Algeria has approved a referendum that will allow a sweeping amnesty law to bring an end to years of guerrilla conflict and — hopefully — establish peace in the country.
Under the new law, Islamist parties are banned from taking part in politics, but this vision of a secular Algeria has already been thrown into doubt. Even though many Islamist leaders and former guerrilla fighters have signed up to it, they insist they will compete for power in the future.
The Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation passed with 97% of the vote last week amid questions about high turnout figures. In reality, most polling stations were empty last Thursday, the day of the vote.
Although most Algerians want a final end to years of fighting, critics say the authorities are repeating past mistakes — notably the fateful decision to cancel elections in 1992 after it became clear that a large Islamist party would win a landslide. The move triggered the 13-year guerrilla war that has claimed more than 150 000 lives and is only now coming to an end.
After years of bitter conflict, followed by private negotiations, leaders of the influential Islamic Salvation Front — which was set to win that 1992 election — agreed to endorse this week’s amnesty. It means Islamist guerrillas will soon walk free, and any prisoners still held will be released.
Mustapha Kebir, a member of the Islamic Salvation Front — known by its French initials as the FIS — spent more than a decade in the mountains as a guerrilla fighter after the elections were cancelled and his name went on a wanted list. He only returned to normal life in 2000 after agreeing to give up the fight under one of the first tentative amnesties.
”This is a major step for us,” he said. ”Many officials wanted to eradicate us, not just politically but physically as well. ”When we agreed to stop our military activities, we were given our full rights.
”I cannot imagine that they can take away our political rights now. That would be the beginning of something we really don’t want and something very serious. In the future, nobody can stop us from having political ambitions. I don’t want people to prevent us from taking part in politics.”
Madani Mezrag, who was the leader of the armed wing in which Kebir fought, said he believed there was still a strong chance of creating a purist Islamic republic.
”Our goal, as an Islamic movement, is to set up an Islamic republic in Algeria,” he told Reuters.
”Unlike you would think, it is much more possible today than ever. The regime was responsible for this national tragedy, and we will work day and night to change the system through democratic means.”
The future role of Islamists is crucial because the past decade of war, in which they were forced underground, helped produce an extreme militancy that provided several Algerian recruits to the al-Qaeda style terrorist groups operating in Europe and elsewhere.
Many people in Algeria are uncomfortable about the amnesty because they say it is difficult to forgive either the Islamist militants who killed so many civilians or the security forces who were responsible for ferocious repression.
Yet exhaustion with the war, and the desperate hope that peace and reconciliation will improve the country’s dire economic conditions, meant the amnesty found a groundswell of support.
Alongside the amnesty decisions, the government inserted several clauses in the charter giving it broad powers and severely restricting the role of political Islam — a move intended, in part, to placate the army.
It states that the Algerians ”decide, as a sovereign people, to forbid all those who instrumentalise religion from taking part in any possible political activity under any form that may take”.
”Is there going to be an Islamic republic here, like Iran? That is not possible. Algeria is secular,” said Lagab Mohammad, a university lecturer and newspaper columnist who writes in support of the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Many expect that Bouteflika, who was elected for a second term last year, will use the passing of this amnesty to secure enough support to change the Constitution and allow him to serve a third term as president. – Guardian Unlimited Â