The Battlefield by Hugh Roberts

Author:Hugh Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

i. The vanishing touchline

The rise of the international gallery in Algerian politics has involved the transformation of the nature and significance of the political terrain located outside the country. From 1962 to 1988, this terrain was of marginal significance. It was not where the real action was, where the game was played. Rather, it was where the game was watched by interested spectators and ex-players alike whose running commentary on the game being played in Algiers might influence it in some way, but fell a long way short of active participation in it. It was, in short, partly the touchline and partly the grandstand. Losers in power struggles would escape (or be allowed to depart) into exile where they would sit out the latest round of the political game and wait for the moment when they might effect a comeback.

In the case of major (‘historic’) figures from the political and military leadership of the wartime FLN who had lost out in the post-independence power struggles (e.g. Mohamed Boudiaf, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Belkacem Krim), the tendency was to organise opposition movements in exile (Boudiaf’s Parti de la Révolution Socialiste, PRS; Aït Ahmed’s Front des Forces Socialistes, FFS; Krim’s Mouvement Démocratique du Renouveau Algérien, MDRA) which adopted revolutionary postures and challenged the legitimacy of the Ben Bella and Boumediène regimes head-on, and canvassed support above all among the Algerian migrant workers in France, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe and even North America. In these cases, we might say that the players on the touchline were primarily oriented towards the spectators in the grandstand whom they hoped to recruit to their cause.10

In the case of later casualties of the vicissitudes of Algerian politics, however, especially figures who had served the Boumediène regime and even the Chadli regime initially, while some sought to emulate their more illustrious predecessors in organising an active opposition,11 the prevailing tendency was for them to adopt a far more discreet posture, abstaining from explicit opposition, while waiting for the wheel to turn in the hope of an eventual recall to political service in some capacity or other. Often this self-denial expressed the awareness of those concerned that, having been implicated in the regime, they lacked the standing with the wider émigré public that an active opposition strategy would require. In many cases their discretion was also deliberately encouraged by the regime by the simple ploy of giving them a minor but agreeable post abroad as a consolation prize for their loss of office at home and a tacit promise of better things to come at a future date. In these cases, then, the players on the touchline were strongly inclined to ignore the émigré spectators in the grandstand while keeping their lines of communication with Algiers open and in as good repair as possible.

Such personalities were, and knew themselves to be, ‘sur la touche’. While they might have reasons to resent the regime in Algiers, they knew that their prospects of a comeback depended upon their potential value to

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