Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced in a speech to the nation on March 12 that he had "decided in total freedom and with total conviction to include Tamazight in the constitution as a national language." Berbers are an oppressed minority who make up 20 percent to 30 percent of the population.

Bouteflika's announcement came just days after Berber leaders called for a boycott of parliamentary elections in May because the government had not addressed their demands for language rights.

In the spring and summer of last year, hundreds of thousands of Berbers in the Kabylia region and other Algerians throughout the country held mass demonstrations around the issue. Until Bouteflika's announcement, Arabic was the only official national language. During last year's actions, some of the protests also presented demands for jobs in a country with high unemployment, housing, more democratic rights, and the withdrawal of the hated paramilitary gendarmes. The gendarmes attacked several of the street protests, killing some 60 Berbers and wounding another 2,000.

The French ruling class has sought to pressure the Bouteflika regime by having a hand in the actions. Pro-imperialist Berber groups based in France worked to turn the outrage against the cop killings into actions to bring down the government.

Algeria was ruled as a colony by France from 1830 until 1962, when workers and peasants won their independence after a long liberation struggle that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Algerians at the hands of French imperialism. To the detriment of Paris, the Bouteflika government has deepened its ties with Washington, which is interested in gaining more of a toehold in the strategic and oil-rich north African country.

Berber organizations that led the protests last year are divided over whether or not to continue their boycott of the national elections. Those who command the most support in Kabylia rejected an invitation to meet with Bouteflika and said their broader demands are nonnegotiable. They announced the boycott will continue unless all demands are met, while the government has flatly rejected the complete withdrawal of the gendarmes from the region.  
 
 
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