ÄNote: The Algerian independence day is July 5Å

Algeria????????s independence came on July 5, 1962, after a long and bloody war against France. The Revolution that took place from 1954 to 1962 would soon be abducted by the egos of many powerful men, with names like Ben Bella, Boumediene, and Khider. But, the ideals of the Revolution they stole would not die. The Algerian Revolution was a revolt against exclusion, under-representation, racialism, displacement, colonialism, ignorance and all the other pretty words that come with battles in the name of rights. Algerians today, hold all of these notions close to their hearts, no matter what their political persuasion may be. The Revolution was a diverse one, claimed by former “assimilationists” fed up with the inability of the colonial system to extend the rights of man to Algerian Muslims, pan-Arab nationalists, socialists, Marxists, communists, Islamists wishing to reinstate the Islamic political order in a Muslim land, Amazigh Berberists wishing to bring equality and prestige to their people, the everyday men and women of Algerian wishing to finally know what equality and opportunity felt like, and many other interest groups. They may have disagreed on the particulars of the Revolution, but all agreed that their aims could not be met under the rule of France, and that the colonial order had to be torn down to achieve the betterment of Algeria and her people.

The Algerian Revolution was a jihad. Yes, a jihad. Not one of these jihads of mass murder, rape, pillage, and bigotry that have ravaged the world in recent years. But a jihad in a liberal and patriotic sense. To the revolutionaries of November 1st it was a continuous struggle to recover the national Algerian Muslim identity, by any means possible or necessary. “???????Jihad???????? is a quintessentially liberal and open patriotism” said the first editorial of the FLN????????s newspaper, El Moudjahid in 1956.

It????????s the soldier of the ALN, it????????s the political activist, the liaison agent, the little shepherd who provides information, the housewife in the casbah who comments on events, the little schoolchild in Algiers who goes out on strike, it????????s economic sabotage, the student who joins the resistance fighters, the distributor of tracts, the peasant who suffers and hopes along with his family. In a word, it????????s that ensemble of efforts carried forward by the wheel of history, guided by the FLN, and converging on a single goal, the independence of the country.

By the standards of the FLN, the American Founding Fathers waged their own kind of jihad against the British occupational force. And just like their American counterparts in 1776, Algerians would not retreat from their fight for equality in their homeland. In an appeal to the people of France in 1961, the FLN commanded the French democrats to “ensure that Paris not become the capitol of racism”. France met Algerian demands for equality with inaction, and had met the call of the militant with ever more race specific and barbaric repression. France had abandoned humanism in Algeria. Algerians who had been lucky enough to get a French education could make their way to the continent and become lawyers, teachers or judges, but these were the select few, and such options for them were practically non-existent in the hot bed of pieds-noirs bigotry that were the three North African d????partements.

Ahmed Messali Hadj, leader of the ?????toile Nord-Africain

The Young Algerians (Jeunesse Alg????rienne), an assimilationist movement made up such young men, lost its currency when each of its initiatives to extend the franchise in the d????partements was shot down by the colonial lobby. The call for independence was made for the first time in 1926 from the Marxist oriented leader of the ?????toile Nord-Africain Ahmed Messali Hadj (b. 1898). That same year the ?????toile raised what would become the Algerian national standard, attributing it to the Algerian national hero Emir Abelkadir. This bold man would be expelled from his country to the French mainland, the Congo, prisons, and elsewhere, not just by the French colonial regime but also by the government of independent Algeria. In 1928, he rejected the platform of the Young Algerian, and excoriated those who would tolerate the bare minimum when it came to the liberty of others and their own.

Ä. . .Å in our own ranks this pro-slavery position finds supporters and propagators among the traitors and sell-outs. French imperialism, thanks to corruption, has known how to involve in its policies those elements through which it exercises its influence and domination. Alternatively, through the mouths of Bentami and Chekiken it allows us to hope for a so-called “generosity” of wolves towards the lambs.

Muslim! Our conduct is laid out for us before so odious a regime.

Unite your efforts in order to improve our lot. For the suppression of the Code de l’Indig????nat, for the freedom of the press and assembly, for the equality of military service, for the freedom of immigration, against the sending of native troops to foreign lands, against the war in Morocco! Fight against French imperialism. . .

Each attempt to bring about equality in Algeria, between Muslims and pieds-noirs, had been stone walled. Many men who had been assimilationists, accommodationists, or indifferent became nationalists. Ferhat Abbas (b. 1899, Tahert, Algeria) was one such man. Once a staunch assimilationist who had hoped for the rights of Frenchmen to be extended to all Algerian Muslims, he issued the Manifesto of the Algerian People in 1943. This manifesto called for the release of all Algerian political prisoners to that point, the recognition of both French and Arabic as official languages in Algeria, and the extension of full civic rights and responsibilities to Muslims and equality under the law. Abbas would join the FLN in 1955, moving on to become the president of provisional Algerian government in exile from 1958 to 1961. After independence, when the demands of his manifesto, and the cause so many Algerian had fought and died for, were thought to have been realized, Abbas became the first president of Algeria. But, as the egos of the Oujda Clan (a group of FLN officers that had served in Morocco during the War of Independence) began to show themselves clearly, and amended the Constitution so that the FLN was the sole party of state, and under the tight control of the executive, Abbas was once again disillusioned and resigned in disgust and protestation, in the true spirt of the Revolution. His Cincinnatus-like actions earned him years of house arrest. A year before his death in 1985, Abbas was awarded the Algerian Medal of Resistance. If there ever was a legacy that Algerians should emulate it is his.

The Algerian Revolution was filled with men and women like Ferhat Abbas; bakers, poets, factory workers, laborers, house wives, teachers, who went to the front and did their duty and never stopped. They raised their nation out of illiteracy, raised upstanding and honest youths, and did the best that they could to live despite their subjugation by forces that had stolen their Revolution. Though Algeria became independent in 1962, the single greatest exhibition of Algerian virtue took place in 1963 by Ferhat Abbas. Refusing to take part in corrupt and ineffectual political maneuverings, and taking the moral high ground are what Algeria????????s revolution was all about. There can be no compromise when it comes to justice, independence, the recognition of human dignity, or honesty. These are the spirits of 1963.

Independence meant the end of the imperial Alg????rie fran????ais, and the beginning of Alg????rie alg????rienne. It was the end of an era both in Africa, and in France. Not long after France????????s Mediterranean empire collapsed, so did her Fifth Republic. French colonialism had crashed, burned, and returned home in shame. The pride of a great power was shaken and the pride of a new power invigorated. The romance of the Battle of Algiers swept through the hearts of Leftists across Europe, and the hope that it offered took peoples in the Third World by storm. Algerians were modern, fit and able to provide advice and tactical support to revolutionaries further south in Africa. Algiers became home to revolutionaries from Latin America to Palestine. An Algerine boulevard is named for the ever unjustly romanticized Che Guevara.

This year marks the fifty-fourth year of Algerian independence. This July 5, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a man who has done much for his country during his term as president, will announce that he too will attempt to follow the presidential tradition of usurpation from the people. He will make an address to the Algerian people announcing his support for a constitutional amendment, put forth by his PM Abdelaziz Belkhadem, that will, among other things, abolish presidential term limits and extend the presidential mandate from five years to seven. It would seem to me that with the support of the FLN, NRD, and the other major Algerian political factions, there is no way that this initiative can fail. The spirts of 1963 are present in Algeria to this very day, they can be seen everywhere one looks, from border to border in they eyes of Algerians young and old. President Bouteflika should take a lesson from Ferhat Abbas and withdraw his support for this shameful motion. The ramifications of this proposal are too great to ignore. The Algerian democracy is too young and too fragile to allow the egos of powerful men to manipulate the process at such an early stage. Never before has here been such an opportunity for Bouteflika to show his commitment to democracy and the rule of law as this upcoming Independence Day. If he shuns this chance by going ahead with this criminal plan, we will see his truest colors, and they certainly will not be red, green, and white.