NATIONALISM IN THE MAGHREB
Nasser’s Egyptian nationalism and before that Zionism and Palestinian nationalism were not being articulated in a historical and geographic vacuum. In fact, they were part of a continuum of nationalisms that thrived in the Arab east as far away as Iraq and in the Maghreb as far west as Morocco. Despite fundamental differences in the genesis and evolution of the nationalisms that swept across the Middle East in the early twentieth century, there were striking similarities in both their causes and their effects. In the case of Zionism, the emergence of nationalism owed much to the mobilizational efforts of early Zionist leaders and their success, over time, in combining a collective, distinct sense of Jewish identity with a viable set of statelike organizations. Once these organizations and the collective identity out of which they had arisen were transplanted onto a piece of territory, that of historic Palestine, Zionist (or Israeli) nationalism was complete. This transplantation in turn created—or re-created—a Palestinian nationalism. Egyptian nationalism was nothing new, but only after the defeat of 1948, the “catastrophe” (nakba), were some Egyptians prompted to take matters into their own hands and, as they saw it, redeem the honor of the Egyptian and the larger Arab nation. Nasserism was Egyptian nationalism writ large, a reaction to military incompetence, national disgrace, and industrial and economic backwardness.
These were also the targets of Maghrebi nationalism, although here the culprit was not a domestic despot but an outside colonizer. And in this region, unlike the Arab east, it was not Britain that dominated but rather France. In each country of the Maghreb, the nature, extent, and duration of French colonialism directly influenced the emergence of nationalist sentiments and, eventually, national independence movements. This was also the case with Libya, the only country in the Maghreb, and in the entire Middle East, for that matter, that was occupied by Italy. In turn, the nature of the nationalist forces leading the movement for independence, and the way independence was achieved, had direct consequences for the politics of each of the newly independent countries.
In broad terms, Algeria’s colonial domination by France was the longest lasting and most extensive. It started in 1830, lasted for 132 years, and resulted in the transfer of 1.7 million French colons to Algeria, or 11 percent of Algeria’s total population. It also featured the annexation of geographic Algeria as yet another provincial administrative unit of France. By contrast, French colonial rule in Tunisia started in 1881, lasted 75 years, and resulted in less than 7 percent of the Tunisian population being made up of the colons. Morocco’s colonial domination was even less extensive. Begun in 1912, it lasted for only 44 years and resulted in a colon population of only about 5 percent.77 Most important, in both Tunisia and Morocco, especially in the latter, existing political institutions—the beylik in Tunisia (a relic of Ottoman rule) and the monarchy in Morocco—were not destroyed. In fact, the “protection” of these indigenous institutions theoretically formed the raison d’être of the French protectorate. Precolonial Algerian institutions were not as fortunate. The French effectively eradicated all of them and sought to make Algeria as thorough a French possession as possible.
The Italians tried to do the same thing in Libya, but in a much shorter time span. Italian conquest of Libya started in 1911, lasted for slightly more than 30 years, and resulted in a settler population of one hundred thousand out of a total of about a million, approximately 10 percent. Only in 1951, long after the Italians were defeated in World War II and Libya’s control had been turned over to a joint British-French administration, did the country’s geographic boundaries and political structures take form under the aegis of the United Nations. Still, Libyan nationalism took nearly another two decades to emerge and make its presence felt on both the domestic and the international stages.
Morocco and Tunisia both became independent in March 1956. As we shall see presently, in each of these cases the causes and consequences of nationalism were different, although the two countries did, naturally, maintain a symbiotic relationship. In large measure, however, the French acquiesced in giving independence to Tunisia and Morocco in 1956 because they were being threatened with the loss of their much larger, older possession, Algeria. This is not to imply that Tunisian and Moroccan independence came easily. As compared to the Algerian case, however, the struggles involved very little violence. The independence movements in Morocco and Tunisia were headed by individuals and organizations that came to symbolize and articulate nationalist aspirations, thereby giving added ferocity and direction to nationalist sentiments in each country. In Morocco, the monarch, Mohammed V, emerged in this role when he opposed the French protectorate. In Tunisia, the role fell to the Neo-Destour Party and one of its most capable leaders, Habib Bourguiba. When independence eventually arrived, both the Moroccan monarch and the Tunisian Bourguiba became, in their own way, the Nassers of their respective countries.
As in Morocco and Tunisia, Algerian nationalist sentiments were strengthened by American president Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy of the right of national self-determination and, later, by the French defeat in World War II. Nevertheless, the outbreak of the Algerian war of “national liberation” on November 1, 1954, appears to have come as a total surprise to the French, and they resisted its success to the bitter end. Before the war of independence, Algerian nationalists had been divided into three groups: some called for greater assimilation with the French; others advocated cultural nationalism; and still others called for outright independence. Despite a seven-year, bloody war with the French, the Algerian revolutionaries did not develop a united, corporate sense of identity and a common vision of the future. In large measure, this was because the Algerian nationalists did not have a single, dominant figure like Nasser, Mohammed V, or Bourguiba. The Evian Agreements, signed in March 1962, finally brought the bloody war to an end and resulted in Algeria’s formal independence the following July. The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), which had led the revolution from abroad, assumed power but failed to develop unity. By 1965, the FLN’s leader, Ahmed Ben Bella, had been overthrown and replaced by one of his lieutenants and former comrades, Houari Boumedienne.
In his seminal study of North African politics, Clement Moore Henry argues that in the face of colonial domination three modes or “moments” of nationalist consciousness are possible and that one or a combination of these three modes was found in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. The first mode of nationalist consciousness is “liberal assimilation,” in which “sons of the old shocked elite admire and imitate the new rulers, assimilate some of their styles and values, accept their rules of the game, and attempt to engage in dialogue.”78 A second mode of nationalist consciousness is “traditionalist anti-colonialism,” “entailing a reassertion of traditional values against the alien presence.”79 Third and last is the “radical outlook,” rejecting both assimilation and traditionalism and being the “only mode of consciousness that can sustain a coherent modernizing elite and generate a new political design.”80
Moroccan nationalism featured a preponderance of the second mode of consciousness, traditionalist anticolonialism. As mentioned earlier, the French protectorate of Tunisia and Morocco was technically meant to protect the sovereigns of each country. In Morocco, the sixteen-year-old Moulay Muhammad had acceded to the throne in 1927. Gradually, the new king emerged as a vital mediator among Morocco’s competing nationalist forces, a moderating influence whom the French found next to impossible to silence.81 Because of his “dual capacity as the temporal leader of the entire country and . . . spiritual leader, [the king] could serve as an excellent unifying force.”82 He was thus able not only to rally elements of the urban society but also to unite the country’s Arabs and Berbers in the cause of independence.
The king, of course, was not the only one giving expression to the nationalist aspirations of Moroccans. In January 1944, a group of educated Moroccans formed a political party called the Independence (Istiqlal). The party went on to play an important role in po
pularizing the ideals of independence among the tiny but influential class of Moroccan intelligentsia. More importantly, the tactical alliance of the king and the Istiqlal—the Makhzan and the urban elite—proved ultimately more powerful than that between the intransigent colons and successive French resident generals. In the process, the king rather than Istiqlal emerged as the symbolic embodiment of Moroccan nationalism. Istiqlal’s founders had a “fundamentally legalistic and religious frame of mind” and were “better versed in public oratory than in mass organization.”83 But in the popular eye, the king already had religious legitimacy; he was both a sherif (descendant of the Prophet) and the commander of the faithful (Amir al-Muʾminin). He was even considered to have been endowed with baraka, an indefinable divine blessing akin to charisma.84
Any doubts about Mohammed V’s nationalist credentials were erased in August 1953, when the French authorities, having gone to Morocco to “protect” the king, forcibly deposed him and installed one of his little-known grandsons as the new sultan. By November 1955, with Mohammed V more popular than ever before, a Liberation Army demanded the restoration of his throne. The French, by now eager for a political settlement, returned the deposed king to power. He promptly demanded an end to the protectorate and “the beginning of an era of full independence.”85 France had little option but to grant the wish of a monarch who now openly rejected their protection. On March 2, 1956, French Morocco became formally independent. Within a month, the Spanish government, which still held on to parts of northern Morocco, followed suit. Generalissimo Franco had long supported Moroccan nationalist efforts in order to undermine French interests in the region. Now that the French were gone, the Moroccans wanted full independence. Spanish Morocco became independent on April 7, 1956.
Moroccan nationalism as articulated by Mohammed V and, in his shadow, various Moroccan political parties was qualitatively different from the nationalism of Nasser and his Arab Socialist Union. Nasser was a self-proclaimed revolutionary and, at least into the early 1960s, was seen as such by a majority of Egyptians and others. His conception of nationalism was informed by a “progressive” socialism that would fundamentally change the domestic socioeconomic order as well as the international balance of power. But Mohammed V though he wanted the French and the Spanish out of Morocco, was a monarch whose legitimacy rested on centuries of tradition, and he by no means welcomed radical domestic changes to the structure of Moroccan society. Nor did he necessarily favor large shifts in regional or global international relations. From the start, therefore, Moroccan nationalism as officially articulated was in the “traditionalist anticolonialist” mode alluded to earlier.
This tradition, and a salient historical memory on which to build a nationalist consciousness, was precisely what the Algerian nationalist revolutionaries lacked. The French conquest of Algeria was rapacious and thorough. Although it occurred in stages, it involved considerable violence directed at the native population. The historical context within which the Algerian colonial conquest began in the 1830s was markedly different from the contexts in which the Tunisian and later the Moroccan protectorates began in the 1880s and 1910s, respectively. French colonial officials saw the native Algerians as barbaric savages, uncivilized and in need of redemption.86 The aim here was assimilation, not protection. For the French colonial authorities and the often violent colons, this meant forcible subjugation of native Algerians. “Indiscriminate search-and-destroy tactics, the routine burning of crops of ‘disloyal’ tribes, and occasional incinerations, in villages or even caves, of hundreds of men, women, and children, terrorized populations into submission.”87 By the beginning of the twentieth century, all local centers of power had been either vanquished or eliminated altogether, and local revolts were brutally suppressed. The French domination of Algeria was total and complete.
Within the context of French domination, the three modes of nationalist consciousness emerged side by side, undermining nationalist efficacy and hampering elite cohesion. Some Algerian intellectuals called for greater assimilation with the French, while others advocated cultural authentication, and still others proposed a radical break with France. For a handful of Algerian nationalists frustrated by these internal divisions and the resulting political impotence of the nationalist movement, the launching of an armed struggle seemed like the most promising way to achieve internal unity and dislodge the French.88 Thus began the FLN’s campaign in November 1954 to achieve Algerian independence. But France was in no mood to be ousted from its old colony, and in 1956 it gave Morocco and Tunisia independence so that all its efforts could be focused on keeping Algeria French. Shortly after the first attacks on French colonial interests on November 1, 1945, the French prime minister, Pierre Mendès-France, assured the world that Algeria would forever remain irrevocably French.
For the next eight years, the French and the FLN battled each other violently. By the time the conflict ended in 1962, some one million French soldiers had been mobilized (up from an original eighty thousand in 1954), one million Algerians were dead, and another two million Algerians were imprisoned in concentration camps. Out of its inability to deal with the Algerian crisis, in 1958 the Fourth French Republic collapsed and the Fifth Republic was born. Charles de Gaulle, the new republic’s founder, combined the French military campaign with a much-touted Algerian charm offensive, promising to redistribute 250,000 hectares of state land to the Algerian Muslims, encourage industrial development in the colony, and create four hundred thousand new jobs there.89 After relentless pressure by the French forces, by 1959 the Algerian revolution seemed on the verge of collapse. On the defensive, the FLN took its activities to the international level, mounting a campaign to vilify and isolate France in the global community.
Had the conflict ended earlier, perhaps the FLN would have stayed more unified. But as the war dragged on, and as the political landscape in Algeria and in France itself changed, the internal dynamics of the FLN changed a great deal as well. Structurally, the FLN became divided along two fundamental axes: one separating “internal” from “external” resisters and another separating the organization’s military operatives from its political activists. An additional split proved to be especially disruptive: that between the more moderate and the radical elements within the organization. Largely because of the difficult, underground circumstances within which it operated and the organizational deficiencies of many of its key figures, the FLN never developed an effective means of internal conflict resolution. While the Algerian nation became increasingly unified in the goal of attaining independence, the FLN—and thus the Algerian elite—did not. The project of national independence had rallied the elite against the common French enemy. But once French resolve weakened and the Evian Agreement ending the war was signed in 1962, whatever bonds still held the elite together soon began to disappear. The nationalist aspirations of the Algerian masses might have been achieved at that point, but there was no single articulator—no Nasser, or Bourguiba, or Mohammed V—to give the movement official direction from that point on. The victorious FLN, riven by internal discord and coups, turned out to be ill equipped for such a task. Only by the early 1970s was the Algerian government stable enough to present a cohesive conception of Algerian nationalism to the people.
As compared to the other cases in the Maghreb, Tunisian nationalism had a much longer gestation period. Moreover, because of Tunisia’s social structure and the nature of its colonial experience, Tunisian nationalism evolved in gradual stages. With the emergence and then the passage of each stage, nationalist sentiments became more salient, assumed greater ideological sophistication, and developed corresponding organizational abilities. Perhaps most significantly, the manner and context in which this nationalism evolved helped solidify rather than erode the cohesion of the Tunisian elite. Tunisia’s independence in 1956, and its transformation into a republic the next year, allowed the elite the opportunity to give official sanction to a conception of nationalism that had already become quite popular.
Unlike Algeria but like Morocco, Tunisia had become a French protectorate in 1881, the justification having been France’s desire to protect the largely autonomous Ottoman bey who governed Tunisia at the time. Largely bereft of the historic legitimacy that the Moroccan sultanate enjoyed, the Tunisian beylik had neither the opportunity nor the wherewithal to emerge as the symbolic embodiment of Tunisian independence. Instead, the small but influential circle of young intellectuals was the first group among whom nationalist sentiments circulated. Initially, their goal was to secure a constitution (destour in Arabic), leading to the establishment of the Destour Party in 1920. The granting of a constitution was seen as perfectly compatible with the framework of the protectorate. In fact, the party’s founders appear not to have favored a radical break with the status quo. For them, Tunisian nationalism meant working to gradually enhance Tunisia’s internal autonomy within the confines of the protectorate.
It was this innate conservatism that prompted a group of younger intellectuals to break from the party in 1934 and form the Neo-Destour Party. Neo-Destour quickly tapped into the nationalist aspirations of the Tunisians that the older party had ignored. Its leadership was composed of more professionals, it was more dynamic, it remained flexible in its tactics, and it was more able to achieve results in its confrontations and negotiations with the French authorities.90 More importantly, many party leaders had achieved social mobility through the educational system, not through family prestige, and most, having graduated from the same academic institution, developed a strong esprit de corps.91 Complementing the cohesion of the party’s leadership was the rapid rise in its mass popularity. Whereas the old Destour leaders had been mostly elitist in their outlook, the Neo-Destourist leaders came from the masses. Many had personally traveled throughout the country to see the people’s plight firsthand. They had forged organic and organizational ties to trade unions, while avoiding ideological labels so as not to get distracted from the practical task of independence.
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