POLITICS : With Islam Bottled Up, What’s Next for Algeria?

The abrupt coup d’etat that stamped out an impending Muslim fundamentalist victory at the polls in Algeria early last week brought a collective sigh of relief from the surrounding monarchies and military regimes of the Arab world who have nervously heard the growl of Islamic thunder on their own horizons.

But with the Algerian president ousted from power, top leaders of the Islamic party in prison, public religious gatherings in the streets banned and the army firmly in control, the question remains: Can the democratic genie be stuffed back into the bottle?

How does one explain away the fact that 49% of the people who voted Dec. 27, during Algeria’s first free national elections in more than 30 years, chose the fundamentalists? How can the leadership keep its promise to hold new presidential elections soon with any confidence that the same thing won’t happen again?

The Arab governments that have rushed to the defense of the new military-backed regime--Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco--are quick to point out that Western-style notions of democracy don’t apply in the tribal, economically bereft societies of the Arab world. Besides, the Algerian authorities argue, the fundamentalists didn’t really win. Turnout was so low, they say, that barely a quarter of Algeria’s eligible voters actually sided with the fundamentalists.

There is also much talk about when democracy is democracy, and when it’s really simply a tyranny of the majority.

“Certainly, the fundamentalists never intended to install a democratic regime in Algeria. They are fascists,” said an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official who recently served as ambassador in Algiers.

“One should not be sorry to see democracy go. The Nazi party came to power in Germany after winning the general elections. Had the German army intervened then to prevent Hitler from coming to power, would this have been written in history as opposition to the people’s will? It would have been saving humanity from the crimes of the Nazis, and this is exactly what the (Algerian) army did now.”

So far, the new government, headed by former exiled war hero Mohammed Boudiaf with the backing of Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar, has carefully squeezed the Islamic opposition to the point that it seems unable to function.

Hundreds of rank-and-file members of the Islamic Salvation Front have been arrested. The governor of Algiers on Wednesday announced there would be no more public gatherings on the streets outside the mosques, effectively preventing the Islamic Front from mobilizing thousands of militants as it has during Friday prayers. Also on Wednesday, the acting leader of the front, Abdelkadir Hachani, was taken into custody, joining top Islamic Front leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhaj.

And if that’s not enough, the government has indicated that it may be prepared to shut down the fundamentalist-dominated municipal councils, ban the Islamic front altogether--or mobilize the tanks and troop carriers that have lurked in the streets of the capital since the forced resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid on Jan. 11.

During recent interviews in Algiers, nobody was mourning Bendjedid’s passing. But diplomats and many officials wonder how long that’s going to last, and when the middle class--exhilarated as much as the fundamentalists when Bendjedid ended 30 years of one-party rule and opened the door to political reform--will insist on having something to say about who’s ordering the tanks around.

No one, said a young Foreign Ministry official, is likely to forget the fact that it took the deaths of several hundred young Algerians during an uprising in October, 1988, to spur democratic reform. “The democratic process was purchased with the blood of Algeria’s youth in 1988,” he said. “I believe the political system has given a gift to the Algerians. And now the gift has been taken away.”

Fundamentalism in Algeria has fed on economic maladies, and the winter of discontent in Algeria is by no means over. Unemployment still hovers at 23%, housing is in short supply and the present crackdown promises to make things worse.

If Islam can’t be the solution, where will people turn next?

“Now that they’ve blocked up that channel, how are they going to contain those pressures?” asked one diplomat. “I think what you’re going to have is a buildup of social tension to where it (upheaval) could happen at any time.”