favour with its own people. It so happened that the effects of all its mistakes and shortcomings hit the country at the same time, and in a particularly acute fashion, and in a very short period brought it to ruin.’4 The FLN in all practical senses was a dictatorship but admirers of the country’s post-independence achievements were too ready to overlook this fact because its socialism was fashionable, especially during the years when Algeria was in the forefront of demanding a New International Economic Order and was using its oil wealth to launch major development projects. As a result it was regarded as an enlightened dictatorship.
The process of heavy industrialization implemented through the 1970s was financed by oil wealth, but the industrial plants that were purchased from foreign contractors in fact were not profitable. There were a number of reasons for this. Most of their products were unable to compete with cheaper imports or as exports. The principal reason lay with the lack of indigenous expertise capable of making the newly established plants develop and expand naturally to pay their way. Moreover, in order to safeguard its socialist experiment the government used its oil revenues to finance the losses, which the new industries incurred. At the same time that this industrial revolution was put in place, agriculture was neglected. Two events occurred at the end of the 1970s, shortly after the death of Boumedienne, to have a major impact upon Algeria. The first of these was the Iranian revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power and signalled a growth of Islamic fundamentalism right across the Arab world. The other event was the second major rise in oil prices that took place over 1979–80. At the end of the 1970s, relaxing the austerity to which it had accustomed the Algerian people, the Boumedienne government had increased social spending. The oil price rise allowed Benjedid to spend more lavishly. The government relaxed import restrictions and luxury goods such as bananas, foreign cheese, washing machines, refrigerators and cars appeared in the country and were subsidized by a process of adjusting prices. Moreover, to finance its expansive consumer-oriented policies, the government began borrowing on the international market in 1984 and then, when the oil price collapsed from US$30 a barrel to US$10–15, increased its borrowing still further. Government borrowing was accompanied by a rise in unemployment and by the end of the decade as many as 25 per cent of the male workforce were unemployed while among the 17–23 age group as many as 70 per cent were unemployed. The young unemployed, more than any other factor, threatened the government’s ability to control the situation. These young unemp
loyed had no money, were bored and bitter and felt they had little future. They were ripe for revolution.
By 1988 the Islamic politicians were becoming more prominent and influential and were instrumental in prolonging the riots of October. Abbasi Madani and Ali Belhadj, the leaders of FIS, which at this point was still in embryo form, were university lecturers and would preach in mosques when allowed to do so. Tradesmen and unemployed workmen now joined the ranks of FIS in growing numbers and became more aggressive in their demands for change. As a result, by June 1990, when the first free vote since independence was allowed for the town councils and provincial assemblies, FIS won 54 per cent of the vote. In the aftermath of this victory, the FIS shut kindergarten schools (to keep mothers at home), turned cinemas into mosques, separated the sexes on buses, had separate counters established in post offices for men and women and had verses of the Koran posted up in the streets. But though the FIS made plain the direction it intended to take, the public as a whole was not greatly impressed. However, in the run-up to the June 1991 national parliamentary elections, FIS tactics, which included using municipal buses to transport their supporters to meetings and denying polling cards to opponents, demonstrated clearly that a real confrontation between FIS and the FLN was about to take place. One outcome of any dictatorship is to teach opponents to adopt equally dictatorial methods.