Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
156. The War of Algeria’s Independence – 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The colonial history of Algeria begins in the year 1830 CE. The Ottoman Empire was exhausted from the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-29 and had ceded Georgia, Armenia and the Caucuses to Russia, while accepting Russian influence in Serbia, Rumania and Bulgaria. The Greeks had waged their war of independence (1828-1830 CE), and with encouragement from both Britain and Russia, had broken off from the Ottoman Empire. The powerful governor of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, openly challenged the authority of the sultan, sending his armies into Syria and Anatolia to extract concessions from Istanbul. Sensing a historic opportunity, the French made their move in North Africa.
The initial French thrust had the dual aims of containing piracy in the western Mediterranean and enhancing its commercial interests in the region. Using a feigned insult to the French consul in Alger as an excuse, the French navy bombarded the city, and after a fierce battle, occupied it in 1830 CE. With the city of Alger as a base, the French army fanned out across the Mediterranean coast. The Algerians fought desperately but lost out against the superior armaments and discipline of the French invaders. A people who had raised the banner of liberty, equality and fraternity barely a generation ago, now became the perpetrators of the worst kind of human rights abuses. The war against the North Africans had become a “science”, in which superior technology was used to enslave entire nations and tribes. Torture was used as a weapon to break down the resistance. So destructive was the French onslaught that the population of Algeria decreased from 3 million in 1830 to 2.5 million in 1840. By the summer of 1834, the French controlled the entire northern coast of Algeria and declared it to be an integral part of France.
Algerian resistance continued. As has often happened in the history of the Maghreb, it was the Sufis who took up arms against the invaders. In 1558 CE the Jazuliya Sufis, marshaled the Moroccans to defeat an invading force led by the Portuguese king Sebastian. In 1835 CE, it was the Qadiriya Sufis. Shaikh Abdel Qader was the leader of this resistance. He was born in Oran in 1807. His father was a well-known Qadiriya shaikh. After studying the Qur’an, Tafseer, logic and philosophy, he proceeded to Mecca for hajj and on his way back visited Baghdad to visit the tomb of Shaikh Abdel Qader Jeelani and other awliyah. Upon returning to his homeland he found it under occupation. He took up arms and with the help of tribes in western Algeria, gave battle to the invaders inflicting one defeat upon another on the French (1932-37 CE).
Shaikh Abdel Qader was chivalrous to the enemy as he was valiant in battle and won the admiration even of the invaders. In 1937 CE a truce was concluded between the two sides allowing the French to keep Alger and Oran but keeping the hinterland independent under Shaikh Abdel Qader. Two years later the French unilaterally broke the truce. Using overwhelming force, they pursued Abdel Qader’s forces, burning, raping and using widespread torture as they went. Fighters and civilians fleeing the advancing French hid in caves. The French used smoke bombs to flush them out or kill them. Shaikh Abdel Qader surrendered in 1841 on a promise that he would be allowed to stay in Algeria. The French broke the promise and the Shaikh was exiled first to France and then to Damascus where he passed away in 1883.
Colonization destroys the old social, economic and military alliances and creates new ones throwing up in their wake new historical opportunities. So it was with Algeria. The occupation of the northern coast attracted settlers from southern France looking for new economic opportunities. Colonization created a new class of French bureaucrats beholden to the settlers. The old Ottoman aristocracy in which local landlords and businessmen held high positions was destroyed and became subservient to the French bureaucracy. In time the collusion of the settlers, called the colons, and the French administrative machine created a powerful lobby which no government in Paris could disregard.
Although Algeria was annexed, it was legally not a part of France, but was administered as three “departments”. The colons had representations in the French parliament but not the Muslim Algerians. The one-sided political relationship between the occupier and the occupied created a corresponding imbalance in the economic and social conditions on the ground. Agricultural land owned by Algerians was confiscated, often arbitrarily, and given to the settlers who amassed huge plantations and grew rich in the process. The displaced Algerians were forced to become laborers and servants for survival.
As economic disparities grew, so did the social chasm between the settler and the native. A sociology of discrimination emerged which justified the economic and political stratification as a natural order.
The colonial wars had the indirect consequence of French penetration into the interior of the country. The policy of land confiscation and its distribution to the colons was now extended to the Atlas highlands. The local farmers were increasingly squeezed into less productive lands. Traditional centers of power based on land ownership were destroyed. The Algerian farmer had no choice but to become a sharecropper on land owned by the colons or to migrate to the larger cities along the coast and seek employment in menial jobs working for the immigrant Europeans.
The French occupation of Algeria showed the classic signs of colonialism, and was characterized by rabid racism, religious bigotry and exploitative capitalism. The European settlers, Christians immigrants from France, Spain, Malta and Italy, looked down upon the Berbers and Arabs who were predominantly Muslim. The Muslims who constituted ninety-five percent of the local population were systematically excluded from employment, housing and social services. Political and economic power resided exclusively with the Europeans. The settlers took over most of the choice land and converted it into plantations for cash crops. Roads and schools were built but these were for the Europeans only. An Algerian Muslim could enlist in the French army and was permitted to shed his blood for the empire but he could not become a French citizen unless he was willing to give up his allegiance to the Shariah. Traditional education based on the Madrasa system was decimated while access to French education was restricted. The use of Arabic language was discouraged and its place was taken up by French. Illiteracy increased so much that in 1960, after 120 years of French rule, only ten percent of Algerian Muslims could be considered literate. The Algerians were not just second class citizens; they were not citizens at all in their own land and were considered by the settler Europeans as no more than serfs worthy of benevolent patronizing at best and contempt at worst.
The oppressive policies of the French spawned several revolts. In 1871, the Kabyle tribes in the eastern Sahara rose up under the leadership of Shaikh al Haddad of the Rahmaniya Sufi order. The cause of this insurrection was the extension of colon rule over reserved Muslim villages. There was also widespread famine due to a sustained drought. The French officials were negligent and did nothing to ameliorate the situation. Wars in Europe and increasing commerce between Algeria and France had driven up the price of Algerian wheat to world market levels and the peasants had sold their reserves to speculative French hoarders. The administration reneged on its promise to advance loans to the farmers to replenish their seed grains exhausted by years of famine. More than 200,000 Algerians perished in the famine. Shaikh al Haddad declared a jihad against the French, mustered a force of 100,000 tribesmen and marched on Constantine. Lacking modern firearms and the discipline of modern armies, the uprising was quickly down and Shaikh al Haddad was captured. Following the insurrection, the colonial administration instituted harsh statutes against the Algerian Muslims which sanctioned arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, abrogation of the right to assembly and severe punishment for the slightest disrespect to French officials.
The French government was aware of the growing social and political imbalances but was divided on the issue of Algeria. The French emperor Napoleon III did make a feeble attempt to stop the arbitrary seizure of Algerian lands in 1863 but had to rescind the measures in the face of hostility from the entrenched colons.
In the colonial order, the Algerian Muslim had two strikes against him, one because he was an Algerian, and the other because he was a Muslim. The discriminatory laws had a definite religious angle to them. The Sephardic Jews were accorded full citizenship in 1870 as if to proclaim openly that religion was a key criterion in the discriminatory and oppressive emerging colonial order. Christians and Jews could become full citizens; not so the Muslims. The statutes offered French citizenship to a handful of Muslims provided they gave up their allegiance to the Shariah. This was tantamount to giving up their religion and few Muslims took up the offer.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
