Algerian people celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Hirak, the peaceful uprising

Friday 22 February 2019 is a date that will forever be engraved in gold letters in Algerian history. Indeed, it figures prominently in the preamble of the Constitution adopted on 1 November 2020. On that day, like a hurricane, the Algerian people poured into every town and village in the country to demand the end of a regime that had enslaved, plundered, impoverished and humiliated them too much. 

The date of 22 February is remembered for the simple reason that the capital, which until then had been incredibly passive, suddenly woke up. A few weeks earlier, Khenchela, in the Aurès region, birthplace of the Berber warrior queen Kahina, had kicked off by destroying a giant portrait of General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, Deputy Minister of National Defence and Chief of Army Staff, symbol of a military caste that guards the disgraced temple where Abdelaziz Bouteflika sits, impotent since his stroke in April 2013. 

On 15 February, the town of Kherrata in Lesser Kabylia, which made history with its revolt against the colonial army on 8 May 1945, will be the one to echo Khenchela's call, just as it did in 1954 when the Djurdjura of Kabylia responded to the Aurès of the Chaouias to launch a liberation struggle that would not come to an end until seven and a half years later. In 1962. 

With the conflagration of Algiers and other cities in the country, the peaceful insurrection took on a national dimension. Like the armed revolution of November 1954, it was a long-lasting affair. Every Friday, millions of Algerians from all corners of the country took to the streets to demand the fall of the regime. A fall that would entail Bouteflika's abdication as a candidate for a fifth term, despite his severe physical handicap, and a fourth term during which he was completely absent. 

As if to imitate their elders of the liberation war years, the students chose on Tuesday to come out en masse to make the same demands. They sacrificed an academic year for their commitment to liberate Algeria from the yoke of a government that their own leader, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, defines as a "gang". 

Under strong pressure from the street, this same Gaïd Salah deposed Bouteflika, forcing him to resign. He had done so in response to the president's younger brother, Saïd Bouteflika, the real head of state by proxy, who planned to oust him in order to have a free hand. 

It was a coup d'état against Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was a handful of days away from the end of his mandate, and a real robbery against the will of the people. The army had just taken over the popular revolution, the "hirak", by force. The coup d'etat of the old military man, who was 79 years old at the time, was presented as "a response to the expectations of millions of demonstrators". But the people were not fooled.  

Every Friday, Gaïd Salah heard the demonstrators chanting against him. Never before had a military chief of any army in the world been so humiliated by slogans expressing the people's hatred for one of the symbols of corruption and dictatorship.  

Paradoxically, the army chief of staff was posing as the democrat who fought corruption by settling scores with his peers who had previously overshadowed him. And it was thanks to Saïd Bouteflika, the President's younger brother, that his star began to shine when he was appointed Deputy Minister of National Defence. A political post incompatible with the operational post of army chief of staff, which he occupied only to take advantage of General Mohamed Mediène, alias Tewfik, the immovable head of the secret services for a quarter of a century, who has seen five heads of state pass through his hands (Chadli, Boudiaf, Kafi, Zeroual and Bouteflika). 

On 5 May 2009, in order to win the sympathy of the people and easily regain the "hirak", Gaïd Salah sent his mentor Saïd Bouteflika, his eternal enemy General Tewfik and his successor at the head of the secret services, Athmane Tartag, known as Bachir, to military prison. The next day, Friday 6 May, he was the target of all the slogans of the demonstrators who set him on fire. The people had not swallowed the snake offered by the army chief. 

Having failed to appease the people, the Army Chief of Staff took the hard way. He arrested hundreds of demonstrators, many of them illegally imprisoned. He did not hesitate to trample on and violate the constitution by postponing the presidential elections for seven months. These elections saw the arrival of an unexpected candidate, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Abdelaziz Bouteflika's favourite. He presented himself as the symbol of the new Algeria. However, after retiring in 1991, he was called back by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who put him in charge of several ministries, with a longer stint in Housing.  

Without the support of any political party or civil society association, Tebboune ran as an independent candidate. How did he get the 60,000 sponsors he gathered in at least 28 wilayas (departments)? Who financed his election campaign? It is all a mystery. Moreover, even the head of internal security, appointed to ensure electoral fraud in favour of the former housing minister, worked against him. He had chosen another candidate, the Minister of Communication, Azzedine Mihoubi. He had almost succeeded had it not been for Gaïd Salah's insistence on enthroning his protégé Tebboune when, on the morning of 13 December, he was presented with the election results in favour of Azzedine Mihoubi. 

These results were strongly denounced by the people, who continued their weekly demonstrations and boycotted the elections. Whether they were presidential, parliamentary or the referendum on the constitution. This boycott sealed the definitive rupture between the people and the government, which had become de facto illegitimate. 

The "hirak" continued until March 2021, despite repression, torture and imprisonment. It only came to an end when the Coronavirus pandemic came to the rescue of a regime that wanted nothing more than to see the population forced off the streets.  

With the end of the pandemic, the authorities were better prepared and better armed to prevent the population from taking to the streets again. Dozens of squads of riot police went out early every Friday morning to arrest the first "Hirakists" who came out of their homes. To this day, not a day goes by without "Hirakist" activists being sentenced to prison terms in courts across the country. 

In recent days, attempts have been made to arrest the main "hiraq" figures, who are beginning to call for demonstrations on 22 February. In France, where there is a large diaspora, the regime had opposed the "hirak" activists with elements bribed by the external security services. The French authorities, fearing excesses that would disrupt public order, limited themselves to cancelling the two demonstrations of the two opposing camps. 

In Algeria, to mark the fifth anniversary, voices are being raised everywhere calling on the people to come out en masse to demand "a civilian and not a military state". The authorities are on the prowl and have drawn up a series of scenarios to stem the tide, which threatens to sweep them away just as it swept away the Bouteflika clan and its cronies. But how long will it continue to rob the people of their sovereignty?