David Hirst in Beirut
President Liamine Zeroual’s decision to step down before the end of his five-year term looks likely to weaken Algeria’s military-based regime and further erode domestic and international confidence in its ability to end the gruesome civil war.
The shock decision, announced last weekend, has plunged the country into new confusion and uncertainty, with all political parties holding emergency meetings and warning of chaos.
The Algiers newspaper Libert said: “Some will liken this decision to that of a captain abandoning ship as it fills with water on all sides.”
In addition to the continuing Islamist terror, the regime now faces the danger of serious social unrest. The slump in oil revenues and the conversion to a free- market economy under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund have further increased unemployment.
Zeroual, who was due to serve until November 2000, said he would hand over power after presidential elections in February next year.
The upheaval echoes events in 1992 when the military annulled elections which the Islamic Salvation Front looked set to win. That drove the Islamists to the violence that has continued to grow in scale and barbarism.
Zeroual believes in accommodating Islamist rebels interested in a peaceful settlement who last year threw their weight behind a ceasefire between the army and the FIS’s military wing, the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS). This has brought him into collision with those dominant members of the military hierarchy, the so-called eradicators, who want to crush the Islamists.
Zeroual’s decision to step down is reported to have come during a stormy six-hour meeting last week with top commanders headed by the chief-of-staff, Mohamed Lamari.
It was these powerful generals who, in 1994, chose him as head of state. For them he was a safe, uncontroversial figure whom they thought they could influence. But he developed a will of his own, especially after his handsome victory in the presidential elections of 1995.
The hardliners distrusted his conciliatory tendencies. Although it was they who brought off the ceasefire with the AIS, Zeroual and his followers subsequently sought to turn this into a much broader political understanding with the Islamists.
Zeroual’s departure can be seen as a victory for the “eradicators”, but hardly a definitive one. It is likely to intensify conflicts within the regime, and it is likely these will spill into the public arena if the elections in February are to be the expression of “pluralist democracy” that Zeroual has called for.