Language and Conflict Kabylia and the Algerian State Naima Mouhleb UNIVERSITY OF OSLO December 2005 MA Thesis in Arabic Program for African & Asian Studies Institute for Culture Studies & Oriental Languages University of Oslo Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) ii Table of contents December 2005............................................................................................................................................... i Table of contents........................................................................................................................................... iii 0.1 Table of Arabic transcription ...................................................................................................................v 0.2 Abbreviations...........................................................................................................................................vi 0.3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ vii 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research design....................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Research traditions.................................................................................................................................. 4 1.3 The context of language, nation-building and conflict in Algeria ........................................................... 5 Map 1: Greater and Lesser Kabylia.................................................................................................................. 6 2. THE LANGUAGE SITUATION IN ALGERIA............................................................................................ 9 2.1 Arabic and arabicization......................................................................................................................... 9 2.2 Berber or Thamazight............................................................................................................................ 16 Map 2: Geographical dispersion of Berber groups......................................................................................... 17 Map 3: Population density and Berberophone areas ...................................................................................... 19 2.3 Language repertoire in Algeria............................................................................................................. 21 Figure 1: Linguistic composition in Algeria .................................................................................................. 24 2.3.1 The local and the Islamic............................................................................................................................ 25 3. BERBERS AND THE BERBERIST MOVEMENT.................................................................................... 26 3.1 Roots...................................................................................................................................................... 26 3.2 What lies in a name ............................................................................................................................... 28 3.3 Colonial legacy...................................................................................................................................... 30 3.4 First stirrings......................................................................................................................................... 32 3.5 The post-war Berberist movement......................................................................................................... 34 3.5.1 Football as a political arena........................................................................................................................ 36 3.6. What is the ‘Kabyle question’?............................................................................................................. 37 3.6.1 Kabyle developments ................................................................................................................................. 40 3.6.2 The effect of national developments .......................................................................................................... 43 4. ‘PRINTEMPS NOIR’: THE EVENTS IN 2001 ........................................................................................... 44 4.1 A word on the sources ........................................................................................................................... 45 Table 1: Linguistic distribution of national media ......................................................................................... 47 4.2 The initial events.................................................................................................................................... 47 4.3 The channelling and organization of the protests.................................................................................. 49 4.4 The riots spread..................................................................................................................................... 51 4.4.1 Comments in the press 2001....................................................................................................................... 52 5. TAKING IT NATIONAL............................................................................................................................... 55 5.1 The origin and role of les Arūš or the Coordination of the Arš, Daïras and Communes (CADC)....... 56 5.2 The MAK................................................................................................................................................ 58 5.3 High Commission for Amazighté (HCA): An organ for nationalizing the Amazigh concept?............... 62 5.4 Thamazight in school............................................................................................................................. 65 Table 2: Number of Thamazight students by province ( wil āya ) and year...................................................... 67 5.5 The Thamazight experience at the University of Tizi Ouzou ................................................................. 69 5.6 Comments in the press 2001.................................................................................................................. 70 5.7 The national project .............................................................................................................................. 75 6. ETHNICITY AND CONFLICT .................................................................................................................... 77 6.1 Language as a motivating role for ethnic identity................................................................................. 80 6.2 What type of ethnicity for Algeria’s Berbers? ....................................................................................... 82 6.3 Ethnicity and internal political conflict................................................................................................. 83 6.3.1 Language as ethnic factor in internal political conflict............................................................................... 85 6.3.2 State use of ethnicity as legitimization in the Middle East and North Africa ............................................. 85 7. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY AND POLITICAL LEGITIMACY IN ALGERIA ...................................................................................................................................................... 87 iii 7.1 Nationalist agenda versus regionalist demands .................................................................................... 90 7.2 Whither the Berberist movement ........................................................................................................... 93 8. REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................ 95 8.1 Arabic sources and references............................................................................................................... 95 8.2 References ............................................................................................................................................. 96 8.3 Interviews ............................................................................................................................................ 100 iv 0.1 Table of Arabic transcription ا ā ب b ت t ث ج ǧ ح خ د d ذ ر r ز z س s ش š ص ض ط ظ ع غ ġ ف f ق q ك k ل l م m ن n h و w, ū ي y , ī ء a) Long vowels will be written ū, ā, ī b) Diphthongs will be written aw, ay c) Assimilation of definite article with sun-letters will not be marked (e.g. aš-šams ) rather it will be written as al- šams . d) Personal names and names of newspapers will be written according to accepted English spelling norms, or as with El Moudjahid , as it is spelled by the publisher self. e) I have marked Hamzatu l-qat and not hamzatu l-wasl. f) Words, single expressions and references are rendered in pausal form, while sentences are rendered in contextual form. 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