I have a feeling we’ll be repeatedly discussing these arrests in the future. But at first blush these men are likely not involved in the large scale West African drug trade that has recently been in the papers, nor are they any part of any recognized AQIM groups connected to Algerian militants scattered in the Malian Sahara.

Admittedly we have very little to go on at the moment. Three Malian men, said to be in their mid 30s, were arrested by the US in Ghana, and flown to New York. Here they were disposed before a judge on drug smuggling and terrorism charges. We have the New York Times and wire articles, based entirely on the press release and a copy of the actual deposition provided by the US government. I await the reaction of the Malian press especially.

The three men are Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. Oumar Issa was contacted by a Lebanese who worked for the US in Ghana. The US informant pretended to be a criminal with Hezbollah connections, seeking to ship drugs, and looking for contacts with the “Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb”. Issa said he represents a “big boss”, Harouna Touré, from somewhere in north Mali, who “has connections in government” and who while not running a smuggling operation “collects taxes for Al Qaeda from Malian politicians.” Sounds like a big deal. But Touré’s not a current holder of any local political office (according to the last election results) and hasn’t been in the news.

One identification claims that Harouna Touré is a well known Songhai smuggler from the small village of Bamba (in Bourem on the Niger River).  This “Harouna Bamba” is known primarily for people smuggling into Morocco, as well as hashish and other common smuggled goods.  He, like the now famed Baba Ould Sheik — Mayor and mediator between the Malian government and the AQIM hostage takers — is reputed to be a member of the local “Mouvement Citoyen” of Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré.

It is likely not accidental that Bamba is one of the historic endpoint of the Taoudenni salt trade.  From here there is a well trodden route to northern Mauritania or north to Algeria and Morocco, one that people in the area have been making for at least a thousand years.  It was ancient when Ibn Battuta made the caravan trek from Morocco through Taoudenni and south to the Niger in the 1350s.   The Berabiche Arabs in particular have long been responsible for this salt route, and it would be little surprise that a Bamba merchant would have a business relationship with some of these semi-nomadic Arabs.

The area around Bamba in particular has a bad reputation for petty crime, smuggling, and ethnic violence.  In 1994, at the height of the ethnic murders of Tuaregs, Arabs, and Songhai by Army,  rebels, and Ghanda Koy militias, FIAA rebels opened fire on locals in Bamba, killing almost 50 civilians.  The local Kounta Arabs, whose historic identity is linked to a tradition of Qadiriyya Sufi scholarship have long been based in Bamba.  In 2004 their feuds with some Berabiche saw an attack on a Kunta religious leader and spilled over at a well near the town, leaving 13 dead.

Abelrahman (perhaps a variant of the more common Malian Arab family name “Abderrahmane”) is identified in the complaint as an AQIM leader,  claims to command a group of 11 men and calls himself “King of the desert”. He claims to have been “a general” in some unidentified previous insurgency, something which is as entirely unverifiable as it is grandiloquent.  Touré, claimed to be the “big man”, has been involved in the drug trade via Brasil if the US reporting of his boasts ( and his passport stamps) is to be believed. Their plan was to take cocaine via Togo to Mali or Niger, then Algeria, Morocco, the coast, and by boat to the Canary Islands. The last phase of this is described by Touré as handled by Brazilian contacts. Another description, fed by the US planners, seems to suggest an inland trip to Spain via Melilla. He also claims to have previously arranged shipments of hashish into Tunisia and South Asian migrants to Spanish territory.

I would be VERY surprised if this Idriss Abelrahman is anything more than a Arab/Maure smuggler and caravan driver,  resident somewhere between Bamba and  Taoudenni in the desert north of Mali. He probably knows some people who are related to members of some AQIM cells who move through the area, and so can probably pass by them on friendly terms. But is he Al Qaeda? Not bloody likely.

Further, if the US agents can pose as Lebanese Hezbollah and FARC, then logically, these men can not have had contacts with these organizations prior to this. Maybe these groups are involved with smuggling in West Africa, but the US didn’t arrest anyone they do business with.

We can say with some likelihood that these men are businessmen/smugglers, from somewhere  in Gao ( from the context of routes), and Oumar Issa is probably someone’s family member working in the south (he’s the contact made in Lome). But their flight from Mali via Lome and on to Ghana is arranged for and paid by the US. Toure, the reputed “big man” claims he’s going back home from Bamako at one point to “the north” where he doesn’t have email or phone. Toure is given money in Ghana to buy a truck, but buys a car instead, and the agent has to give them more cash and explain they really do need a bigger vehicle. Toure says he needs to be paid 3000 Euro a kilo for transport with %10 up front. Then says he needs US$10000 a kilo, and %50 down. And he needs it in Euros.

Pardon me, but these business deals don’t seem designed to make money. These “drug dealers” are giving three Malians 500 kilos of cocaine, and then paying the Malians a pile of cash. Won’t the Malians then go sell the drugs for even more cash.

And the complaint is littered with attempts to illicit anti-American sentiments from the marks, who rarely return with anything more damning than a “God Willing” or two. Clearly the US government expects that everyone who hates America is on the same page, plotting across ideological lines, continents, and religions to hurt us. By selling drugs. To Europeans.

The counterpoint of blind nationalism here is blind paranoia, the thought that everyone must be scheming about you behind your back, that all “evil doers” are doing evil as part of a grand conspiracy to bring you down. If you wave several million dollars in front of three people from one of the poorest countries in the world, do you think when you say “You love Al-Qaeda, right?” they’ll launch into a subtle discussion of international terror? Or will they say “Oh yeah, you’re my brother cause we hate America too! And I’ll take that %50 up front in Euros.”

But this is par for the US government anti-terrorism law enforcement. The policing enforcement of US terrorism policy is as hamfisted as the military “war on terror”, except that the policing war is usually motivated by the desire for good domestic press. They tend to create their own terrorist plots, convince criminal idiots to accede to the plans invented by the US, and then arrest the patsies. The example of the recent Bronx terror plot in which the FBI informant took several not very bright young men recently released from jail, created a plot, bought gifts for them until they agreed to help, gave them the supplies, and then arrested them as “dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists.” Of course there are real terrorists out there, but it’s much easier to disrupt plots you invent yourself.

My concern will be that this West African variant of US anti-terrorism enforcement, while attempting to win US plaudits will forget that in trying to impress Americans, they may end up alienating West Africans. If this is seen as an entrapment operation, it will eventually do more to turn Malians — who are today very positively disposed to people from the United States — against the US than it will actually disrupt real smuggling, let alone terrorism.

Meanwhile, two Italian citizens and their Mauritanian driver were kidnapped yesterday in the Mauritanian desert, near a crossing into Mali, as the returned to their home in Burkina Faso. The Mauritanian government says they are being held by the AQIM.

Related News articles

• Italian, wife missing in eastern Mauritania (af.reuters.com)
• Muslims Say F.B.I. Tactics Sow Anger and Fear (nytimes.com)
• UPDATE 2-Italian couple missing in eastern Mauritania (af.reuters.com)
• US in ‘al-Qaeda cocaine sting’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

[UPDATE: yeah. Haidar back in El Aaiun & passed customs w/o passport, on Spanish papers]

Short update on the Aminatou Haidar stalemate, which may be about to finally resolve itself one way or the other:

1. AFP reports that she was taken to intensive care earlier today, reportedly after vomiting blood.
2. Whether related or not, Morocco just caved, according to multiple sources, incl. Reuters, which has POLISARIO jumping on cue into the spotlight:

“Effectively everything has been resolved, according to our information,” said Ibrahim Ghali, the POLISARIO ambassador to Algeria, where the movement has its HQ. “A plane is at Lanzarote airport awaiting instructions,” he told Reuters.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see if this turns out to be true: recall that an earlier attempt to fly her back ended when Morocco changed its mind and refused landing permission. Fassi Fihri recently met with Ban Ki-moon, so they might want to put a UN stamp on her return, to help Rabat save face internally. Not that it will look good for the government anyway, but they really got themselves into that dead end. M6 should consider expelling some of his media advisors instead.

Also, pour les French speakers, Ibn Kafka has a series of interesting posts (1, 2, 3) discussing the legality of the expulsion and nationality issue, from an anti-independence but pro-rule-of-law Moroccan standpoint.

The history of the Algerian Jews is as fascinating as it is tragic. There existed a large indigenous Jewish population when France arrived in the 1830s (in fact, two Algerian Jews played an unfortunate and entirely unintended role in France’s invasion). They had lived there peacefully if not always happily under Muslim rulers and within the larger body of Muslim Arabs and Berbers, since many hundreds of years; most of the community were descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, alongside Muslims, after the Christian Reconquista. As France extended its writ throughout the country, and began a serious effort at settler colonization, a decision was taken to assimilate the local Jewish community into the European settler community. The turning point in this process was the Crémieux Decree of 1870, which granted Algerian Jews citizenship in France, while their Muslim neighbours were refused similar political rights. (It’s text can be found here.) The background is complex, but while colored by religious prejudice, the emancipation of the Algerian Jews took place for essentially external political reasons, as an outgrowth of the emancipation movement in France, but also to split them off from the Muslims, in a colonial strategy of divide and rule. It brought great benefits to the Jewish community, which suddenly found itself in a position to act politically and construct social and economic ties with mainland France; but in the longer term, it also caused its total unravelling, along with the fall of French rule.

As Algeria’s Muslim majority drifted into violent confrontation with the French authorities during the 1900s, the Jewish population was caught in the middle, without good options. Both sides courted them and tried to bring them to their side, but the Crémieux Decree was of course deeply suspect in the eyes of nationalists, while the Arab-Israeli conflict began bringing in anti-Jewish propaganda from the Arab east after 1948 (making things worse, France and Israel were closely allied during the period). But at the same time the pied noir settler community was thick with Christian anti-Semitism, with much of its political activism influenced by reactionary far-right groups. Under the 1940-1942 Vichy government in Algeria, Jews were stripped of citizenship as a result of German pressure, and to their horror they realized that the Christian settler population by and large supported this. After liberation at the hands of the US, UK and Free French in 1942, the community was deeply shaken.

During the war of 1954-1962, few Jews were overtly involved on either side. Jews did play a notable role in the pro-independence Communist movement (eg. Henri Alleg), but they were mostly immigrant settlers, strictly secular and somewhat cut off from the conservative traditionalist local community. Both France and the FLN did appeal to the community for support: France was clearly more successful, being the state power to which most Jews had no choice but to cling, but the nationalist leadership made some efforts to dispel French claims that the FLN was anti-Jewish.

As the French evacuation approached, however, the Jewish community was by and large swept away in the panicked emigration of pied noirs and pro-French Muslims towards the mainland. While Jews were never really a target for either side, there were abuses, and the vast majority of Algerian Jews — regardless of their view on the legitimacy of the Algerian struggle — simply packed up and left with the European community. It was not necessarily about fears of nationalist anti-Semitism, although that lurked in the background, and the thought of an Arab nationalist government wasn’t exactly reassuring; you’ll recall that a major inspiration for the Algerian rebels was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had been treating the Egyptian Jewish minority pretty roughly, in the context of Egypt’s battle with Israel. Most importantly, however, there was the general chaos that prevailed in 1962. The European settler group OAS had launched a terrorist campaign in which thousands of Muslim civilians were butchered indiscriminately, in the hope that this would derail the independence process. What it did, rather, was to finally wreck the hopes for an organized and bloodless handover to the independence movement, as FLN groups and rogue militias began responding in kind, and summarily executed suspected collaborators (“harkis“) as they swept the cities. There were also increasingly obvious tensions within the FLN, and a nationalist civil war seemed unavoidable to many — it did indeed take place, but only to end as quickly as it had begun, when the “border army” of Houari Boumédiène squashed all opposition and installed Ben Bella in power.

In this climate of violent anarchy, the vast majority of Algerian Jews — some 130,000 at the time — opted for safety by fleeing the country. So, of course, did many Muslims whether they had worked with France or not, but unlike Muslim Algerians, the Jews had citizenship rights and could count on being received by France, and also Israel (although only a minority went there), and presumably several other European countries too. As the majority of the community finally threw in its lot with the French — for lack of better options — the number of Jews rapidly dwindled, communal cohesion vanished, local Muslim prejudices towards Jews increased (as they were now more or less totally identified with the French) and so did the hopes for a continued, strong Jewish presence in Algeria. Even many who had wanted to stay, at that stage opted to leave while they still knew they could, and the refugee exodus snowballed until it had all but vanished. The disappearance of the remainder was just a question of time, as Algeria’s economy failed to ever seriously take off, the government’s socialist policies destroyed the traditional occupational choices of most remaining Jews (private business and Mediterranean trade), while the option for secure emigration to both France and Israel remained open. When civil unrest broke out in the 80s/90s and Islamists took aim at the tiny minority that remained, most of the last remaining Jews left the country.

Today, only a handful remain, and an ancient community in Algeria is no more.

"Baba Tandja" looms over the MNSD-Nassara leadership.

No end is yet in sight for the Nigerien political crisis, begun when President Tandja Mamadou, facing the end of his term-limited mandate on 22 December, decided to scrap the constitution of the 5th Republic, and grant himself three years grace period in which to create a 6th Republic. The alienation of most of the political class was expected, but the severity of ECOWAS rhetoric was likely not. Niger’s rulers would have expected this to be wrapped up by now, with the previous legal deadline for a new president to pass with a shrug. But the personal interest of current ECOWAS chair Nigeria — Niger’s massive neighbor and largest African trade partner — has meant that President Tandja has been excluded from the body, branded as a coup leader, and placed alongside Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara as a poster child for what’s wrong with West African governance.

And while Blaise Compaore, assigned mediation duties in Guinea, seems intent on finding a way for Dadis to stay in power despite his wholesale slaughter of his own people, Yar’Adua’s government has kept an unusual concentration of pressure on Niamey. [see Niger:Piling on the Pressure for details] Sadly, this has far exceeded any pressure the remarkably unified internal opposition has been able to bring to bear internally.

Should effective ECOWAS pressure escalate as they promise, seconded by sanctions by crucial donors like France, the EU, and the US, Niger’s new 6th Republic can’t carry on indefinitely. Current Chinese projects don’t fill the gap with direct payments. While uranium and oil revenue continue to flood in, too much of that has gone to support a small group of businessmen around Tandja to enable the government to balance the budget with it. Wages will not be paid, loans will not be forthcoming, the military will miss their trips to Fréjus, and there will be trouble.

But if Tandja is toppled or forced to give way in this manner, it will be an inside job by the political and military leadership who aided his new constitutional order.

–

Niger has had a lot of constitutions, and they tend to be none too creative rehashes of previous documents. The 6th was generated in less than a week, and declared “in effect” within days of the August referendum. It recycles much of the 5th Republic (semi-presidential 1999), with elements of the failed 4th Republic (General Baré Maïnassara’s strong presidency and ceremonial legislature). To give you a feel for the slapdash nature of current Nigerien jurisprudence, the constitution calls for a strong presidency which appoints all ministers — including the PM — and most of the judiciary and “independent” governing bodies. In most every public power carried over from the last constitution, there is simply a clause added which gives either the President or a body he appoints the power to suspend or override its function “when needed”. For new bodies, their description is invariably followed by something like “..whose functions and composition will be determined by law.” Later.

The “new” Legislature includes a National Assembly, whose law-making functions can be largely replaced by the President and his Council of Ministers. Their primary task, the annual budget legislation, must also be passed by a new second house, the Senate, which has not yet been created. The constitution says that the President will appoint a third of this Senate’s members, while bodies such a the council of Chieftancies and other government commissions will “indirectly elect” the remainder. I have yet to find any serious discussion of this body in the government’s daily mouthpiece, Le Sahel, let alone a schedule for it’s appearance.

The Nigerien National Assembly has historically sat in two short sessions each year. The first Hemicycle of the new Assembly has just wrapped up, but its hard to see what they accomplished. Committee rules were written up by a group led by former Communications Minister and close Tandja loyalist Mohammad Ben Omar, former PM and current MNSD party chief Seyni Oumarou was named President of the Assembly, and heads of each of the minor parties was given an important sounding office. because of the opposition boycott, there is no opposition in the Assembly. A budget for 2010 was announced in the President’s Council of Ministers and adopted by the National Assembly, calling for an increase in direct budget supports from foreign donors, which the government relies upon to pay the bills. That these will soon be cut by many donors seems to have eluded normally erudite Finance Minister Zeine. The leadership then wrapped up by chartering a junket to Angola for the 18th Joint Parliamentary Assembly of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific plus European Union (ACP/EU). All interested members were offered a large stipend to fly down and look like a real parliament. At least one member reportedly took the stipend but chose to stay in Niamey. And then the gavel fell of the first Assembly session of Niger’s 6th Republic.

And while the domestic and foreign press is rife with speculation, there seems little movement to resolve the crisis. The opposition, including two former Prime Ministers, one former President, and a large split from Tandja’s ruling MNSD, vows to eject the current President from power, and mark the 22nd with a final repudiation of his holding any legal office. Expect demonstrations and some violence in major cities.

Violence has flared in Niamey in August (bottom) and September (top).

Niger is an overwhelmingly rural society, in which the vast majority of the population do not participate in politics, intent as they are with meager rain-fed substance agriculture in the strip of Sahel along the south and west of the nation. The time leading up to harvest, taking place now or in the last month, is “the hungry season” in which rural people work much and eat little. Even many urban Nigeriens return to farms to help with the crop and pad their food supply. Rains in some areas of the west stopped for a crucial period in June this year, causing farmers there to replant, and millet crops to be less than expected. As if that were not preoccupation enough, the time after Tabaski and harvest begins the “exodé” when as many as a third of rural men (and a few women) travel as far afield as Ghana, coastal Nigeria, Benin or Côte d’Ivoire to work odd jobs, coming home in several months with clothes, supplies, and a little cash. Short of ECOWAS closing the borders, Nigeriens are unlikely to be roused to large scale political action in the next few months.

ECOWAS negotiator Abdulsalami Abubakar, the former Nigerian general and interim president who led his nation out of military rule, has continued his negotiations with opposition and government, demanding a directly negotiated solution between the parties. Nigerien PM Ali Badjo Gamatié, jetting from one West African capital to another has recently acceded — in theory — to such negotiations. Several recent opposition press stories have postulated that Gamatié

A recent cover of the state paper, Le Sahel, focuses on the PM's meetings abroad, and the business as usual at home.

is eager to split off the hard core Tazarché (pro-Tandja) forces who have become a political force parallel to the ruling MNSD. The Assembly elections of October were already read as such a movement, with the return of MNSD apparatchiks at the expense of an influx of “independent” business men close to the president and his sons. Yet Gamatié is technically himself an Independent, not a MNSD minister, and brought in for that reason.

The rumored “solution” to this crisis, the creation of a 7th Republic with Tandja as a figure head and his bête noire former ally Hama Amadou as head of a transitional authority, remains just rumor. The re-assertion of the old line MNSD over the pure Tazarchistes may make the political bloodletting easier to take, but many powerful men have publicly hitched their stars to the 6th Republic and the President himself.

Creeping personalization of rule is after all par for the course in such regimes, but a sudden and unexpected transition from one government to another is not a new phenomena in Niger. The genius of the Nigerien political class is, arguably, their ability to not only change political sides, but to successfully hit the “reset button” after dramatic change. Very few of the high ranking members of Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara’s 4th Republic saw their political careers — or access to the state — end following his death at the hands of his own former coup leaders in April 1999.

Tandja, whose government has been supported from the outset by the group of officers surrounding Chief of Staff General Moumouni Boureima, has since 2004 relied on the unwavering support of the RDP-Jama’a, Baré Maïnassara’s old party. Their only identifiable founding principle is the rollback of the 1999 immunity against those who carried out the April coup, including Moumouni Boureima. It’s current leader, Hamid Algabid flew to Abudja in November to plead with ECOWAS to support Tandja’s new regime. Still, the constitution of the 6th Republic maintains a blanket immunity for officers like Boureima.

Algabid is a good illustration of how reinvention is easy for the Nigerien elite. A Tuareg from Tanout, Algabid rose to the office of Secretary General of Finance in

Hamid Algabid

Hamani Diori’s First Republic. When Seyni Kountché led a coup in 1974 and imposed almost a decade of extra-constitutional government, Algabid flourished, being appointed to several international posts and becoming Minister of Finance. When a token civilian government was named in 1983, Algabid became its second Prime Minister. When the gray formless General Ali Saïbou succeeded to power on Kountché’s death, Algabid served him for a year, before being kicked up to head the Organisation of the Islamic Conference throughout both the authoritarian Second Republic and the post-revolutionary Third Republic. When Baré Maïnassara took power, Algabid failed in a bid to become Secretary General of the UN (!), and agreed instead to head the General-President’s new party, made up almost entirely of defectors from the boycotting civilian parties. After 1999, Algabid led RDP-Jama’a into a coalition with the social democratic PNDS (a leader in the opposition to Baré Maïnassara, and now Tandja) before changing their minds in 2004 and supporting the president.

So while a few diehards newly lifted to great heights will fall should Tandja go, most of the political class will just change seats. Look for that jockeying with an eye to a post-Tandja future at every meeting of Nigerien officials with ECOWAS. The final key is where it always was, with Moumouni Boureima and a group of several officers who are all veterans of the 1999 CRN coup government. [more on them in a forthcoming article] Jeune Afrique’s recent report of coup talk amongst some younger officers strikes at the very foundations of Tandja’s continued rule.

Even if nothing comes of that, the moment a 7th Republic looks more likely to those currently in government than the stumbling on of the 6th, Tandja will be carried out on his throne. Pressure is important, then, but unless either ECOWAS or the opposition exhibit to heretofore unseen ability to generate outside force or popular unrest, Tandja will exit thanks to an inside job.

A hunger strike in Lanzarote is turning into a serious crisis in and between Spain and Morocco. Center stage is occupied by Western Saharan human rights leader and pro-independence activist Aminatou Haidar. This former prisoner-of-conscience, “desaparecido”, and mother of two, has been a major name in Sahrawi politics since May 2005, when a picture of her smashed into a pulp by Moroccan police officers went viral, as the kids say, among Sahrawi activists. The photo of her in her blood-drenched melhfa became, for them, the first iconic image of the Sahrawi independence struggle, waved as both memento of Moroccan cruelty and as a stand-in for the banned flag. To add insult to injury, she was jailed after the abuse, but eventually released after heavy foreign pressure. Displaying a rather remarkable steel in her  spine — whatever you think of her politics, there’s no doubting her courage — she’s been charging in a one-woman full frontal assault ever since, campaigning publicly and frequently meeting foreign politicians and the press, in what seems to be a deliberate gamble to raise her profile and make her untouchable. So far, it’s been working all right. She’s been monitored, harassed, made unemployable and had her family placed under perpetual pressure, but the government hasn’t really had the stomach to touch her personally again since HRW and Amnesty aimed their spotlights at her; remember that Morocco’s overarching strategy is to keep the Saharan front as quiet as possible.

Bruised, not beaten: the photo of Aminatou before her arrest in 2005

Now, however, a harsher note has been sounded in Moroccan policy against the independence movement, with King Mohamed VI’s speech recently, where he declared that you are “either a patriot or a traitor”. Clearly, the velvet gloves, if such there were, are off: seven leading activists are being hauled off to a military court, and a number of other arrests have been made.

In the case of Aminatou Haidar, she was supposed to return from the United States, where she had received the Robert F. Kennedy Award John Train Civil Courage Prize for her human rights work, but was held up at el-Aaiun airport, after having signed “Western Sahara” as her country of residence — not “Morocco”. (She claims to have done this routinely in the past, without problems.)

This is, of course, strictly speaking true: she lives in el-Aaiun, which is internationally recognized as being in Western Sahara, not Morocco proper, and where there’s even a UN mission deployed to determine final sovereignty. The Moroccan government, however, sees things otherwise. She was stripped of her Moroccan passport (which she had held from birth, having been born in a Sahrawi area of southern Morocco rather than Western Sahara), and forcibly put on a plane to Spain. According to the Moroccan authorities, she herself signed a document saying that she is no longer a Moroccan citizen and threw away her passport to effectively make herself stateless; she denies this. The truth is impossible for an outsider to tell, but one might note that the authorities haven’t in fact been able to produce this much-talked-about document. (Also, Spanish papers claim that Morocco had booked her return flight long before she arrived to the airport, which would mean that the expulsion was planned beforehand, and the travel paper formality was simply an excuse.)

A few days after being expelled, Aminatou began a hunger strike in Lanzarote airport, refusing to move; when they threw her out overnight, she huddled up under blankets in the airport parking. She says she will not go to Spain, or any third country, but is determined to return to her home, dead or alive. The latter is of course impossible as long as the Moroccans refuse to let her in, alive, which they now do saying she hasn’t got valid travel documents (…since they took them from her). The Moroccan press, having gone into one of its Sahara-induced fits of spittle-and-foam wingnuttery, is saying a lot of other things as well — most of it some spikily worded variation on the theme of her being an ungrateful daughter of Morocco and/or a hostile Algerian agent, and oh, oh the irony that she’s demanding her Moroccan passport back. (Which is of course true, in a way, but it’s not as if she’s got a choice; not even POLISARIO wants Sahrawis in Western Sahara to burn their passports, since that would only leave them politically crippled.)

Spain is terribly discomfited by the whole affair. The Western Sahara solidarity movement (which is uniquely strong in Spain, post-colonial guilt and all) has mobilized like crazy around the issue, and the Socialist government is facing a barrage of fire from right and left on behalf of Aminatou. Should she die in the airport, as medical staff in the solidarity campaign claim she may do very soon, it would not only be hideous stain on the country’s image — and self-image — but also a really nasty domestic scandal. The government has tried to give her refugee status or even Spanish citizenship, having presumably secured a promise from Morocco to let her back on a tourist visa or something similar, but Aminatou remains intransigent: she’s not having any of that, she’s having her identity papers back and thank you very much. For a while, Spain apparently thought they had a deal — or possibly Zapatero tried to chicken-race King Mohamed — but a plane sent out to bring Aminatou back was forced to turn by the Moroccans.Adding to the pressure is the rapidly growing international attention, with continual updates from the major news agencies and criticism of both Spain and Morocco from Amnesty, HRW and similar groups, all driven by a sense of urgency and fear that Aminatou really is determined to go all the way and starve herself to death. There’s no doubting that official Spain shivers at the prospect:

The extraordinary power of Aminatou to shame her hosts, whom she has accused of connivance with Morocco in failing to defend her rights and helping to have her sent home, led a Foreign Ministry representative to tell her in the hall of Lanzarote airport that the Spanish authorities did not actually recognize the 1975 Madrid Accords, which saw her territory carved up without any consultation with the local people.

Of course, Morocco isn’t really interested in her dying there either. Sure, the government would like nothing more for her than to quietly pass away, but not while she’s in the media spotlight. There’s also the problem that the longer the affair drags on, and certainly if she should die, Spanish-Moroccan relations (which are quite crucial to Rabat, perhaps less so to Madrid) may take a serious hit, given how unpopular Zapatero’s conciliatory strategy towards Rabat is already in much of his political base. But a humiliating climbdown would really irk the Rabat government, having loaded the issue with so much prestige. Also, there’s the fear in Morocco that caving to Aminatou’s demands could set a precedent: that Sahrawis, or at least their diehard core of independence activists, can write whatever the hell they like on entry forms; or that, if Morocco allows the UN to help her back, or there is some other special arrangement, this could potentially be construed as a chip off of Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory. Both things of course anathema to the government, and to the oolitical elite and the press — although the latter been known to bark on command, and be shut up as easily, when it comes to the Sahara.

All in all, a tough stalemate to break. Spain is working fervently to find a solution — any solution — but Morocco hasn’t budged, and neither has Aminatou, although there are increasing pleas for her to at least break off her hunger strike. The question, now, in this battle of wills between the government of Morocco and a lady in an airport parking, seems to be who will flinch first.

Not that I feel much sympathy for Orascom’s owners, crooks as they undoubtedly are too, but it seems to me one more sign that the just-recently moderately promising outlook for Algeria is dimming fast. At this stage, Bouteflika appears to have more or less given up on liberalizing the economy, to leave the country on a positive trajectory. And I think that’s what he will be remembered for: unexpectedly and brilliantly centralizing power, partly through fortifying the rentier state, only to then miss the opportunity to use all that power to transform the country. Sooner or later, the old man will die, and there will be no one (?) there to catch the reins except the officers and their civilian props, all jostling for sole possession — and back we are to square one.

Algeria has about 50 daily or weekly publications. Most of them circulate 15.000 copies, roughly estimated. Only four newspapers are estimated to boast circulation greater than 50.000 copies: Arabic- language El Khabar (530.000); Le Quotidien d’Oran (140.000-198.000) Liberté (120.000- 150.000) and El-Watan (70.000-90.000) in French.

These must be old figures, since Ech Chorouk El Youmi actually passed El Khabar to become the biggest paper a few years back, also claiming around 500,000 copies. I don’t know which one is ahead at the moment, but as far as I know they’re both still up there at somewhere, both said to be above 400,000 copies/day + weekly supplements and such. In fact, Ech Chorouk claims to have temporarily broken the frankly incredible 2,000,000 limit during the recent Algerian-Egyptian football wars, where it played a leading part by publishing sensationalist claims of Algerian fans having been murdered (the paper shamelessly puts it down to its journalistic “rigour and professionalism”).

UNNAMED GENERAL TO PRES. BOUDIAF: "So, here's the program: Today you go to Algiers, on March 2 you go to Oran, on June 29 to Annaba ... and on June 30, you'll be at El Alia." (Cartoon by DILEM.)

Recall: those papers are all privately owned. While not necessarily independent from the cirles of power, they definitely represent different perspectives and to some extent different interests. Liberté, for example, is identified with the ultrasecularist Berberist liberal party RCD, while the Arabophone El Chorouk tends to more Islamic perspectives, eg. running series with Sheikh Qaradawi. They have all had problems with the government at various points in their history, and while there are certainly areas they won’t touch, they can be quite outspoken in their criticism of the government. They tend to tread very carefully with the army and security issues, but President Bouteflika is regularly read the riot act in several of these papers. If they go much too far, they can certainly be shut down, as was the case of Le Matin (now only available online), but that is rare. In short, then, as far as press freedom goes, Algeria is much freer than full-blown dictatorships like Tunisia and Libya, but broadly similar to liberalized autocracies such as Egypt, Morocco and perhaps some other of the better-placed Arab countries — maybe Kuwait, perhaps Yemen, I don’t really know — although behind regional star Lebanon, and obviously Israel.

So in that way they are similar: many Middle Eastern countries have a semi-free press, which is mostly independent but not free to write what it wants. What is considered a red line varies from country to country, but on the whole, Algeria’s press appears about as free/unfree as that in Morocco or Egypt. But in one way, it really stands out. Rembember the print figures above? Now compare them with local giant Egypt (2006):

The announced circulation figures for local newspapers are generally seen as unreliable. The daily Arabic Al-Ahram says it sells approximately one million copies a day, as does Al-Akhbar. Al-Masri Al-Yom is believed to distribute between 10,000 and 50,000 copies a day. Topping the weekly independent newspapers is Al-Osbou, with a circulation of between 100,000 to 120,000 copies. It is followed by Al-Dostour, with between 80,000 to 90,000. The Nasserist Party’s mouthpiece Al-Arabi and the independent Sawt Al-Umma, are believed to distribute around 30,000 copies each.

(N.B. both Ahram & Akhbar are state-owned and benefit from government support. Algeria’s state-owned papers are El Moudjahid, El Chaâb, El Massa, and Horizons [website virus-alert] neither of which is widely read — they’re crap — but still massively distributed to public institutions and such, probably as part of some scheme to line politicians’ pockets.)

Compare those numbers. Then compare populations: Algeria ~35 mil, Egypt ~80 mil. More than twice the size. The same discrepancy is apparent if one compares with Morocco (similar size, at ~35 mil), where readership is really low, despite having some interesting papers — probably mostly because of it being a poorer country:

Newspapers in Morocco suffer from a fairly limited readership. In Morocco, which has 33,8 million inhabitants, all print media combined sell 350,000 copies/day, compared with 1,3 million copies in neighboring Algeria, which has 33,3 million inhabitants.

Again, a significant difference: the Algerian readership is measured at almost four times the Moroccan figure.

So, to conclude this rambling heap of unrelated statistics: it would quite simply seem that Algerian papers sell incredibly well, compared to Arab countries with a similar level of press freedom. Even if we assume that the Algerian print numbers above are too high, we could cut them in half, and they would still be eyebrow-raising figures. Why this is so, I’m sure one could speculate forever, but what I’m interested in here is the effect: even if Algerian papers are not exceptional for their content, their impact on public opinion must be proportionally far bigger than in comparable countries, simply because they are read so widely. Yet I’ve never seen this noted anywhere, even in literature on Arab media.

It would seem to me that the Algerian press gets far too little credit as a factor in public opinion, and in Algerian politics generally, since outside watchdogs tend to focus on the content and the limits of political reporting, rather than the actual reach of newspapers. While most private papers in Arab countries tend to cater to rather slim sections of elite opinion, Algeria’s papers have achieved at least some mass-market reach, while at the same time they remain reasonably independent and pluralist.

Of course, there’s no denying it, red lines persist in both domestic (eg. security issues & elite affairs) and foreign (eg. W. Sahara) policy. It’s obvious that the country is not in any way, shape or form a democracy, and that decision-makers will not respond to public opinon unless forced to. And compared to developed countries, say any in Europe, the Algerian print figures are obviously very low. But even under these circumstances, the Algerian press can clearly drive and shape developments at times, even when the state seems hesitant, and this role may well come to grow in the future, as the press asserts its independence and censorship methods are blunted by technological developments.

Algerian fans holding a copy of an unidentified newspaper in protests against Egypt

The football riots of these past weeks are a case in point. Independent papers (presumably with the tacit acceptance of the government) were the ones to fan the flames, both in Algeria and Egypt. The press, more than television or radio, seems to have been the main force in mobilizing civil society — admittedly for a lousy goal* — in a way and with an effect rarely seen in this region. For all the overwhelming importance of al-Jazeera and other electronic media, it just seems to me that the influence of the printed press (and its online appendices) is underrated, as its popular impact slowly grows with literacy and increased independence. It could be a force for good — empowering civil society, such as it is — but also, as the above example shows, for bad: sensationalism and inflammatory journalism to sell copies. But if I’m not altogether mistaken about these figures and what they signify — and contrary opinions are welcome — it’s a force to be reckoned with, and a phenomenon which people would be well served to pay more attention to.

(*) pun intended.

Frankfurt – In what many see as a major setback to Europe’s effort to integrate its booming Muslim population – and a potential boost to right-wing parties throughout the continent – Swiss voters Sunday approved a move to ban the construction of new minarets in the country.

The Swiss government had urged voters to reject the ban, saying that it would violate religious freedom and human rights and intensify Islamic radicalism. But in Sunday’s referendum, which was organized by a right-wing political party, more than 57 percent of Swiss residents – a majority in 22 out of the country’s 26′s cantons – approved the proposal.

On the other hand, there’s not really a lot you can say about it either, except that this shouldn’t be taken as some minor aberration. For several years, parts of the Europen political landscape (not to mention the US Republican fringe, which is even loonier, but there are stronger constitutional safeguards there) has been sliding into clear-cut Islamophobic territory. Jew-bashing and other classic gimmicks are now a thing of the past: most far-right populists embrace Israel as a “Western outpost”, claim to have no racial prejudices, and now spend their days almost exclusively targeting Muslims, not on account of their religion, but because of what they call “Islam’s ideology”.

Of course it’s nonsense — they’re bigots, and that’s that. We’ve seen these people before, and apparently didn’t deal firmly enough with them in 1945, so here they are again. The new rhetoric seems to work like a charm, too, no matter how irrational their arguments (“‘Muslims don’t just practice religion, they increasingly make political and legal demands,’ said Walter Wobmann, who heads the initiative behind the referendum“), certainly helped along by their similarly bigoted counterparts in the Muslim world, and even more, I’m sure, by the social tensions raised by the economic crisis .

Conditions vary from country to country, of course — there’s no such thing as a “European debate”, whatever the EU may accomplish in the future — but the general trend is quite clear. Until recently, there was much beating around the bush, and talk about how it’s not really about hating Muslims, it’s just about fighting terrorism and supporting womens’ rights, and adopting a responsible immigration policy. Again, nonsense.

Now, the stage has been set, and here we go: Switzerland has actually voted for a law specifically and openly aimed at Muslims as a religious minority. The gloves are coming off, and this could get considerably worse in years to come.

As for me, I now count myself among the backers of Col. Qadhafi’s Great Popular De-Swissification Plan.

_____________________________________________________________________

DEAR FRIEND,

This letter isn’t real. It doesn’t exist, and we hope it will never exist. One could name all the reasons we think that the Sahara is Moroccan, but that’s not the question. We don’t need to convince ourselves. We’re part of the overwhelming majority that is already convinced. What we need to do is to freely analyze our policy towards this conflict. Are we on the right path? This exercise aims to make us reflect upon that. – ABOUBAKR JAMAÏ, Le Journal hebdomadaire.

“You ask me whether I prefer to live in an independent Sahrawi state if I was allowed the choice? Actually, I’m divided on this issue.

“In contrast to some of my Sahrawi friends, I’m not convinced that independence is the only possible way for me and my own to flourish. They think that independence is the only possible way to guarantee our collective and individual rights. Bottom line, they haven’t convinced me. At the same time, I won’t deny that, as of late, I’ve begun reflecting on this idea of independence more seriously, and on what it would mean for us. But before I tell you what I think today, I’d like to tell you how my opinions have developed.

“In September 1999, I was 20 years old. That year saw my political awakening, more precisely during the manifestations that Driss Basri’s police forces so harshly repressed. I was among those who took to the street to show how sick we were of the way the central government managed our region.  We wanted respect and good governance. We’d had enough of this policy of fattening our Sheikhs and beating and imprisoning our youth, and of the so-called leaders of the Sahara who were made ministers and rich governors and hung around their villas in the Souissi quarter of Rabat, and came down to show off for us…

King Mohamed VI visiting El Aaiún, the main city of Western Sahara.

“We thought that with the death of Hassan II, Morocco would have changed. The young king brought a new mood with him, and he was said to be close to the civil society which I admired so much. That the new king wanted to put Morocco – put us – on the path to democracy seemed totally credible.

“And, to be honest, back in those days we thought the alternative to Moroccan sovereignty was Mohamed Abdelaziz and the Polisario. For me, that was an easy choice. Sure, the old ones spoke about the legendary Brahim El Ouali, an El Ouali Mustapha Sayid who was for the Moroccanity of the Sahara at first, but then changed his mind due to repression from the hardliners in the regime. They also told us that Abdelaziz was just a leader among several, that there were other more intellectual and charismatic figures in the Polisario. Fine, but what I saw was an organization that, sure, it was made up of earnest Sahrawis, but at the same time it was under the jackboot of Algerian security. I couldn’t see myself in a state run by those people. Exchanging the Moroccan monarchy for agents of the Algerian army? No thanks.

“Especially not with the promising Mohammed VI on the other side. As you can see, I believed in him. Even my pro-independence pals calmed down a bit. But then time just passed without anything really changing.

Aminatou Haidar, after being beaten by Moroccan police in 2005, just before being sent to jail for participating in a pro-independence demonstration. She's presently in exile.

“Actually a whole new pro-independence generation has emerged. A generation which is more seductive, more democratic. This Haidar, for example. She’s really cool. You’ve seen how some people call her the ‘Sahrawi Gandhi’? Yeah, think about it! To know she was beaten and mistreated by the police, that really got to me.

“She’s not a terrorist, after all. And even terrorists have rights. Still, I didn’t always agree with her at first – but seeing what they’d done to her and her friends, I started asking questions. You realize that they were transferring teachers and activists and radical leftists and members of the Forum for Truth and Justice [FVJ, a human rights group] all over Morocco, because of their political activities? Even worse, they threw them out of the Forum.

“That – now that got me thinking. It was organizations like the Forum that had made the new regime appealing to me. For me, it was the fact that they existed and were able to work freely that had made it possible to believe in a democratic Morocco. Haidar and her people also made me think, because they weren’t Polisario’s playthings – at least I don’t think so.

“I told myself that, when you look at the recent experiences of independence processes under the UN, they’re not that bad. Sure, they have problems, but they’re democracies. And I’d hope that my future co-citizens would have the brains not to vote for daddy Abdelaziz. Perhaps for one of the kids who are getting beat up by the Moroccan regime right now? Or why not for Aminatou – wouldn’t that be something, the first “Ms. President” to be elected in an Arab and Muslim country?

“Then what? We’d be 300,000 citizens with rich seas, phosphates, beautiful tourist sites, and probably oil as well. I haven’t added it all up yet, but do we really need to? And just for good measure, we’d let the US install a military base too. Not Guantánamo-style, of course, but it would let them fight that al-Qaida in the Sahel which worries them so much… and we’d turn into a strategic ally of the United States of America.

“So, yeah, I’ve started to question some things. I really did dream of a united Morocco, but a democratic one. With this controlled justice system, these businessmen of the regime who hog all the best economic opportunities, these trampled liberties – I’ve started questioning things.

“But, you see, I’m going to have a son now. Suddenly my hopes are not just for myself, but for the little one and for what I leave him to inherit. I want him to live a dignified life. I want him to live in a world, a country, where you can dream and realize your dream. I, who was hoping that Morocco would be that country, now doubt it.”