Algeria’s Revolution Risks Repeating Arab Spring’s Mistake

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The Algerian revolution has now entered its most dangerous phase.

Two weeks after street protests persuaded President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to give up his bid for a fifth term in office, the demonstrations have continued to swell, as have their ambitions: the protesters now call for a root-and-branch transformation of their system of government.

Sounds familiar? It should.

In the first few weeks of the uprising, many analysts — present company included — resisted comparisons with the Arab Spring protests of 2011. The most telling difference, as I pointed out in late February, was in the slogans ringing through the streets of Algiers and other cities. Where the Arab Spring protestors had, from the first, chanted, “The people want to bring down the regime,” the Algerians had a narrower demand: “No fifth mandate for you, Bouteflika.”

They seemed opposed mainly to the president, who is 82 and has been debilitated by a stroke since 2013, rather than the entire government. The protests conceivably might have been pacified by Bouteflika’s removal and generous government handouts of the kind that prevented Algeria from following the example of Tunisia and Egypt in 2011.

But in the demonstrations since Bouteflika’s announcement, more and more people have taken up Tahrir Square’s rallying cry of “Al-shaab yurid isqat al-nizam!”

If it sounds like the Arab Spring, smells like the Arab Spring…then it also suffers from the Arab Spring’s fatal flaw: the absence of leadership. The mostly young protesters are a movement with no formal organization, no recognizable representatives. There is nobody to take their demands to the regime, and negotiate a transition to a more democratic system — or to manage the protesters’ expectations of the nature of such a transition.

Without leaders, the protesters’ only means of forcing change is to keep protesting, and to keep demanding more. “The evolution of demands is characteristic of a leaderless revolution,” says Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting. “If there’s nobody to tell you what’s possible, you can believe that anything is possible.”

And that’s where things get dangerous. The experience of 2011-2012 suggests two paths from there, neither of them ending in satisfaction for the protesters.

One path leads to violence. The Algerian military has thus far kept its truncheons sheathed. The army chief, General Ahmed Gaid Salah, has even expressed admiration for those seeking change. But prolonged protests, in the absence of negotiations, could wear down his patience. It is hard right now to imagine Algeria spiraling into a civil war along the lines of Libya, Yemen and Syria, or the one it experienced in the 1990s, when tens of thousands were killed. But once shots are fired, outcomes become unpredictable.

Another path leads to the hijacking of the revolution, by groups that have what the protesters lack — leadership and organization. That’s what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, where Islamist organizations capitalized on the political space opened by the Arab Spring, much to the disappointment of the protesters. In Egypt, many pro-democracy activists eventually cast their lot with the military counterrevolution of 2013. In Tunisia, many simply grew disillusioned with politics.

Can the Algerian revolutionaries carve out their own path? Right now, they seem focused on staging ever larger demonstrations.

The protests have persisted in part because Bouteflika is still in office. Although he has appointed a transitional authority controlled by longtime loyalists, and has promised a new constitution before new elections before the end of the year, many suspect a ruse to extend his fourth term. Other protesters recognize that Bouteflika is merely the face of a larger ruling clique — known as “le pouvoir” (The Power) — a gerontocracy that includes top military officers, leaders of the ruling National Liberation Front party, and some crony capitalists. Even if the president does vacate his office eventually, it will count for little if The Power remains entrenched.

And there are plenty of signs that the old guard intends to cling on. “There are people in the regime who don’t want change to happen,” says Abdelwahab El-Affendi, professor of politics at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Significantly, the transitional administration is shoring up international support, but not the kind that would signal more democracy: Deputy Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra made a quick trip to Moscow earlier this week, to solicit encouragement from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who warned other foreign powers not to interfere. The U.S. has expressed support for the protests; French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a “transition of a reasonable length.”

Still, if the protests continue — and grow — without violence, the regime may be inclined to make more concessions. “I think we’ve reached a point where there has to be meaningful change — the government’s transition plan is too little, too late,” says Andrew Lebovich, who researches North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

 “Somebody needs to be having a conversation with the government about what is acceptable and what is not,” says Brian Klaas, an expert in democracy at University College of London. Bringing down the regime makes for catchy slogans, but it’s not a practical negotiating position. The experience of the Arab Spring movements demonstrates that “they need to be working on compromises,” Klaas says. “Removing the infrastructure of the regime overnight is not a great idea, so they should be talking about who has to go and who gets to stay.”

But who is “they”? For now the influential labor unions have refused the government’s invitation to parley. A group calling itself National Coordination for Change has issued a statement asking the army not to intervene, as well as demands for a transitional government. Algeria’s Islamists, battered by the civil war of the 1990s, have not shown the ability of their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts to seize the day.

For the Algerian protesters to press home their advantage, they need to be at the negotiating table as well as in the street. If they can’t, the lessons of the Arab Spring don’t allow for much optimism about what happens next.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and the wider Islamic world.

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