Algeria - Fratricide in Allah's Name
42 mins - August 1996 - Licensees: German speaking broadcasters
- A report by Hubert Seipel for ZDF, Germany
2:00-2:27 Introduction - no voice
2:28-2:52 Title music at sunrise
2:52-3:18 Titles
3:20-4:22 Timimoun - an oasis in the heart of Algeria. Over 1000
kilometres away from the capital of Algiers. Here life runs, as it always has, to the heartbeat of tradition. Liveand let live. What you need, you can buy in the market
place, and what you can’t find in the market place the people of Timimoun can usually do without.
Everything is on public display, living cheek by cheek, sharing everything. It’s the Islamic way and these people would do nothing to change it. North African architecture of red lime, hundreds of years old. In Timimoun the Islamic world is still in order.
4:23-4:34 Anti-terror training, house to house fighting.
4:34-6:00 Anti -terror training in the capital city of Algiers.
The special units train daily. The situation is serious. Because here it’s not just the police and soldiers who are on the hit list. No one is safe. In Algeria a civil war has waged for the last five years ever since the military hindered the assured election success of the Islamists. It is a gruesome bloodbath with no thought for the number of casualties. 60,000 people have been murdered in the past five
years.Death can come without warning, at any time, and above
all when least expected. Snipers can transform peaceful demonstrations into a massacre, as they shoot aimlessly into
the crowd. The battle hinges on bombs, blood and terror.
6:01-7:03 Algiers. An idylic town made for picture postcards. The white city on the Mediterranean. The old houses at the harbour’s edge originated from French colonial times. For 132 years Paris dictated the events of this North African country. Only in 1962 did France finally give up
Algeria, after a long and bloody war of independence.
Now nearly 3 million Algerians live in the capital city. Foreigners have virtually disappeared. The war by Islamic fanatics has forced out the Westerners. For them as much as anyone, it’s a question of life and death. Dozens have been killed. When it comes to a choice between the suitcase and the coffin, most chose the suitcase. The peace in the streets of the capital is deceptive. The foreigners have left but the killing goes on.
7:04-7:52 The Djema el Jedid Mosque in the heart of Algiers, in the Martyr’s square, on the edge of the Casbah,
the old part of the city. When the Imman calls for Friday’s prayers, it is not just the believers who make their pilgrimage to the Mosque. Hours before, the Ninjas, the United police forces, have made the area secure. It all started in Mosques like this one, in the late eighties, when the F.I.S. - the Islamic Popular Front, declared Islam as the solution to their problems. Today no politics can be preached in the mosques, but the views and the memory of the imprisoned leader of the Popular Front are determinedly alive.
8:00-9:41
FIS Celebration Through the words of the Koran is our salvation! The terse cry of the Islamic cause is dominant.
A message Algerians have taken to heart after three decades of bureaucratic socialism and corruption. In December 1991, the first free elections ever, were held in Algeria. The F.I.S. achieved a majority of 48 percent. This was the victory celebration. It was a cry of protest against the military regime, which had driven their country to bankruptcy. Abdelkader Hachani, the young leader of the Popular Front, is the winner of the first ballot. He entreats the army to accept the decision. His followers are jubilant. But already the generals are planning their coup.
Hachani knows that he has won the election, but has not yet got into power. This is Hachani's last official appearance. Before the second ballot the F.I.S. leader is arrested, and with him thousands of his supporters. This was the moment Algeria fell apart
9.22 In the desert the concentration camps are erected.
Power remains entrenched where it always was; in the hands of the Military. They influence everything with a vice like grip which is all encompassing. That’s how it’s been since the founding of the State.
9:42-10:39
Swearing In
The new man named as Head of State by the generals will supposedly give the coup d'etat a democratic appearance. Mohamed Boudiaf is an old man, a hero of the war of independence against France. Boudiaf is President for barely six months. When a new figurehead declares Independence, Boudiaf is murdered.
Funeral
The old man had become a liability to those who have been plundering Algeria since Independence: the military. It was not Islamic fanatics who shot the President, but a Lieutenant in the army.
10:40-11:13 The next President is also one of the 'old
comrades'. This is General Limiane Zeroual - he becomes a civilian President. A third of all Algerians entitled to vote have voted for him since then. So much for the official result of the presidential election of the previous year. The Islamic faction of the popular front were not included. The President had promised dialogue, because he said he wanted reconciliation with his political rivals. But ... he adamently refuses to talk to the F.I.S.
11:15-11:30 By refu he excludes a third of the population. Under Zeroual the civil war goes on. A bomb explodes in the city’s press centre. Again people are killed, people are wounded. Islamists, like the military, don’t set much store by good press.
11:31-12:13 We visit the biggest daily newspaper, 'El Watan', The Fatherland. Over fifty journalists on this paper have been targeted for execution. They don’t know whether it was the Islamists or the military. Neither like being criticised. Not surprisingly, the journalists prefer to remain anonymous. Apart from Omar
Bellhouchet, the chief editor. He barely escaped assassination by radical Moslems. Bellhouchet spends more time in the courtrooms than he does in the editor’s office. The military powerbase does not appreciate the free tone of his newspaper.
12:14-12:55 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- The real breakthrough of the Popular front came because of the way and the means in which they spoke to the people. They simply said to the people-if you are poor, or unable to find a house or a job, it is because the government is corrupt. There was a scandalous misappropriation of funds. the corruption spread through the whole of society and because of this the appeals of the F.I.S. captured the mood of the people.
12:55-13:00 Question- “Why did the military interfere after the elections?”
13:01-13:15 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- "It’s very simply their victory fundamentally threatened the interests of the military, and that explains why they took over power again.”
13:15-13:19 Question- "Would the military give up power freely?"
13:19-13:45 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- "I think this question goes to the heart of the problem, to the heart of the political debate. There are very few countries, with the exception of Portugal and Chile, where the military have handed over power by themselves."
13:46-14.14
The Casbah
The old part of the city of Algiers, a stronghold of the Islamists. The police and the military dare wage only short campaigns in the windy streets of the Casbah. We are the first television crew here for years, and have come despite strong opposition from the authorities.
The government says it has things under control but it’s simply not the case. The number of permanent bodyguards who have been assigned to us since the beginning of the filming is increased in the Casbah from six to forty.
14.39 "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet", calls the old man fearfully as he sees us and our accompanying bodyguards, as though he’s seen the devil himself. Even the old men in the cafe look surprised. They have not seen any strangers here for a long time.
15:01-15:31 At the sight of such a massive police turnout, the butcher at the corner of the street refuses to talk. Especially in front of the camera. His neighbours might think he’s in collusion with the police.In any case the police want to move on quickly. They clear the surrounding streets. They are nervous. Possibly the tailor shop will turn out to be a trap.
15:32-16:00 Across the walls are daubed the slogans of the opposition. All over the place you see the letters F.I.S. the initials of the Popular front. The Casbah is enemy territory. Dozens of policemen have died here, and they aren’t the only ones.
16.03 Here where this rubbish lies, six Russian sailors had their throats cut in recent months.
16:10-16:37 We bump into a military unit on active service. Filming in the Casbah has to stop. It’s too dangerous. The leader of the unit wants us to put our cameras away.
16:32 -17:11 The speaker of the F.I.S., Abdelkarim Addain is in hiding. He believes the military are not able to solve Algeria’s problems.
INTERVIEWEE SPEAKER FIS " I believe that neither we nor the army can win this battle militarily. However, our resistance fight is our last chance for us to gain justice and rights returned to us. The only solution for Algeria is a political, a civil solution."
17:15 -18:03
The Desert
Even if politicians in Algiers can’t agree, the desert has unified the people of Africa’s second largest country. Three quarters of Algeria is desert. The rules of survival are as old as they are simple. Hard work and strong principles. We are travelling to Beni Isquen, the Holy City, a thousand kilometres away. The government bodyguards remain by our side.
18:04 - 19:24
Beni Isquen
Here life is almost as it always was, an untouched relic of the Islamic past. The women- heavily veiled ,are banned from public life. Their life centres on family and children. TV cameras seem to be the last thing that the people of Beni Isquen want in their midst, our body- guards stay close on our heels. It’s a man's world; public life is run by men. Men determine the look of the shops, the streets, men are all you can see and men dictate religious life They sit for hours in the market place discussing God and the world. They shield themselves and their kin from all progress.
19.19 They would entirely prefer to forget that this is the 20th century.
Placards
Placards remind us what is forbidden. No photographs, no cigarettes, no women in short trousers.
19.32 Market Today the men have things to do. It is the evening before Eid al Aidah, a sacred Islamic Holy day, and it is the men's duty to provide a suitable roast for the feast. It’s not just the old in Beni Isquen who cling to the traditional values.
19.53 Ahmed is in his mid thirties and an administrative assistant in the city. He follows the letter of Allah's law, which includes not allowing one's likeness to be taken, but lets us film him anyway. His neighbours who do not allow themselves to be filmed. He also doesn’t seem to mind taking us to the mosque with him .
19:29 - 22:02 This is the day they’ll celebrate the feast of Eid Al -Adha. It’s a story of absolute obedience. In Islamic countries they kill
millions of sheep each year to celebrate. It’s equivalent to Christmas. The story goes that Allah wanted to test the obedience of his servant Abraham. So he ordered him to sacrifice his own son. Abraham withstood the test. He really was prepared to slaughter his own son. Allah was so moved by this that he sent a lamb which Abraham was allowed to sacrifice in place of his son. It’s a story from the Old Testament and one which Jews and Christians know well.
21.15 The feast may have become just a family party where a
roast is eaten, for the true Islamists the core of the message is as binding now as it was then. And it is as simple as it is radical: it is absolutely right to obey the word of Allah in all circumstances. So the message of this feast day, especially here in the religious stronghold of Beni - Isquen, is in harmony with the political message of the Popular Front FIS. The Koran is ready with solutions, to all their problems. And their problems today are universal; poverty, hunger, drought. Hardhship they resent as they see a corrupt government squandering their countries wealth.
[Archive footage 22.08 - 23.22]
22.08 - 22.44
Archive 1950s Their Islamic fervour is not new. It caused the French immense frustration during the liberation wars of the fifties. It was this mixture of Islamic identity and national consciousness that enabled the Algerians to overthrow their colonial rulers. The war with the French was merciless, brutal and murderous, almost as bad as the war today.
22:44 -23:22
Archive 1950s The Casbah in Algiers in the 1950’s.
Even then it was a centre of resistance. It was hermetically sealed off from the French troops. Here, in little pockets of resistance, bombs were fashioned. Islamic women smuggled their deadly cargo, in spite of strict controls, out of the old part of the city. They hid the explosives in the bars and cafes like the Milk Bar. The effect of the bombs was devastating. In eight years of war for Independence, over half a million people lost their lives. But most of these were Algerians.
23:22 -24:06 The same Milk Bar today - There’s no trace of the past. It used to be just the French who came here. But now Algerians come and drink. There are no tourists in Algiers any more and the fear of attack is ever present.
This balcony looks over the Milk Bar. It belongs to Zora Drift. Zora was once a planter of bombs, a revolutionary fighting the French colonial authorities. In fact it was she that bombed the milk bar. Today it’s she who is the target of the Islamists.
24:07 -25:05 INTERVIEWEE Drift "When we started, we were aware of the battles in the countryside and in the mountains. We knew that the French were laying bombs and Napalm, even against women and children. We knew, however, that we didn't stand a chance as long as the war stayed centered inland. So we decided to bring the war into the city. French-Algerians, in whose name the war was being fought, were the first to feel the effects.
25:05-25:07 Question?-"How did they capture you?"
25:08-25:28 INTERVIEWEE Drift " I was captured at the same time as our chief, Yasef. It was a bad time, the people were systematically tortured, the methods which the military government were using, were as bad as you can imagine.
25:29-25:27 Question? "When you see today’s murders, the bomb attacks, does it remind you of the situation back then?"
25:38-26:24 INTERVIEWEE Drift "Certainly not, I fundamentally refuse to draw a parallel here. Our war was a war of independence, we were a colony. Even though this was our country, we were treated like second class citizens. Our culture was the culture of Moslem Arabs, but the culture of our enemies was Roman, Judeaic Christian. We knew who our real enemies were. This generation today deceives itself if it sees us as the enemy. If we tear each other apart we can’t create a better future."
26:25-26:46 The revolutionaries of those times have lost the trust
Monument of their children. Memorials are useless if you erect them to yourselves. Independence counts for nothing if there are no houses, no jobs. Half of all Algerians are younger than twenty five years old.
26:47-27:39
Football
Supporters
Yahya Mohammed is in his late twenties, unemployed and a football fan.It’s the weekend and the football team USMA is playing ORAN. USMA isn't just any old club. USMA is the club, as Yahya explains proudly, "With more wins than any other". The abbreviation stands for the Moslem Sports Club of Algeria. It was founded in 1938. It is the first ever Moslem football club.
27:40-28:02 The fans throng in front of the stadium. They haven't anything else to do anyway. Two -thirds of Algeria’s youth are unemployed.Because USMA is playing in a popular part of the city, Bab El Quoed, the police have taken up position with primed Kalashnikovs. Because Bab El Quoed is Islamic territory.
28:05-29:04 Inside the stadium its business as usual. Yahya and his friends are singing in the stands. On the turf below, the home team tries to keeps the opposition from Oran at bay. USMA takes the lead. Then, the anthem of the young, first quiet, then louder "Give me a visa", they sing in the same refrain, "So that we can clear off" . A song which the police chief is unhappy to hear.
29:08 -30:01 While the game goes on, up in the city in the Catholic cathedral, the Sacre Coeur, the Bishop of Algiers lights seven candles. Monsigneur Tessier does this every day, in memory of the seven monks, from the manastary of Tiberhirine who were killed in May by Islamic underground fighters. And more recently, the Bishop has to light another candle, for his fellow colleague, the Bishop of Oran, who they blew to pieces with a bomb. The monastery of Tiberhirine has been here since the nineteenth century. It lies about a hundred kilometres away from Algiers. The monks worked on the land and ran a small chemist’s. They were never missionaries.
30:02-31:00 The streets are closed on the way to the monastery. The whole strip of land is controlled by the G.I.A.- an especially murderous faction of the Islamic underground. The French monks had been kidnapped by Islamists who then murdered them when their demands were not met. Now the place is as good as dead. The reception room is still officially open, but there are no visitors any more. The terrorists were demanding the release of their comrades from prison in France. "We cut their throats because Paris cut the communications cord", is how the kidnappers glibly justify the murders.
31:01-31:36 The monks are not the only victims in the area. This is the police station in Blida. 'Hero Room' is the name given to the room off that of the Commissar.
Photos All the photos and files are of colleagues who have been assassinated in the last few years.
31:37-32:08 In Algiers the situation is no better.
Car Driving
Every step that we take, is taken under massive police protection, twenty four hours a day. At every traffic jam the police jump nervously out of their cars. It could be an ambush. Those were the conditions of our entry into Algeria. 'For our safety', say the authorities, but they also think that this is the best way to censor our reporting.
32:22-33:45 Yousef is visibly discomforted by the massive police Grave Digger contingent.
In Cemetery
Yousef is a grave-digger at the cemetery near the Casbah and has been putting people to rest for decades. The funeral business is in deep crisis. The cemetery is actually full to overflowing, says Yousef. In spite of this Yousef and his twelve colleagues dig graves every day, because the number of corpses has dramatically increased. Where once one person lay, now a whole family rest. Sometimes they have to dig more quickly, because deliveries come which have to be dealt with hastily, without the necessary formalities. And because there are so many corpses they lie in a jumble together, shoulder to shoulder. Dead terrorists, dead police and the ordinary dead.
33.28 Yousef has no more time for explanations.
Yousef digs
Yousef has to continue grave digging. The coffins are waiting.
33:48-34:56 An armoured car rolls into place. Slowly the police Officials in their blue uniforms form a guard of
Funeral honour. The finely attired column is not quite ready. It’s a state funeral. The whole cabinet has turned out. Prime Minister, Minister for Justice, Minister of the Interior, all have come.
34.30 You can only see them all together here in the cemetery. Militant Islamists have shot one of the political guard on a shopping excursion. He wasn’t a nobody. He was a former Minister of the Interior. He belonged to a group called the Eradicators, or Exterminators, who reject every compromise with the Popular Front, and who want to eradicate them, lock stock and barrel. This merciless attitude is popular in government circles. Although now it seems an Exterminator has been exterminated himself.
35:12-36:46 The dead minister’s colleagues take the same hard line as he did in the fight against the F.I.S.
Funeral Service
So today they are showing a united front. Nobody knows who will be the next to be hit, but everyone knows there will be a next. Inevitably and with deadly certainty, because the dialogue which President Zeroual promised when he took office has not taken place. There are no signs that this will change in the foreseeable future. The government relies, as ever, on a militarysolution.
36:05 The plywood coffin is
Coffin the coffin-bearers took it off before and carefully
folded it up. The flag will be used again, for the next funeral. As the government ministers depart they each know that their next time here could be in a coffin. For each it’s life or death but in Algeria death seems to persuade few against further slaughter
36:48-37:46 This is the Algiers district of Cuba.
Lawyer’s office This is the office of lawyer Mohamed Tahri. They are mostly supporters of the Popular Front, and they all share the same problem. Hundreds of people are taken every night by the police or special commandos, tortured and then shot - all without trial.
37.19 First they took her husband, then they came and took both of her sons and destroyed the house, says the old woman, and finally they came and fetched the daughter in-law. Nacera Lazry, mother of six children, disappeared without a trace. Nacera is not unique. The list is endless. In recent years thousands of Algerians have been taken, never to reappear. Missing presumed dead.
Photos of Dead
Like Amina ben Slimone, a human rights worker, killed for investigating the killings.
37:32-39:00 INTERVIEWEE Mother Ben Slimone- "She had the documents with her and wanted to hand them over. In that moment they pounced. They arrested Amina on the thirteenth of December at 8.30 am in Belcourt and took her to Chateau Neuf. There they tortured her,they tortured my daughter, and while torturing her they killed her. Subsequently they buried Amina anonymouslyin the cemetery. We finally found her. I've been several times to the prison and every time they tell me the same-
38.37 The Islamists, the terrorists, abducted your daughter. They think I'm stupid. When I finally got to see the Police Chief he only said-Why do you ask?-your daughter sympathised with the terrorists, therefore she is a terrorist.
39:01-39:31 He too has disappeared. Zaid Boualem, thirty-one years old, Occupation - Technician. The story his mother tells, is the story which many mothers tell. The Military Police arrested him on the twelfth of December 1994 at midday, and since then she has not heard anything from him Zaid Boualem does not officially exist any more.
39:34-40:10 Waiting Room
Mohamed Tahri's waiting room is full. Everyone sitting here has lost someone. A brother, father, son in law, brother in law, sister, husband. It is doubtful whether the lawyer can help. Tahri is one of the few remaining lawyers who even gives support to clients like these . Many of his colleagues are afraid that they will end up like the victims.
40:11-40:34 Victims’ Pictures.
40:35-40:59 Mohamed was nineteen when the police shot him in front of his mother. His brother Noruidin age 17, was murdered in prison. His brother Djamel also died, aged 21,in prison. Two further brothers are still under arrest, and their father Rachid is also in prison. Fatima Boudib was their mother.
41:00-41:27 INTERVIEWEE Fatima Boudib "Since when are people, who are devout, murdered? They arrested my youngest son Noruidin and they said, we want your brother-Mohamed and then they came again and shot Mohamed in front of my eyes. My daughter got away with a beating."
41:28-41:39 INTERVIEWEE Daughter- "They beat me with their machine guns. I was standing there and suddenly they started yelling at me and beating me."
41:40-41:58 INTERVIEWEE Boudib- " They come every day. Sometimes it's the police, sometimes it's the army, and sometimes the men in masks. Noruidin was in prison for a total of twelve days, before they killed him, and then they gave me these papers."
41:59-42:49 A scrap of paper with a name and a few numbers, that's it. With this scrap the relatives of the dead can fetch their loved ones from the morgue and find a corner in the cemetery in which to bury them. Assuming that is, that the authorities haven't already removed the corpses. Terrorists or people who the army and the police suspect as such, have no right to a normal
42.40 grave. At best they can expect a wooden plaque with a number on it to mark their final resting place. Or there are just mounds of earth to show that somewhere underneath people lie buried.
42:54-43:06 Each week, Mohamed Tahri and his colleagues discuss Meeting the difficulties in actually gaining access to those who have been arrested.
43:07-43:34 INTERVIEWEE Lawyer " Many parents come to us to get information about extra-judicial killings. In the beginning the security forces only killed at night, now the people are murdered in broad daylight. It’s by the Secret Service or by the police - it’s as simple as that."
43:35-43:55 Abdelkader Hachani, the leader of the Popular Front, has been held in solitary confinement without a trial for the past five years. The generals are keeping him as a hostage just in case they need him again.
43.57
Stony Desert Is the murderous civil war in Algeria only a prelude for a Holy war between Islam and the West? If it is, it’s rather a battle between the rich and the Islamic poor, corrupt government and devout Muslim underclass
44.36 The battle in Algeria follows thirty years of socialism and military dictatorship. It’s not a fight about religion but rather a fight by the religious. Religious politics of the middle ages their last resort against a corrupt leadership, against an all powerful Western influence, against any enemy.
45.15 CREDITS
Interviewer: Hubert Seipel Cameraman: Jürgen Rapp
Editor: Heike Flaum Producer: Thomas Jimmerthal
Executive Producer: Peter Berg
ENDS
42 mins - August 1996 - Licensees: German speaking broadcasters
- A report by Hubert Seipel for ZDF, Germany
2:00-2:27 Introduction - no voice
2:28-2:52 Title music at sunrise
2:52-3:18 Titles
3:20-4:22 Timimoun - an oasis in the heart of Algeria. Over 1000
kilometres away from the capital of Algiers. Here life runs, as it always has, to the heartbeat of tradition. Liveand let live. What you need, you can buy in the market
place, and what you can’t find in the market place the people of Timimoun can usually do without.
Everything is on public display, living cheek by cheek, sharing everything. It’s the Islamic way and these people would do nothing to change it. North African architecture of red lime, hundreds of years old. In Timimoun the Islamic world is still in order.
4:23-4:34 Anti-terror training, house to house fighting.
4:34-6:00 Anti -terror training in the capital city of Algiers.
The special units train daily. The situation is serious. Because here it’s not just the police and soldiers who are on the hit list. No one is safe. In Algeria a civil war has waged for the last five years ever since the military hindered the assured election success of the Islamists. It is a gruesome bloodbath with no thought for the number of casualties. 60,000 people have been murdered in the past five
years.Death can come without warning, at any time, and above
all when least expected. Snipers can transform peaceful demonstrations into a massacre, as they shoot aimlessly into
the crowd. The battle hinges on bombs, blood and terror.
6:01-7:03 Algiers. An idylic town made for picture postcards. The white city on the Mediterranean. The old houses at the harbour’s edge originated from French colonial times. For 132 years Paris dictated the events of this North African country. Only in 1962 did France finally give up
Algeria, after a long and bloody war of independence.
Now nearly 3 million Algerians live in the capital city. Foreigners have virtually disappeared. The war by Islamic fanatics has forced out the Westerners. For them as much as anyone, it’s a question of life and death. Dozens have been killed. When it comes to a choice between the suitcase and the coffin, most chose the suitcase. The peace in the streets of the capital is deceptive. The foreigners have left but the killing goes on.
7:04-7:52 The Djema el Jedid Mosque in the heart of Algiers, in the Martyr’s square, on the edge of the Casbah,
the old part of the city. When the Imman calls for Friday’s prayers, it is not just the believers who make their pilgrimage to the Mosque. Hours before, the Ninjas, the United police forces, have made the area secure. It all started in Mosques like this one, in the late eighties, when the F.I.S. - the Islamic Popular Front, declared Islam as the solution to their problems. Today no politics can be preached in the mosques, but the views and the memory of the imprisoned leader of the Popular Front are determinedly alive.
8:00-9:41
FIS Celebration Through the words of the Koran is our salvation! The terse cry of the Islamic cause is dominant.
A message Algerians have taken to heart after three decades of bureaucratic socialism and corruption. In December 1991, the first free elections ever, were held in Algeria. The F.I.S. achieved a majority of 48 percent. This was the victory celebration. It was a cry of protest against the military regime, which had driven their country to bankruptcy. Abdelkader Hachani, the young leader of the Popular Front, is the winner of the first ballot. He entreats the army to accept the decision. His followers are jubilant. But already the generals are planning their coup.
Hachani knows that he has won the election, but has not yet got into power. This is Hachani's last official appearance. Before the second ballot the F.I.S. leader is arrested, and with him thousands of his supporters. This was the moment Algeria fell apart
9.22 In the desert the concentration camps are erected.
Power remains entrenched where it always was; in the hands of the Military. They influence everything with a vice like grip which is all encompassing. That’s how it’s been since the founding of the State.
9:42-10:39
Swearing In
The new man named as Head of State by the generals will supposedly give the coup d'etat a democratic appearance. Mohamed Boudiaf is an old man, a hero of the war of independence against France. Boudiaf is President for barely six months. When a new figurehead declares Independence, Boudiaf is murdered.
Funeral
The old man had become a liability to those who have been plundering Algeria since Independence: the military. It was not Islamic fanatics who shot the President, but a Lieutenant in the army.
10:40-11:13 The next President is also one of the 'old
comrades'. This is General Limiane Zeroual - he becomes a civilian President. A third of all Algerians entitled to vote have voted for him since then. So much for the official result of the presidential election of the previous year. The Islamic faction of the popular front were not included. The President had promised dialogue, because he said he wanted reconciliation with his political rivals. But ... he adamently refuses to talk to the F.I.S.
11:15-11:30 By refu he excludes a third of the population. Under Zeroual the civil war goes on. A bomb explodes in the city’s press centre. Again people are killed, people are wounded. Islamists, like the military, don’t set much store by good press.
11:31-12:13 We visit the biggest daily newspaper, 'El Watan', The Fatherland. Over fifty journalists on this paper have been targeted for execution. They don’t know whether it was the Islamists or the military. Neither like being criticised. Not surprisingly, the journalists prefer to remain anonymous. Apart from Omar
Bellhouchet, the chief editor. He barely escaped assassination by radical Moslems. Bellhouchet spends more time in the courtrooms than he does in the editor’s office. The military powerbase does not appreciate the free tone of his newspaper.
12:14-12:55 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- The real breakthrough of the Popular front came because of the way and the means in which they spoke to the people. They simply said to the people-if you are poor, or unable to find a house or a job, it is because the government is corrupt. There was a scandalous misappropriation of funds. the corruption spread through the whole of society and because of this the appeals of the F.I.S. captured the mood of the people.
12:55-13:00 Question- “Why did the military interfere after the elections?”
13:01-13:15 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- "It’s very simply their victory fundamentally threatened the interests of the military, and that explains why they took over power again.”
13:15-13:19 Question- "Would the military give up power freely?"
13:19-13:45 INTERVIEWEE Bellhouchet- "I think this question goes to the heart of the problem, to the heart of the political debate. There are very few countries, with the exception of Portugal and Chile, where the military have handed over power by themselves."
13:46-14.14
The Casbah
The old part of the city of Algiers, a stronghold of the Islamists. The police and the military dare wage only short campaigns in the windy streets of the Casbah. We are the first television crew here for years, and have come despite strong opposition from the authorities.
The government says it has things under control but it’s simply not the case. The number of permanent bodyguards who have been assigned to us since the beginning of the filming is increased in the Casbah from six to forty.
14.39 "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet", calls the old man fearfully as he sees us and our accompanying bodyguards, as though he’s seen the devil himself. Even the old men in the cafe look surprised. They have not seen any strangers here for a long time.
15:01-15:31 At the sight of such a massive police turnout, the butcher at the corner of the street refuses to talk. Especially in front of the camera. His neighbours might think he’s in collusion with the police.In any case the police want to move on quickly. They clear the surrounding streets. They are nervous. Possibly the tailor shop will turn out to be a trap.
15:32-16:00 Across the walls are daubed the slogans of the opposition. All over the place you see the letters F.I.S. the initials of the Popular front. The Casbah is enemy territory. Dozens of policemen have died here, and they aren’t the only ones.
16.03 Here where this rubbish lies, six Russian sailors had their throats cut in recent months.
16:10-16:37 We bump into a military unit on active service. Filming in the Casbah has to stop. It’s too dangerous. The leader of the unit wants us to put our cameras away.
16:32 -17:11 The speaker of the F.I.S., Abdelkarim Addain is in hiding. He believes the military are not able to solve Algeria’s problems.
INTERVIEWEE SPEAKER FIS " I believe that neither we nor the army can win this battle militarily. However, our resistance fight is our last chance for us to gain justice and rights returned to us. The only solution for Algeria is a political, a civil solution."
17:15 -18:03
The Desert
Even if politicians in Algiers can’t agree, the desert has unified the people of Africa’s second largest country. Three quarters of Algeria is desert. The rules of survival are as old as they are simple. Hard work and strong principles. We are travelling to Beni Isquen, the Holy City, a thousand kilometres away. The government bodyguards remain by our side.
18:04 - 19:24
Beni Isquen
Here life is almost as it always was, an untouched relic of the Islamic past. The women- heavily veiled ,are banned from public life. Their life centres on family and children. TV cameras seem to be the last thing that the people of Beni Isquen want in their midst, our body- guards stay close on our heels. It’s a man's world; public life is run by men. Men determine the look of the shops, the streets, men are all you can see and men dictate religious life They sit for hours in the market place discussing God and the world. They shield themselves and their kin from all progress.
19.19 They would entirely prefer to forget that this is the 20th century.
Placards
Placards remind us what is forbidden. No photographs, no cigarettes, no women in short trousers.
19.32 Market Today the men have things to do. It is the evening before Eid al Aidah, a sacred Islamic Holy day, and it is the men's duty to provide a suitable roast for the feast. It’s not just the old in Beni Isquen who cling to the traditional values.
19.53 Ahmed is in his mid thirties and an administrative assistant in the city. He follows the letter of Allah's law, which includes not allowing one's likeness to be taken, but lets us film him anyway. His neighbours who do not allow themselves to be filmed. He also doesn’t seem to mind taking us to the mosque with him .
19:29 - 22:02 This is the day they’ll celebrate the feast of Eid Al -Adha. It’s a story of absolute obedience. In Islamic countries they kill
millions of sheep each year to celebrate. It’s equivalent to Christmas. The story goes that Allah wanted to test the obedience of his servant Abraham. So he ordered him to sacrifice his own son. Abraham withstood the test. He really was prepared to slaughter his own son. Allah was so moved by this that he sent a lamb which Abraham was allowed to sacrifice in place of his son. It’s a story from the Old Testament and one which Jews and Christians know well.
21.15 The feast may have become just a family party where a
roast is eaten, for the true Islamists the core of the message is as binding now as it was then. And it is as simple as it is radical: it is absolutely right to obey the word of Allah in all circumstances. So the message of this feast day, especially here in the religious stronghold of Beni - Isquen, is in harmony with the political message of the Popular Front FIS. The Koran is ready with solutions, to all their problems. And their problems today are universal; poverty, hunger, drought. Hardhship they resent as they see a corrupt government squandering their countries wealth.
[Archive footage 22.08 - 23.22]
22.08 - 22.44
Archive 1950s Their Islamic fervour is not new. It caused the French immense frustration during the liberation wars of the fifties. It was this mixture of Islamic identity and national consciousness that enabled the Algerians to overthrow their colonial rulers. The war with the French was merciless, brutal and murderous, almost as bad as the war today.
22:44 -23:22
Archive 1950s The Casbah in Algiers in the 1950’s.
Even then it was a centre of resistance. It was hermetically sealed off from the French troops. Here, in little pockets of resistance, bombs were fashioned. Islamic women smuggled their deadly cargo, in spite of strict controls, out of the old part of the city. They hid the explosives in the bars and cafes like the Milk Bar. The effect of the bombs was devastating. In eight years of war for Independence, over half a million people lost their lives. But most of these were Algerians.
23:22 -24:06 The same Milk Bar today - There’s no trace of the past. It used to be just the French who came here. But now Algerians come and drink. There are no tourists in Algiers any more and the fear of attack is ever present.
This balcony looks over the Milk Bar. It belongs to Zora Drift. Zora was once a planter of bombs, a revolutionary fighting the French colonial authorities. In fact it was she that bombed the milk bar. Today it’s she who is the target of the Islamists.
24:07 -25:05 INTERVIEWEE Drift "When we started, we were aware of the battles in the countryside and in the mountains. We knew that the French were laying bombs and Napalm, even against women and children. We knew, however, that we didn't stand a chance as long as the war stayed centered inland. So we decided to bring the war into the city. French-Algerians, in whose name the war was being fought, were the first to feel the effects.
25:05-25:07 Question?-"How did they capture you?"
25:08-25:28 INTERVIEWEE Drift " I was captured at the same time as our chief, Yasef. It was a bad time, the people were systematically tortured, the methods which the military government were using, were as bad as you can imagine.
25:29-25:27 Question? "When you see today’s murders, the bomb attacks, does it remind you of the situation back then?"
25:38-26:24 INTERVIEWEE Drift "Certainly not, I fundamentally refuse to draw a parallel here. Our war was a war of independence, we were a colony. Even though this was our country, we were treated like second class citizens. Our culture was the culture of Moslem Arabs, but the culture of our enemies was Roman, Judeaic Christian. We knew who our real enemies were. This generation today deceives itself if it sees us as the enemy. If we tear each other apart we can’t create a better future."
26:25-26:46 The revolutionaries of those times have lost the trust
Monument of their children. Memorials are useless if you erect them to yourselves. Independence counts for nothing if there are no houses, no jobs. Half of all Algerians are younger than twenty five years old.
26:47-27:39
Football
Supporters
Yahya Mohammed is in his late twenties, unemployed and a football fan.It’s the weekend and the football team USMA is playing ORAN. USMA isn't just any old club. USMA is the club, as Yahya explains proudly, "With more wins than any other". The abbreviation stands for the Moslem Sports Club of Algeria. It was founded in 1938. It is the first ever Moslem football club.
27:40-28:02 The fans throng in front of the stadium. They haven't anything else to do anyway. Two -thirds of Algeria’s youth are unemployed.Because USMA is playing in a popular part of the city, Bab El Quoed, the police have taken up position with primed Kalashnikovs. Because Bab El Quoed is Islamic territory.
28:05-29:04 Inside the stadium its business as usual. Yahya and his friends are singing in the stands. On the turf below, the home team tries to keeps the opposition from Oran at bay. USMA takes the lead. Then, the anthem of the young, first quiet, then louder "Give me a visa", they sing in the same refrain, "So that we can clear off" . A song which the police chief is unhappy to hear.
29:08 -30:01 While the game goes on, up in the city in the Catholic cathedral, the Sacre Coeur, the Bishop of Algiers lights seven candles. Monsigneur Tessier does this every day, in memory of the seven monks, from the manastary of Tiberhirine who were killed in May by Islamic underground fighters. And more recently, the Bishop has to light another candle, for his fellow colleague, the Bishop of Oran, who they blew to pieces with a bomb. The monastery of Tiberhirine has been here since the nineteenth century. It lies about a hundred kilometres away from Algiers. The monks worked on the land and ran a small chemist’s. They were never missionaries.
30:02-31:00 The streets are closed on the way to the monastery. The whole strip of land is controlled by the G.I.A.- an especially murderous faction of the Islamic underground. The French monks had been kidnapped by Islamists who then murdered them when their demands were not met. Now the place is as good as dead. The reception room is still officially open, but there are no visitors any more. The terrorists were demanding the release of their comrades from prison in France. "We cut their throats because Paris cut the communications cord", is how the kidnappers glibly justify the murders.
31:01-31:36 The monks are not the only victims in the area. This is the police station in Blida. 'Hero Room' is the name given to the room off that of the Commissar.
Photos All the photos and files are of colleagues who have been assassinated in the last few years.
31:37-32:08 In Algiers the situation is no better.
Car Driving
Every step that we take, is taken under massive police protection, twenty four hours a day. At every traffic jam the police jump nervously out of their cars. It could be an ambush. Those were the conditions of our entry into Algeria. 'For our safety', say the authorities, but they also think that this is the best way to censor our reporting.
32:22-33:45 Yousef is visibly discomforted by the massive police Grave Digger contingent.
In Cemetery
Yousef is a grave-digger at the cemetery near the Casbah and has been putting people to rest for decades. The funeral business is in deep crisis. The cemetery is actually full to overflowing, says Yousef. In spite of this Yousef and his twelve colleagues dig graves every day, because the number of corpses has dramatically increased. Where once one person lay, now a whole family rest. Sometimes they have to dig more quickly, because deliveries come which have to be dealt with hastily, without the necessary formalities. And because there are so many corpses they lie in a jumble together, shoulder to shoulder. Dead terrorists, dead police and the ordinary dead.
33.28 Yousef has no more time for explanations.
Yousef digs
Yousef has to continue grave digging. The coffins are waiting.
33:48-34:56 An armoured car rolls into place. Slowly the police Officials in their blue uniforms form a guard of
Funeral honour. The finely attired column is not quite ready. It’s a state funeral. The whole cabinet has turned out. Prime Minister, Minister for Justice, Minister of the Interior, all have come.
34.30 You can only see them all together here in the cemetery. Militant Islamists have shot one of the political guard on a shopping excursion. He wasn’t a nobody. He was a former Minister of the Interior. He belonged to a group called the Eradicators, or Exterminators, who reject every compromise with the Popular Front, and who want to eradicate them, lock stock and barrel. This merciless attitude is popular in government circles. Although now it seems an Exterminator has been exterminated himself.
35:12-36:46 The dead minister’s colleagues take the same hard line as he did in the fight against the F.I.S.
Funeral Service
So today they are showing a united front. Nobody knows who will be the next to be hit, but everyone knows there will be a next. Inevitably and with deadly certainty, because the dialogue which President Zeroual promised when he took office has not taken place. There are no signs that this will change in the foreseeable future. The government relies, as ever, on a militarysolution.
36:05 The plywood coffin is
Coffin the coffin-bearers took it off before and carefully
folded it up. The flag will be used again, for the next funeral. As the government ministers depart they each know that their next time here could be in a coffin. For each it’s life or death but in Algeria death seems to persuade few against further slaughter
36:48-37:46 This is the Algiers district of Cuba.
Lawyer’s office This is the office of lawyer Mohamed Tahri. They are mostly supporters of the Popular Front, and they all share the same problem. Hundreds of people are taken every night by the police or special commandos, tortured and then shot - all without trial.
37.19 First they took her husband, then they came and took both of her sons and destroyed the house, says the old woman, and finally they came and fetched the daughter in-law. Nacera Lazry, mother of six children, disappeared without a trace. Nacera is not unique. The list is endless. In recent years thousands of Algerians have been taken, never to reappear. Missing presumed dead.
Photos of Dead
Like Amina ben Slimone, a human rights worker, killed for investigating the killings.
37:32-39:00 INTERVIEWEE Mother Ben Slimone- "She had the documents with her and wanted to hand them over. In that moment they pounced. They arrested Amina on the thirteenth of December at 8.30 am in Belcourt and took her to Chateau Neuf. There they tortured her,they tortured my daughter, and while torturing her they killed her. Subsequently they buried Amina anonymouslyin the cemetery. We finally found her. I've been several times to the prison and every time they tell me the same-
38.37 The Islamists, the terrorists, abducted your daughter. They think I'm stupid. When I finally got to see the Police Chief he only said-Why do you ask?-your daughter sympathised with the terrorists, therefore she is a terrorist.
39:01-39:31 He too has disappeared. Zaid Boualem, thirty-one years old, Occupation - Technician. The story his mother tells, is the story which many mothers tell. The Military Police arrested him on the twelfth of December 1994 at midday, and since then she has not heard anything from him Zaid Boualem does not officially exist any more.
39:34-40:10 Waiting Room
Mohamed Tahri's waiting room is full. Everyone sitting here has lost someone. A brother, father, son in law, brother in law, sister, husband. It is doubtful whether the lawyer can help. Tahri is one of the few remaining lawyers who even gives support to clients like these . Many of his colleagues are afraid that they will end up like the victims.
40:11-40:34 Victims’ Pictures.
40:35-40:59 Mohamed was nineteen when the police shot him in front of his mother. His brother Noruidin age 17, was murdered in prison. His brother Djamel also died, aged 21,in prison. Two further brothers are still under arrest, and their father Rachid is also in prison. Fatima Boudib was their mother.
41:00-41:27 INTERVIEWEE Fatima Boudib "Since when are people, who are devout, murdered? They arrested my youngest son Noruidin and they said, we want your brother-Mohamed and then they came again and shot Mohamed in front of my eyes. My daughter got away with a beating."
41:28-41:39 INTERVIEWEE Daughter- "They beat me with their machine guns. I was standing there and suddenly they started yelling at me and beating me."
41:40-41:58 INTERVIEWEE Boudib- " They come every day. Sometimes it's the police, sometimes it's the army, and sometimes the men in masks. Noruidin was in prison for a total of twelve days, before they killed him, and then they gave me these papers."
41:59-42:49 A scrap of paper with a name and a few numbers, that's it. With this scrap the relatives of the dead can fetch their loved ones from the morgue and find a corner in the cemetery in which to bury them. Assuming that is, that the authorities haven't already removed the corpses. Terrorists or people who the army and the police suspect as such, have no right to a normal
42.40 grave. At best they can expect a wooden plaque with a number on it to mark their final resting place. Or there are just mounds of earth to show that somewhere underneath people lie buried.
42:54-43:06 Each week, Mohamed Tahri and his colleagues discuss Meeting the difficulties in actually gaining access to those who have been arrested.
43:07-43:34 INTERVIEWEE Lawyer " Many parents come to us to get information about extra-judicial killings. In the beginning the security forces only killed at night, now the people are murdered in broad daylight. It’s by the Secret Service or by the police - it’s as simple as that."
43:35-43:55 Abdelkader Hachani, the leader of the Popular Front, has been held in solitary confinement without a trial for the past five years. The generals are keeping him as a hostage just in case they need him again.
43.57
Stony Desert Is the murderous civil war in Algeria only a prelude for a Holy war between Islam and the West? If it is, it’s rather a battle between the rich and the Islamic poor, corrupt government and devout Muslim underclass
44.36 The battle in Algeria follows thirty years of socialism and military dictatorship. It’s not a fight about religion but rather a fight by the religious. Religious politics of the middle ages their last resort against a corrupt leadership, against an all powerful Western influence, against any enemy.
45.15 CREDITS
Interviewer: Hubert Seipel Cameraman: Jürgen Rapp
Editor: Heike Flaum Producer: Thomas Jimmerthal
Executive Producer: Peter Berg
ENDS