Algeria Focus

[Bengal_Tiger]

- LARGEST COUNTRY IN AFRICA.

- LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE ARAB WORLD.

- 2nd LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD.

- RESOURCE RICH

- POWERFUL MILITARY


*** ALGERIA FOCUS ***





Algiers.





Oran.





Constantine.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Houari Boumediene (rahmatullahi 'alaih), a man who played a major part in Bangladesh's post-independence recognition by the Muslim world. The man whom I regard should be one of the people the Bangladeshi government should think of renaming the "Mustafa Kemal" street (after the Turkish dictator and war criminal) after.



Mujib (first leader of independent of Bangladesh) in the centre with the legendary Boumedienne on the left.



Zinedane Zidane.



Muslim "saint" (wali of Allah), Sheikh Ahmad Alawi.



Anti-imperialist leader against the French, Abdul Qadir Al-Jaza'iri.

THE "REAL" ALGERIANS, THE IMAZIGHEN (BERBERS)

- Holding on to their ancient tongue despite the fierce and unrelenting wave of Arab cultural imperialism and assmiliation are the original Amazigh people of north Africa whom in Algeria are represented in the form of the:

- Kabyle
- Chaoui
- Tamazight

and other Amazighi ethnic groups. Often mistakenly called "Berber", their actual name is Amazighi or plural "Imazighen" (free men).



The Amazighi flag.



An Amazighi woman from the Kabyle, the Kabyle are an Amazighi nation of the Algerian state.

Zidane is a Kabyle.



A woman in traditional Kabyle dress.



Another Kabyle female.



Kabyle with a protest calling for the official status of Tamazight (standard Amazighi language).



A boy in a Kabyle flag.



Kabyle flag.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Tuaregs of Algeria.





Algerian president, Bouteflika (right) with Touraeg men.



North of Algeria.



Metro in the capital, Algiers.

[Bengal_Tiger]

"I am Kabyle", the Imazighen of Algeria are resisting the Arab cultural onslaught and the genocide of their language and culture.



Girl with Amazighi symbol on T-shirt.



Kabyle.



Stylized image of a man with a Tuareg headcovering in the Amazighi colours.



Abdel Karim Benzema, Kabyle from France.



Kenza Farah, Kabyle from France.



Myriam Abdel Hamid ("Myriam Abel"), Kabyle from France.



Zidane sent off during the 1998 world cup after the Saudi captain racially abused him for being Kabyle, Amazighi ("Berber").

Saudi went out of the competition and were also humiliated 9-0 in the following world cup, Zidane and France went on to become world champions.

[Khostai]

The French did their best in Algeria, all of the buildings and infra are dating from French colonial era.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Algeria proposes constitutional reforms

Measures would limit presidents to two terms and make Berber language official



Man waves Amazigh flag

The Berber, or Amazigh, flag. Algeria’s population of 39.5m contains an estimated 13m people of indigenous Berber heritage.

Tuesday 12 January 2016 10.15 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 12 January

Algeria’s government has published two significant draft constitutional reforms that seem intended to send out a message to critics of the country’s commitment to democracy.

Last Monday the Algerian presidency published plans to restrict serving presidents to two terms of office; it also wants to make Amazigh, spoken by the country’s indigenous Berber minority, an official language.

The government said the plans were intended to round off a series of reforms announced in 2011, following the Arab spring. The restrictions on the presidency will cancel out a change made in 2008 that enabled Algeria’s long-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to stand for a third term. Bouteflika won a fourth term of office in 2014, amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud.

Amazigh was granted “national language” status in 2002 and its recognition rewards the efforts of a long campaign hinging on the definition of Algeria’s national identity. In 1949 the issue triggered a serious crisis in the Algerian independence movement. The controversy was papered over when the war of independence started shortly afterwards, but resurfaced when independence was proclaimed in 1962. Hocine Aït Ahmed, one of the original leaders of the independence movement, advocated a democratic state guaranteeing political pluralism. But his ideas were soon thwarted by the authoritarian Pan-Arab credo that prevailed under presidents Ahmed Ben Bella (1963-65) and Houari Boumédiène (1965-1976).


The campaign in favour of the Amazigh language dovetailed naturally with the broader struggle for civil liberties, gaining fresh impetus in the 1980s with the Berber cultural movement. In the early 1990s the authorities grudgingly started to acknowledge its importance. “It took almost half a century, starting from the crisis in 1949, for the Algerian constitution [of 1996] to begin to draw up a more balanced, realistic map of the nation’s identity, though there is still a great deal of ambiguity,” the nationalist militant, then leader of the Algerian Communist party, Sadek Hadjeres, wrote in 1998.

The plans for constitutional reform include setting up an Algerian Academy of Berber Language, tasked with consolidating its new status as an official tongue. Supporters say it would put an end to a pointless source of division, giving rise to various political ills the country could well do without.



Some opposition parties have voiced doubts about the reform, but the overall feeling is any form of progress is worth having.

Although there is a consensus on Amazigh, the move to restrict presidential powers was greeted with cynicism. The new article in the constitution would only allow the incumbent to be re-elected once and rules out any further changes to the rules.

Explaining the reform, Ahmed Ouyahia, the former Algerian prime minister and now Bouteflika’s principal private secretary, claimed that the previous extension, in 2008, had come in response to “demands from civil society”. Bouteflika’s candidacy in 2009, and again in 2014, had, he asserted, represented a “sacrifice” on the president’s part.

The reform will also enlarge parliament’s powers and set up an independent body to supervise elections, headed by a non-aligned public figure. But the opposition is unconvinced.

Ali Benflis, a former prime minister who twice stood against Bouteflika in elections, condemned the constitutional changes as a ploy “simply to buy time and stay in power”.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/algeria-bouteflika-amazigh-berber-language-official

A comment by an Algerian from the Guardian article above:


Youcef Baouchi

Hi Ben,

You should probably not talk about things that you do not understand. You should probably understand that 1. I am a berber and 2. the majority of algerians are arabised berbers. We have those who speak arabic and others who speak berber. There was a language shift to colloquial arabic which is the algerian language that is made up of (berber, arabic, french, spanish) in the cities because our various berber tribes speak different dialects that are not mutually intelligible, so arabic was used as a lingua franca for a millenia. Algeria is not made of 30% berbers and 70% arabs. It's made up of mostly berbers, some speak arabic while others speak berber. Genetic research proves that there was not a population replacement, but arabization was a mostly cultural process.

Comment:

I totally support the Amazighi language in Algeria, but not just for Kabyle but for all the Amazighi languages such as Chaoui, Mzab, Tamashek etc.

The real question here is if Amazighi becomes an official language, which version of Amazighi? Kabyle, Chaoui or a new artificially created hybrid/amalgam of all of them?

Anyway Algerians are Imazighen ("Berbers") who have adopted the Arabic language and this is common place through out the world e.g. the mainly native Amerindian populations of Latin America speak Spanish.

I believe the rendering of Amazighi as an official language of Algeria is a great step for Algeria, North Africa in general and the world at large. Algeria is in essence celebrating the inherent richness and diversity of its own indigenous culture and linguistic heritage, and we are all richer ourselves by the maintenance of this diversity.




A news presenter in Kabyle dress, the Kabyle are one of the Amazighi nations in Algeria and are speculated to have Germanic and Roman admixture.



The world's most famous Kabyle, Zidane.



Algeria's education minister Ms Nouria Benghabrit second from the left, with children wearing Kabyle clothing. Ms Benghabrit is an Arab but with distant Spanish/Andalusian ancestry.



Nouria Benghabrit, Algeria's minister of education, an Arab.



It was the Amazighi new year recently it's year 2966 in the Amazighi calendar, and Imazighen produced several Roman emperors.



Kabyle.



Imazighen supporting the Mzab (another Amazighi nation in southern Algeria) waving the Amazighi flag.













Amazighi with Amazighi national symbol.



Amazighi Imam.



Amazighi.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Sports complex to be built in Algiers.







Other planned projects in Algiers.






A view from Bab el Oued.





New ministry of religion building under construction.



Grand mosque in Algiers under construction.





It will be the third largest mosque in the world and it is being built by China.



China, a strong ally of Muslim countries including Algeria. A picture of a Sino-Algerian agreement signing.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

So after over a decade of creeping on Pashtuns, Talukhdar is creeping on Algerians .....I feel bad for our brothers and sisters in Algeria.

[Hunter]

Why do you make threads like this? Like how is it even relevant to a "Pashtun forum"? This isn't your own personal blog...

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

Why do you make threads like this? Like how is it even relevant to a "Pashtun forum"? This isn't your own personal blog...

Da Bangalay Tor Khar (The Bengali Black Donkey- no racial epithet intended) is an ethnic fetishist, he has made a creepy and bizarre career of trying to accumulate imformation about people's cultural and social landscape Like other South Asians, due to their self hatred and overt or covert desire to distance themselves from their South Asian heritage, they long to be immersed with others

It seems part of his goal has been to do so in hopes of courting a potential partner from another ethnicity perceived as higher status than other South Asians (in their mentality). This is what evolutionary biologists would call attempts at "hypergamy". He has made flirtatious attempts on Afghan girls here, Khyberwatch, Afghanforums and on Chaikhana (an older Pashto forum)

Notice he posts about Afghans, Algerians, Chechens but never about Mauritania, Somalia or even Indonesia? This is not a coincidence. And watch NOW he will post about these countries in hopes of "proving this post wrong"


It shouldn't surprise anyone since this is what his culture has to be proud of (Warning: Grapgic Content in the link)

EXCLUSIVE: 'I was fully comfortable with the photo shoot': Meet the topless Muslim model from American Apparel's controversial new ad | Daily Mail Online

[Win Butler]

The French did their best in Algeria, all of the buildings and infra are dating from French colonial era.

Yes, they did their best at massacring Algerians. Not surprised that you consider over a million Algerian deaths a positive.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

Yes, they did their best at massacring Algerians. Not surprised that you consider over a million Algerian deaths a positive.

He's corrupted by European brainwashing, he doesn't care. This is why I don't support Pashtun Nationalists they have become useful idiots for Imperialists.

[Bengal_Tiger]

How Algeria (yes, Algeria!) could hold key to Syrian peace


Hafsa Kara-Mustapha

Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a journalist, political analyst and commentator with a special focus on the Middle East and Africa. She has worked for the FT group and Reuters and her work has been published in the Middle East magazine, Jane's Foreign report, El Watan and a host of international publications. A regular pundit on TV and radio, Hafsa can regularly be seen on RT and Press TV.
Published time: 7 Aug, 2016 12:31



A general view shows the bay of the Mediterranean port of Algiers.


In April of this year, reports emerged in the Algerian media that intense diplomatic efforts were being deployed by Algiers to diffuse ongoing tensions between Syria and Turkey.

While at the time a thawing of relations seemed unthinkable, events in recent weeks indicate that those efforts have yielded results and Ankara's uncompromising position, in relation to Assad remaining in power, has somewhat softened.

No doubt re-enforced by Erdogan's own fragile position since he was almost ousted in a military coup in July, Turkey is realizing that both its stand-off with Russia and Syria have plunged it into an ever-deepening crisis from which its struggling to extract itself.

No sooner had it interfered in the internal affairs of Syria, Turkey's Kurdish separatists returned to the political frontline to push for independence from Ankara. What Turkey had long resisted seemed somewhat hypocritical in light of its desire to see segments of Syrian society break away from Damascus' rule.

Algerian mediation has therefore come at an interesting time and could secure a return to some tangible stability for all parties.


Algiers to the rescue?

Algeria has been consistent in its position since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011, insisting that Syrian sovereignty should be respected. For example, it fiercely opposed moves by the Arab League to expel Syria, one of its founding members, from the pan-Arab organization.

Any outside meddling in Syria, Algiers has argued, could only exacerbate tensions and risk engulfing much of the region into decades-long sectarian strife. Algiers has sided with Damascus, much as it did with Libya in those early days of the 'Arab Spring'.

Algiers is approaching the Syrian conflict from a prime position, in that its social fabric shelters it from usual accusations of tribal, religious or sectarian affinities with the Assad leadership.

As an essentially Sunni Muslim nation, Algeria cannot be accused of standing by Damascus over Alawite or Shia solidarity (An accusation often leveled at Iran despite its Mutual Self-Defence Pact signed with Syria in 2005 on the back of George Bush's infamous 'Axis of evil' speech in which he identified Iran, and to a lesser extent, Syria, as threats and therefore candidates for 'regime change').

Algeria also enjoys good relations with most Arab League nations and has consistently played a moderator role during periods of crisis in the region - whether among Arab nations or with other Middle Eastern countries.

And how many recall that it was Algiers that negotiated the release of US hostages held in Tehran after the revolution in 1979?

In 1988, Algiers found itself once again the main negotiator during the hostage crisis of Kuwait Airways Flight 422, when Lebanese fighters attempted to divert a plane traveling to Bangkok.

Algerian authorities refused to hand over the hijackers to Western capitals that were demanding their transfer to European courts to face trial.

More recently, Algiers refused to get embroiled in the current war waged by Saudi Arabia against Yemen, preferring instead to conduct behind-the-scenes talks that could resolve the ongoing crisis.

Having refused to engage in sectarian or tribal discourse that has pitted many Arab nations against each other, and preferring instead to support countries in the name of Arab solidarity, Algeria has acquired a reputation as a skilled and fair-minded party that has been credited for the resolution of many previous crisis.

Syria: Algeria's mirror image

Algiers' support for Syria, however, goes deeper than mere respect for national sovereignty. In the 1990's Algeria faced a similar crisis that Syria faces today when it was plunged into a decade-long civil war against 'Islamist' factions.

As the country embraced political change and allowed a plethora of new political parties to emerge in 1989, the 'Islamist' party FIS (Front Islamic du Salut) lead by the charismatic Abassi Madani appeared to be the most credible movement to challenge the ruling FLN's dominance in Algerian politics.

In a first round of elections, FIS won a majority of local councils forecasting an imminent victory at the next electoral round.


During that time, the FIS deputy and far more radical figure Ali Belhadj spoke of the need to cancel elections once in power and dissolve all state institutions that would allow his party to rule.
Such a convoluted and dishonest approach to politics was not lost on many in government.

Belhadj's fiery speeches were slowly but surely emerging as calls against those Algerians who did not support his 'religious' brand of politics and he was soon rallying support for attacks against state symbols in a bid to signal the potency of his movement.

The Algerian army eventually stepped in and cancelled the second round of elections that appeared to give FIS an almost guaranteed victory.

A move widely condemned by the 'international community,' it was immediately seen as a de facto declaration of war against FIS by its leadership.

Belhadj and Madani consequently called on their supporters to take up arms against the government and all those who opposed them dismissing them as 'disbelievers' plunging the country in a vicious internecine war that bears strong resemblance to the conflict ravaging Syria today.

For the army, the state institutions on which the Algerian nation had been built were being threatened by a group that was openly supported by foreign entities looking to establish a '*******ised' version of an Islamic state on a country that was already Muslim and whose founding platform was steeped in Islamic values.

While there was merit in criticisms of the Algerian army's decision, FIS could and had the means to challenge the government's decision without resorting to violence. Instead the 'Islamic' party called its followers to arm and attack government and civilian targets, causing untold loss of exclusively Muslim life.

Young army reservists were being captured and beheaded by the newly formed AIS (Armée Islamic du Salut ) or GIA (Group Islamic Armé) and bombs placed in various institutions including schools and hospitals.

In August 1992, at the height of the summer holidays, a bomb went off in Algiers airport killing scores of passengers and maiming hundreds of others. The government declared a state of emergency and the country descended into its long painful civil strife that would leave as many as 200,000 dead and over 1m Algerians leaving the country over the following decade.


The country would spend the 90's, known locally as the black decade, isolated from the rest of the world as country after country, including close allies, would impose strict visa regimes for Algerian nationals. Business and travel to the North African state almost come to a halt.
Yet while Algeria's isolation was at the time felt like a painful betrayal, in the end it proved to be its salvation.

Left to its own devises, Algeria was able to resolve the crisis 'in-house' with no interference from outside forces. What has made the Syrian crisis intractable however is precisely the presence of foreign fighters traveling from across the globe to contribute to the removal of the 'Assad regime.' But what made domestic protests for more political transparency into an 'Islamic cause ' in which Muslims from across the globe would be invited to fight a holy 'Jihad'?

Syria's original protests were about fighting cronyism and supporting 'political pluralism', how did these notions turn into a desire to install an Islamic state in what is yet again a predominantly Muslim nation, where Islam is visible and present at every level of Syrian life?

No doubt it's Syria's geographical position, in the heart of the Levant, and bordering Western ally Israel, that has turned these localized protests into the global crisis it is today.

Today's Syria is viewed by many Algerians as the Algeria of the 90's.

Yet while regular attacks in Algeria were brutal leaving a nation scarred, war fatigue was beginning to wear terrorists down. Unlike Syria which appears to be supplied with fresh fighters regularly, GIA ranks in Algeria were eventually deflating.

Algerian support and know-how today is therefore crucial. As armed conflict was drawing to a close, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, offered a full amnesty to those who took up arms against the state.


Put to a popular referendum and approved by a comfortable majority, fighters who were not involved in attacks against civilians or rape ( a common tactic by GIA terrorists) were pardoned and allowed to return to civilian life.

As is the case in Syria, many admitted to being drawn in a conflict they were unable to understand. With the Algerian government eager to restore peace as well as entrench a sentiment of national reconciliation, the war-torn country would eventually move forward.

Syria to Syrians

It is therefore imperative for outside forces involved in the Syrian conflict to withdraw. Turkey is now bogged down in problems of its own and Saudi, which devoted much of its military might to the war in Yemen, is looking for ways out while saving face.

This gives Syria an opportunity to take back control of the war and work towards a gradual return to peace. Recent images of Syrian opposition fighters surrendering to the Syrian army indicate that some form of amnesty based on the Algerian model will be offered to those Syrian opposition fighters. With most opinion polls pointing to Assad's popularity or to a rejection of the ongoing conflict, Syrians are faced with the opportunity to bring this crisis to an end. Sadly for Damascus there remains the thorny issue of what to do with scores of foreign fighters no one else wants and whose only option for survival is to continue to fight a government that was never theirs to challenge in the first place.

For that, Algeria has no past experience to share, however its mediating skills will now be crucial. For Syria's survival let's hope Algeria lives up to its reputation.

How Algeria (yes, Algeria!) could hold key to Syrian peace — RT Op-Edge



Hafsa Kara-Mustapha, the author of this article.


Comment:

- Algeria will not accept the fall of Syria to Wahabis, nor will Egypt. Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria will not allow Syria to fall to Wahabism or militants.

- Algeria has historically played a valuable role as a mediator and there have been reports that there are covert talks between Turkish and Syrian officials in Algiers to bring some sort of rapprochment.

- Algeria could play a big role in finally ending the war in Syria.



Nelson Mandela, receiving training in Algeria. The north African giant helped Mandela who eventually ended apartheid in south Africa. An example of the north African giant's understated role in world affairs.



Algerian soldiers. Algiers has called for an end to conflicts in Syria and Yemen and may play a big role in bringing peace to Syria and ending Turkish terrorism against Syria.