MER Article

"Algeria is not for Sale!" Mobilizing Against Fracking in the Sahara

Although Algeria's 2019 Hirak uprising came as a surprise to many, previous instances of popular mobilization, like the impressive protests against fracking that emerged in several southern Algerian cities in 2014 and 2015, not only highlighted the intersection of political and environmental questio

Naoual Belakhdar • 9 min read

Current Analysis

Mourning the Loss of the Berber Troubadour Idir

For nearly 50 years, Idir’s music has resonated deeply with his Kabyle listeners: His lyrics not only recall the power of their ancestral traditions, they also serve as a reminder that Kabyle resilience transcends the ages. His music and his novel musicality completely revolutionized Kabyle song, br

Nabil Boudraa • 7 min read

Covid-19 Coverage

Voices from the Middle East: The Future of the Hirak Movement in Algeria

Is the Algerian state using the COVID-19 crisis and the suspension of weekly street protests as an opportunity to put an end to the Hirak social movement? What is the Hirak doing now? How is the government responding to the pandemic? Muriam Haleh Davis interviews the Algerian journalist Selma Kasmi

Muriam Davis, Selma Kasmi • 7 min read

From Protesta to Hirak to Algeria’s New Revolutionary Moment

But protesters have not gone home, and many have vowed to stay until the underlying structure of rule in Algeria changes and its ruling elite–known as Le Pouvoir (the power)–are expelled from power. The protesters are demanding that an entirely new system–which some call a new revolution–be put in p

Robert Parks, Robert P. Parks • 10 min read

Current Analysis

Protesting Politics in Algeria

Since February 22, 2019, Algerians have mounted massive protests in cities across Algeria. While calling for President Bouteflika’s resignation has been a focal point of demonstrations, the protests are more broadly a political contestation against a byzantine, status-quo politics upheld by an elite

Amir Mohamed Aziz • 10 min read

Current Analysis

From the War of National Liberation to Gentrification

Demonstrations about gentrification in Oran, Algeria are linked to a broader tension over collective versus individual rights to colonial-era properties abandoned by the French, occupied by citizens, nationalized by the state and now subject to varying strategies of individual appropriation in the w

Robert P. Parks • 19 min read

MER Article

Voter Participation and Loud Claim Making in Algeria

Change looms on the horizon in Algeria—change that could well touch the edifice of the country’s framework of governance. In the short term, given the protracted period of low international oil and gas prices, the state is likely to introduce economic reforms that will modify its expenditures on pop

Robert P. Parks • 12 min read

Current Analysis

The Lessons Algeria Can Teach Today's Middle East

As we witness today the escalating horrors across the Middle East—acute insecurity, combined with varying degrees of violence, death and destruction, from Libya and Egypt, to Syria, Iraq and now Yemen, we may want to recall the Algerian experience of the 1990s and consider some lessons to be drawn f

Miriam R. Lowi • 4 min read

MER Article

Postcard from the Algerian Saharan Past

In 1923, a crippling drought pushed the nomads of the Algerian Sahara as far north as Bou-Saada, just 150 miles south of the Mediterranean coast, in search of sustenance. The French colonial authorities worried that fighting would break out between the nomads and locals over scarce water. From their

George R. Trumbull • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Hybrid Loyalties at the World Cup

The World Cup raises nationalist (make that nativist) sentiment to a fever pitch all around the Mediterranean Sea basin. But nowhere does the temperature run higher than in France and Algeria (as Martin Evans discusses at length in this article [http://www.historytoday.com/martin-evans/patriot-games

David McMurray • 6 min read

MER Article

Maxime Rodinson Looks Back

Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004) was a pioneering scholar of Islam and the Middle East, as well as a prominent Marxian public intellectual. A product of classical Orientalist training, he was professor of Old Ethiopic and South Arabian languages at the Sorbonne. His scholarly sensibility was historical-m

Joan Mandell, Joe Stork • 23 min read

Current Analysis

North African Commonalities (part two)

Bill Lawrence is director of the North Africa Project for the International Crisis Group. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Morocco), Fulbright scholar (Tunisia), development consultant (Egypt), State Department official, Arabic translator and filmmaker (Marrakech Inshallah, Moroccans in Boston)

David McMurray • 7 min read