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Algeria on the brink as 60 die in rioting By Patrick Bishop

ALGERIA was sliding towards chaos as the authorities fought to contain a widening anti-government revolt yesterday.

Marches have been banned in the capital Algiers to try to defuse a crisis that is alarming the secretive military-political oligarchy controlling the country. The unrest first erupted two months ago in the Berber region of Kabylia, east of Algiers, after a man of 19 was killed in a police station. Since then there have been almost daily riots in which at least eighty people have been killed by the security forces.

Anger towards the government, which is struggling with an Islamic uprising, is spreading beyond the Berber heartland and has begun to bubble elsewhere in the country. The prime minister Ali Benflis went on television on Monday night, after a day of clashes between demonstrators and police which left seven people dead and nearly 120 wounded, to appeal for calm.

He said: "I am calling on all Algerians to save our beloved country and the wealth of the people." But the leadership of the Kabylia Co-ordination of Clans and Villages, which has promoted the protests, accused the Pouvoir, as the ruling group is popularly known, of provoking the riots.

Traditional Berber agitation for language and cultural rights have been reinforced by demands for the withdrawal of the gendarmerie and the punishment of those responsible for the deaths. The demonstrations, however, have also vented a rage that extends beyond Kabylia against a government which is widely seen as corrupt, repressive and incompetent.

The latest riots included ominous signs that discontented youths from the half of the population aged under 25 could join the fray. A juvenile mob roamed through the eastern port of Annaba, smashing and looting shops which they said belonged to members of the Pouvoir, in a reminder of the upheavals of 1988 which marked the start of Algeria's 13 years of violence and decline.

Jobless and hopeless, they have taken to chanting when confronting security forces: "You can't kill us because we are already dead." More than a third of the country is unemployed and overcrowding and deprivation are endemic. A Western diplomat said: "This is a manifestation of the frustration that is felt by a whole group of people, not just one culture."

The unrest reached Algiers last week when hundreds of thousands arrived from Kabylia to be joined by locals for a demonstration which ended in violent clashes with security forces. The authorities' response has been to hint at dialogue while launching repressive sweeps in Kabylia. The government has tightened libel and defamation laws to muzzle the opposition press, whose journalists say that banks and post offices in Kabylia have been closed to try to wear down resistance by economic means.

The unrest has resuscitated rumours that President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika will be forced out by the generals. He was elected two years ago promising social and economic improvement and an end to a nine-year civil war that has killed more than 100,000,

Diplomats and analysts are sceptical. "Who will they find to replace him?" said one observer. "Anyway, whoever they got would be just the same." The Pouvoir faces trouble on three fronts. Its relations with the Berbers worsen daily. It seems to be rapidly losing the support of the Arab majority, and in the meantime the conflict with the Islamists shows no sign of abating.

On Sunday 20 soldiers were killed in an ambush in the Chelf region west of Algiers in a bloody reminder that the war goes on.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001