Auteur: mohand-abane
Date: 2001-08-26 12:51:20
The Rebel is Dead. Long Live the
Martyr!"
Kabyle Mobilization and the Assassination of
Lounès Matoub
Paul A. Silverstein
A Kenza a yelli / D iseflan neghli /
F Lzzayer uzekka / A Kenza a yelli /
Ur tru ara
(O Kenza my daughter / We have sacrificed our lives /
For the Algeria of tomorrow / O Kenza my daughter /
Do not cry)
- "Kenza," written by Lounès Matoub in 1993 for the daughter of assassinated
Kabyle journalist and playwright, Tahar Djaout
On June 25, 1998, approximately 12:30 PM local time, a car driving along a
mountainous road in eastern Algeria was stopped and fired upon by masked gunmen
at a roadblock. The driver died; his three female passengers were wounded. Such
attacks have become a common occurrence in today's Algeria, six years into a bitter
civil war that has claimed more than 75,000 (mainly civilian) lives. The incident
occurred within two hours and three hundred miles of the throat-slitting of 17 men
and women of the village of Hammar El-Hes in the Saïda province of western
Algeria--the third massacre of its kind in only one week. Such events may have
passed unnoticed by an Algerian audience all but inured to false roadblocks and
nail-filled bombs, the daily murder of men, women and children by kalashnikov,
hatchet and knife.
In this case, however, people did take notice. The murdered driver was Lounès
Matoub, a popular singer-songwriter who has been at the forefront of the Berber
cultural movement for the last 20 years. His assassination occurred a week before
Algeria's Arabic-only law--of which he had been an outspoken critic--went into
effect. Within hours, telephone calls and Internet postings spread the news of
Matoub's death to Kabyle populations throughout Algeria and the diaspora.
Thousands of angry mourners crowded around the Mohamed Nédir Hospital in the
regional capital of Tizi-Ouzou where his body had been taken. Yelling
anti-government slogans--"Pouvoir, Assassin" ("Government, Assassins")--the
crowd clearly laid the blame for Matoub's death at the state's feet. In an ensuing
week of riots throughout Kabyle cities and towns, young demonstrators attacked
hundreds of regional government offices and damaged public property, often
clashing with state riot police. By June 28, the day of Matoub's funeral, three more
young men had been killed by police "stray bullets."
As the government and Matoub's family called for calm, the international community
mobilized to address the "situation." On Thursday, July 2, James Rubin, press
secretary for the US State Department, publicly called on the government and
people of Algeria to "reject the use of violence as a political instrument." On the
same day, the United Nations announced that a mission of "eminent personalities" led
by former Portuguese President Manuel Soares would travel to Algeria to "collect
information on the Algerian situation." In spite of these calls for peace, an ambiguous
new player, the Armed Berber Movement (MAB), announced its presence in the
Algerian conflict. In a crude leaflet of unknown origin, the MAB swore to "avenge
the blood" of their fallen comrade.
To grasp the magnitude of popular outrage and the threat of an escalation of the
Algerian conflict that it poses, it is necessary to understand the iconic character of
Matoub's life and death. Matoub had an unparalleled following among the younger
generation of Kabyle activists because his life replicated their triumphs, defeats and
hopes. Born in 1956 in the midst of the Algerian liberation war, he was a product of
the fading francophone secular educational system. Like many of his generation, he
migrated to France in search of work and began his singing career under the
patronage of the established Kabyle singer Idir. His first major concert took place in
April 1980, coinciding with the "Berber Spring"--several weeks of student
demonstrations and general strikes in Kabylia which gave birth to the modern Berber
Cultural Movement (MCB). Wearing an army uniform to show his solidarity with a
Kabylia "at war," Matoub gave a public concert in Kabylia on each subsequent
anniversary of the 1980 events.
While Matoub, unlike many of his comrades, was never arrested for his explicit
support of Kabyle cultural-linguistic rights, his songs--a mix of oriental Cha'abi
musical orchestration with politicized Berber (Tamazight) lyrics--were often banned
from Algerian airwaves. During Algeria's October 1988 urban riots in Algiers (which
forced the legalization of rival political parties), he was shot five times by a policeman
and left for dead. After the outbreak of the civil war in 1992, his name appeared on
GIA (Armed Islamic Group) hit lists with other artists and intellectuals. Despite these
warnings, Matoub remained in Algeria. On September 25, 1994, he was abducted,
held for two weeks in a GIA mountain stronghold, condemned to death and released
only when his MCB supporters threatened "total war" on the Islamists and he vowed
to discontinue his musical career.1 On the eve of his assassination, the "guerrilla
singer" 2 had just finished the final work on his forthcoming, now posthumous album,
"Open Letter To...." If Matoub was the inveterate "rebel" he claimed to be in his
autobiography,3 he was uncompromising in his critique of the government's
Arabization policies, which he claimed destroyed Algeria's identity and engendered
Islamic fundamentalism. The place of Berber language and culture in Algeria has
been fiercely debated since the early nationalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s.
After independence, the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) incorporated the
slogan "Islam is my religion, Algeria is my nation, and Arabic is my language" into its
national charters. In the late 1960s, the FLN began progressively to Arabicize the
state apparatus, the justice system and primary education. The law implemented on
July 5, the 36th anniversary of Algeria's independence, was designed to complete
this process by mandating the exclusive use of Arabic in all domains of public life and
levying hefty fines for all violations.4 The law flies in the face of a number of
concessions--including the creation of an advisory High Amazigh Commission
(HCA) and the recognition of "Amazighité" as an element of Algerian national
identity in the Constitution (ratified November 1996)--made by the Zéroual
government since 1994 when Kabyle students held a year-long school boycott to
protest the exclusion of Tamazight from classrooms.
Matoub was a stalwart supporter of efforts to change the status of Tamazight.
Kabylian activists want their language to become, alongside Arabic, an "official" and
"national" language of Algeria. Kabyle demonstrators have readily linked his
assassination to the new Arabic-only law. Political divisions within the MCB have
been swept aside as the factions associated with the two rival Kabyle political
parties--Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) and Socialist Forces Front
(FFS)5--have jointly petitioned the government to abrogate the new language policy.
Rock-throwing rioters decry the government as the assassin of not only Matoub but
Berber culture in general. In direct defiance of the new law, they have covered
Arabic signs with slogans such as "Assa, Azekka. Tamazight Tella" ("Tamazight,
Today and Tomorrow"). Responding to Matoub's "call to arms" at the end of his
autobiography,6 the Armed Berber Movement has threatened a "traditional"
vendetta against Matoub's killers and the "elimination" of any Algerian attempting to
apply the new law.
While disavowed by the MCB, the violent unrest has forced the government to
soften its position. To date, no punitive action has been taken against institutions or
individuals employing Tamazight or French. Indeed, Zéroual recently publicly
re-affirmed Algeria's commitment to preserving its Berber heritage. As such,
Matoub's struggle for a democratic and secular Algeria, a struggle for which he
declared himself willing to give his life,7 continues after his death. Invoking the
Kabyle "cycle of reproduction," in which the deceased is mythically understood as
resurrected in the birth of the next generation,8 young Kabyles have transformed
Matoub's death into political inspiration, utilizing his assassination to advance their
cultural and linguistic demands.
"The Rebel is dead! Long live the Martyr!"
Paul A. Silverstein is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities,
Barnard College, Columbia University
The author wishes to thank Jane Goodman for her assistance and advice in
preparing this article.
Endnotes
1 Matoub's abduction has been contested by certain commentators, including fellow
Kabyle folk singer Ferhat Mehenni, who heads a rival branch of the MCB. They
believe that the event was a publicity stunt orchestrated by Matoub and his Rally for
Culture and Democracy (RDC) supporters, with the goal of "destabilizing Kabylia
for the benefit of a power clan." In what became known as the "Matoub Affair" in
May 1996, Matoub publicly contested these charges with allegations of his own,
claiming that another singer, Aït Menguellat, who had refused to comment on the
kidnapping, had bought the GIA's protection in order to maintain his residence in
Algeria, to which Aït Menguellat responded by accusing Matoub of "megalomania."
2 "Maquisard de la chanson" is the title given by the Kabyle author Kateb Yacine
to Matoub's generation of political folk singers.
3 Lounès Matoub, Rebelle (Paris: Stock, 1995), pp.16, 40-43.
4 Originally signed on January 16, 1991 by FLN leader Chadli Benjedid and
designed to go into effect on July 5, 1994, the law was frozen by his successor
Mohamed Boudiaf just prior to the latter's assassination.
5 The two parties, generally corresponding to geographic, class and generational
divides within Kabylia, remain opposed over whether to negotiate with Islamists or
not.
6 "I call for resistance.... It is not only with words that one must stop terrorism, but
with arms." (Matoub, p. 279).
7 Ibid., p. 280.
8 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), p. 155.
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