26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544 |
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The right to an identity
Recent Berber protests in Algeria have divided their immigrant community in Europe, Judit Neurink spoke to a prominent Berber professor on the roots of the problem
Algerian immigrants in Europe, already worried by the militant killings in their country over the past decade, have watched the latest Berber protests on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea with great concern. Clashes between Berber protesters and Algerian riot police, which have claimed at least 80 lives, have split the immigrant communities into Algerian Berbers and Arabs. This has led to many expatriate Algerians taking up a clear position in favour of the Berbers.
Berber demonstrators in Algiers earlier this month photo: Reuters
"The deaths in Kabylie have woken us up," says Ali, an Algerian Berber who drives a taxi in Amsterdam. His friend Jamal, who spent his youth in France before settling in the Netherlands, adds: "My sister in France tells me that the riots have brought young Berbers there together."
Ali and Jamal, both in their 30s, have formed a committee named the Algerian Berbers in the Netherlands (ABN), aimed at informing Dutch politicians and media about what is going on in their country. When they went to their embassy in The Hague to present a petition against the violence and repression used against young protesters by the gendarmerie in Kabylie region, they found themselves in a heated debate with the Algerian ambassador. And when they sought the support of Algerian Arab members of an intellectual organisation in exile, the reaction was cool. Until now this organisation has not answered Jamal's request that they work together. However, Jamal's committee has found understanding and support from the much more populous Moroccan Berber society in the Netherlands.
The Algerian Berbers suspect that their Arab fellow countrymen think they want to gain autonomy for Kabylie. But he does not want a Berber state, Ali stresses. "Algeria is my country, I am an Algerian. Algeria has to become a democratic state, and the army must return to the barracks, then we can finally start to build our country." What the Berbers do want, he underlines, is the official recognition of their language and culture, an end to corruption and to the "hogra," humiliation of Berbers, a democratic state and an economic revival of the Berber regions.
"Look at the situation in Kabylie," Jamal said. "There is no industry; 30 per cent of the population are without work and people live on the money sent to them by their families in Europe, mainly in France, where the biggest community is living." He adds that the roads in many villages in Kabylie have been built with that money, because the government does not care.
"The young in Kabylie have no future. Their desperation drives them to the streets," Jamal said. "They know they are just standing against the wall, while their lives just pass them by. No future, no work, no money to raise a family, no house. They think: we're dead already. What difference does a bullet make."
Professor Mohamed Arkoun, 72, an Algerian Berber who teaches history of Islam at the Sorbonne in Paris, says his region has been neglected for centuries by the various occupying powers. Berbers, or the Amazigh, were the original inhabitants of the Maghreb, and have been dominated by the Romans, the Arabs and the French.
"After the independence of the five states in the Maghreb, the policy was to centralise and forcefully unite Berbers into a new entity. Using police and army, the new governments wanted complete control of the Berbers," Arkoun said.
"In Algeria, the state obliged Berbers to live by Islamic law. They could, for instance, no longer marry according to their own customs. This has activated the dynamic of the Berber identity."
To Arkoun, the main problem is the drive of the Algerian government to form a state in which there is no room for Berber culture. "To follow the ideal of Arab unity, the Maghreb states had to eliminate different cultures. And because this pressure is stronger than under any ruler before, resistance is also stronger."
The Berber culture is quite different from the Arab, and has a very strong unwritten history. "Every village has its own saint. None of their biographies are written down; they exist in the collective memory. I myself have been brought up with these stories. And with the customs, which are the roots of the culture," Arkoun says.
Nowadays Berbers live only in a few regions in the Maghreb. Their language is not taught in any of the Maghreb countries. It is developed outside, in Europe. "Paris has two chairs for Berber, Tamazigh," Arkoun says. "Linguists have made a phonetic transcription into the Latin script. Books have been printed. Poetry has been collected and finally written down."
Berbers who want to read and write their own language must go abroad. "At school in Algeria, young Berbers are taught a language which is not theirs. They do not recognise anything of their own world in the teachings. This has made them aware they are being dominated. This, in combination with the bad economic situation, has driven them to the streets," Arkoun said.
Arkoun feels the Berbers only want now what they fought for during the war of independence: a democratic state where they can express themselves in their own language and where Berber will be recognised as the second national language. "They do not want to get rid of Arabic. That is just propaganda, to discredit the movement," he says. The same goes for the talk about Berber independence. "Propaganda from the state, not true," Arkoun insists.
To Arkoun, the recognition of the Berber is an necessary step to end the riots. Meanwhile, he does not have much faith in Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, who has promised an inquiry into the violence. "That is just strategy -- or should I say: tactics. Because for a strategy you have to look ahead, and he's not. It's a tactic to keep people quiet for a while." That is why he predicts the protest will continue. "The tension will explode from time to time into riots. People will again and again be murdered by the police," he says.
Essential for a solution is that Berbers finally feel they are really part of the country. Arkoun's recipe is a combination of freedom of language and a shared citizenship for all Algerians. "Create the possibility at schools and institutes for everybody to express themselves according to their culture. Give them the freedom to use their own language and create a culture of a shared citizenship to create unity. Because the language is the spirit of any human being, the deepest centre. If you kill the language, you kill the life of that spirit," Arkoun concluded.
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