Algerian women fight for democratic and social rights

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SOCIALISTACTION FEBRUARY 1992 13 The following article originally appeared in the Nov. 7, 1991, issue of Socialistische Zeitung, the paper of the German United Socialist Party, in which the West German Fourth Internationalists work. The translation has been taken from the Jan. 20, 1992, issue of International Viewpoint, the journal of the Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, with some stylistic changes.

Much has been said and written in the Western media in recent years about the women's movement in Algeria, above all about its struggle against the Islamic fundamentalist. However, this movement did not arise yesterday.

Already during the war of independence, women took part in the liberation struggle. Some, the best known among them, but only a minority, planted bombs. Others went into the mountains and joined the guerrilla struggle. Most, however, joined the resistance in the towns, while the men took to the mountains.

Their participation in this struggle has given Algerian women a strong sense of historical legitimacy. Even today, women involved in the war of independence take the front line in the movement, above all at the moments of sharpest confrontation with the fundamentalists.

The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) has never acknowledged that women took part in the guerrilla struggle. In 1958, it gave the order that all the women fighting in the mountains on the Tunisian border should be sent back into the home. Women have never been represented in the leading bodies of the FLN or the liberation army.

Roots of women's movement It was in the FLN's nature that, at the time of the declaration of independence, it should pursue its policy of excluding women. Resistance to this took shape in the capital, Algiers. This led the president ...Algerian coup (continued from preceding page)

The Committee for the Defense of the Republic was formed two or three days after the results were announced by the UGTA and three employers' unions. It was presided over by the minister of communications.

In our eyes, it was clear that this was a structure controlled by the government. It includes the bourgeois liberal parties-—as well as the Stalinists, who are in an extremely grave crisis.

That is, it includes the Stalinist milieu, because there is hardly anyone left in the party. This element has taken charge of all the mobilizations demanding cancellation of the second round.

The attitude of the secretary general of the UGTA was very badly received by the workers. The following day, several unions denounced the UGTA general secretary for abusing his position as spokesman of the confederation by putting forward a position the workers did not support.

There is another aspect to this. The elections did not stop social struggles. There were strikes during and after the elections. Important workforces, such as the railway workers, had given strike notice.

But after the UGTA position, all strikes were discredited. The workers thought that if they struck, it would be seen as supporting the call for cancelling the second round, and so they withdrew their strike notices.

This is disastrous. This is the time the UGTA should try to create a more favorof the time, Ben Bella, to call an Algerian women's association into being, in order to head off the women's protests.

Throughout the whole existence of the association, that is, since 1963, its leadership has always been in the hands of men. Some of them have permitted themselves, when speaking of the association, to say, "we women of Algeria."

The roots of the present women's movement lie outside this organization. They are the work rather of women outside the assoable relationship of social forces, which is the only way of opposing the fundamentalists. Social tests of strength are coming up. The first lifting of price controls will take place in January. The lifting of all controls is scheduled for July 1992.

So, today we in the PST have the mission of contacting all those sectors who do not agree with the UGTA's attitude, since we have a network of trade-union activists with a lot of credibility. We might call for a renewal of the UGTA through a special congress, and perhaps call for the formation of a new confederation.

SA: What was behind the coup?

AM: The army, which represents the section of the PLN that refuses to share power with the FIS.

It's just self-preservation, because they need to maintain their privileges. People who have been in power for 30 years cannot give it up. You have to listen to the way the generals talk. For them, there is no question of their relinquishing power just because "three-and-a-half million lumpen" voted for the FIS.

Secondly, the coup is a sign that that the attempt to install free enterprise in conditions of social peace has failed. They dumped the president of the republic because he had become the symbol of this failure of the FLN's policy. Today they want to put forward another image.

Another faction of the FLN today is against the Council of State that has been installed. Thus, there are two totally different factions of the FLN.

In appointing Boudiaff—that is, a veteran nationalist-as head of government, the Council of State is trying to find a new ciation who have resisted attempts by the govemment to enact anti-women legislation.

The FLN was a liberation movement with a national program. It had no precise social program for building an independent Algeria, and it came under the influence of the most diverse social forces, including the fundamentalists.

Since independence, the government has tried many times to impose a family law regulating marriage, divorce, inheritance, legitimacy also in the name of the FLN. Boudiaff is one of the historic leaders of the FLN. The mid-January meeting of the FIS and the FLN proves, in fact, that the faction that had been pushed aside was ready to share power with the FIS.

SA: What is your position on the coup?

AM: Our first reaction, when the president resigned on TV, was to declare there could be a military dictatorship, and we would be against it. When the coup happened, we just reaffirmed our position.

We are totally against it for a whole number of reasons—for democratic reasons, for reasons of principle, but also for eminently political reasons. The FIS cannot be blocked today by force. Over the past years, it has gained far too much credibility in the eyes of the masses to expect that by momentarily pushing it aside you can break it.

The more undemocratic attacks there are upon the FIS, the more credibility it will gain in the eyes of the masses.

SA: So, what do you think is going to happen?

AM: All the statements, the formulas tried, show that we are heading for a period of total instability. They may find a formula that will hold up for a few months, but maybe not even that.

The Council of State has dumbfounded people. A comrade told me yesterday that even those who had greeted its establishment, since it put forward a very general formula, became quite uneasy when they saw its composition.

The strong opposition of the FIS and the FLN to this sort of Council of State is opening up a war. We cannot know where and so on according to Islamic law. Such a law was entirely unacceptable to the women who had taken part in the war of independence, and in the decade after independence they created an organized women's movement that reacted to events as they happened.

With the industrialization drive of the late 1960s and early 1970s, girls were allowed to attend high schools and universities. The newly founded industries needed women. At this time, women were able to improve their social position significantly.

But with the end of the "Golden Age," at the start of the 1980s, the situation of women once again began to deteriorate. Layoffs affected women first. The government once again began to seek to legislate against women.

In the 1980s, independent movements such as the women's movement, the student movement, and the Berber movement were harshly suppressed. It was the women's movement that put up the stiffest resistance to the government. People would say: "The women are the only men left in this country."

However, lacking a firm national organization, even the women's movement finally went under. After the big demonstrations of 1981, 1982, and 1983, the movement suffered a big setback in 1984. And this was the very year in which the government brought a draft family code before the National Assembly.

In 1988, Algeria experienced a social explosion. The youth occupied the streets of the capital, and attacked all the institutions that symbolized the regime. In Algeria, 60 percent of the population is under 20 and 75 percent under 25. This revolt shook the regime. One of its results was opening up the way for the formation of several political parties.

The subsequent repression was terrible. There were deaths, and torture was used for the first time since independence-and on a mass scale. Thousands of young people "disappeared."

Women besieged the barracks, the police stations and the prisons. They organized committees for the release of their sons, against torture and for democratic freedoms. It was out of this movement that organized groups of women emerged in a variety of places, above all in the north of the country.

These women's structures had broadly (continued on page 14)

this going to lead. It is possible that things will get out of hand. For the moment, the FIS is keeping its base in check. It is calling for caution, it is negotiating with the FLN.

But anything is possible. You can't rule out that some meeting for Friday morning prayers could lead to an insurrection. They might even negotiate and get a formula for transition. But in my opinion, there is no lasting solution, because there will be no solution to the political crisis before there is one to the social crisis.

SA: What are the possibilities for building a workers' opposition?

AM: We can always work to try to rally those who are ready today to defend democratic freedoms, all the democratic freedoms for everyone. Unfortunately, there are not many of them. All the liberal parties are supporting the coup d'etat. Only the Front of Socialist Forces characterizes what has happened as a coup d'etat—but without calling for a mobilization or any action.

There may be some small groups, some workers, maybe those [in the UGTA union federation] who took a position against their own general secretary. But there is no already-constituted force that can serve as a basis for an immediate counteroffensive against the coup d'etat and the threat to democratic freedoms posed by the fundamentalists.

The crisis is so deep that no formula will succeed in containing the anger of the masses when they see their buying power continue to decline. We need to survive in order to be there when the explosion comes.

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issues are not going away, and neither are