The Maghreb in 2016: Bleak Situation but Hope Remains

Rabat – North Africa might be facing tremendous instability and many uncertainties in 2016 as the result of three main factors: the after-effects of the failed Arab Spring, the rise of religious extremism and its influence on the marginalized youth and ongoing economic hardships.

The key political players in the arena are still traditional systems represented by: a consensual monarchy in Morocco, patriarchal tribalism doubled by military rentier states in Mauritania and Algeria, an explosive and tribally-fragmented Libya, and a fragile and volatile democracy in Tunisia. All of which are living dangerously in the shade of over-looming religious fanaticism that thrives on social inequalities and youth dissatisfaction and anger.

All North African countries are dangerously tightrope-walking hoping to reach safety, at the least cost possible, with the hope to make political status quo a solution acceptable to all the protagonists, as long as possible.

In this particular state of affairs very little has changed since the advent of independence in the fifties of the last century. Youth is still marginalized and the patriarchal tribal systems are still omnipresent, stronger than ever, women continue to be discriminated against and the same is true of minorities, education is still in shambles and only leading to unemployment and more frustration, equity and equality are a wishful thinking, and democracy is still many light years away.

So, in many ways the future looks very bleak, and all the ingredients are there for potential uprisings and explosions of violence.

Algeria: Is there a pilot in the airplane?

De facto, Bouteflika is still the president of the country though he has been incapacitated by a heart problem and is, now, permanently in a wheelchair. But, in reality, that has never been problem because the true power, in Algeria, is, clearly, in the hands of a military junta that holds the reins of the country, behind the curtains. The military have always made use of the “revolutionary violence”, a concept which makes them the “lawful” inheritors of power in the country and its riches, on the ground that it is the liberation army that fought the war of independence and obliged the French to depart. Which means, in many ways, that Algeria is their rightful spoil of war? This, indeed, has been proved in the past when they denied the Islamist party FIS in 1992, the constitutional right to rule the country after their landslide win in the first round of the legislative elections. A contested move that plunged Algeria in the horrors of a bloody civil war that lasted until 1999, claiming the lives of 150,000 people.

Bouteflika, who was handpicked by the army to rule, at the height of the civil war, brought some sort of social peace to the country through the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which was approved by a referendum on September 29, 2006, by 97% of the votes.

Algeria, nevertheless, continued, since then, to be a rentier state using oils revenues to insure national reconciliation and social stability. But now that the president is in a wheelchair and the oil revenues have dwindled dangerously pushing the state to make use of its sovereign reserves to maintain the status quo. It is only a question of time that the Algerian government will cut drastically the subsidies to reduce its budget deficit in order to avoid state bankruptcy.

This explosive situation will spawn, then, two important questions:

• Why are the military still in power and why are they still benefitting grossly from the largesse of the state? and
• Why is Algeria still spending billions of dollars on the perpetuation of the existence of Polisario in the South, to no avail, at the expense of the Algerian people’s welfare?

The two issues are painful for the army: giving power to the civilians is committing willingly hara-kiri, because that will bring to the helm their arch-foe the Islamists who will be tempted to put an end to the benefits the generals get from the state. Stopping support to the Polisario is offering the other arch-enemy Morocco the Western Sahara on a silver platter, without a fight and strengthening the monarchy there.

But as the economic situation worsens every day, an Algerian Spring gets nearer and nearer. If the social uprising happens, the Amazigh people[iii] would want a state of their own or full autonomy, at the least. The southern Twaregs might want a similar arrangement. These two probable situations will weaken beyond belief the Algerian state and if the Army does not give up to the demands of the rank and file Algeria will fall, yet again, to chaos that might bring about another episode of a bloody civil war. So, 2016 does not look clement to the Algerians: government and people?

Libya: more of the same but there is a gleam of hope

Since the uprising of 2011 that led to the downfall of the dictator Qaddafi, the country has fallen into chaos becoming almost three countries in one. Rather than building on the positive outcome of the Arab Spring, tribal identity grew stronger and lead to what Libya is today.

On this particular point, Yasmina Khadra, a world-renowned Algerian writer argues:

“The Libyan people did not exist as a homogenous nation under one flag and sharing one common ideal. It was a collection of fiercely autonomous, proud and unruly tribes, suspicious of centralised rule (first there had been a substitute Ottoman regency, then a mandated principality, next a short-lived monarchy – the last king of Libya, Idris I, was Algerian), which they saw as a potential threat and to which they would only give allegiance to preserve their own independence.

The history of deeply hostile relationships between Libya’s ethnic groups is littered with violent raids, betrayals, unfulfilled vendettas and long-held frustrations carried like shameful injuries that have festered over the years as each generation is brought up to seek revenge for old sins. The terrible reality of the Libyan situation is precisely what Nato’s generals did not deem it necessary to know, dangerously choosing to ignore the unique combination of factors that make up the Libyan mindset. They failed to consider how Libyans would react to having a war thrust upon them.” 

This state of affairs is very dangerous to North Africa, which is the soft belly of Europe, and has two potential dangerous implications:

• ISIS, profiting from the inexistence of a strong central state, started flexing its muscles within the country arousing the fear of everyone that the Islamic State will, maybe, become the de facto Libyan State with all the implications that will have on the region; and
• The inexistence of state could lead to a massive exodus of African migrants to the shores of southern Europe destabilizing the countries of the region.

Aware of these imminent dangers, the United Nations through the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has brought together all Libyan protagonists to agree on a solution acceptable to everyone. After many years of bickering, the Libyans reached an agreement in the city of Skhirat in central western Morocco on September 17, 2015 for power-sharing but this agreement has still to become reality on the ground. In the meantime, Libya will continue to be a powder keg able to blow up without any prior notice.

Libya, as it is today, is a serious threat to the whole of southern Europe, either at the hands of the mercurial ISIS, or through the thousands of potential African migrants that are waiting in the dark for any sign of instability to push their way to the European Eldorado.

The fall of oil revenues will make Libya even weaker economically and politically to be attracted by the ISIS solution that blames the woes of the Muslim world entirely on the “emasculating” influence of the West. 

Tunisia: a democracy on the surface but a fractured country in the underlying structure

On October 26, 2014, the secular party Nidaa Tounes won the legislative elections pushing the strong and regimented Islamist party Ennahda into the opposition. People around the world acclaimed this victory of the secular forces on the Islamists.

However, this looked as an easy conclusion out because Ennahda is a strong party whose only tagline is: “for the grace of Allah” and mobilizing its forces along this line is extremely easy, to say the least.

Nidaa Tounes is not a strong party, it is a patchwork of many political groups some of which are inherited from the era of the dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Unlike Ennahda, Nidaa Tounes party members are motivated by money and power and they might, at any time, leave the party for some other destination where life is rosier and the grass is greener.

On this particular issue, The Economist, in its electronic edition of November1, 2014, points out:

“Nidaa Tounes still struggles to shake off claims that it represents an attempt by members of the previous ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), to regain influence. In what was in effect a single-party state, the RCD built clientelistic relations running from taxi-drivers to corner-shop owners, lawyers, senior civil servants and—importantly for its funding—business people. Although the RCD as an organisation is long dead, these networks may have played a role on polling day.”

As of today, Tunisia is a fractured society. On one side, there are the Salafists, who vote for Ennahda but do not share its views and consider it to be too soft on such important issues as the re-islamization of society. On this issue the Salafists have shown that they could use violence, if need be, to achieve their aims.On the other side of the spectrum, there are the secularists for whom Tunisia is a country that has a long tradition of secular culture and should keep it so. At some point there is going to be a clash between these two tendencies that both believe they have the right solution for the country.

So the future of the country is not secure and the spate of terrorist attacks in the past months have proved that.

Morocco: the economic force awakens

Morocco is the best-blessed of the countries of the Maghreb, for the time being. Its long-standing monarchical system, though not totally democratic, has offered the country much-needed cohesion and unity along two legitimacies:

• The religious legitimacy, which is as old as the monarchy and is traced back to the Idrisid dynasty (788-974), when the monarch was primarily “the Commander of the Faithful” amir al-mu’minin before being the head of state; and
• The historical legitimacy, the monarchy enjoyed for more than 13 centuries uninterrupted in spite of various uprisings and even the division of the country, in the 19^th, century into bled siba “land of dissidence” and bled l-makhzen “land of law and order”, because even in the land of dissidence, which was mostly Amazigh hinterland, the Berber tribes recognized the religious charisma of the Sultan but denied him tax collection prerogative.

The monarchy has always been contested, especially during the reign of Hassan II, but it was never rejected outright because it always offered some sort of flexibility to the opposition forces.

Morocco rode through the tempest of the Arab Spring remarkably well with a new constitution, not the best of constitutions possible, but certainly another important phase within the Moroccan incremental democracy.

Strong with a competitive economy and aided by dwindling oil prices, Moroccan capital and Moroccan companies moved south to invest in the promising economies of West Africa. This nimble action was met with much acclaim from Western countries that saw in this approach an embodiment of the long-hoped for south –south cooperation and exchange scheme.

For François Soudan of Jeune Afrique, Morocco is rising to the status of a regional power in Africa:

Loin du carcan d’Addis-Abeba, Rabat est parvenu à se tailler le statut de puissance régionale autonome et de puissance relais entre l’Europe et le sud du Sahara. Une stratégie directement pilotée depuis le palais royal par un souverain personnellement investi, au point que les tournées africaines de ce chef d’État de 51 ans ne ressemblent à nulles autres.

Though Morocco is seen as an island of stability in a sea of turmoil, yet the “Moroccan Exception” leaves a lot to desire in the arena of freedom of expression, for the Moroccan journalists are constantly harassed by the establishment and put in prison.

The Moroccan government has yet to come to terms that freedom of the press and freedom of political expression are the foundations of democracy, if any.

Mauritania: Tribes aspiring to become a nation

Mauritania is a huge desert territory populated by several tribes aspiring to become a nation, but the country is fractured along northern and southern groups of population identified by the color of their skin.

In the north live al- bidan “the whites,” who consider themselves superior and control the security forces, the economy and the government. In the south, along the Senegal River, live the African Mauritanians, known as as-sudan, who are in many ways the underdog of this country.

Until recently, they were slaves owned by the white tribes of the north of the country and even when they were freed from slavery they continued to live with their masters because of poverty and lack of opportunity. In any cases they work on the land of their masters and are obliged to give them a big portion of the crops.

For Amnesty International when talking about slavery in Mauritania there is a “gap between words and actions.” The government says one thing about this inhuman practice and the reality, in the field, is another and the country continues to jail anti-slavery activists like Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, the runner-up in 2014 presidential elections and the head of an anti-slavery group.

In spite of the north-south jockeying for power and riches, the main important and most powerful tribe of all is, undeniably, the army, which remains the main power broker. Indeed, since independence and the stable civilian rule of the father of the independence, Mokhtar Ould Daddah (1961-1978), the country has been subject to successive military coups that have pushed the dream of democracy further away and kept the country in the status of tribal patriarchy ruled by the Arab al-bidan, who enjoy the riches of the recently-discovered oil in total ignorance of the minority black Mauritanians, who are still considered as second class citizens.

The Maghreb is moving into 2016 with much apprehension and fear as the future looks pretty much blurred because of the following challenges:

• Political instability;
• Identity crisis;
• Economic hardship;
• Social fracture;
• Religious extremism; and
• Lack of democracy.

The Maghreb countries are requested to find solutions to these ailments soon for fear to fall into chaos and disorder that could last for decades.

Endnotes:

[ii] Ibid. p. 114

“Algerian voters approved the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation on September 29, 2005, by more than 97 percent. The charter absolves government forces of their role in the violence, contains an amnesty for Islamist fighters except those responsible for “massacres, rapes or bomb attacks in public places,” and provides for reparations to families of victims, including those who disappeared during the civil war. Turnout, taken by some as an indication of the unanimity of the referendum result, varied significantly across Algiera, even as the turnout rate nationally was almost 80 percent. Tizi-Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylia, for example, had turnout of about 11 percent.”

[iii] Ibid. p. 112

« Most histories of Algeria mention the “Berber Question” close to the outset. This chapter is an anomaly in that respect. The current conflict in Algeria, however, is unrelated, at least in a direct way, to problems surrounding the role of Berber identity in Algeria. Rather, conflict over Berber identity is more related to efforts to reform the government and reconceptualize the Algerian nation. Violent conflict in Kabylia related to these issues, both in the early 1980s and after 2000, represents a focal point for opposition to the government, if limited in the movement’s support outside the region.”

In an open letter …, one of the accused, Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, vowed to continue his fight against slavery and appealed for the United States and European Union to put pressure on Mauritania to act against the practice, including stopping financial aid.
“From my dark cell I urge them to mobilise all legal and diplomatic means, including the suspension of all financial aid, to push the government to take real action to eradicate slavery as well as the racism and exclusion underlying it,” he wrote.”

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