Algeria's celebration of November first and the uninvited guest
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Ceylal
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Tribute to November first, 1954 in pictures..and articles
A father posing with his daughter....
It happened one October 23, 1954: Birth of the National Liberation Front (FLN)
When the six met October 23, 1954 at the Pointe Pescade in Algiers, at the home of Mourad Bouchecoura it was a week before the 1 st of November. The FLN was born. It was now that the acronym would emerge within and outside the country.For Algeria, led by the FLN was the dawn of freedom that rose.
The mere mention of the acronym FLN automatically returns to the outbreak of the Algerian revolution. That said, if the proclamation is published on 1 November 1954, preparations, meanwhile, lasted several months. Furthermore, although proponents of armed struggle have to transcend the pitfalls galore, they finally managed to complete their project on October 23 1954 At this meeting, a proclamation and a call to the Algerian people are then written. But to reach this stage, these leaders have faced both hostile tendencies of the party, centralists (from the central committee) and Messalists (supporting President of the party), and escape at the same time, to the vigilance of the colonial authorities.
In general, the crisis of PPA-BACT (Algerian People's Party - Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties), the main nationalist party, peaked after the congress of the party in April 1953 On this occasion , relatives of Messali were simply excluded from positions of responsibility. Even the activist current has not been spared either. Apart Ramdane Benabdelmalek which was accepted, and, as an observer, no officer of the OS (Special Organization) was allowed to follow the work of the congress.
However, in the resolutions of the congress, a congress dominated of course by supporters of the Central Committee, the reformist option was widely acclaimed. Suddenly, the already strained relations with Messali, this option will significantly worsen the conflict between the president of the central committee. In December 1953 Messali Hadj vilified, in a message to the base, the Reform turn made by the party leadership. That said, although his conception of armed struggle is only to compel the colonial authorities to engage in dialogue with the nationalist leaders, President Messali believes the step taken by the central committee is plainly contrary to the principles of the party.
Anyway, between the two designs, a third way is not long in coming. March 23, 1954, a Revolutionary Committee for Unity and Action (CRUA) was born. Wanting neutralist, its mission is to reunite the party ranks. However, its members do not come from all current account as the party. Although Boudiaf and Ben Boulaid do not claim to this or that trend, and Dekhli Bouchebouba are related to the central committee. In addition, the membership of the Central Committee Boulaid Ben and aversion Boudiaf for Messalists, one can easily imagine that supporters of Messali could not recognize in this CRUA. Moreover, the newspaper of the latter, namely the patriot, is not it funded and overseen by the central committee?
Anyway, the two activists CRUA are quick to notice the inevitable failure of their committee. Thus, June 27, 1954, unbeknownst to Dekhli and Bouchebouba, activists meet their old comrades of the OS in Algiers to reflect on the transition to direct action as the only way that can bring together the Algerian people around Ideally independence. To do this, the Committee of Five (Ben Boulaid Ben Mhidi, Bitat, and Boudiaf Didouche), resulting from this meeting, contact the Kabyle group to strengthen the nascent movement. Near Messali that the Central Committee, Krim Belkacem finally joined the Committee of Five, in August 1954, and after having had confirmation that the group was not traveling to the central committee.
In short, after several meetings, the group of six Fignole its action plan. Met for the last time before the start of the armed struggle, October 23, 1954, at Mourad Boukhechoura at 24 rue Comte-Guillot, currently avenue Bashir Bedidi, and they divide their roles:
- Moustapha Ben Boulaid, Head of Zone I (Aures)
- Didouche Mourad, Head of Zone II (Constantine)
- Krim Belkacem, head of IIIa (Kabylia)
- Rabah Bitat, head of IV (Algiers)
- Larbi Ben Mhidi, head of V (Oran)
- Mohamed Boudiaf, national coordinator.
The next day, after taking a souvenir photo, the six disperse. Each zone leader joined the coup office.Following Mohamed Boudiaf left Algeria, October 25, 1954, provided the documents adopted two days before, to Cairo. There, he is greeted by members of the foreign delegation MTLD composed of Ait Ahmed Ben Bella and Khider, who supported this project as soon as they heard. Finally, it is this group of nine who proclaims on 1 November 1954, the birth of the FLN.
Synthesis Babzman
Sources:
October 22, 1956, Ben Bella Khider Lacheraf Ait Ahmed and Boudiaf are in Rabat. They come from a long exchange with Sultan Mohammed V and his son, Prince Hassan, about the Tunis conference at which they must travel at the invitation of Habib Bourguiba.
Then it's time to leave. At the airport, a program change occurs. Finally, five historic leaders will not fly in the same plane as the Sultan of Morocco. It will take a special flight that will fly over Algeria and provides its guests another aircraft, a DC3 of Air Atlas, on which is also a patient to be hospitalized in Tunis.
The taking off without delay and after a time, the aircraft descends and lands ... in the Balearics, not included in the program call. Passengers do not worry so much. When the plane takes off again, no one will doubt that the decision was taken by the French authorities, with the approval of Guy Mollet, to intercept the plane by making land not in Tunis, but in Algiers. To take passengers, flight attendants serve them drinks and, it seems, even play cards with them. The atmosphere is relaxed. The pilot, following the instructions of French military, rotates the plane in circles above Algiers to convince leaders of the FLN everything happens normally and they will arrive at the scheduled time in Tunis. But at nightfall, the DC3 landed on the tarmac of the airport in Algiers. The five leaders of the FLN, "off-the-law" and "terrorists" in the words of this story News at the time, were arrested and taken prisoner.
This diversion was the first act of international piracy concerned with civil aircraft passenger.
It happened one October 14, 1960, El Mujahid issues a call to French
In its edition of October 14, 1960, the newspaper of the FLN, El Mujahid publishes call of the Federation of France to the French people.
Entitled "guillotine Algerian patriots Gaul," the article points out how "the French people can close their eyes and pretend to ignore the murders and tortures, the horrors of war or repression carried out in his name," convinced it is not necessary to move or act against these practices related to the war, a fate against which we can only sit back and, most importantly, look away.
There followed an appeal by the Federation of the FLN France begins: "People of France! De Gaulle continues to mount the scaffold Algerian patriots. In France alone, eight members of our of our armed groups have been beheaded for interviews Melun. Just when De Gaulle asks us to "let the knife at the door", he wields the ax continuously his guillotine. "
Citing names guillotined militants, the call continues on the same course to compare the reaction of the French rulers to that of the German occupying forces in France during World War II. De Gaulle, who accepts and takes personal responsibility for the guillotine fidaïyine considering they can not have the status of combatants, was running against fighters of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) by German occupation forces whereas, according to him, these FFI meet the general conditions set by the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention of 18 October 1907 concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land.
The call tells in detail the reactions and actions of the Provisional Government of De Gaulle. And continues: "French people! We judge, we condemn it in your name guillotine men whose action is no different from that of the French resistance executed by the occupying Germans, yesterday Rundstedt glared French prisoners now De Gaulle guillotine Algerian patriots. Yesterday the Nazis were shooting the French prisoners at Fort Montluc today De Gaulle guillotine Algerians at the same Fort Montluc (...) Yesterday, De Gaulle denounced Rundstedt today identifies with De Gaulle Rundstedt. "
And at the end: "French people! Tomorrow the Algerian people will not accept you the excuse of ignorance "
The article continues with the last written by a letter Fidai before his execution, he is Abderrahman Lakhlifi guillotined July 30, 1960 in Fort Montluc (Lyon):
"My dear father, I die for my country, I am not a traitor, I die like so many of my brothers. Dear Parents, I apologize for the trouble I give you. But I lived to my people, I am neither a thief nor a criminal. I worked for the independence of my country. I am sure that my country dying live independent and free. I embrace you all with all my affection. "
The article concludes with a list of other patriots executed in Algeria, on the orders of De Gaulle, who rejected their appeal.
ZM
Sources:
It happened one October 22, 1956 hijacking of the plane of the FLN
October 22, 1956, France committed the first act of piracy in the history of civil aviation in intercepting the plane of the five leaders of the FLN.
The leaders of the National Liberation Front, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamed Khider Mohamed Boudiaf, Hocine Ait Ahmed and journalist and intellectual, Mustafa Lacheraf are received by the king of Morocco, Mohammed V, Rabat, October 20, 1956 Their Discussion focuses primarily on the Tunis conference to which all must attend two days later. The conference is to host the head of the FLN and the Tunisian and Moroccan chairs around the same table, with the aim "to change the political equation in North Africa," so that the Algerian question becomes a matter Maghreb.
On October 22, the historic leaders and Mustafa Lacheraf are preparing to take the same flight as the king of Morocco, but at the last minute a change occurs. The king will take a special plane that will fly over Algeria, while the FLN leaders will board a DC3 of Atlas Air, with journalists on board and a large patient who is hospitalized in Tunis. The unit must fly over the Mediterranean (avoiding the Algerian airspace) to take no chances.
Many still flow over this last minute change, up to bring charges against the Moroccan side. Yet Aït Ahmed said in a television Medi1-Sat (2008), that it was he himself who requested the change fearing to "take risks" to the king by making travel in the same apparatus as leaders FLN who were wanted by the French services. Ben Bella, meanwhile, says that the change is due to the fact that the King was traveling with his wife.
The DC3 off so late and landed in the Balearic Islands, while the call is not in the flight schedule.Some think it was when the venue for negotiations between the crew and the French secret service.Anyway, the decision to intercept the aircraft is taken with the approval of the Secretary of State for War to monitor military operations in Algeria, Max Le Jeune, the Chief of Staff of the Minister of defense, Abel Thomas, and Minister Resident Governor of Algeria, Robert Lacoste.
At 16 hours, the French army made contact with the crew that is entirely French and ordered him to land the aircraft in Algiers. The plane going around in circles until nightfall to reach Algiers at the scheduled time Tunis, with the complicity of the stewardess. And when Ben Bella asks if Tunis, at the sight of the lights of a big city, the hostess replied in the affirmative.
The crew gets trapped in the cockpit when the descent begins. And file by an escape when the aircraft landed on the tarmac of the airport in Algiers.
Passengers plunged into the dark, are surprised by the sound of heavily armed rushing into the cabin soldiers. Ahmed Ben Bella, Hocine Ait Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Mohamed Mostafa Lacheref Khider and circled, then handcuffed and taken to the airport lounge teeming with soldiers and officers of French security.
The five leaders are subsequently embedded into a military vehicle and escorted to Bouzaréah at the headquarters of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) for interrogation.
They will be transferred to France and held in different places: Prison Health Aix Island, Castle Turquant and finally, Aulnoy, where they were kept until the independence of the country in 1962.
Face their tormentors, the FLN leaders say, "This is not the arrest of some leaders or officials that will end in a major movement from the depths of the people." Indeed, the revolution will continue with more firmness.
For its part, France, by diverting the aircraft, commit the first act of piracy of civil aviation to be overturned by a majority of the French left and by international opinion.
ZM
Sources:
"Misuse of the plane of the FLN," the fiftieth anniversary magazine: Department of Business Etrangères- APS Fiftieth Anniversary of the Algerian diplomacy from 1962 to 2012.
http://www.al-djazair.com
www .memoria.dz
http://www.herodote.net
http://lequotidienalgerie.org
A father posing with his daughter....
It happened one October 23, 1954: Birth of the National Liberation Front (FLN)
When the six met October 23, 1954 at the Pointe Pescade in Algiers, at the home of Mourad Bouchecoura it was a week before the 1 st of November. The FLN was born. It was now that the acronym would emerge within and outside the country.For Algeria, led by the FLN was the dawn of freedom that rose.
The mere mention of the acronym FLN automatically returns to the outbreak of the Algerian revolution. That said, if the proclamation is published on 1 November 1954, preparations, meanwhile, lasted several months. Furthermore, although proponents of armed struggle have to transcend the pitfalls galore, they finally managed to complete their project on October 23 1954 At this meeting, a proclamation and a call to the Algerian people are then written. But to reach this stage, these leaders have faced both hostile tendencies of the party, centralists (from the central committee) and Messalists (supporting President of the party), and escape at the same time, to the vigilance of the colonial authorities.
In general, the crisis of PPA-BACT (Algerian People's Party - Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties), the main nationalist party, peaked after the congress of the party in April 1953 On this occasion , relatives of Messali were simply excluded from positions of responsibility. Even the activist current has not been spared either. Apart Ramdane Benabdelmalek which was accepted, and, as an observer, no officer of the OS (Special Organization) was allowed to follow the work of the congress.
However, in the resolutions of the congress, a congress dominated of course by supporters of the Central Committee, the reformist option was widely acclaimed. Suddenly, the already strained relations with Messali, this option will significantly worsen the conflict between the president of the central committee. In December 1953 Messali Hadj vilified, in a message to the base, the Reform turn made by the party leadership. That said, although his conception of armed struggle is only to compel the colonial authorities to engage in dialogue with the nationalist leaders, President Messali believes the step taken by the central committee is plainly contrary to the principles of the party.
Anyway, between the two designs, a third way is not long in coming. March 23, 1954, a Revolutionary Committee for Unity and Action (CRUA) was born. Wanting neutralist, its mission is to reunite the party ranks. However, its members do not come from all current account as the party. Although Boudiaf and Ben Boulaid do not claim to this or that trend, and Dekhli Bouchebouba are related to the central committee. In addition, the membership of the Central Committee Boulaid Ben and aversion Boudiaf for Messalists, one can easily imagine that supporters of Messali could not recognize in this CRUA. Moreover, the newspaper of the latter, namely the patriot, is not it funded and overseen by the central committee?
Anyway, the two activists CRUA are quick to notice the inevitable failure of their committee. Thus, June 27, 1954, unbeknownst to Dekhli and Bouchebouba, activists meet their old comrades of the OS in Algiers to reflect on the transition to direct action as the only way that can bring together the Algerian people around Ideally independence. To do this, the Committee of Five (Ben Boulaid Ben Mhidi, Bitat, and Boudiaf Didouche), resulting from this meeting, contact the Kabyle group to strengthen the nascent movement. Near Messali that the Central Committee, Krim Belkacem finally joined the Committee of Five, in August 1954, and after having had confirmation that the group was not traveling to the central committee.
In short, after several meetings, the group of six Fignole its action plan. Met for the last time before the start of the armed struggle, October 23, 1954, at Mourad Boukhechoura at 24 rue Comte-Guillot, currently avenue Bashir Bedidi, and they divide their roles:
- Moustapha Ben Boulaid, Head of Zone I (Aures)
- Didouche Mourad, Head of Zone II (Constantine)
- Krim Belkacem, head of IIIa (Kabylia)
- Rabah Bitat, head of IV (Algiers)
- Larbi Ben Mhidi, head of V (Oran)
- Mohamed Boudiaf, national coordinator.
The next day, after taking a souvenir photo, the six disperse. Each zone leader joined the coup office.Following Mohamed Boudiaf left Algeria, October 25, 1954, provided the documents adopted two days before, to Cairo. There, he is greeted by members of the foreign delegation MTLD composed of Ait Ahmed Ben Bella and Khider, who supported this project as soon as they heard. Finally, it is this group of nine who proclaims on 1 November 1954, the birth of the FLN.
Synthesis Babzman
Sources:
- Aït Benali Boubekeur, The matinDZ
- Said Benabdallah Justice of the FLN during the war of liberation
October 22, 1956, Ben Bella Khider Lacheraf Ait Ahmed and Boudiaf are in Rabat. They come from a long exchange with Sultan Mohammed V and his son, Prince Hassan, about the Tunis conference at which they must travel at the invitation of Habib Bourguiba.
Then it's time to leave. At the airport, a program change occurs. Finally, five historic leaders will not fly in the same plane as the Sultan of Morocco. It will take a special flight that will fly over Algeria and provides its guests another aircraft, a DC3 of Air Atlas, on which is also a patient to be hospitalized in Tunis.
The taking off without delay and after a time, the aircraft descends and lands ... in the Balearics, not included in the program call. Passengers do not worry so much. When the plane takes off again, no one will doubt that the decision was taken by the French authorities, with the approval of Guy Mollet, to intercept the plane by making land not in Tunis, but in Algiers. To take passengers, flight attendants serve them drinks and, it seems, even play cards with them. The atmosphere is relaxed. The pilot, following the instructions of French military, rotates the plane in circles above Algiers to convince leaders of the FLN everything happens normally and they will arrive at the scheduled time in Tunis. But at nightfall, the DC3 landed on the tarmac of the airport in Algiers. The five leaders of the FLN, "off-the-law" and "terrorists" in the words of this story News at the time, were arrested and taken prisoner.
This diversion was the first act of international piracy concerned with civil aircraft passenger.
It happened one October 14, 1960, El Mujahid issues a call to French
In its edition of October 14, 1960, the newspaper of the FLN, El Mujahid publishes call of the Federation of France to the French people.
Entitled "guillotine Algerian patriots Gaul," the article points out how "the French people can close their eyes and pretend to ignore the murders and tortures, the horrors of war or repression carried out in his name," convinced it is not necessary to move or act against these practices related to the war, a fate against which we can only sit back and, most importantly, look away.
There followed an appeal by the Federation of the FLN France begins: "People of France! De Gaulle continues to mount the scaffold Algerian patriots. In France alone, eight members of our of our armed groups have been beheaded for interviews Melun. Just when De Gaulle asks us to "let the knife at the door", he wields the ax continuously his guillotine. "
Citing names guillotined militants, the call continues on the same course to compare the reaction of the French rulers to that of the German occupying forces in France during World War II. De Gaulle, who accepts and takes personal responsibility for the guillotine fidaïyine considering they can not have the status of combatants, was running against fighters of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) by German occupation forces whereas, according to him, these FFI meet the general conditions set by the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention of 18 October 1907 concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land.
The call tells in detail the reactions and actions of the Provisional Government of De Gaulle. And continues: "French people! We judge, we condemn it in your name guillotine men whose action is no different from that of the French resistance executed by the occupying Germans, yesterday Rundstedt glared French prisoners now De Gaulle guillotine Algerian patriots. Yesterday the Nazis were shooting the French prisoners at Fort Montluc today De Gaulle guillotine Algerians at the same Fort Montluc (...) Yesterday, De Gaulle denounced Rundstedt today identifies with De Gaulle Rundstedt. "
And at the end: "French people! Tomorrow the Algerian people will not accept you the excuse of ignorance "
The article continues with the last written by a letter Fidai before his execution, he is Abderrahman Lakhlifi guillotined July 30, 1960 in Fort Montluc (Lyon):
"My dear father, I die for my country, I am not a traitor, I die like so many of my brothers. Dear Parents, I apologize for the trouble I give you. But I lived to my people, I am neither a thief nor a criminal. I worked for the independence of my country. I am sure that my country dying live independent and free. I embrace you all with all my affection. "
The article concludes with a list of other patriots executed in Algeria, on the orders of De Gaulle, who rejected their appeal.
ZM
Sources:
- El Mujahid October 14, 1960, # 71
It happened one October 22, 1956 hijacking of the plane of the FLN
October 22, 1956, France committed the first act of piracy in the history of civil aviation in intercepting the plane of the five leaders of the FLN.The leaders of the National Liberation Front, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamed Khider Mohamed Boudiaf, Hocine Ait Ahmed and journalist and intellectual, Mustafa Lacheraf are received by the king of Morocco, Mohammed V, Rabat, October 20, 1956 Their Discussion focuses primarily on the Tunis conference to which all must attend two days later. The conference is to host the head of the FLN and the Tunisian and Moroccan chairs around the same table, with the aim "to change the political equation in North Africa," so that the Algerian question becomes a matter Maghreb.
On October 22, the historic leaders and Mustafa Lacheraf are preparing to take the same flight as the king of Morocco, but at the last minute a change occurs. The king will take a special plane that will fly over Algeria, while the FLN leaders will board a DC3 of Atlas Air, with journalists on board and a large patient who is hospitalized in Tunis. The unit must fly over the Mediterranean (avoiding the Algerian airspace) to take no chances.
Many still flow over this last minute change, up to bring charges against the Moroccan side. Yet Aït Ahmed said in a television Medi1-Sat (2008), that it was he himself who requested the change fearing to "take risks" to the king by making travel in the same apparatus as leaders FLN who were wanted by the French services. Ben Bella, meanwhile, says that the change is due to the fact that the King was traveling with his wife.
The DC3 off so late and landed in the Balearic Islands, while the call is not in the flight schedule.Some think it was when the venue for negotiations between the crew and the French secret service.Anyway, the decision to intercept the aircraft is taken with the approval of the Secretary of State for War to monitor military operations in Algeria, Max Le Jeune, the Chief of Staff of the Minister of defense, Abel Thomas, and Minister Resident Governor of Algeria, Robert Lacoste.
At 16 hours, the French army made contact with the crew that is entirely French and ordered him to land the aircraft in Algiers. The plane going around in circles until nightfall to reach Algiers at the scheduled time Tunis, with the complicity of the stewardess. And when Ben Bella asks if Tunis, at the sight of the lights of a big city, the hostess replied in the affirmative.
The crew gets trapped in the cockpit when the descent begins. And file by an escape when the aircraft landed on the tarmac of the airport in Algiers.
Passengers plunged into the dark, are surprised by the sound of heavily armed rushing into the cabin soldiers. Ahmed Ben Bella, Hocine Ait Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Mohamed Mostafa Lacheref Khider and circled, then handcuffed and taken to the airport lounge teeming with soldiers and officers of French security.
The five leaders are subsequently embedded into a military vehicle and escorted to Bouzaréah at the headquarters of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) for interrogation.
They will be transferred to France and held in different places: Prison Health Aix Island, Castle Turquant and finally, Aulnoy, where they were kept until the independence of the country in 1962.
Face their tormentors, the FLN leaders say, "This is not the arrest of some leaders or officials that will end in a major movement from the depths of the people." Indeed, the revolution will continue with more firmness.
For its part, France, by diverting the aircraft, commit the first act of piracy of civil aviation to be overturned by a majority of the French left and by international opinion.
ZM
Sources:
"Misuse of the plane of the FLN," the fiftieth anniversary magazine: Department of Business Etrangères- APS Fiftieth Anniversary of the Algerian diplomacy from 1962 to 2012.
http://www.al-djazair.com
www .memoria.dz
http://www.herodote.net
http://lequotidienalgerie.org
Last edited:
Ceylal
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Algeria's citizens meet their war heros..
The Algerian women were always played a great role in the war.
There were many French that helped the Algerian Revolution and were brutalized, tortured and killed by the French Paratroopers...Maurice Audin and his wife are among the many.
Raymonde Pechard joined the Colonel Amirouche's zone three and was killed in combat in 1957
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Zarvan
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A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
Sixty percent of Algeria’s university students are women, researchers say. This group was waiting for a bus Thursday at a university in Algiers. PRINT
ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.
Multimedia
Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.
“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”
The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and Islamists trying to take that power.
Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.
University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.
But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be social rather than in terms of career,” he said.
This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of recent years.
The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern, sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.
Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.
“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,” said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the narrow, winding roads of Algiers.
The impact has been far-reaching and profound.
In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.
And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating an awkward social reality for many women.
Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.
She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”
Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive, but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms. Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.
Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire and opportunity.
Algeria’s young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes — the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.
Increasingly, the people here have lost faith in their government, which draws its legitimacy from a revolution now more than five decades old, many political and social analysts said. In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was low and there were 970,000 protest votes — cast by people who intentionally destroyed their ballots — nearly as many as the 1.3 million votes cast in support of the governing party.
There are regular protests, and riots, all over the country, with people complaining about corruption, lack of services and economic disparities. There are violent attacks, too: bombings aimed at the police, officials and foreigners. A triple suicide bombing on April 11 against the prime minister’s office and the police left more than 30 people dead.
In that context, women may have emerged as Algeria’s most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.
“Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity,” said Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers.
Not everyone is happy with those dynamics. Some political and social analysts say the recent resurgence in radical Islamist activity, including bombings, is driven partly by a desire to slow the social change the country is experiencing, especially regarding women’s role in society.
Others complain that the growing participation of women in society is a direct violation of the faith.
“I am against this,” said Esmail Ben Ibrahim, an imam at a neighborhood mosque near the center of the city. “It is all wrong from a religious point of view. Society has embarked on the wrong path.”
The quest for identity is a constant undercurrent in much of the Middle East. But it is arguably the most complicated question in Algeria, a nation whose borders were drawn by France and whose people speak Berber, Arabic and French.
After a bitter experience with French occupation and a seven-year revolutionary war that brought independence in 1962 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders here chose to adopt Islam and Arab identity as the force to unify the country. Arabic replaced French as the language of education, and the French secular curriculum was replaced with a curriculum heavy on religion.
At the same time, girls were encouraged to go to school.
Now, more than four decades later, Algeria’s youth — 70 percent of the population is under 30, researchers said — have grown up with Arabic and an orientation toward Middle Eastern issues. Arabic-language television networks like Al Jazeera have become the popular reference point, more so than French television, observers here said.
In the 1990s radical Islamist ideas gained popular support, and terrorism was widely accepted as a means to win power. More than 100,000 people died in years of civil conflict. Today most people say the experience has forced them to reject the most radical ideas. So although Algerians are more religious now than they were during the bloody 1990s, they are more likely to embrace modernity — a partial explanation for the emergence of women as a societal force, some analysts said.
That is not the case in more rural mountainous areas, where women continue to live by the code of tradition. But for the time being, most people say that for now the community’s collective consciousness is simply too raw from the years of civil war for Islamist terrorists or radical Islamic ideas to gain popular support.
There is a sense that the new room given to women may at least partly be a reflection of that general feeling. The population has largely rejected the most radical interpretation of Islam and has begun to return to the more North African, almost mystical, interpretation of the faith, sociologists and religious leaders said.
Whatever the underlying reason, women in the streets of the city are brimming with enthusiasm.
“I don’t think any of this contradicts Islam,” said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. “On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway, it is between you and God.”
Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. “I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent,” she said. “You cannot always rely on a man.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html?pagewanted=all
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Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
Sixty percent of Algeria’s university students are women, researchers say. This group was waiting for a bus Thursday at a university in Algiers. PRINT
ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.
Multimedia
Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.
“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”
The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and Islamists trying to take that power.
Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.
University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.
But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be social rather than in terms of career,” he said.
This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of recent years.
The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern, sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.
Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.
“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,” said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the narrow, winding roads of Algiers.
The impact has been far-reaching and profound.
In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.
And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating an awkward social reality for many women.
Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.
She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”
Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive, but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms. Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.
Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire and opportunity.
Algeria’s young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes — the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.
Increasingly, the people here have lost faith in their government, which draws its legitimacy from a revolution now more than five decades old, many political and social analysts said. In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was low and there were 970,000 protest votes — cast by people who intentionally destroyed their ballots — nearly as many as the 1.3 million votes cast in support of the governing party.
There are regular protests, and riots, all over the country, with people complaining about corruption, lack of services and economic disparities. There are violent attacks, too: bombings aimed at the police, officials and foreigners. A triple suicide bombing on April 11 against the prime minister’s office and the police left more than 30 people dead.
In that context, women may have emerged as Algeria’s most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.
“Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity,” said Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers.
Not everyone is happy with those dynamics. Some political and social analysts say the recent resurgence in radical Islamist activity, including bombings, is driven partly by a desire to slow the social change the country is experiencing, especially regarding women’s role in society.
Others complain that the growing participation of women in society is a direct violation of the faith.
“I am against this,” said Esmail Ben Ibrahim, an imam at a neighborhood mosque near the center of the city. “It is all wrong from a religious point of view. Society has embarked on the wrong path.”
The quest for identity is a constant undercurrent in much of the Middle East. But it is arguably the most complicated question in Algeria, a nation whose borders were drawn by France and whose people speak Berber, Arabic and French.
After a bitter experience with French occupation and a seven-year revolutionary war that brought independence in 1962 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders here chose to adopt Islam and Arab identity as the force to unify the country. Arabic replaced French as the language of education, and the French secular curriculum was replaced with a curriculum heavy on religion.
At the same time, girls were encouraged to go to school.
Now, more than four decades later, Algeria’s youth — 70 percent of the population is under 30, researchers said — have grown up with Arabic and an orientation toward Middle Eastern issues. Arabic-language television networks like Al Jazeera have become the popular reference point, more so than French television, observers here said.
In the 1990s radical Islamist ideas gained popular support, and terrorism was widely accepted as a means to win power. More than 100,000 people died in years of civil conflict. Today most people say the experience has forced them to reject the most radical ideas. So although Algerians are more religious now than they were during the bloody 1990s, they are more likely to embrace modernity — a partial explanation for the emergence of women as a societal force, some analysts said.
That is not the case in more rural mountainous areas, where women continue to live by the code of tradition. But for the time being, most people say that for now the community’s collective consciousness is simply too raw from the years of civil war for Islamist terrorists or radical Islamic ideas to gain popular support.
There is a sense that the new room given to women may at least partly be a reflection of that general feeling. The population has largely rejected the most radical interpretation of Islam and has begun to return to the more North African, almost mystical, interpretation of the faith, sociologists and religious leaders said.
Whatever the underlying reason, women in the streets of the city are brimming with enthusiasm.
“I don’t think any of this contradicts Islam,” said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. “On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway, it is between you and God.”
Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. “I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent,” she said. “You cannot always rely on a man.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html?pagewanted=all
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awesome man awesomeA Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
Sixty percent of Algeria’s university students are women, researchers say. This group was waiting for a bus Thursday at a university in Algiers. PRINT
ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.
Multimedia
Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.
“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”
The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and Islamists trying to take that power.
Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.
University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.
But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be social rather than in terms of career,” he said.
This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of recent years.
The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern, sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.
Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.
“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,” said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the narrow, winding roads of Algiers.
The impact has been far-reaching and profound.
In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.
And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating an awkward social reality for many women.
Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.
She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”
Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive, but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms. Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.
Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire and opportunity.
Algeria’s young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes — the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.
Increasingly, the people here have lost faith in their government, which draws its legitimacy from a revolution now more than five decades old, many political and social analysts said. In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was low and there were 970,000 protest votes — cast by people who intentionally destroyed their ballots — nearly as many as the 1.3 million votes cast in support of the governing party.
There are regular protests, and riots, all over the country, with people complaining about corruption, lack of services and economic disparities. There are violent attacks, too: bombings aimed at the police, officials and foreigners. A triple suicide bombing on April 11 against the prime minister’s office and the police left more than 30 people dead.
In that context, women may have emerged as Algeria’s most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.
“Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity,” said Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers.
Not everyone is happy with those dynamics. Some political and social analysts say the recent resurgence in radical Islamist activity, including bombings, is driven partly by a desire to slow the social change the country is experiencing, especially regarding women’s role in society.
Others complain that the growing participation of women in society is a direct violation of the faith.
“I am against this,” said Esmail Ben Ibrahim, an imam at a neighborhood mosque near the center of the city. “It is all wrong from a religious point of view. Society has embarked on the wrong path.”
The quest for identity is a constant undercurrent in much of the Middle East. But it is arguably the most complicated question in Algeria, a nation whose borders were drawn by France and whose people speak Berber, Arabic and French.
After a bitter experience with French occupation and a seven-year revolutionary war that brought independence in 1962 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders here chose to adopt Islam and Arab identity as the force to unify the country. Arabic replaced French as the language of education, and the French secular curriculum was replaced with a curriculum heavy on religion.
At the same time, girls were encouraged to go to school.
Now, more than four decades later, Algeria’s youth — 70 percent of the population is under 30, researchers said — have grown up with Arabic and an orientation toward Middle Eastern issues. Arabic-language television networks like Al Jazeera have become the popular reference point, more so than French television, observers here said.
In the 1990s radical Islamist ideas gained popular support, and terrorism was widely accepted as a means to win power. More than 100,000 people died in years of civil conflict. Today most people say the experience has forced them to reject the most radical ideas. So although Algerians are more religious now than they were during the bloody 1990s, they are more likely to embrace modernity — a partial explanation for the emergence of women as a societal force, some analysts said.
That is not the case in more rural mountainous areas, where women continue to live by the code of tradition. But for the time being, most people say that for now the community’s collective consciousness is simply too raw from the years of civil war for Islamist terrorists or radical Islamic ideas to gain popular support.
There is a sense that the new room given to women may at least partly be a reflection of that general feeling. The population has largely rejected the most radical interpretation of Islam and has begun to return to the more North African, almost mystical, interpretation of the faith, sociologists and religious leaders said.
Whatever the underlying reason, women in the streets of the city are brimming with enthusiasm.
“I don’t think any of this contradicts Islam,” said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. “On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway, it is between you and God.”
Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. “I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent,” she said. “You cannot always rely on a man.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html?pagewanted=all
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Algerian women always enjoyed a high degree of freedom, until the 90's. The rise of the FIS (known by the sobriquet Fatma Interdit de Sortir, [Fatma forbidden to go out])and armed fundamentalism after, tried to alter the gain that these women have made throughout our history, without a real success. It has certainly changed the society equality between the the two sexes, but it has never succeeded in putting a halt to women entrance in the job market or kept them from running important sector of the Algerian economy. There is a big push by the women to re-appropriate their local cultures and push back what was imported by the fundamentalists in the 90's. Bouteflika, without being able to change the statu quo in their favor , encouraged them to modify the society hangups by occupying the field of competency, and they are showing it in every sector of the economy, the education, and in different branches of the armed forces.A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
Sixty percent of Algeria’s university students are women, researchers say. This group was waiting for a bus Thursday at a university in Algiers.
Zarvan, my sincere thanks for your contribution.
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