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| Volume X, Summer 2003, Number 2 |
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| EXCERPT: Islamism in Algeria: A Struggle Between Hope and Agony |
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| Ray Takeyh |
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Dr. Takeyh is a professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University, Washington, DC.
With its vast oil deposits and a
Francophone intellectual
and ruling elite devoted to
reshaping the state along modern (albeit socialist) lines, decolonized North Africa was seen as one region where secular modernization had the greatest chance of success. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Algeria -- the principal state of the region -- fulfilled these expectations, as its functioning socialist economy and leadership of Third World causes made it a celebrated state throughout the Middle East and left-wing Western circles. It was a leader in the "Group of 77" and one of the proponents of the New International Economic Order.1 It was casually ignored that Algerians had not discovered the magic formula for making socialism function, but rather relied on oil revenues to mask over the shortcomings of the command economy. In the meantime, the Algerian regime's draconian practices at home were similarly neglected in favor of the great service that the small North African state was performing in the cause of world revolution. Algeria may have been a country of contradictions and precarious stability, but it was also the Third World model that had to be acclaimed as an alternative to the decadent capitalism exported by the United States.
In the late 1980s, the dream shattered. As oil revenues declined, the governing regime no longer had the funds to subsidize its ideological dogma and was compelled to launch liberalization measures that inevitably provoked political repercussions. As the imported Western models failed to fulfill their promises, an increasingly disillusioned middle class turned to the Islamists and their devastating critique of the prevailing order. However, for the Islamists to succeed, they had to appreciate that their mandate was not the restoration of the mythical seventh century, but reconciliation of demands for cultural authenticity with equally compelling calls for political empowerment. Algeria, the greatest laboratory for this experimentation, is, ironically, the state that appeared to be the foremost model of modernization.2
1 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "Crises, Elites and Democratization in the Arab World," Middle East Journal, Spring 1993; Mohammad Harbi, Le FLN, Mirages et réalities (Paris: 1980), and L'Algérie et son Destin -- Croyants et Citoyens (Paris: 1993); Abdelkader Yesfsah, Processus de Légitimation du Pouvoir Militaire et la Construction de l'Etat en Algérie (Paris: 1982); John Ruedy, Modern Algeria; The Origins and Development of a Nation (Indiana: 1992); Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam (Berkeley: 1996); Roger Murray and Tom Weingraf, "The Algerian Revolution," New Left Review, December 1963.
2 Ernest Gellner, "The Unknown Apollo of Biskra: The Social Base of Algerian Puritanism," Government and Opposition, Summer 1974; Lahourai Addi, L' Algérie et la Démocratie: Pouvoir et Crise du Politique dans l'Algérie Contemporaine (Paris: 1995); Jean-Claude Vatin, "Religious Resistance and State Power in Algeria," Islam and Power, eds. Alexander S. Cudsi and Ali Hilal Dessouki (Baltimore, MD: 1981), pp. 119-157.
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