Algeria's Lessons

Algerians elected a new 389-seat parliament on Thursday, endorsing the existing control by a tripartite alliance. The National Liberation Front won 136 seats, the Democratic National Rally 61 seats and the Movement of Society for Peace 52 seats. But several opposition parties boycotted the poll calling it a fraud, and the Islamic Salvation Front remains banned. The voter turnout was considered poor at 35%, down from 46% five years ago, indicating the electorate's belief that their ballots could not have much impact one way or the other.

Nonetheless, the country's political crisis has in fact eased considerably since the election of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999. He has gradually asserted more civilian control over the military, promoted national reconciliation and presided over a gradual dramatic decline in the civil war fighting that took more than 150,000 lives.

Serious problems remain. Bouteflika has sought to strengthen the powers of the presidency at the expense of parliament, and his recent mysterious illness has set off intense jockeying for power on the assumption he will not be fit to run for a third term in 2009. Recently, there's been a surge in violence, including a bold suicide attack targeting the prime minister's office last month. This seems to be the work of an extreme Islamist splinter faction that has renamed itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as the result of a new alliance with Bin Laden's group. Despite opportunities provided by high hydrocarbon revenues in the last few years, Algeria's transition from civil conflict to peace and democracy still has a long way to go.

Many of Algeria's problems are obviously unique to Algeria. But Algeria's difficult experience may have some lessons that can be applied to today's crisis in Iraq as well as to the question of democracy elsewhere in the Arab world, especially in places like Egypt where rule has long been entrenched by military-backed authoritarian regimes.

One lesson from Algeria is that while Bush and Iraqi politicians may raise expectations for "progress" and even "success," actually achieving stability in Iraq is likely to take years if not decades. The state in Algeria cracked but did not dissolve, yet it took about eight years before it could get violence reasonably under control. In Iraq, the state did completely dissolve with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, creating a complex political scene where multiple factions representing ethnic and religious groups are scrambling for the spoils.

A related lesson is that it takes years to defeat a determined insurgency.

Another lesson is what Algeria expert Hugh Roberts calls "the failure of premature reform." Algeria was pushed into extreme crisis by the regime's decision to open the country to free elections in the late 1980s. Though laudable in theory and widely applauded at the time, the lack of pluralistic experience and democratic institutions led to dangerous hyper competition between secularists and newly enfranchised Islamists. When the FIS won the parliamentary election in 1991, the secular, military-backed FLN regime cancelled them, leading the Islamists to take up arms. Like Algeria, Iraq was unprepared to move rapidly from military dictatorship to democracy, the "reform" envisaged by the Bush administration's neo-con strategists. As Algeria's latest parliamentary elections indicate, Algeria, though far advanced compared to Iraq, is still grappling with the question of how to create a participatory democracy.

In a new Carnegie Paper titled "Demilitarizing Algeria", Roberts, without mentioning Iraq, draws attention to the problem of foreign powers like the U.S. dealing with democratizing states mainly through the prism of the war on terrorism--i.e., approaching stability as a purely security issue rather than political issue.

Roberts headed the North Africa Project of the International Crisis Group for many years. His Carnegie Paper is a solid overview of the the current state of affairs in Algeria.

Extracts from his conclusion:

In view of the terrible damage done to the Algerian polity by the events of the 1990s, the relative restoration of peace and order that has taken place under President Bouteflika was arguably as much as could realistically be hoped for. Given the weakness of the democratic current in Algerian political life and especially the salience of mutually antipathetic forms of identity politics, it was inevitable that this restoration would exhibit an authoritarian aspect. Insofar as this has involved at least partial curbing of the power of the military, it has opened up the possibility of interesting political reform in the medium to longer term.

The necessary condition for democratization is that the Algerian legislature acquire important decision-making powers. Only if this happens will the legislature be able to hold the executive to account (and thereby curb corruption) and, by so doing, guarantee the independence of the judiciary. Only if the national parliament becomes a real locus of decision making, in which the major interests in society need to be effectively represented, can social pressure ensure that elections are wholly free and fair and political parties—the kind necessary to a democratic system of alternating governments—develop. And only if the elected representatives of the people become the source of government mandates can the demilitarization of the Algerian political system be definitive.

For the moment, none of this is in prospect. The high oil price and resulting buoyant revenue have given the "distributive state" in Algeria a new lease on life. As a result, the regime's capacity to co-opt opposition and buy social peace is high and the effective pressure for fundamental institutional reform is low. The most that can be expected in the short term is that Bouteflika's provisional success in restoring order is preserved and that the Algerian political class and intelligentsia are able to use the continued breathing space this offers them to reflect on and draw the right lessons from the dramatic experience of the period since 1988.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo