BY JEAN-LOUIS SALFATI AND JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON - Meeting January 26, foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) member states called for the Algerian government to allow United Nations "monitors" into the country. This followed a British-led EU "investigative" trip to Algeria, carried out in the name of helping to stop the massacres that have supposedly been carried out by "Islamic terrorists" there.

The civil war in Algeria broke out six years ago after the army staged a military coup and canceled the second round of the January 1992 general elections, which the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win by a landslide. The FIS was officially dissolved and many of its leaders were killed or imprisoned. As the army turned on protests against the coup, the clashes developed into a civil war. According to the Algerian government, between 60,000 and 65,000 people have been killed in the war. Most other estimates of the death toll are considerably higher. The Algerian government blames the current slaughter on the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), an organization that split from the armed wing of the FIS. But there is increasing evidence that death squads sponsored by the regime itself are responsible for the massacres.

Evidence of government culpability
The Jan. 11, 1998, Observer, one of the main Sunday newspapers in Britain, carried a report about an Algerian policeman seeking asylum in the UK who said he had been ordered to take part in the massacre and torture of civilians. The unidentified man and a colleague were quoted as saying that army special forces, disguised as "Islamic militants" with beards and Muslim dress, slaughtered entire families in the middle of the night. Several other defectors from government forces have also admitted carrying out massacres on government orders.

There is also testimony by survivors of the government's terror campaign. Ahmed, a former imam in an eastern Algerian village mosque, told reporters he had been tortured by the police and security forces. Quoted in the London Times January 15 under only his first name, he said those who did the torturing "were trained in special camps. We know these people. Many have been recruited to the Ninja, the killing squads who are carrying out massacres of villagers to spread fear around the country."

While using the massacres as a pretext to clamp down on rights, the government's armed forces have demonstratively not intervened to stop the killing. In August and September of last year, for example, massacres occurred in two small villages 15 miles south of the capital city of Algiers. In Bentalha, 217 villagers were slaughtered in one night. "For four and a half hours," said Ali, a villager who survived the massacre, "they moved through the village at will, killing every one they could," particularly elderly men, women, and children. Most of the victims had their throats cut. The nearest army unit was barely 200 yards outside the settlement, yet soldiers did not arrive until hours after the butchers had gone.

Three weeks before, the village of Sidi Rais had been raided in a similar way, with throats cut, mutilation, beheading, burning, and evisceration. The nearest army barracks is little more than a mile away, yet it took troops three hours to reach the village.

This year news reporters have echoed government briefings that the latest wave of violence coincided with the December 30 start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, thereby implicating the Islamic opposition. But the facts point the finger at the regime. On January 12 a slaughter of 200 villagers was perpetrated in Sidi Hamed, about a 20-minute drive from central Algiers and 10 minutes from the heavily guarded perimeter of the international airport. According to survivors, troops were on the periphery of the village within 15 minutes, but no soldiers moved in until the last of the assailants had left. On December 30 more than 400 people were murdered in a simultaneous attack against several villages in the Relizane region of western Algeria -Khourba, Ouled Sahnine, and the neighboring hamlets of El Abadel and Ouled Tyeb. The assailants arrived around 6:00 p.m. and stayed until dawn without being bothered.

In a statement earlier this year, the FIS blamed the violence on "death squads organized by the government" and has backed calls for an investigation into the carnage.

Most of these killings take place in regions where most people voted for the FIS in the 1991-92 elections. No raider has ever been caught or arrested, let alone brought to trial. The government has rejected demands for arms from villagers who feel threatened by attack, instead putting 150,000 so-called militia members under arms. These "militias," portrayed by the government as self-defense units of villagers have in many cases been terror squads deeply involved in massacres. They supplement the "antiterrorist" section of the army, which has tripled in strength in three years, going from 20,000 to 60,000 men. A "district guard" of 50,000 men was has also been created.

Crackdown on rights
This strengthening of the state security forces is part of a broader crackdown on democratic rights unleashed by the government, including the imposition of strict censorship.

The 1992 elections took place in the midst of a deep economic crisis and after three years of social unrest and mass mobilizations against austerity measures. Inflation was rampant, fueled by a 22 percent devaluation of the dinar in 1991. Food and housing shortages, as well as 25 percent unemployment fueled the unrest.

The FIS campaigned on a platform of denouncing the government's austerity program and widespread corruption in the regime, as well as calling for the establishment of a so-called Islamic Republic. The big-business media in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom have labeled support for the FIS in the 1992 elections as testimony of growing support for "Islamic fundamentalism," claiming this is the continuing source of the crisis in the country. This view has been echoed by many on the left, especially in France.

But the bloody civil war is the product of mounting class tensions in a situation where workers and peasants have no leadership that speaks and acts in their interests. In this context, electoral support for the FIS has been one way that working people have expressed resistance to the government's policies.

Repression and attempts by the government to legitimize itself through presidential elections in 1995 failed to break this resistance. Thousands of people took to the streets last October to protest the government and electoral fraud. The demonstration was cheered by thousands more from balconies overlooking the march route. It was the largest organized protest since 1992.

Foreign capitalists look for bargains
The conditions faced by the mass of working people are disastrous. In 1994 the government initiated a "structural adjustment plan" under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund. Under this, payments on the regime's burgeoning foreign debt of $26 billion were rescheduled. The government initiated a program of privatizations - including of state- owned buildings, public works, transport, and insurance companies - and encouraged more foreign investment. Foreign companies especially scrambled to get a piece of the highly profitable hydrocarbon sector, which had been closed off to them. Algeria has the fifth-largest natural gas reserves in the world, and fourteenth-largest oil fields. Oil and gas exports currently bring $43 billion a year into the country.

The prospect of making a fast buck and gaining wider influence in the region is at the root of London and Washington's calls for intervention. The British government has equipped the Algerian army to the tune of 63 million ($37.8 million), while a 1994 U.S. State Department document commented, "Algeria has great long-term potential as a market for U.S. business." Both governments have put mounting pressure on the Algerian regime to allow them to "investigate" the violence.

Some 14,000 people marched in Paris last November echoing demands for foreign intervention. That action, supported by actors Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu, and Catherine Deneuve, was a torchlit parade called "Day for Algeria." This took place alongside the stepped-up racist, anti-Muslim campaign in France over the last couple years, which has included attempts to bar female students from wearing Islamic head scarves in schools.

Algiers finally agreed to a 24-hour visit from three ministers of the EU governments known as the troika - those occupying the current, previous, and future EU presidencies. Derek Fatchett, a junior foreign minister for the United Kingdom, which currently heads the EU, was accompanied by his counterparts from Luxembourg and Austria on that delegation.

The move by the British government to take the lead on this also reflects the conflicts within the EU, particularly between London and Paris. The French government, the former colonial power in Algeria, supported the 1992 military coup, fearing that an FIS government would not be as subservient to French imperial interests. The Socialist Party government of then- president Francois Mitterand collaborated with the Algerian military in 1992 to block the FIS's election victory. Paris has been especially generous in securing arms and money for the regime's ongoing war against the FIS. The current government continues to aid the Algerian regime, while presiding over a campaign of harassment and intimidation, known as Vigipirate, against the large North African population in France.

French defense minister Alain Richard spoke against international intervention January 13. "France considers there are government authorities in Algeria and they are making efforts to establish a certain form of democracy," he added.

In response to the British-sponsored EU intervention move, the Algerian government has appealed to the strong anti- imperialist sentiment that continues among the mass of Algerian people to oppose foreign interference in Algerian's internal affairs.

Widespread anti-imperialist sentiment
According to the London Times of January 20, most people in Algeria are opposed to any form of foreign intervention. "We don't want anything from Europe. They should go home," Times columnist Anthony Lloyd quoted one man in Algiers as saying, adding that this expressed "the over-riding opinion of Algerians."

This popular anti-imperialist sentiment has its roots in the profound social revolution which broke out as an anticolonial struggle in 1954 and triumphed in 1962. Working people in Algeria continue to look to this struggle, as evidenced by the fact that last October's mass antigovernment demonstration was called on the 43rd anniversary of the outbreak of the revolutionary struggle against French colonialism. The triumph over French rule brought a workers and farmers government to power, headed by Ahmed Ben Bella of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The revolutionary regime launched a land reform and literacy program, expropriated much of the imperialist-owned industry, expanded workers control in many factories, solidarized with the young socialist revolution in Cuba, and actively sided with the African National Congress of South Africa. It inspired working people internationally.

In 1965 bourgeois forces within the FLN led by Col. Houari Boumediéne took advantage of political retreats by the revolutionary forces to carry out a coup. The new FLN regime consolidated capitalist rule and brutally demobilized struggles by peasants and urban workers to better their conditions. Boumediéne held power until his death in 1978, when he was succeeded by Chadli Benjedid.

But the Boumediéne and Benjedid governments continued to claim "socialist" credentials and continuity with the anti- imperialist struggle, reflecting the fact that they had not totally broken the capacity of working people to resist. In 1988 a new wave of social mobilizations began as the Benjedid government tried to impose austerity measures in face of a mounting economic crisis. Five days of confrontation between working people and government forces left an estimated 500 dead, 1,000 wounded, and 3,000 jailed.

Algeria was also the scene of massive mobilizations against the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991, including demonstrations of up to 400,000 people.  
 
 
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