The Israel Card in Mauritanian politics

This blog has written on the erosion of the Mauritania-Israel relationship before. This week Mauritania severed its relations with Israel formally after recalling its ambassador and taking on a brutal public rhetoric over a year ago. The move is significant in that it is a part of a broader trend in Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s foreign policy; this has been to adopt a rough posture on a number of hot issues in hopes of gaining the support of more consequential powers. It has domestic and international dynamics and can be seen as basically pragmatic, though many debate how impolitic it might be. It has nothing to do with settlements or Avigdor Lieberman or such things; it does have to do with political squabbles inside Mauritania and the diplomatic fallout from the August 2008 coup.

Review: The New Authoritarianism

Stephen J. King’s The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa (Indiana, 2009) is a frank and tremendously useful study of how privatization and cosmetic democratization has strengthened authoritarianism in Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia over the last thirty years. Looking at economic and political reforms and their influence on political order in four important Arab states, two of which are drastically understudied in English. The author pulls few punches in examining doctrinaire economic liberalization and its role in tightening already entrenched political elites’ hold on power while effectively dissolving or fizzing out the influence of both civil society and organized labor. He tracks these developments carefully, academically and purposefully. Though its tone is in the drab  monotone of contemporary Anglo-Saxon political science, bits of indignation and outrage come through the narrative, especially where King rings out myths about organized labor in the countries in question. Unlike in some other academic accounts his tells the workers’ struggle with a somewhat obvious sympathy (separating them from their stooge secretary generals); he tries (and fails) to hold himself back when relating the story of how Syrian workers have tried to defy their regime-appointed bosses. His sections on Algeria are some of the most valuable written in the last ten years. They make excellent reading with Isabelle Werenfels‘s key Managing Instability in Algeria Elites and Political Change since 1995 (Routeledge, 2007). In that regard, however, at times he seems to overestimate the historical importance of the FLN in governing, though this is sometimes a problem of diction rather than analysis. (One might quibble with his repeated citation of Wikipedia for his tables on electoral results.)

King has written before on Tunisia with great success; he has also studied the discontents of economic liberalization in depth and has done political science a terrific service in this way. Too many analyses of North Africa (and the Arab states in general) rely on simplistic formulations, goading on economic “reform” without a critical take on its actual results in what remain mostly closed political and economic orders, but that is not King. In the Arab states, the expression “money is power” is often just as strong when reversed to “power is money” and this old fact of life is one of the powerful takeaways from The New Authoritarianism. The old authoritarianism was based on political domination, backed up by nationalist or socialist dogmas; the State controlled society by sucking up civil society and the economy formally. Unions were run by the States, women’s, religious and youth associations were run by the State, industry was owned by the State, natural resources were exploited (or strongly controlled) by the State, public services were run by the State. The new authoritarianism allows the same men to dominate society by free market dogma. The unions and civil-social organizations are dissolved or sidelined, public services, state industries, news media and all then rest goes off to the highest bidder. And the bidders are the old party bosses and military chiefs. Parties are allowed and elections take place  but substantive political change is illusive.

In each of his cases, King exposes the particularities and commonalities in the establishment of democratic and free market façades over dusty elite regimes. He does not make the mistake of imposing Mashreqi or Maghrebi schema on one or the other; each is in its own context while linking back to the wider narrative. King’s case studies ably shy from simplicity, evidencing his extensive familiarity with both the Arab east and west, a facility happily welcome. King does not claim to have all the answers, and the variables he examines are surely complemented by others but stand powerfully here. As he has it, economic reform has made authoritarianism stronger in the region not because it has not been accompanied by political reforms, but because it has a part of a devious sort of political reform. The situation is one of politicized economics, as corrupt and exclusive as it is unpopular. This new authoritarianism is dynamic and clever, leveraging social, political and economic relationships to keep power. King’s book offers a fascinating and much needed study of Arab authoritarianism in our time.

Good books

Two new books worth reading: Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War by Robert Jervis (Cornell, 2010) and The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War by Nicholas Thompson (Henry Holt, 2009). Jervis’s book is especially useful because it reproduces a CIA report on analytical failures leading up to the Iranian Revolution, probing and explaining why American observers by and large failed to see it coming. The section on the Iraq War lacks this level of depth because not enough information is available yet. But many of Jervis’s observations are pertinent and hot, even if the book is vastly more interesting in its first case study. Thompson’s book is one of many books on Kennan that have come out in the last couple of years; it does a dual biography with Nitze that is fascinating, regardless of whether it comes off with more affection than might be necessary. But it still offers a unique take on both men that makes for engrossing and worthwhile reading. One sometimes grows weary of reading descriptions of George Frost Kennan’s cool temper and geeko-stratego disposition in a world full of capricious and jocular policymakers and hacks. Thompson’s book keeps some of this but buries it under the more interesting intellectual back-and-forth between Kennan and Nitze and constructs a tight narrative that grabs the reader in a really meaningful way where the evolution of grand strategy is concerned. Compared with other recent biographies of Kennan, Thompson’s is one of the better ones at focusing on intellectual content. Both books are highly recommended.

RE: Recent Paucity

Responding to the following query: “Why have you not made any posts on the recent Sahel summit in Algiers?”

1. There has been more than adequate coverage of the meeting at Alex Thurston’s blog. This blogger has only minor quibbles with his analysis.

2. Terrorism poses a real threat to security and stability in the region but it is not the primary or even most pressing problem facing the Sahel. This is surely the case in the two countries this blog is most interested in, Algeria and Mauritania. In the Algerian case there are structure and political questions, unrelated to terrorism, that need to be addressed. Something like an attempt at that is what the posts over the last few weeks have been. The biggest question in Algerian politics today is succession and what kind of events might mark a power transition at the top. Where Mauritania is concerned, there are so many mundane questions that overshadow AQIM’s importance that to make extensive posts on the subject would obscure the picture and be less than productive. That does not offer a proposition that AQIM is not a serious problem for Mauritania or anyone else. It is to be taken seriously. But what has been written here on Mauritania (admittedly not much recently) has tried to put AQIM into a bigger context, a political and social one. There is a strong case that poor leadership is a greater danger to Mauritania than the scrawny turban-clad jihadis out in the bush and that capricious rulers can do more significant and lasting damage to the country than AQIM even as it carries on with attacks in Niger or kidnappings in Mali. So AQIM needs to be addressed in the proper context.

3. From this blogger’s perspective what is missing in the discussion about AQIM, especially in Mauritania, is a critical look at the country’s current leadership. This refers to perhaps two trends: (1) the tendency of the current Mauritanian government to evoke AQIM and terrorism when attempting to consolidate broader and (sometimes) extra-constitutional powers; and (2) a similar movement by the government towards “engaging” the Salafist tendency to the point where it risks making a generally marginal political and religious movement more mainstream and an important part in legitimizing the first trend internationally and domestically.

4. Emphasis is particularly on the international side. Ould Abdel Aziz has become more and more kosher internationally since his disputed election last summer. Part of this came from fatigue and a lack of will on the French and American end. The American position on accountability (on governance, terrorism or practically anything else) has suffered since the Obama administration took office. The administration’s disinterest has been very evident since last spring. Part of it is ignorance at the top that has forced out previously productive measures and postures, symptomatic of the administrations rather steadfast refusal to take a stand on much of anything. None of this deliberately counterproductive, though. On the French end it has been more calculated and straightforward in terms of wishing to maintain historical leverage and protect its own interests which are more larger in number and greater in value than American ones. In both cases the two governments have become more permissive of Ould Abdel Aziz as a result of terrorist activity, be it the killing of the American aid worker or the attempted suicide bombing, both of which occurred last summer. This comes either from one of two places: (1) a fear that Mauritania’s capacity deficit in terms of material and manpower requires outside assistance or at least encouragement; or (2) that Ould Abdel Aziz is a serious fellow when it comes to “fighting terrorism”.

5. It looks more and more like both sets trust Ould Abdel Aziz on the terrorism issue, seeing him as taking the terrorism problem more seriously than he actually does. This idea that Ould Abdel Aziz is “tough on terror” was a part of his presidential campaign, and has remained a fixture of his public rhetoric. Because so much of the reporting on the region and Mauritania has been focused on terrorism, the larger picture seems to escape the reality: that for Ould Abdel Aziz “fighting terrorism” is more of a bumper sticker than a course of action, much like fighting corruption. He uses it as a bone to throw at foreign observers he hopes to scratch some cash out of or to justify restrictive legislation meant to strangle domestic opponents. His anti-terror law, discussed here, was recently thrown out by the Mauritanian high court for violating the constitution. Many took the Mauriatnians’ recalling their Mali ambassador over that country’s prisoner exchange at face value. In doing this (effectively adopting the Algerian position) Ould Abdel Aziz looked to make himself appear as a hardliner against terrorism, but many others will note his own plans to release jailed Islamists with links to AQIM and his having given these men a public forum to express their ideas to the whole country. Others will recall that it was Ould Abdel Aziz who was so strongly indignant as to start plotting a coup at the idea that his special unit be sent to Tiris ez-Zemour to pursue the GSPC in 2005; or that the most significant security breaches related to AQIM have taken place when it was his (or his close associates) responsibility to prevent them, whether under the Abdellahi government (recall the Battle of Tavregh Zeina) or in the post-2008 coup period. And it must be further noted that since his election the number and intensity of AQIM attacks inside the country has grown like never before as he has focused mainly on undermining local political opponents or excluding major parts of civil society from governance, again, while offering marginal extremists public platforms.

6. The reasons are wholly political in the cheapest sense of “political” rather than attempting to address the terrorist issue in a broad social, economic and political way. He and his foreign minister have repeatedly said a “foreign ideology” (e.g. violent Salafism) has infected Mauritanian youth, but they have acted to reduce the number of free alternatives to this “foreign ideology” and have made its propagandists major public figures. This has allowed outsiders to overestimate the importance of the Salafist tendency, as an “authentic” and “moderate” force. It is fact quite unimportant at a national level, having piecemeal influence over the average individual and minimal political influence (even Tawassoul, the local Muslim Brotherhood, has all of tree members of parliament). The average Mauritanian looks at Salafism as a foreign, pernicious political and religious trend that does not deserve serious consideration. Even the most conservative traditional religious leaders want little or nothing to do with it, be if for reasons of self-preservation or theology. What has taken place is Ould Abdel Aziz seeking to co-opt a leg for his own authoritarian ambitions by using the Salafist tendency at the expense of the organized political opposition. This is why he has been so happy to openly scorn cooperation with the country’s traditional political opposition (he pledged not long after his election not to pursue a unity government). At all times it must be remembered that Mauritania has a very active and lively civil society and political class; and Ould Abdel Aziz has tried frequently and aggressively to limit its ability to influence policy and decision-making. The prominence of the terrorism problem has allowed this to go on while outsiders have either been unaware or simply ignored other issues. The consequences of this will be more significant to the structure and mode of politics in the long term than AQIM’s activities.

7. All of this boils down to what this blogger told Inter Press Services last week: “If we only look to these countries and this region when there is a summit going on, that’s a problem”. Thus, as was written earlier, when we analyze this problem it must be as a part of a larger, more holistic framework. It must treat the region’s political and economic and social problems as a whole (which not treating them all the same).

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Parties in Parliament

Three Algerian political parties have seen overall gains in their parliamentary representation over the last three parliamentary election cycles. These are the FLN, the PT (Workers’ Party) and the FNA (Algerian National Front). Among minor and opposition parties, the latter two have been most adept at raising their public profiles and fitting themselves into the parliamentary conversation. Both have clear and well defined target audiences. To plot their electoral performance over the last three parliamentary elections is rather striking.

The royal blue line is the PT; the turquoise line just below it, rising in a similar fashion, is the FNA. Note that these are the only two of the major parties seeing consistent gains in parliament; the others suffer greatly in 2002 or 2007 while the FLN makes great gains in 2002 and slight loses in 2007, but still coming out better than in 1997. The FNA had no seats prior to 2002 when it won 8. The lower house of parliament is of practically no political consequence; it is subject to the veto of the Senate, which has a third of its members appointed by the president, and the president himself. Nowadays the parliament is home to a mixture of various parties — some with ideologies, some without — and many independents (that is for another chart). There are a range of reasons for the PT’s electoral success. Part of it is more aggressive campaigning and another part of it is a cozier relationship with the regime. The party has attached itself to several important issues for the disgruntled middle class and former public sector employees. It also draws many women and old-time left-wingers. These are the people displeased with the government’s privatization program and its paling around with Islamists. The party has taken notable stances against the death penalty and on the Family Code, leading social and religious conservatives to chastise their lot as “anti-Islamic”. The PT has the potential for a fascinating case study  focused on the 1995-2014 period, at some point in the future.

A Cabinet by the Numbers

Again, because graphs are fun, here are three new charts (with the one posted as an update to the Addendum on regionalism) looking at Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia’s government.

Note the large numbers of degrees in economics, law and engineering. “ENA” refers to École nationale d’administration d’Alger, the factory that churns out Algerian bureaucrats, diplomats and managers. (Ouyahia is a graduate.)

The next chart looks at the same men and women by occupational profession.

The technocrats dominate, as one might expect. “Technocrat” here is being used to refer broadly to individuals who have spent most (or all) of their careers in government and working their specific technical field; mainly engineers and economists as well as managers within the state machinery. It includes career diplomats, too. “Academics” refers to researchers and university professors. Lawyers (who range from judges to prosecutors to advisors) are up there too. The only real career politician is Abdelaziz Belkhadem.

The final chart is perhaps the least surprising, for it represents the age brackets in the set, minus one minister whose age and place of origin is unlisted on his website.

Those born after independence are the least well represented; those born during the War of Independence have the greatest share; the War generation is reasonably well in place, though they take most of the sensitive and critical ministries (Defense, the Interior, etc.; also Moudjahidines). The younger generation is especially technocratic and in generally technocratic offices.

Soon enough will begin the work of relating these factors to one another, comparing age to education and profession; and comparing previous governments.

Relationships I

Quick, crude and simplified graphics showing the relationship(s) between the presidency and the military/intelligence service and the spread of supposed “clans” and their “turf” within the state structure. Note severe overlap. Clarifications/opinions, suggestions welcome on the second in particular. Neither intend to make definite claims but reflect general observations from news reports, conversations and widely available information. The first does not claim that Bouteflika and Ouyahia are equal in their powers but rather that both share a status distinct from the military/intelligence services or the ministries in the excutive.

Victor and Vanquished in Algerian Presidential Elections

Here are some graphs showing some trends in recent Algerian presidential elections from 1995-2009. In themselves they say very little; but what they are interesting in that they chart Bouteflika’s progressive domination of the political scene by looking at the number of candidates, the percentage of the vote won by victors (i.e., Zeroual and Bouteflika) and the opposition “winners” (second place candidates) and “losers” (last place opposition candidates). There is nothing new (or scientific) in this post; all of it has been out in the public domain for some time and the observations are not especially new. Yet graphs are fun and, since succession questions are spinning around, there is no real harm in looking at some electoral trends over the last decade and a half. Another set, looking parliament is also in order (later).

In at least the last decade two observations can be made: (1) 1999-2009 has been one of Bouteflika’s ascendence and consolidation and (2) anybody opposing him (through formal political processes at least) or actively seeking to court his favor can be called a “loser” in Algerian politics. The second observation can be divided into two further observations: (1) that those seeking to oppose him through formal means have found themselves effectively shut out of any central or meaningful advisory capacity in government; and (2) those who have sought his favor have been minor actors seeking to gain prestige and notoriety by opposing him through formal mechanisms which “legitimizes” as tightly control political processes and gets them in the newspapers but often do this at the expense of their popular credibility. Algerians refer to this as “letting the bunnies out of the cage.”

Islamist Bros, Brotherhood woes

Homies.

Recent years have seen both triumphs and setbacks. Hamas, a Palestinian affiliate of the Brotherhood, won the Palestinian general election in 2006, forcibly ousted Fatah, its secular rival, from the territory a year later and has run the Gaza Strip since. Other close ideological kin include the leading opposition parties in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Yemen, as well as groups that have been banned and chased out of still more authoritarian states, such as Algeria, Syria and Tunisia.

“The Muslim Brothers’ New Leader: Which Way Now?” The Economist, 21 January, 2010.

The above paragraph is old; but it is also incorrect (at least partially) as far as Algeria is concerned. Its “ideological kin” in Algeria, the Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP, fmr. HMS), has felt serious electoral blows over the last five years. Its leadership been plagued by corruption and egoist scandals and lost popular credibility as a result of its participation in the tripartite ruling coalition with the FLN and RND. Its faithful are increasingly agnostic about the value of the party’s participatory strategy and the character of its leaders. (According to recent reports, published and unpublished, some of the top leadership aside from Madjid Menasra has grown weary of the party’s chairman, Boudjerra Soltani.) So the Algerian Ikhwan have had a rough time of late; David Ottaway writes about the party’s travails in the most recent winter edition of The Wilson Quarterly in light of the 2009 presidential election (the article is not available online).

The party has suffered at the polls and its leaders’ reputations have been damaged, but hardly “chased out” of Algeria, though their institutional enemies have done their best to emasculate them politically — their members still sit in parliament, Soltani remains in his post of Minister of State and continues to preach the value of political dialogue, reconciliation and cooperation between the state and the Islamist tendency and participation as the only way to push its agenda forward. Not an opposition party in the strict sense (circa 2003), the MSP is a part of the government, a [decorative] pillar of the regime’s public façade. The MSP is a case-in-point where the Brotherhood has lost credibility by participating in a political process designed to keep them weak and in the state’s control. They have no real power over policy except to raise fusses at symbolic issues (the Family Code or Palestine for example). Recall how Soltani was humiliated after Bouteflika publicly rebuked him before a gathering of governors for claiming to have dossiers on government corruption. Nowadays one of the MSP’s top ministers, Amar Ghoul, is on the hot plate on corruption charges, with several other top technocrats. The chairman has been obliged to defend Ghoul and others.

All that is summed by what The Economist wrote in its 8 October, 2009 issue:  the party’s popular decline owes to “a failure to fulfill its promises to bring about change.” But in Algeria that failure is not because the regime chased the party out or has persecuted them. It rather comes from the fact that it took the party under its wing and made just another party in an ornamental parliament, as ineffectual, limited and frustrated as all the others.

Addendum on “Regionalism”

UPDATED: Scroll to the bottom to see an update and new chart.

In response to the previous post on “regionalism” in Algeria, Houwari writes:

The east also has proportionally more Algerians. The habitable strip narrows down as you go West. The East has more populous Wilayas, Setif and Constantine are thought to have overtaken Oran in population, add to that Annaba, Constantine and the huge concentration of population from Jijel to Boumerdes. That could partly explain why there is more domination from the East (and why the fighting against France was fierce there).

What do you think of the South? it is not populous, but many think that Ouargla has a disproportionate political influence over other southern Wilayas, or even over many other Wilayas in general. There are currently 5 senators of Ouargla and I believe one minister.

Political Regionalism in Algeria: East side-West side?

Algeria in all its parts

The degree to which regionalism, real or imagined, factors into Algerian political calculus is interesting. Many Algerians (and outside observers) discount regionalist tendencies in the leadership caste. The war generation tended to de-emphasize regional, ethnic and even religious differences to build consensus and nationalism. There are, nevertheless, tendencies for men from particular areas to have say over the nation as a whole, not as a result of deliberate conspiracies  but more because of circumstances. The urban areas were historically centers of political power that struggled to control the tribal and nomadic populations on the periphery. The French were the first to make Algiers indisputable center of political power Algeria (the Ottomans never really got it). But that was European power and when the Europeans left at independence, rural people took their place (Algiers was a majority European before 1962). The result is that Algiers tends not produce leadership clans or political factions; instead political factions with their origins outside the capital, in eastern Algeria, western Algeria or Kabylia, tend to impose themselves on Algiers. Though Algeria is a unitary (if highly complex) state, its capital is the locus of institutional powers that are filled from other parts of the country. Algiers does not dominate Algerian politics. Algerian politics dominates Algiers.

Regionalism and political clannishness are a result of this background; a variety of political cliques developed during the War of Independence and the nation-building process afterward. Men who served in the war-time maquis or ALN clustered together, often according to which wilaya they fought in or what FLN/ALN base they served on outside (or inside) the country. Other alliances were the result of education or personal friendships. As the military became increasingly professionalized, men who were sent abroad for training, to the Soviet Union, Jordan, Egypt, France or China, made good with each other. In the technocratic fields men were tied together by schooling, hometowns, departments or simple corruption. Whether men were urban or rural helped to color the type of bonds and clannishness that developed.

Today networks of corruption bind various “clans” of the national elite, whether in SONATRACH or the ministries or the military. Many retired military men have since gone into the privatized industries, import-export and so on. Many have friends in France or elsewhere in Europe. In the energy sector many have relationships as a result of studying in Europe or North America (even Russia) or because they embezzled money with colleagues. Changes in economic policy or public exposure can be a weapon. The result is a tendency toward secrecy (already in place among many during the wars) and mutual “respect for honor” (code for not talking about other people’s misdeeds). A few observations about the regionalized view of these “clans,” which have their own internal réseaux (شلة) within them that are too cloudy to get into in a blog post, may be in order. This post is not complete as an appraisal of existing political “clans” by any means and does not aim to be.

Algeria’s Succession: schemes & power plays

This sh*t is wicked on these mean streets
None of my friends speak
We’re all trying to win, but then again
Maybe it’s for the best though, ’cause when they’re saying too much
You know they’re trying to get you touched
Whoever said illegal was the easy way out couldn’t understand the mechanics
And the workings of the underworld

“D’Evils“

There’s a war goin on outside, no man is safe from
You could run but you can’t hide forever
from these, streets, that we done took
You walkin’ witcha head down scared to look
You shook, cause ain’t no such things as halfway crooks
[...]
Now we all grown up and old, and beyond the cop’s control
They better have the riot gear ready
Tryin’ to bag me and get rocked steady

“Survival of the Fittest“

The murder of Ali Tounsi has raised important questions in Algerian politics. Rival political “clans” appear to be at war, though no one can quite prove Tounsi’s killing was related to these gang wars. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s political allies have been clashing with allies of the military and intelligence services for several months. The battlefield has been chiefly bureaucratic and legal. Ministers and their sons, nephews and friends have been investigated and taken to court for corruption. Since Tounsi’s killer, Oultache Chouaib, is believed to have done the deed after learning that he was under investigation on corruption charges, many believe the former police head and ally of the intelligence services was put out as a result of this struggle. Tounsi’s wife was indignant after hearing Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni’s comments about the “absence of any witnesses” as the Interior Ministry’s investigation into the killing began earlier this week. In a statement she said her husband was killed “treacherously in cold blood and all consciousness”. Khaled Ziari, an ex-DGSN head, suggested to El Khabar that Tounsi be replaced by a civilian, ruffling some feathers. (Abdelaziz Affani has replaced Tounsi as interim Director General.) At the center of all the fuss is one main question: who will succeed Abdelaziz Bouteflika?

The Face of the People: As the Regime Describes Itself

The above paintings can be seen in the central museum in Algiers; these are two of the more famous in a series of paintings made to highlight the Algerian national struggle after independence. Both recall the stylistic inspiration of socialist realist art, to which many Algerians were exposed during the War of Independence and afterwards, visiting or studying in the Eastern Bloc or in China. Similar paintings can be found elsewhere; if some statues in some parts of the country look as if they might have been made in North Korea or communist China it is probably because they are gifts from either country. The two painting above depict a nationalist militant rallying the troops and the peasants to the struggle and the ALN (the proto-military of the war-time FLN) exhibiting the Muslim character of the Revolution. In the first it is important to note that the flag is directly above the mudjahid and that the faces are mostly indistinguishable from one another. Notice the soldiers keeping watch in the background.