The 2019 Ḥirāk and the Arab Spring Uprisings: The Limits of the Algerian Exception Narrative?

المؤلفون

  • مؤلفون

  • Abdennour Benantar
  • Mohammed Hemchi

الكلمات المفتاحية:

The 2019 Ḥirāk Movement، Social Movements، Arab Spring Uprisings، Algeria، the Algerian Exception

الملخص

This study examines the 2019 Ḥirāk movement in Algeria using a trans-disciplinary perspective spanning the sociology of social movements, comparative politics, and international relations. It compares the Ḥirāk to the two waves of Arab Spring uprisings (2011 and 2019), using the "Algerian exception" narrative as an analytical tool. The paper examines this narrative's arguments and debates its limitations. This approach allows for an understanding of the Ḥirāk 's local particularity that distinguishes it from other Arab uprisings and permits its recontextualization as part of a regional social phenomenon with transnational dynamics and subsequent repercussions.

المراجع

  1. Algeria was no different than Morocco when contrasted with countries that witnessed the Arab Spring and had significant consequences. On the other hand, Bahrain saw a popular revolution (in terms of scale and duration) but with no fundamental impact.
  2. Algeria also saw various uprisings before 2011, the most notable being the protests in Kabylia (1981), in Constantine and Sétif in the east of the country (1986), in Algiers and other cities (1988), in Kabylia again (2001), and in the Aurès (2004). See: Abdennour Benantar, "al-Ḥirāk al-Jazāʾirī: Sardiyyāt wa-Sardiyyāt Muḍāda," Siyasat Arabiya , vol. 10, no 55 (March 2022), p. 9.
  3. See: Ratiba Bouadma, "ʿĀm Baʿd Iḥtijājāt al-Jazāʾir… Shubbān al-Aḥyāʾ al-Faqīra Yabḥathūn ʿan al-Khalāṣ," Deutsche Welle , 4/1/2012, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3Dn1j4U
  4. One of the slogans adopted by protesters in Yemen was "Ali Abdullah Saleh, Tunisify us [tawnisnā], don't Somalify us [lā tuṣāwmilnā]". Tunisia and Somalia both had deep political and economic significance in the conscience of those chanting.
  5. Louisa Dris-Aït Hamadouche, "Le soulèvement populaire algérien à l'aune du printemps arabe," Pouvoirs , vol. 1, no. 176 (2021), p. 17.
  6. We might add to this two other basic semantic points. The first is a general one: a "revolution" is typically a matter of rebellion against the status quo and indeed often of armed action. The second has to do with the Algerian context, where no matter how revolutionary the Ḥirāk may have been, it seemed crucial to distinguish it from the Algerian Revolution of 1954 - 1962 that brought to the country independence from France. For a broader critique of the concept of revolution in the Arab context, see: Yadh Ben Achour, Tunisie: Une révolution en pays d'islam (Tunis: Cérès éditions, 2017).
  7. Referred to in its rhetoric as "the national tragedy", a term previously used in national reconciliation legislation. See for example: People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, "Amr Raqm 06 - 01 Muʾarrakh fī 28 Muḥarram ʿĀm 1427 al-Muwāfiq 27 Fibrāyir Sanat 2006, Yataḍamman Tanfīdh Mīthāq al-Silm wa-l-Muṣālaḥa al-Waṭaniyya," Official Gazette , Year 43, Issue 11, 28/2/2006.
  8. Benantar, pp. 10 - 11.
  9. Farida Souiah, "Rhétorique de l'ingérence et lutte pour la légitimité," Mouvement , vol. 2, no. 102 (2020), p. 36.
  10. The slogans used by the demonstrators bear witness to the trauma of the 1990s and their desire to avoid violence: "Algeria isn't Syria", "the army and the people are brothers", "the police and the people are brothers", and "the Black Decade is over, we'll build a White Decade". See: Faouzia Zeraoulia, "The Memory of the Civil War in Algeria: Lessons from the Past with Reference to the Algerian Hirak," Contemporary Review of the Middle East , vol. 7, no. 1 (2020), p. 43.
  11. Benantar, p. 11.
  12. Although the term Ḥirāk was shared by some countries, different national contexts have generated a rich and specific vocabulary of protest, giving new meanings to old terms that often refer to the same thing: azlām al-niẓām [regime's men] in Tunisia and Libya, the fulūl [holdovers from the old regime] in Egypt, the shabbīḥa [state sponsored mercenaries] in Syria, and the 'iṣāba [regime thugs] in Algeria. The terms baqāyā al-niẓām ("regime remnants") and rumūz al-niẓām ("regime figures") are also widely used in all Arab countries. See: Ibid., p. 10.
  13. This account is taken from direct observation of the Ḥirāk protests, both in Algeria (where one of us was present from the beginning of the movement in February through to October 2019) and abroad (where the other witnessed all of the protests organised by the Algerian community in France). There is a wealth of material, both audio-visual and written, as well as extensive media reporting demonstrating all this.
  14. See: Nacer Djabi, "Limādhā Lā Yatimm Tarshīḥ al-Ḥirāk al-Shaʿbī fī'l-Jazāʾir ilā Jāʾizat Nūbil li-l-Salām?," al-Quds al-Arabi , 28/3/2021, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3Enm56b. In April 2019, Moncef Marzouki, the first post-revolutionary president of Tunisia, said that the "Algerian revolution [was] one of the most successful of the Arab Spring revolutions" because it had occurred "without bloodshed", and "Algerians have a very high level of consciousness". See: "al-Marzūqī: al-Thawra al-Jazāʾiriyya min Anjaḥ Thawrāt al-Rabīʿ al-ʿArabī," Anadolu Agency , 9/4/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3EjaDbz. Shortly after Bouteflika's resignation, Nasser Zefzafi, one of the leaders of the Moroccan Rif Movement, published a letter from his prison cell in which he said "I salute you, great people of Algeria, for securing the first of your demands: the cancellation of the fifth term […] How could it have been otherwise, when you have done such glorious things in the past? And today you are doing them again. Like your brothers and sisters in the Rif, you have taught the world a lesson in peaceful, civilised protest." See: "al-Zafzāfī Yuḥayyī al- Jazāʾiriyyīn: Anḥanī Lakum Ijlālan Ayyuhā-l-Aḥrār!" Aswat Magharibiyya , 5/4/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3EwzJEd. For more, see: "Ḥirāk al-Jazāʾiriyyīn Yubhir Aḥrār al-ʿĀlam," al-Bilad , 5/4/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3WRa3ZS. Such praise can only have further entrenched the idea of an Algerian exception.
  15. Hamadouche, pp. 21 - 22.
  16. Abdennour Benantar, "Arab Democratic Uprisings: Domestic, Regional and Global Implications," New Global Studies , vol. 5. no. 1 (2011), pp. 1 - 7.
  17. Hamadouche, pp. 22 - 23.
  18. Hamadouche, pp. 24 - 25.
  19. Hamadouche, p. 20.
  20. al-Sūdān: Ḍubbāṭ al-Amn Yulāḥiqūn al-Muḥtajjīn al-Muṣābīn Dākhil Mustashfā," Amnesty International , 10/1/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/2RqyQ8Y. Various reports indicate that dozens more protesters have been killed in protests that are still continuing at the time of writing, albeit in a more geographically limited and more scattered fashion.
  21. Lubnān: al-Mutaẓāhirīn Yushayyiʿūn Muwāṭinan Qutil fī-l-Iḥtijājāt al-Mutawāṣila ḍidd al-Ṭabaqa al-Ḥākima," France 24 , 14/11/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3sGOOft
  22. Iḥṣāʾiyya Umamiyya: Ḥaṣīlat Iḥtijājāt al-ʿIrāq Akthar min 400 Qatīl wa-19 Alf Jarīḥ", Al Jazeera Net , 4/12/2019, accessed on 14/4/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3FuxT7F
  23. Hamadouche, p. 21.
  24. Iḥṣāʾiyya Umamiyya: Ḥaṣīlat Iḥtijājāt al-ʿIrāq Akthar min 400 Qatīl wa-19 Alf Jarīḥ", Al Jazeera Net , 4/12/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3FuxT7F
  25. Hamadouche, p. 21.
  26. See: Didier Le Saout, "al-Qiyām bi-l-Ḥirāk fī Bārīs: Mashāhid Thawra Ḍidd al-Niẓām al-Jazāʾirī," Hasan Zaghdar (trans.), Siyasat Arabiya , vol 10, no. 55 (March 2022).
  27. Abdennour Benantar, "Recompositions interarabes dans le contexte des révoltes populaires: Un conservatisme vecteur de radicalisation régionale," in: Abdennour Benantar (dir.), Le Maghreb et la crise entre les monarchies du Golfe: Une neutralité positive (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2021), pp. 21 - 32.
  28. Abdennour Benantar, "al-ʿĀmil al-Khārijī wa'l-Insidād al-Siyāsī fī'l-Jazāʾir," Report , Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, 21/3/2019, accessed on 14/3/2023 at: https://bit.ly/3U4ImKr
  29. Ibid.; Abdennour Benantar, "Siyāsat al-Jazāʾir al-Amniyya: Taḥawwulāt wa-Muʿḍilāt fī Siyāq al-Qalāqil Iqlīmiyyan wa'l-Ḥirāk Dākhiliyyan," Siyasat Arabiya , vol. 10, no. 55 (March 2022), pp. 35, 38.
  30. Benantar, "al-ʿĀmil al-Khārijī wa-l-Insidād al-Siyāsī fī-l-Jazāʾir."
  31. Abdennour Benantar, "Implications du printemps arabe sur la sécurité en Méditerranée," Cahiers de la Méditerranée , no. 89 (2014), pp. 87-98; Abdennour Benantar, "NATO, Maghreb and Europe," Mediterranean Politics , vol. 11, no. 2 (2006), pp. 167 - 188.
  32. Benantar, "al-ʿĀmil al-Khārijī wa-l-Insidād al-Siyāsī fī-l-Jazāʾir."
  33. For a broader review of such theories, see: Erik Neveu, Sociologie des mouvements sociaux (Paris: La Découverte, 1996).
  34. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (London: Polity, 1996); Zouaoui Baghoura, al-Iʿtirāf min Ajl Mafhūm Jadīd li'l-ʿAdl: Dirāsa fī'l-Falsafa al-Ijtimāʿiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 2012).
  35. Baghoura, p. 14.
  36. Quoted in: Ibid.
  37. Ibid, pp. 14 - 15.
  38. Abdennour Benantar, "Ishkāliyyat al-Istiʿṣāʾ al-Dīmuqrāṭī fī-l-Waṭan al-ʿArabī," al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi , Year 24, Issue 273 (November 2001), p. 23.
  39. This phrase (in French) soon became a slogan used against the regime in Tunisia and Algeria, and was adopted in various forms in other Arab uprisings.
  40. Many such scattered and ephemeral events appear in the prevailing causal narratives as triggers for the uprisings: the death of the Egyptian blogger Khaled Saeed, beaten to death in full view of the public by members of the Egyptian security forces on 6 June 2010; the arrest of the Libyan lawyer Fethi Tarbel on 15 February 2011 after he took up the cause of the victims of the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre; the killing of the Moroccan fish seller Mohsen Fikri, crushed to death in a waste collection vehicle by a policeman on 28 October 2016. There are various others.
  41. Abdennour Benantar, "al-Tasalluṭiyya al-Siyāsiyya al-ʿArabiyya," Fikr wa-Naqd , vol. 5, no. 45 (January 2002), pp. 27-36; Khaldun Hasan al- Naqib, al-Dawla al-Tasalluṭiyya fī-l-Mashriq al-ʿArabī al-Muʿāṣir: Dirāsa Bināʾiyya Muqārana , 2nd ed. (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1996).
  42. Benantar, "Arab Democratic Uprisings," pp. 1 - 7.
  43. Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), p. 2.
  44. Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010) p. 14.
  45. Vincent Geisser, "Les protestations populaires à l'assaut des régimes autoritaires: Une 'révolution' pour les sciences sociales?," L'Année du Maghreb , no. 8 (2012), pp. 7 - 26.
  46. Bayat, pp. 17 - 18.
Cover of العدد 13, Almuntaqa

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2023-01-01

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44 مشاهدة 69 تنزيل

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مجلد 6 عدد 013 (2023): العدد 13

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