Algeria

Academe, Jul/Aug 1999 by Djerbal, Daho

Caught between the military regime and its Islamic opponents, professors lose both their lives and their livelihoods. No wonder they're leaving the universities.

TO UNDERSTAND THE CURRENT STATUS OF academic freedom in Algeria's universities, it is necessary to refer to events that have been afflicting the entire country for more than ten years. Since the late 1980s, every sector of Algerian society has been affected by a deep and ongoing crisis. This crisis has touched every aspect of life and influenced all relationships and forms of expression. It is a political and institutional crisis, of course, but an ideological and symbolic one as well.

During this time, Algeria's political system has been undergoing a transformation from a state-owned economy and one-party regime into a liberal economy and a multiparty regime. This transition has been accompanied by violence, both physical and symbolic. What is at stake in this violence is the complete renegotiation of the distribution of power.

Insofar as the university produces and disseminates many forms of knowledge and expression, it is, in one way or another, implicated in the struggle for power. In the clash of forces competing for the monopoly of legitimate violence, however, the university seems to represent a soft underbelly, a marginal reserve rather than an advance outpost in the forefront of the battle. Nonetheless, it harbors within its ranks many victims who represent either the ruling establishment or the opposition to it.

Most of the encroachments on the physical and moral integrity of Algerian academics are not directed at them because they are faculty members. Instead, they are attacked because they represent particular ideologies or political tendencies, or because they are seen as agents of the present regime. Consequently, most of the harm faculty members have suffered can't be seen as specific violations of academic freedom. Their rights have been transgressed no more often than those of any other group.

Included among the attacks on academics and others has been the violation of the most basic of freedoms, the right to live. Several types of academics have been victims of assassination or assassination attempts since 1992. One group consists of wellknown members of the Communist Party, socialist or communist sympathizers, and left-wing secularists. Faculty members in this group have come from all parts of the country and have taught in the humanities and social sciences as well as in the natural sciences. Two professors at the University of Oran, Abderahmane Fardheb, an economist, and Benaouda Bakhti, a literary scholar, were killed. At the National Institute of Agronomy of Algiers, both Youcef Sebti and Khadidja Aissa were assassinated right on the campus. Abderahmane Belazhar, an administrator and trade unionist at the University of Constantine, was also killed, while Zoheir Bessa, a professor at the Institute of Planning and Statistics at the University of Algiers, was gravely wounded.

Another victimized group consists of academics and intellectuals who have defended cultural freedom, such as Rabah Stambouli of the Institute for Interpretation at the University of Algiers, who was assassinated. Yet another category is made up of academics and scholars who have run research centers or held government positions, among them the murdered sociologist Djilali Liabes, a former director of the Center for Applied Studies in Development Economics, member of the National Institute of Global Strategic Studies, and minister of higher education. M'hand Boukhobza, a statistician and former director of the Algerian Association for Research in Demography and of the National Institute of Global Strategic Studies, was stabbed to death in his home in front of his wife and daughter.

And finally there are the academics known for their fundamentalist Islamist views and beliefs. Mohamed Chalabi, professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Algiers, and a member of Hamas, the progovernment Islamist movement, was wounded. Law professor Mohamed Said of the University of Algiers was killed after he joined the guerilla forces of the Armed Islamic Group. Said belonged to the consultative council of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and was considered one of the founders of the Islamic Front for the Armed Djihad, the group that took credit for assassinating most of the intellectuals.

In addition to those gross violations of basic human rights, there are other violations more directly linked to wider university freedoms. For example, the police have come to campus to arrest some fundamentalist university teachers and others with Islamist-oriented views. This group includes Miloud Sefari, director of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Constantine, and the director of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Blida. Other professors more or less closely related to the FIS have been arrested and jailed on grounds unrelated to their specific teaching assignments. The most famous case was the arrest and imprisonment of Abassi Madani, the head of the FIS, who taught at the School of Education at the University of Algiers.