North Africa A Prelude to Civil War?

• Share

On the day Algeria should have been holding the concluding round of parliamentary elections, proving that it could move peacefully from one-party socialist rule to a pluralist state, the country's military was putting the finishing touches on a bloodless coup d'etat. Last Thursday, just five days after the army forced the resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid, provoking the dissolution of parliament and cancellation of the elections that had promised to hand Muslim fundamentalists a legislative majority, Mohammed Boudiaf was sworn in as head of a military-backed, five-member Council of State. Boudiaf has splendid credentials -- he is nonpartisan and a hero of Algeria's war for independence from France -- but real power within the ruling council is likely to fall to the country's Defense Minister, Major General Khaled Nezzar.

And there's the rub. With no clear constitutional standing and with allegiance from few outside the military's high command, the council is trying to impose its authority on a restless nation that could erupt any day in civil strife. Short of martial law, it is unlikely the council will be able to provide the glue for an electorate fractured along political, religious and ethnic lines. The Islamic Salvation Front (F.I.S.) shows no inclination to cooperate with the authorities who stole the party's electoral victory. Last week the fundamentalists and leaders of the two other main political parties set aside their differences to try to design a strategy for restoring an elected parliament.

At the heart of the drama is the question of what is better for Algeria's democratic aspirations: a military intervention that claims to safeguard democratic ideals by robbing fundamentalists of electoral victory, or the full play of the electoral process, which risks empowering radical fundamentalists who might prove antagonistic to the give-and-take of democracy. After the F.I.S. swept the first round of voting on Dec. 26, the military was hardly alone in its fears that the fundamentalists might wield their legislative clout to impose an Islamic republic. Nearby African and Arab states breathed a sigh of relief after the military intrusion, which the Tunisian daily As-Sabah characterized as "a last-minute change of direction by a train heading toward the abyss."

For a Western world grown accustomed to drawing facile distinctions between villains and heroes as it witnessed one political convolution after another, Algeria's crisis posed a jarring dilemma: Which takes precedence -- democratic principles or geopolitical self-interest? The U.S. initially appeared to support the annulment of the election by contending that the generals, whose intervention had the support of a handful of civilian leaders, acted constitutionally when they appointed a council to fill the vacant presidency. In fact, the 1989 Algerian constitution makes no such provision. A day later, officials declared that Washington would not stake out a position in the constitutional debate. France, which ruled Algeria until 1962 and still maintains close cultural ties, also zigged and zagged until President Francois Mitterrand concluded that Algeria "must at the earliest possible opportunity go back to a democratic process."