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GUEST: John Entelis, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University, co-author of “The Algerian Civil War”

The death toll in the wake of Tuesday’s twin truck bombings in the capital of Algeria has continued to rise. Yesterday’s government figures placed the number of dead at 31 after rescue workers sought to uncover survivors as well as bodies from within the rubble of the targeted UN and government buildings in Algiers. Hospital figures place the number of victims at twice the government’s estimate while an Algerian independent newspaper noted that 200 were wounded. Among the confirmed dead were eleven U.N. employees, making the attack the bloodiest against the organization since a 2003 Baghdad bombing killed twenty-two. An Algerian al-Qaeda affiliate known as Aqim has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks. The organization was formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat which had its roots in the 1992 civil war. The ensuing decade long conflict claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people.

Rough Transcript

Sonali: Good morning and thanks for joining us. How significant is it that the buildings attacked were U.N. and government buildings? The United Nations being involved – is that sort of a first for this conflict?

Prof. Entelis: Well, it’s not so much the U.N. as the U.N., as any official or government related institution that is associated with…

Sonali: John, can you speak up?

Prof. Entelis: Yes, can you hear me?

Sonali: Yeah, we need you to speak up as loud as you possibly can.

Prof. Entelis: Sure, ok, I’ll speak louder. I’m just saying that the targets are basically intended to discredit the regime and demonstrate that it’s incapable of providing the kind of security that it promises it is providing. So, it’s targets that supposedly are well-protected by the government in terms of police and security, and if those targets can be attacked, as they were, that demonstrates, or they seek to demonstrate at least to the Algerian population, that the government is really unable to provide the kind of security that they’re promising to provide.

Sonali: So, explain who exactly is responsible for this attack?

Prof. Entelis: Well, this is the most extremist extension of a movement that began more or less peacefully in the late 1980s, early 1990s, embodied in this Islamic political movement called The Islamic Salvation Front, better known by its French acronym FIS, though I don’t want to leave the impression that the GFPC or the al-Quaeda and the Islamic …. as it’s known as Aqim , is a direct extension of FIS, but there’s no doubt that when the military staged a coup against the potential electoral victory of FIS in 1991 – the coup was in 1992, the elections began in 1991 – that it set off a process of radicalization that we now see in its most deadly form. In other words, when it was clear that an opposition, however Islamist or otherwise, was about to win and defeat the one-party state that had been in power since independence in 1962, the military was not going to allow that to happen. And with that, it left the opposition with very few alternatives. Either accept the status quo in which the military continues to dominate – clearly working through electoral politics non-violently, democratically, only leads to a military coup – and therefore the only alternative is to go into the countryside and begin an insurgency. And what began as, more or less, an anti-government insurgency ultimately radicalized into what we’re witnessing today.

Sonali: So, you’re saying that the targeting of the U.N. was not so much because it was the U.N., but this really should be seen as an attack on the government of Algeria?

Prof. Entelis: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, both of these buildings, both in the Benak-Noun region and the Eidr-eidr, is very sort of fancy neighborhood, upscale neighborhood up in the hills of Algiers. Algiers is a very steep city but there’s a port down below, there’s the Casbah, which is by the port, there’s the sort of working-class neighborhood of Badr-wet, just to give you some example, and up in the hills are fancy neighborhoods like Benak-Noun, where the university campus is, and Eidr, where, for example, the embassies, the foreign embassies are there, where, for example the American Ambassador lives and where the U.N. is located. So, and this is an area that is highly protected. The region is whole, not necessarily in front of the U.N. building, per se, because of the kind of people that live there and the kind of offices that are there. So, if you can attack that, if you can, you know, impose the kind of violence or create the kind of chaos that we’ve seen, that would demonstrate again that the government is unable to secure the situation that it believes, and keeps arguing it has secured, and as you know and as you’ve reported, there have been a number of attacks in the last six months that repeat this same kind of targeting against government officials and government buildings.

Sonali: Now, the international media, in taking a look at these bombings, have characterized it as a break from the domestic tactics for Aqim and they’re talking about a North African terror network at the doorstep of Europe. How accurate, you think, are these speculations?

Prof. Entelis: Well, we’re still in a kind of ambiguous situation, in part because the nature of these regimes, whether it’s Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia or Libya – highly authoritarian if not dictatorial, very opaque, almost impossible to determine how decisions are being made and clearly undemocratic and, therefore, it’s been in their interests to promote the issue of terrorism, cooperation with the United States and its security and military efforts, as a way by which to unify support, which I believe succeeded, but also as a way by which to impose a more security-oriented policy. So, on one hand, the suspicion – is the so-called terrorist threat what it is? What they’re saying it is? You know, we don’t have information, this is not a transparent political system. So, that’s on one hand. On the other hand, there have now been a series of highly coordinated attacks in Morocco, in Tunisia, in Algeria. There has been a formal announcement from Zawahiri of the creation of this, you know, al-Queda and the Islamic …which supercedes the GFCC, which has been an offshoot of the GIA which has been a totally nationalistic Algerian movement. And we know, for example, in the report that just came out a month ago, about the 700 foreign fighters in Iraq reported since 2006, that almost 40% of them came from North Africa, about 140 from Libya, and about 40 from Algeria and so on. Libya and Tunisia, Morocco. So, there is evidence now to show that there is movement back and forth of North African militants and jihadists, going to Iraq, getting experience if they’re not killed or captured, coming back, coordinating with former GSPC units in the Sahara, linking up with some of the other groups that we know about in Tunisia and Morocco and Libya and then, as we saw last month and the month before, staging coordinated attacks and continuing along these lines as we’ve seen the last two days in Algeria. But to say, definitively, that, in fact, this is simply al-Quaeda extending its arm into North Africa as if there’s no connection to the local situation or the political situation in North Africa. I think that’s misleading. I think that there’s an interaction of the two. Each side is exploiting the other to advance its own interests.

Sonali: So, would you say that the war in Iraq has boosted the domestic movements and, sort of, vice-versa?

Prof. Entelis: Yes, yes – the domestic movements in the most militant and radical way. It could be argued, for example, that by the late 1990s and early 2000, that the Algerian government had, more or less, suppressed this insurgency with an occasional attack here and there. It’s a huge country and the terrain lends itself, in certain parts of the country, especially in the mountainous area of the Kabil and so forth, for insurgency and that kind of activity. But, more or less, it comes down to something like, you know, maybe 50 to 100 deaths a month, which, by Algerian standards, wasn’t so bad. So, people felt this was sort of the beginning of the end of the insurgency. And so, when GSPC emerged in 1998, its intent, I think, was to revive its identity and its purpose in a condition under which the army was becoming increasingly successful in containing them. So, I think it was looking for some outside support. Al-Quaeda itself was looking for a presence in North Africa. I think each saw the other side as providing a kind of opportunity at a moment when their political standing among potential recruits was waning or declining seriously and the result is what you see today.

Sonali: I want to remind our listeners I’m speaking with John Entelis. He is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University. He’s written many books on Algeria and his latest, he is the co-author of a book called The Algerian Civil War. What about the U.S. and its role? You mentioned that the west is supportive of a lot of these dictatorial regimes in North Africa and this benefits these regimes to be part of this war against terror. What has the U.S. said about these bombings and are they basically blindly supporting these dictatorial regimes?

Prof. Entelis: Yes, I mean, there’s no escaping the fact that, let’s say, France, which of course, historically, the key actor and the U.S. as the …

Sonali: …the ex-Colonial power…

Prof. Entelis: …the ex-Colonial power that colonized the country for over 130 years but has still has very close ties, number one trading partner, close intelligence ties, military ties, economic, tourist and so on and so forth. Paris and Washington, back in 1992, when the opportunity presented itself, when the military staged its coup, I mean, this was a historic moment of enormous importance not only for Algeria and its relationship with the West, but to the whole of the Arab-Islamic world. It would’ve shown, way before the election of Hamas in Palestine, way before the power and development and influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon, way before those movements. Here was the opportunity to demonstrate to the Arab-Islamic world that a party that is willing to work peacefully, democratically through the electoral process, and is willing to accept the results, should be allowed to assume power as would any political movement of opposition in an otherwise authoritarian regime is given that opportunity, as happened in Eastern Europe during the Communist period and so on and so forth, but which was not given that opportunity in the case of Algeria. And that resonated throughout the Arab-Islamic world. But, it became very clear that when that coup took place, and we’ll never know, maybe at some point we will know, what the actual American involvement in this was. Did we just simply look the other way, did we actually assist, did we provide intelligence, did we encourage them? Any of these things? What we didn’t do, of course, is we didn’t publicly and loudly declare opposition, impose sanctions, among other things, for example, and indicate that we would no longer have dealings, diplomatic or otherwise, until this coup was reversed. I mean, it’s laughable to even, you know, state that because we did just the opposite. So, the message went out very clearly – if you do play by the rules of the game and you happen to be an Islamic party, however defined, and mind you this was not a terrorist group at the time and even to this day those people are not the same people who are involved in the killings that we’re witnessing today – that, you know, you better think of alternative ways to try to oppose these authoritarian governments. And, among the ways, of course, has been through armed conflict. So, if you accept this kind of historical …provided, then I think the United States is implicated in the kind of violence we’re witnessing today by the way that they acted then and the way they now see the problem as almost exclusively a security problem. Whereas, in all these countries, there is a war going on, a real war between state and society, where society is marginalized, discontented, they’re totally disenchanted with their political system, it’s reflected over and over again. Even with the pseudo-elections that take place – turnouts of 35% in the case of Algeria and the parliamentary elections, 37% in the case of the Mubarek and parliamentary elections. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is one of social, economic and political alienation. From our point of view, the real issue is one of security and militarization.

Sonali: Finally, John, speaking of the situation within the Algerian government, what future does the Algerian government face? The president is 70 years old, has no clear successor and seems to be a fairly weak government right now. What do you think will happen?

Prof. Entelis: Well, Buta Fleeka, who is the current president, was diagnosed with stomach, many of us think it was stomach cancer, but they hushed it all up and they said it was an ulcer, and he went to France for a couple of weeks, got treatment, came back. He supposedly is back to good health, but more importantly, is given what I’ve just described as the discontinuity and the huge gap between state and society and the discontent that exists in Algeria today, for example, despite the fact that Algeria is making a killing with the price of oil approaching $100 a barrel, and where the heck is that money going – most people are saying that they’re not getting it in housing or education or social services and so on, so the discontent is widening. Well, what’s really, I think, testimony to the discrediting of this regime is that among the first policy measures in the new year that this government will undertake is to amend the constitution to allow the president to run for a third term. The constitution now limits two five-year consecutive terms. So, this is again, you know, kind of a Putinization, or more accurately a ben-Aliism in Tunisia. You know, you amend the constitution, you allow the president to stay in as long as he wants, there is no designated vice-president, there is no designated successor. Technically, it would be the prime minister, Del-hadm, who nobody considers capable of being the president for a whole bunch of reasons, the personality, the policy of age and so forth. So, at this critical juncture in Algeria’s political history, when you know, the challenges are as severe as they are, you have a leader who many believe is terminally ill, who is trying to amend the constitution and can stay in power as long as he can and who is, from most people’s point of view, using the successive wealth that oil is producing not for the benefit of society but for the benefit of the state.

Sonali: Well, John Entelis, I want to thank you very much for joining us today and sharing your insight with us.

Prof. Entelis: Thank you very much.

Special Thanks to Julie Svendsen for transcribing this interview.