Algeria : Searching for Salvation

By LARA MARLOWE ALGIERS

Ominously recalling Iran in the months before the Ayatullah Khomeini's revolution, thousands of Muslim worshipers manifest their desire for an Islamic republic by walking to the Kouba mosque each Friday morning. The men flaunt their allegiance by wearing long cotton kamis and beards -- reputedly the dress of the Prophet Muhammad. The sheik whom they come to hear speaks of martyrdom and sedition.

"The Algerian people are Muslims," says the voice on the minaret's loudspeaker. "The police who prevent people from coming to prayers are not true Muslims." Security forces surrounding the mosque listen impassively as the message grows more strident. "This government ruined the country. It is the people who suffer from the economic crisis. The government claims it is Muslim, but if it is, why won't it proclaim Shari'a ((Islamic law))? The people of Algeria want an Islamic state. They should be allowed to choose this freely."

Such sermons have galvanized the discontented in a country mired in political and economic chaos. Earlier this year, members of the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front issued a manifesto of civil disobedience and occupied sections of Algiers to protest electoral laws that they claimed were devised to deny them victory in parliamentary elections originally scheduled for June. After some 100 people died in street fighting between the army and demonstrators, balloting was postponed and President Chadli Bendjedid declared a state of siege to restore calm.

How could a nation that is geographically and culturally closer to Paris than to Mecca or Tehran come to such a pass? For years the government managed to contain the fundamentalists by building mosques and passing laws to placate them, then arresting leaders who became too powerful. But after political parties were legalized two years ago, the Islamic Salvation Front won an overwhelming majority in the June 1990 municipal elections, the first multiparty vote since Algeria gained independence from France in 1962. Then the gulf war sparked a fresh burst of anti-Western sentiment. If the fundamentalists ever come to power, they vow to outlaw alcohol, segregate the sexes and impose Shari'a, creating a society dramatically different from the socialist state built more than three decades ago by nationalist revolutionaries.

While most Algerians profess to be devout Muslims, they do not wish to see the tyranny of socialism replaced by a tyranny of mullahs. But they do want to be led out of the country's political and economic chaos. Since 1962, the socialist National Liberation Front, which led the fight for independence, has ruled. The party lost credibility as its ideology failed to supply the European standard of living Algerians want.

The economy is crippled, and many citizens blame the government's mismanagement and corruption. Unemployment is estimated at 30% of the work force. Housing and consumer goods are in scant supply. The drop in world oil prices has drained petro-revenues by two-thirds, and most of the remaining earnings go to service the $25 billion foreign debt. "When I see the poverty in the streets, I feel ill," says Zena Haraigue, who won Algeria's highest medal as a freedom fighter. "The government filled its pockets and its stomachs, and now they ask what's wrong with their young people."

"Fundamentalism feeds on the crisis, it nourishes the crisis, and it will disappear with the crisis," says Said Saadi, leader of the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy. But neither the opposition parties nor the government has succeeded in capturing the imagination of the country's disaffected youth as the Islamic Salvation Front has. Nearly 75% of Algeria's population of 25 million are under 30, and more than one-third who leave school have no jobs. The fundamentalists promise to end corruption and bring prosperity to all.

For now, martial law has brought a deceptive quiet to the streets. Some 6,000 people have been arrested, including most of the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front. An overnight curfew has been lifted, and the army is in evidence only at the main radio and television stations and around the fundamentalist mosques. Last summer Algerians shunned the beaches to avoid intimidation by Islamic Salvation Front supporters, who chided men and women alike for showing their bodies. This year the beaches are again packed with bathers.

Though political rallies are forbidden, Friday prayers -- and audiocassettes of fiery sermons -- enable the fundamentalists to spread their message of militancy. "If they exclude us," says Youssef, a chemistry teacher and Islamic Salvation Front militant, "we will go underground, and it will be much harder for them to control us."

Government officials and centrist opposition leaders claim fundamentalism is < just a phase that will disappear with the advent of democracy and a free- market economy. They point out that Algeria's Muslims are Sunni and have no Shi'ite tradition of radicalism and martyrdom. "Algeria is giving birth to democracy after nearly 30 years of one-party rule," says presidential spokesman Amin Zerouk. "It's not easy."

Because Algerians have little experience in democracy, their plunge into multiparty politics is exuberant but naive. There are now 51 registered parties and 118 daily and weekly newspapers. "We are going through a period of libertarian childishness," says Zouaoui Benamedi, publisher of the weekly Algerie Actualite. "Everyone wants to express himself."

But many are looking for what Hocine Ait-Ahmed, a hero of the independence war, calls "an alternative between the police state and an Islamic republic." The government has initiated an ambitious process of democratic reform, but it is ill-equipped to control its momentum. "The rest of the world should understand that we are undertaking a major transformation of our economic and political systems against a background of acute crisis," says Foreign Minister Lakhdar Ibrahimi. "My impression is that there is no likelihood of our becoming an Islamic republic." In the months to come, Algeria's leaders could find it difficult to keep to a middle course.