Algeria still not out of the woods

From the outside, it seemed as if a political spring had come to a land long gripped by winter.

There, in the pale Algiers sunshine, freshly released from prison, his lean figure surrounded by gleeful supporters, stood the bane of the Algerian Government - Ali Belhadj, former deputy leader of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

Belhadj was among the first wave of around 2000 jailed Islamists to be freed this week, thanks to an amnesty decreed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after approval in a referendum last September.

The amnesty is the cornerstone of Bouteflika's Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which aims to turn the page on one of the bloodiest and most traumatic chapters in Algeria's history.

It began in 1992 when the military seized power to thwart a likely election victory by the FIS. Over the next nine years, around 150,000 people lost their lives, many of them slain in atrocities attributed to armed Islamist insurgents and to Government forces alike.

The amnesty offers a pardon to militants who surrender over the next six months and to those serving prison terms or awaiting trial for their role in the violence. Those involved in "massacres, rape or the use of explosives in public places" will not be freed, although the mechanism for determining this is not spelt out.

Members of the security forces and state-armed local militia are being granted immunity from prosecution, and the judicial authorities have been told to dismiss "all accusations or complaints" against them.

The reconciliation charter has been hailed by leaders in Britain, the United States and others as a welcome sign of stabilisation in a key ally in the war against terrorism.

In a red-carpet visit to Algiers this week, Josep Borrell, President of the European Parliament, described it as "an essential step for Algeria's return to a normal life" and called for the country to strengthen its co-operation with Europe.

BUT analysts doubt that Bouteflika's blueprint will resolve the problems of human rights, security and political uncertainty that beset Algeria, and some predict it may even make matters worse.

They see nothing of the calming effects of the famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. A decreed amnesty without investigation, national debate, repentance or punishment will simply sow the seeds for score-settling, they warn.

"You can only turn a page after it has been written," said Francois Burgat, a specialist in Arab affairs at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

"And to do this you have to officially identify the people who initiated and bore responsibility for the massacres and disappearances and not, as has so unilaterally been the case, blame them on the 'Islamist' camp which for the most part in fact accounted for most of the victims."

Said Eric Goldstein of Human Rights Watch: "If 150,000 people have been murdered - we don't know the exact number - that means in a country where extended families count for a lot, everybody knows someone who has lost someone.

"In many cases, people claim to recognise the perpetrators who are now walking free or coming back from the mountains and claiming their old jobs; they know the police who were involved in disappearances. I don't think the resentment and the desire for justice is going to disappear just because the Government has said it's time to turn the page ... "

That opinion finds an echo among Algerians themselves, on both sides of the Islamist fracture.

Samira, a middle-aged feminist activist who lives in Algiers, said she harboured dark memories of the days when Islamist thugs controlled her neighbourhood, forcing women to wear a veil in public and threatening any woman whose thinking challenged Muslim traditionalism.

Her indignation was mixed with fear as the first batches of amnestied Islamists walked out of prison this week to a triumphant reception from bearded supporters.

"I don't know if I'll be able to stomach it to see them strutting around streets," Samira said. She was toying with the idea of emigrating to France, a possibility that she had turned down in the early 1990s "because I didn't want to be chased out of my country by the bearded ones", a reference to Muslim radicals.

Belhadj himself warned on his release that "there cannot be national reconciliation imposed by just one side, the Government, to the detriment of other sides which have not had the right to speak".

"For there to be reconciliation, there first has to be the truth on everything that happened."

THIS uncertainty is bolstered by speculation about Algeria's long-term stability. Bouteflika is in poor health. He underwent surgery and a long convalescence in France last year, details of which are closely guarded.

There is a huge surplus in government revenue thanks to rising prices for oil and gas exports and foreign corporations are cautiously returning, but corruption and mismanagement have been a hallmark of Algeria's economic history ever since the first oil boom in the 1970s.

Most of the population is mired in poverty and unemployment among its young males is rampant. The queue to emigrate is ever lengthening and discontent flourishes. "People don't see themselves as living in a country that is poor, but in a country that should be rich among developing countries," said a French analyst. "People want jobs, they want to see some of this oil wealth invested in road repairs, schools and property."

Then there is the question of human rights. Watchdogs say journalists in Algeria are routinely harassed or jailed for criticising Bouteflika. Eighteen were given jail terms in 2005, according to a report in Le Monde this week.

The Government's panoply of repressive tools has been strengthened by a provision in the new presidential decree that makes it a criminal offence to express views that could "weaken the State ... undermine the good reputation of its agents ... or ... tarnish the image of Algeria".

Any statements questioning the real intentions of the amnesty's authors could result in jail.

"The effect [of the decree] has mainly been to protect the authorities from all judicial investigation and criminalise all future challenges in this respect rather than to offer credible guarantees to political opponents, whether they have been amnestied or not," says Burgat.