How Algeria’s regime used coronavirus to crush a revolution

A popular uprising toppled the president and was gunning for the shadowy figures running the regime – then the pandemic struck. Report by Borzou Daragahi

People chant slogans during a weekly anti-government demonstration in the capital Algiers (AFP/Getty)

The threat of the coronavirus is already discouraging Algerians from heading into the streets to protest a powerful regime in place for nearly six decades. But just to make sure Farouk Kadiri can’t leave his house to join weekly anti-government protests, the authorities in his town came up with a simple solution: they post two police officers outside his home every Friday afternoon.

“They come around 2pm and stay until sunset,” Kadiri, a 32-year-old accountant in the southern Algerian city of El Oued, tells The Independent. “That’s during the time of the protests.”

The ubiquitous enforcers of Algeria’s military and security apparatus also took other measures to keep him off balance. They got him fired from his job and tell prospective employers in his city not to hire him. They locked him up in jail for several months on spurious charges. And they demand that he shows up weekly for interrogation sessions.

They’ve applied similar pressure on activist leaders all over the country, exploiting a deadly pandemic that swept the world to reimpose their grip on society and beat back a nationwide protest movement that last year toppled the country’s longtime president and was, until months ago, threatening the longstanding power of the shadowy generals and clans running the oil-rich country.

“This pandemic has been a lifeline for the regime,” says Arezki Daoud, publisher and editor of North Africa Journal, which covers current events in security matters from across the region. “How would you stop millions of people from going into the streets? One way is force, but that could backfire. Then, you’ve got this thing coming from the heavens. What a great way to tell people, ‘You gotta go back home.’”

Algeria’s uprising last year, loosely grouped under the Hirak, or “movement” banner, began in February 2019 and had been gathering steam for months, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in the capital, major cities, and small towns every Friday. It drew in lawyers and labourers, housewives and hotel clerks, Islamists, liberals and leftists. It was spontaneous, led by students and the young but joined in by their parents, who sometimes brought small children to protests.

All were fed up with the corruption and incompetence of an ossified Algerian regime overseeing the nation of 42 million, the largest in Africa by land mass and the second largest in the Arab world by population. Made up of the friends, families and loyalists of the same figures who led the war of independence against France six decades ago, the regime has been accused of pilfering the country’s hydrocarbon wealth and badly mismanaging the country’s healthcare, education and transport systems.

Parallel peaceful protests also erupted in Sudan, Iraq, and Lebanon. All are countries that largely stayed out of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that continue to have consequences throughout the region.

Stunned by Hirak, Algeria’s ruling clique first sought to prevent the weekly protests. It failed. It then moved to co-opt its aims. After shoving out longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it announced vague anti-corruption measures and new elections.

The opposition angrily boycotted the vote, which was won by former prime minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Many Algerians realised that the real power remained in the hands of army chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah.

But days after Tebboune was sworn in, the wily general himself passed away, giving new life to the protest movement just as 2020 got underway. Regular protests continued until the pandemic struck. In March, protesters themselves – who often showed civic responsibility by cleaning streets after demonstrations – decided people’s health was more important than politics.

Algeria’s shadowy, ever-present security forces moved in. The most infamous of the security branches is the Department of Intelligence and Security, known by its French acronym, DRS. It remains deeply embedded in the country, with its operatives in every national, provincial and local institution. Citing the coronavirus, authorities declared a ban on all public gatherings on 17 March, and then DRS went to work cracking down on government opponents it had already identified.

“DRS is a state within a state,” says publisher Daoud. “You have no Algerian organisation that isn’t infiltrated by the DRS, whether the airports, state administrations, public corporations, private corporations. These guys have been fed very well. They have loyalty to their organisation.”

In the month of June alone, at least 31 activists were arrested, most of them for posting anti-government articles or content on social media, according to Shoaa, a London-based group that monitors the Algerian protests. Journalists critical of the Tebboune government have been arrested or intimidated.

“The coronavirus pandemic has been a windfall for the Algerian government because it has undermined the protest movement, and the authorities have taken advantage of this to clamp down drastically on the provision of news and information,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

Demonstrations in Paris on 5 July in support of Algeria’s Hirak protest movement (AFP/Getty) (AFP via Getty Images)

Activists are swept off the street by plainclothes security enforcers or arrested at their homes and disappear for days. This week, social media users spread the word about Abdullah Benaoum, a jailed political activist who has a heart condition and may be in danger of dying.

“Unfortunately, the system is trying to stop all of the revolutionary people, the journalists and the human rights activists,” says Rachid Aouine, director of Shoaa. “The regime is trying to remove all the activists and all the people who are demonstrating from the scene.”

Among the countries that have experienced political unrest in the Middle East, has proven the most adept at using the illness to crush dissent. “It is the country in the Middle East where the coronavirus has been most exploited by the government to shut down a vibrant, peaceful protest movement,” says Eric Goldstein, North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“They’ve been arresting leaders of the protests and arresting people who took their protests online by policing their Facebook pages,” he says.

Kadiri, who had spoken out against the regime on television and Facebook posts, was held in prison for four months before he was finally let out in February. The father of two boys was held in a filthy cell, but never physically abused. Charges against him included inciting an illegal gathering and speaking out against the army, an institution that remains pristine and honourable in the eyes of many Algerians.

“They treated me like I was a terrorist,” he says. “But in fact I was only defending my rights and speaking the truth.”

Nor el Houda Oggadi, a 25-year-old university student in the northwest Algerian city of Tlemcen, was arrested in January and spent nearly seven weeks in prison. The charges were of the type Arab regimes typically lodged against dissidents: insulting the regime, inciting illegal gatherings and weakening the morale of the armed forces. Jail was rough.

“It was really hard because it was winter,” she recalls, in a telephone interview with The Independent. “There was no heating and no healthy food.”

She emerged in February and immediately rejoined the protests until they stopped.

Some activists say that the protests were already dying down before coronavirus came, as protesters began to tire of a year of non-stop political action and organising. “We can’t deny that the pandemic has slowed down the protests across the country,” says one activist in Algiers, who asked to remain anonymous. “People don’t like to say it, but the movement was in danger way before the pandemic. Protests in December were not June protests, for instance.”

Algeria’s regime does have its supporters. They were among those who insisted on participating in December elections in which the government insists 40 per cent participated even as some provinces reported less than 1 per cent turnout and no independent observers were allowed. They accuse the protesters of being foreign dupes, and say they fear the country falling into chaos as it did during the late 1980s and 1990s, when a groundswell of political opposition led to a vicious civil war.

But in a sign of the regime’s weakness, it allegedly contracted out attempts to drum up support by paying troll armies.

“This is a regime that uses old-fashioned tools,” says Daoud. “They are just beginning to understand that the way you crack down now is not the way you cracked down in the 1970s. They don’t have a public relations machine or smart spokespeople. They don’t have an understanding of the opposition.”

Many in the movement say they’re confident the movement will gather pace again once coronavirus fears recede, especially given the regime’s botched handling of the pandemic. At least 1,000 people have died of Covid-19 and nearly 20,000 people have been infected, making it the worst-hit country in North Africa.

“People are hoping to come back into the streets,” says student activist Oggadi. “Nothing has changed. The government can’t deal with the pandemic and it can’t provide for the people.”

Daoud says the regime remains badly divided, with powerful cliques and generals using legal and extra-legal means to go after each other as much as the protesters. High-ranking officials regularly are felled in corruption trials, prompting reprisals by loyalists in other factions. Tebboune, he says, remains a reformist and seeks reconciliation, while hardliners oppose him and attempt to undermine his modest attempts to make changes.

All of this creates an opening for Hirak’s return. “The movement will come back once the virus issue is over,” he says. “It will take a little time but it will come back. Hirak was a spontaneous outburst. It’s spread so broadly, they can’t control it.”