1 00:00:02,680 --> 00:00:09,630 You back them up. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. 2 00:00:10,560 --> 00:00:19,170 My name's Eugene Rogan and as director of the Centre, it's a great pleasure to welcome you to join us for a special celebration tonight. 3 00:00:20,250 --> 00:00:25,620 The Middle East centre often has occasion on a Tuesday evening to invite authors to talk about their books. 4 00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:32,910 We take it as part of our mission to be exposing our community to the very latest word that's come out of scholarship in our field. 5 00:00:33,900 --> 00:00:41,670 But it is a particular celebration where we are celebrating the publication of a new book by one of our own fellows. 6 00:00:42,430 --> 00:00:49,950 And for 19 years now, for nearly 19 years now since he was appointed the inaugural. 7 00:00:51,150 --> 00:01:02,490 Let me get this title straight. His Majesty King Mohammed, the fifth fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies Eagle Michael Willis, 8 00:01:02,490 --> 00:01:05,370 has been at the very heart of the Middle East centre. 9 00:01:06,330 --> 00:01:15,900 He came to us with a remarkable pedigree from his B.A. at Redding, where he had the privilege of studying with a future colleague of Islam, 10 00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:25,650 his M.A. at the NSC, his Ph.D. at Durham, where he worked with our colleague, the legend, Tim Niblock. 11 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:32,620 Michael served for seven years as professor of politics at Howard University in Morocco, 12 00:01:33,100 --> 00:01:37,659 where he learned as much about the politics of Morocco as he was able to teach to his 13 00:01:37,660 --> 00:01:42,069 very fortunate students who've been very loyal to Michael down to the present day. 14 00:01:42,070 --> 00:01:52,840 Many of them still in touch with him as I speak. At the time of his appointment, Michael already had published his first major single authored book, 15 00:01:53,140 --> 00:01:58,990 The Islamist Challenge in Algeria A Political History, which came out in 1997. 16 00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:09,800 Since taking up his Oxford Post, he's produced his magisterial study of politics and power in the Maghreb, Algeria, 17 00:02:09,920 --> 00:02:18,470 Tunisia and Morocco, from independence to the Arab Spring, which came out to much celebration and fanfare in 2012 here in Oxford. 18 00:02:19,130 --> 00:02:30,740 So it is Michael Willis's third single offered volume that we celebrate tonight Algeria, Politics and Society from the Dark Decade to the Hirak. 19 00:02:31,980 --> 00:02:39,870 Few scholars have enjoyed the privilege of studying the politics of Algeria up close from within the country itself. 20 00:02:40,380 --> 00:02:48,720 It is one of the distinguishing features of Michael's work in producing this book that it is based on field work conducted in the country. 21 00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:56,880 Very much in keeping with Michael's approach to political science, to talk to the people and to walk the ground where it happens. 22 00:02:58,170 --> 00:03:00,420 This book, Algeria, is something of a sequel, 23 00:03:00,420 --> 00:03:07,230 bringing up to date the political transformation that has gone on in the country since the dark decade of his first book, 24 00:03:07,470 --> 00:03:15,150 studying the Islamist insurgency that tore government and society in Algeria apart right through the 1990s, 25 00:03:16,140 --> 00:03:22,170 up to the hirak or the popular uprising that continues to challenge politics in Algeria today. 26 00:03:22,740 --> 00:03:26,610 So with that knack for writing the book that we all want to read, 27 00:03:26,910 --> 00:03:35,250 to better understand a country that remains one of the most important countries in the North Africa and Southwest Asia region, 28 00:03:36,030 --> 00:03:38,310 the biggest country in the African continent, 29 00:03:38,670 --> 00:03:47,070 a country whose tortured history and secretive politics have made it a subject of perennial fascination to us all. 30 00:03:47,580 --> 00:03:55,709 Bobby Don If it's not Michael Willis who gets the book out first to share the findings of his research and to get us off to a proper celebration, 31 00:03:55,710 --> 00:04:01,970 I'd like to hand the floor over to Michael Willis. Will you please join me in giving him the biggest say down to his Middle East centre? 32 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:20,910 Welcome. Well, thank you very much, Eugenie, 33 00:04:20,910 --> 00:04:26,969 for an extraordinary kind introduction and for giving us background to some of the things I've done, which has been wonderful. 34 00:04:26,970 --> 00:04:30,240 But thank you very much and thank you for for arranging this. And thank you. 35 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:38,790 I want to thank my colleagues at the Middle East Centre for inviting me to give this talk today and talk about my book quite a bit. 36 00:04:38,790 --> 00:04:44,530 To get my glasses on, we will get a very different talk if it was the way that my own rather shorter I imagine. 37 00:04:45,870 --> 00:04:52,530 And I think having having stood as many of you will know at this podium on a very regular basis, 38 00:04:52,920 --> 00:04:56,999 introducing over the years other people to talk about their books, 39 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:07,120 it therefore feels rather slightly surreal but very nice to be finally talking about my own book, so thank you very much for arranging this. 40 00:05:07,140 --> 00:05:10,620 Invited us to Why have I written this book? 41 00:05:10,950 --> 00:05:14,670 Well, I think we can really break this down into two things. 42 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:21,979 Why are my books written? A book on Algeria and why I written this particular book on Algeria. 43 00:05:21,980 --> 00:05:26,400 And I'll try and say a little bit about both of those things to explain what I've tried to do this book. 44 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:30,959 So why a book on Algeria? Well, 45 00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:35,430 mainly to try and explain something about a country that is perhaps one of the 46 00:05:35,430 --> 00:05:40,530 least known and thus understood in the Middle East and North Africa region. 47 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:48,059 Now, this unfamiliarity extends not just to the general public, but also, I think, to academia, 48 00:05:48,060 --> 00:05:53,370 including people who work on the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa. 49 00:05:54,510 --> 00:05:59,700 Those of us who work on Algeria will be familiar with a rather sort of quizzical 50 00:05:59,700 --> 00:06:03,960 look that crosses people's faces when you tell them that you work on Algeria. 51 00:06:05,180 --> 00:06:08,540 People often remark when you tell them that you work on Algeria, 52 00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:16,550 that they have seen and appreciated the film The Battle of Algiers, and then they usually mumble something about friends Fanon. 53 00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:26,419 And then the look becomes sort of even more quizzical when you tell them that you work as I do in Algeria since independence, 54 00:06:26,420 --> 00:06:28,610 since the end of the French colonial rule. 55 00:06:29,710 --> 00:06:37,330 And then when I say that, it's usually ventured that they say something like, didn't they have some problems there in the 1990? 56 00:06:38,290 --> 00:06:40,750 Yes, they did. And we'll talk a little bit about that. 57 00:06:41,830 --> 00:06:50,920 Now, I think that this sort of sense of unfamiliarity is frequently fed by how Algeria's often described in journalistic coverage of the country, 58 00:06:51,190 --> 00:06:54,580 even by those familiar with Algeria or indeed from Algeria. 59 00:06:55,300 --> 00:07:05,860 The adjective most commonly used I've often found when talking about Algeria's structures or dynamics, especially the elite level, is opaque. 60 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:09,129 Everything is opaque. Opaque this opaque that opacity. 61 00:07:09,130 --> 00:07:14,650 Opacity is the noun from opaque. This is a very regular description. 62 00:07:15,010 --> 00:07:21,339 Tellingly, almost every journalistic account of politics over the last few decades has contained 63 00:07:21,340 --> 00:07:27,700 the word secret in its title The Secret History of the Independent Algeria Bouteflika. 64 00:07:27,700 --> 00:07:31,570 The Secret History. The Secret History of the Fall of Bouteflika. 65 00:07:31,810 --> 00:07:35,500 There's a lot of secret. It's a very secretive country. It's remarkable. 66 00:07:35,510 --> 00:07:39,640 I found even more ones that I didn't even know about. They all have secret somewhere in the title. 67 00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:51,380 Once there is this sense of in Algeria and particularly its politics, are not just little known but also hidden or even somehow sort of unknowable. 68 00:07:52,460 --> 00:08:02,150 Indeed, I was intrigued and and amused to see a comment on social media when my book was released a few months back. 69 00:08:02,210 --> 00:08:05,810 And the comment said, and I quote, I have not read this book, 70 00:08:06,140 --> 00:08:15,620 but it is certain it is going to be full of mistakes and errors because no one really knows what is really happening in Algeria. 71 00:08:16,310 --> 00:08:19,760 And this was from an Algerian. And this is common. 72 00:08:20,030 --> 00:08:23,870 Both of you are familiar with Algeria. Well, some people might say that, well, 73 00:08:23,870 --> 00:08:31,460 perhaps Algeria isn't well known and can remain opaque and secret because maybe it's not really that important. 74 00:08:31,730 --> 00:08:34,070 Now, I obviously would beg to differ. 75 00:08:34,670 --> 00:08:41,960 And I want to give you a few statistics to illustrate why Algeria is important and why it matters to try and find out what is happening there. 76 00:08:43,310 --> 00:08:49,129 So here are a few of the things, just some headlines. Algiers is geographically, I think you mentioned this in his introduction. 77 00:08:49,130 --> 00:08:52,880 Algeria's geographically the largest country in the Middle East and Africa. 78 00:08:53,550 --> 00:09:01,010 It's the 10th largest country in the world. It has the second largest population, 45 million of any Arab. 79 00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:05,300 Please notice the quote marks around Arab from my Amazon friends. 80 00:09:07,580 --> 00:09:11,660 Arab states second only to Egypt in terms of population in the Arab world. 81 00:09:12,320 --> 00:09:18,650 It is not only not small, but also not remote or unconnected is only 100 miles from Europe. 82 00:09:19,340 --> 00:09:24,890 Several million Algerians live in Europe and it is one of the largest armies in Africa. 83 00:09:25,400 --> 00:09:31,460 Crucially, for current times, it is a significant producer of oil and especially gas. 84 00:09:32,900 --> 00:09:39,740 So a major objective reading and writing this book was to try and introduce Algeria and its politics to a broader audience. 85 00:09:39,740 --> 00:09:45,860 This book is really for a broader audience. People who aren't familiar, not many say people who know Algeria well, but those people, again, 86 00:09:46,040 --> 00:09:49,370 to which it's always been unfamiliar for the sort of reasons I've just mentioned, 87 00:09:49,940 --> 00:09:56,020 and therefore somehow I hope it make Algeria a bit less opaque and a bit less secret. 88 00:09:56,030 --> 00:09:57,530 And this is what the objective really has been. 89 00:09:58,990 --> 00:10:06,700 Algeria is not an easy country to do research on or do research in, but because it's yeah, it's difficult. 90 00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:10,090 In my view, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Sometimes. 91 00:10:10,090 --> 00:10:13,240 Often we we end up not doing things because we can't be perfectly. 92 00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:18,220 The book is imperfect, but I wanted to do something to fill this gap about this country. 93 00:10:18,820 --> 00:10:23,680 So that's the first question why book analogy? So second question is why this particular book? 94 00:10:24,280 --> 00:10:28,270 Well, I wanted to write something on more recent history and developments. 95 00:10:28,780 --> 00:10:35,889 I had written my first book and the PhD thesis on which it was based, which Eugene very kindly referred to on Algeria, 96 00:10:35,890 --> 00:10:40,300 which substantially focussed on the tumult and conflicts of the 1990s. 97 00:10:40,660 --> 00:10:43,480 And I therefore wanted to look at the period since then. 98 00:10:44,500 --> 00:10:51,219 I decided to focus on examining politics of the last two decades and not because of the sort of neatness 99 00:10:51,220 --> 00:10:56,710 of it coinciding with the turn of the millennium and the last two first two decades of the 21st century. 100 00:10:57,100 --> 00:11:04,900 But because the end of 1990 and the beginning of 2000 saw three developments in Algeria in the areas of leadership, 101 00:11:05,260 --> 00:11:10,940 economy and society, but in my view, really recast the political landscape in Algeria. 102 00:11:10,940 --> 00:11:13,560 And I want you to look at that. So what were these three things? 103 00:11:13,570 --> 00:11:21,190 Firstly, and most obviously was the election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika to the presidency of Algeria in 1999. 104 00:11:21,400 --> 00:11:28,420 This was a position that he would hold for exactly 20 years until his enforced resignation in April 2019. 105 00:11:30,170 --> 00:11:35,719 Bouteflika had been Algeria's foreign ministry for minister for the 1960s and 1970s and 106 00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:39,800 had been brought back to try and rekindle a sense of optimism and stability of period. 107 00:11:40,130 --> 00:11:45,390 After this, the eighties and nineties of the upheaval. So the first change would really have becomes in his presence. 108 00:11:45,410 --> 00:11:52,370 Second change was the perceptible decline in levels of violence, but have been a major feature of the 1990s. 109 00:11:53,450 --> 00:11:58,999 Algeria had experienced a prolonged and bloody civil conflict in the 1990s between the government 110 00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:05,420 and armed Islamist groups following the cancellation and abandonment of elections in 1992. 111 00:12:05,690 --> 00:12:11,030 But an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, had been poised to win decisively. 112 00:12:12,770 --> 00:12:18,840 The conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives. We're not even entirely sure how many lives produce seven tens of thousands. 113 00:12:18,860 --> 00:12:20,540 By some estimates, hundreds of thousands. 114 00:12:20,810 --> 00:12:28,290 It's difficult to know, but the violence associated with began to define quite perceptively towards the end of a decade, 115 00:12:28,290 --> 00:12:32,719 and especially after the turn of the millennium into the 2000. That was the second factor. 116 00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:37,760 The third factor that changed at the turn around the turn millennium and I believe was probably the most important, 117 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:45,890 was the steady climb in the international price of oil that began in the second half of 1999 and continued for well over a decade, 118 00:12:46,130 --> 00:12:51,500 increasing fivefold over time. So the revenues increased in, prices went up five times. 119 00:12:51,920 --> 00:12:56,330 This transformed, as you can imagine, the state finances of the Algerian state, 120 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:00,710 which had long been heavily dependent on the country's oil and gas resources. 121 00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:08,870 Collectively, these three developments leadership, society and the economy allowed Algiers to make something of a break. 122 00:13:08,870 --> 00:13:14,960 With the tumult and turmoil of the previous two decades, the eighties and nineties, which had witnessed financial crisis, 123 00:13:15,260 --> 00:13:21,650 uncertain change in political leadership, and most prominently, of course, that this the bloody civil war was the conflict. 124 00:13:22,490 --> 00:13:30,950 I therefore really intended this book to be both in an account, an analysis of this reconfigured political landscape, 125 00:13:31,190 --> 00:13:35,530 notably about how a country emerges from a serious civil conflict. 126 00:13:35,570 --> 00:13:40,910 A lot of that is in the book is trying to explain what happens in a civil war in this way. 127 00:13:41,780 --> 00:13:48,350 To this end, three chapters in the book are dedicated to these themes of leadership, economics and the decline of the armed conflict. 128 00:13:48,920 --> 00:13:55,520 Chapter two looks at elite politics examining the impact of Bouteflika's presidency from 1999, 129 00:13:55,790 --> 00:13:59,270 notably his battles to assert himself against the military leadership, 130 00:13:59,540 --> 00:14:04,130 the leadership, the intelligence services which a security service which is very important in Algeria. 131 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:12,890 Chapter three examines the decline of it occurred in the 2000s and the levels of violence associated with civil conflict of the 1990. 132 00:14:13,850 --> 00:14:19,520 It looks at how a ceasefire and amnesty were negotiated with a less hard line of Iran's Islamist groups. 133 00:14:20,090 --> 00:14:25,669 It explains the initiatives taken by President Bouteflika to bring an end to the conflict through the granting 134 00:14:25,670 --> 00:14:32,000 of these amnesties and also legal protection was granted to members of the Army and security services. 135 00:14:32,510 --> 00:14:38,270 Finally, Chapter four addresses have a steady rise in the international oil price affected Algerian politics, 136 00:14:38,570 --> 00:14:43,310 not only through providing the state with resources to rebuild the country and dampen opposition, 137 00:14:43,700 --> 00:14:50,420 but also how it drew in a new class of businessmen into elite circles and deepened institutional corruption. 138 00:14:50,530 --> 00:14:54,560 Much later on, which became a real major feature of this period. 139 00:14:55,160 --> 00:14:59,840 Now the relevance of understanding this period was further sharpens by mark 140 00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:03,770 changes that came towards the middle of the second decade of a new millennium, 141 00:15:03,770 --> 00:15:05,600 about roughly eight or nine years ago. 142 00:15:06,620 --> 00:15:15,680 In two of these three big defining things and features, but as a start and much of a course of what I've outlined now. 143 00:15:15,950 --> 00:15:19,310 The first of these changes came in the field of leadership. 144 00:15:19,970 --> 00:15:21,440 In April 2013, 145 00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:29,420 President Bouteflika suffered a major stroke but physically incapacitated him as president to the point that he was rarely seen in public thereafter. 146 00:15:30,140 --> 00:15:33,290 Despite official assertions that he retained his mental faculties, 147 00:15:33,650 --> 00:15:38,900 his physical decline and advancing age indicated that his presidency was approaching 148 00:15:38,900 --> 00:15:43,670 its end despite his securing of a full five year term in office in 2014. 149 00:15:44,090 --> 00:15:47,630 He didn't appear in the campaign. The only thing appeared to was to vote. 150 00:15:47,930 --> 00:15:50,240 That's the only thing he did in the entirety of the campaign. 151 00:15:51,560 --> 00:15:57,410 Secondly, and this is the other change and a much more long consequence was the fall in the international price of oil, 152 00:15:57,710 --> 00:16:00,110 but occurred from the latter part of 2014, 153 00:16:00,620 --> 00:16:09,020 losing more than 70% of its value in just 18 months, although the long years of high prices meant that Algeria had a sizeable financial cushion. 154 00:16:09,410 --> 00:16:16,640 You didn't need to be an economist to see that in considering existing patterns of consumption and public spending. 155 00:16:16,940 --> 00:16:21,080 Algeria would eat through its reserves in just a few short years. 156 00:16:21,740 --> 00:16:26,840 Now this place, the huge dark cloud, not over just over the Algerian state finances, 157 00:16:27,200 --> 00:16:33,470 but also future social and political stability over previous decade and a half. 158 00:16:33,710 --> 00:16:45,410 There had been vast increases in state spending on salaries, job creation, housing and infrastructure funded by revenues from the oil and gas bonanza. 159 00:16:46,340 --> 00:16:52,130 These had made a significant contribution to the improved social and political space Algeria enjoyed over this period. 160 00:16:52,670 --> 00:16:58,040 Now a scaling back of the spending stood to potentially reverse these effects. 161 00:16:58,460 --> 00:17:06,710 And furthermore, and quite naturally, there were even fears the financial crisis might undermine the third pillar of this period that I just write, 162 00:17:07,100 --> 00:17:10,160 which was the decline of the civil conflict. 163 00:17:10,730 --> 00:17:17,670 State spending had played a. Play a role directly and indirectly in securing the cease fire of members of the armed Islamist groups. 164 00:17:18,300 --> 00:17:24,240 Generous official compensation had also helped soothe the resentment of victims and their 165 00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:30,300 families and all sides of the conflict and therefore some resurgence in these animosities. 166 00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:37,560 But a cause for conflict of the nineties might be expected from the ending of this sort of palliative of state aid, 167 00:17:37,830 --> 00:17:44,280 especially given that no systematic public recognition county of a conflict had ever occurred. 168 00:17:44,730 --> 00:17:48,330 There was no peace and justice commission in Algeria. 169 00:17:48,330 --> 00:17:53,910 The participants were simply amnestied and paid off on all sides and told to forget about it and move on. 170 00:17:54,720 --> 00:17:58,700 One phrase would often use and it wasn't amnesty, it was amnesia with all. 171 00:17:59,340 --> 00:18:02,450 It works better than French amnesia, and amnesty works better in France. 172 00:18:02,460 --> 00:18:08,400 But the purpose, therefore, this book was such when it began in 2015, 173 00:18:08,400 --> 00:18:12,510 was to attempt not to explain, only to explain the count for the preceding period, 174 00:18:13,050 --> 00:18:20,610 but also develop some perspective on what the consequences of a new shifts would be with these changes. 175 00:18:22,070 --> 00:18:30,530 By the time the first draft of this book was finished in late 2018, no major shifts were yet detectable in the Algerian political landscape. 176 00:18:30,950 --> 00:18:34,940 Bouteflika was still alive and president, though he was rarely seen in public. 177 00:18:35,360 --> 00:18:38,180 Social and political peace and stability seemed to be holding. 178 00:18:38,420 --> 00:18:46,130 But the sense of political drift, absent leadership and impending financial crisis, indicated that this soon might fray. 179 00:18:47,180 --> 00:18:53,660 Now, the weakness of a formal political opposition and organised civil society, something I explored in detail in Chapter five of the book, 180 00:18:54,080 --> 00:19:00,770 indicated that opposition and civil society would not be able to marshal the anger and frustration of the ordinary population, 181 00:19:00,770 --> 00:19:05,510 but would inevitably develop, especially when the financial crisis began to be felt. 182 00:19:06,050 --> 00:19:11,990 It seemed likely then, and this is my view at the time, that this discontent would soon manifest itself in unstructured, 183 00:19:12,500 --> 00:19:18,560 even anarchic and violent ways, starting locally in a pattern but already being seen in developing across the country. 184 00:19:20,510 --> 00:19:26,360 Now, interestingly, popular unhappiness with the situation did indeed begin to express itself, 185 00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:32,780 but somewhat earlier than expected and in a way that few had foreseen or predicted. 186 00:19:33,860 --> 00:19:43,070 The emergence and flourishing of a mass protest across the country in late February 2019 seemed to take everyone by surprise. 187 00:19:44,060 --> 00:19:49,879 I remember receiving a phone call from a friend participating in a seminar and he was had his mobile phone marching 188 00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:55,070 down the main street in Algiers in a mass protest and was the first thing I knew about and I had no idea about it. 189 00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:05,330 But protest was specifically sparked by the announcement on ten February that Bouteflika would seek a fifth consecutive term as president in office. 190 00:20:05,780 --> 00:20:16,130 And what were initially local protests rapidly grew, culminating in thousands coming onto the streets of Algiers on Friday, the 22nd of February 2019. 191 00:20:17,360 --> 00:20:22,030 The organisation of these events came not from the opposition parties or established associations, 192 00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:30,600 but rather initially from social media before developing their own structure and links through the weekly protests themselves largely leaderless. 193 00:20:30,620 --> 00:20:34,430 They drew their support from across the ideological spectrum. 194 00:20:35,270 --> 00:20:40,280 Their central demands, expressed unambiguously through banners and chanted slogans, 195 00:20:40,700 --> 00:20:45,020 were first the departure of Bouteflika through denying him a fifth term in office 196 00:20:45,410 --> 00:20:49,100 and removal of a wider political leadership and reform of the whole system. 197 00:20:49,730 --> 00:20:54,740 If we see if we see here, this was when he wanted a fifth term and this became unfit. 198 00:20:55,100 --> 00:20:58,370 And then there was a proposal. It was quite interesting. This dialogue began. 199 00:20:58,700 --> 00:21:01,880 There was a brief proposal that Bouteflika would stay a little bit longer. 200 00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:05,600 So everybody came back with four, four plus. 201 00:21:05,810 --> 00:21:07,190 With that ruled out in sight. 202 00:21:07,460 --> 00:21:12,950 And every time it was as, yes, they ought to be longer, they would change it and say each time, no, this is not happening. 203 00:21:16,050 --> 00:21:20,670 It was also reformed. The whole political system I really like this from this is right down to the ascent of Algiers. 204 00:21:20,670 --> 00:21:27,899 If you know anything about this says in French general clean up and it's non-recyclable rubbish and it's all 205 00:21:27,900 --> 00:21:33,930 the politicians in the in the wheelie bin but they're saying all of these should not be non-recyclable, 206 00:21:33,930 --> 00:21:36,180 rubbish needs to go in the bins. There's a big clean up there. 207 00:21:37,590 --> 00:21:45,090 The humour in the protest was wonderful, as in often in these cases, pressure from the protest movement, which became known as the Hirak. 208 00:21:45,330 --> 00:21:50,160 The movement in Arabic led to Bouteflika's resignation as president, the member dismissal, 209 00:21:50,460 --> 00:21:57,780 and frequently the arrest and prosecution imprisonment of most of his key supporters and ministers over the months that followed. 210 00:21:58,050 --> 00:22:05,970 Here is two big prominent promises Ahmadiyya and that parliament itself would be by basically kept on changing positions all way through. 211 00:22:05,970 --> 00:22:11,850 And that's certainly most of the initial terms. I think up they were they went up to about 40 years each but kept on coming in and out of court. 212 00:22:11,850 --> 00:22:16,740 But these were bouteflika's two most important party prime ministers. 213 00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:27,239 Now, even more astonishing to our outside observers in particular was the near complete absence of any violence from the protest. 214 00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:31,920 Despite their enormous size and diversity now, the diverse, 215 00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:39,630 peaceful and civic minded character of the protests evoked unavoidable parallels to the early days of a mass protest movements. 216 00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:47,760 But it flourished elsewhere across the Midlands, the North Africa, on which now became known as the Arab Spring or the Arab uprisings of 2011. 217 00:22:49,010 --> 00:22:53,239 But interestingly, in 2011, it had very little echo in Alger. 218 00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:56,150 And I'll come back to that in a moment about why that was the case. 219 00:22:57,170 --> 00:23:04,760 However, Algeria's movement soon distinguished itself in many ways from other earlier movements in the region by sustaining these trends over weeks, 220 00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,970 months and eventually even years that followed. 221 00:23:09,620 --> 00:23:17,629 Now, such achievement was remarkable in its own right in being able to keep going, but was of special note in the country but certainly beyond. 222 00:23:17,630 --> 00:23:22,790 Algeria was was widely known for a history marked by violence and bloodshed. 223 00:23:23,510 --> 00:23:27,440 Such a history encompassed not just the period of the civil conflict of the 1990s, 224 00:23:27,770 --> 00:23:33,470 but the long struggle for independence from France, which had cost hundreds of thousands of lives. 225 00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:41,450 This had led to a widespread trend in many journalistic and sadly, even some academic narratives of Algerian history, 226 00:23:41,660 --> 00:23:46,840 as one characterised by nearly unremitting bloodletting and conflict. 227 00:23:47,150 --> 00:23:52,490 But it consequently forged a population that was somehow inherently predisposed 228 00:23:52,490 --> 00:23:56,540 to acts of violence when confronted with political crises and problems. 229 00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:04,530 Now such narratives not only ignore the very particular and different contexts of the 1990, 230 00:24:04,530 --> 00:24:10,740 the 1950s, but also betray a dubious stereotyping and a centralising of a whole society. 231 00:24:11,730 --> 00:24:17,760 Now, the enduring peaceful nature of a protest movement that emerged in 2019 and continued for over a year. 232 00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,510 In the first instance, this was not a much longer than in the Arab Spring. 233 00:24:21,510 --> 00:24:26,100 Incidences showed really how flawed these narratives of inherent violence were. 234 00:24:26,790 --> 00:24:33,900 Moreover, it was no accident or coincidence, but rather an undeniably explicit and conscious choice of those participating in marches 235 00:24:34,260 --> 00:24:38,640 who made the peaceful nature of their protests one of their two defining features, 236 00:24:38,790 --> 00:24:43,020 alongside the commitment to just keep on coming out every week and keep on protesting. 237 00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:51,520 Now the conscious choice of the participants in the hirak to actively reject and move away from a past experience, 238 00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:54,610 but had been widely assumed to somehow define them, 239 00:24:55,060 --> 00:25:00,520 confirm their agency in the face of historical legacies that they were supposedly powerless to resist. 240 00:25:01,390 --> 00:25:07,060 Indeed, the enduring commitment to a fully peaceful protest became a badge of honour for the movement. 241 00:25:07,090 --> 00:25:10,000 These were enormous protests. I think they were completely peaceful. 242 00:25:10,870 --> 00:25:16,870 Algerians bitter experience of bloodshed and turmoil, rather than making them more prone to repeating it, 243 00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:24,640 had created a resolve to avoid at all costs, really, a conclusion that should not be as surprising as it was to so many people. 244 00:25:25,990 --> 00:25:31,030 Now, in addition to the Pacific Nature, another feature of the protests that took people, 245 00:25:31,030 --> 00:25:35,980 especially outside observers, by surprise was the fact that they actually happened at all. 246 00:25:37,120 --> 00:25:46,750 Now, Algeria, after all, had been markedly, as I mentioned, unaffected by the events of 2011 being the only country on the North African littoral, 247 00:25:47,290 --> 00:25:51,819 but had seen the emergence of a mass protest movement of a sort that had shaken, 248 00:25:51,820 --> 00:25:58,570 insecure the departures of the leaders of the countries to the Middle East, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. 249 00:25:59,260 --> 00:26:07,780 Even Morocco, further west, supposedly renowned for its stability, saw much larger and sustained protests than Algeria in this period. 250 00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:13,630 Why then, having been strikingly unaffected by the uprisings of 2011, 251 00:26:14,230 --> 00:26:22,750 did Algeria then produce a mass movement just eight years later that bore significant similarity to those that occurred across the region, 252 00:26:23,020 --> 00:26:26,620 but in many cases was larger and ultimately more sustained. 253 00:26:27,700 --> 00:26:28,450 Now, at this point, 254 00:26:28,450 --> 00:26:39,969 I find myself pausing slightly because the question of why did Algeria see mass protests of 2019 in 2019 and not in 2011 is an essay question, 255 00:26:39,970 --> 00:26:47,680 but I now set pretty well every term as a student. So anyone who's taking my taking my option or future terms, I'll see you. 256 00:26:48,190 --> 00:26:53,740 Lean forward and take notes. I won't give you back, but I'll give you some hints and tips if I see this reproduced on there. 257 00:26:53,750 --> 00:26:57,130 But I'll be flattered. But however I will address it. 258 00:26:58,180 --> 00:27:03,160 I think a number of things changed in the eight intervening years between 2011 and 2019. 259 00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,520 First time around with leadership in 2011. 260 00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:12,310 In contrast to most of its neighbours, there was a noticeable lack of popular antipathy towards the head of state. 261 00:27:13,030 --> 00:27:21,340 Bouteflika was widely viewed as having helped bring significant peace and prosperity to Algeria in the wake of a civil conflict in 2011. 262 00:27:21,610 --> 00:27:29,020 Although suffering worsening health, Bhutto was still able to appear in public, speak and provide visible leadership. 263 00:27:29,830 --> 00:27:35,560 However, the stroke he suffered in 2013 significantly debilitated him, 264 00:27:36,250 --> 00:27:44,559 necessitating regular periods in hospitals in Europe and restricting him to only occasional public appearances in a wheelchair, 265 00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:47,620 looking frail and often blank and confused. 266 00:27:49,390 --> 00:27:51,670 However, his continuation in Morocco, 267 00:27:52,150 --> 00:27:59,410 visible debilitation and diminishing number of parents in public led to questions as to whether he could really still be in control of the country. 268 00:27:59,830 --> 00:28:03,310 And if he wasn't a man who was actually running the country. 269 00:28:05,300 --> 00:28:13,100 The announcement that Bouteflika would seek a fifth presidential term thus ignited fears that this arrangement was continuing. 270 00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:20,670 Many Algerians felt humiliated by the fact they didn't know who was actually leading their country and 271 00:28:20,670 --> 00:28:24,960 that their former president was not able to appear in public and meet foreign leaders and visitors. 272 00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:33,270 Moreover, and this is something that really, Robert was increasingly represented at national events by giant framed photos of himself. 273 00:28:34,050 --> 00:28:37,800 Some interesting enough, they chose ones where he looked younger and better looking than when he was later on. 274 00:28:38,190 --> 00:28:40,710 And this was actually he would appear when president was supposed to appear. 275 00:28:41,220 --> 00:28:47,610 And in Algeria, this was a sense of feeling of humiliation that they would you know, 276 00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:52,650 how James would say, what are we, North Korea, that we have some veneration of pictures of leaders? 277 00:28:53,640 --> 00:29:00,360 Oh, God forbid. Are we Morocco? That was the other way around where you have people where you have pictures of your leaders south, everywhere. 278 00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:10,110 It did, however, leave the. I want to show you one of my Algerian cartoonists in the newspapers some of the best and funniest cartoonists. 279 00:29:10,260 --> 00:29:14,430 And I wish I could I could spend the whole evening showing you cartoons. But they did some wonderful. 280 00:29:14,590 --> 00:29:19,710 But this particular one, when he put it because of the comparing just in portraits, is look at this one. 281 00:29:20,100 --> 00:29:24,990 Now, this is when Bouteflika tired. This is when the ban Saleh was the interim president. 282 00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,410 And it says in French, Ben Stiller takes the place of Bouteflika. 283 00:29:28,860 --> 00:29:32,520 So he's the pace if president is to be in a in a portrait, in a frame. 284 00:29:32,940 --> 00:29:38,099 And if you notice, he's standing on a general because the army helped him into power and he's getting into the picture frame, 285 00:29:38,100 --> 00:29:41,300 because that's some place that the president is. 286 00:29:41,310 --> 00:29:49,380 You don't have a normal president. You have to beat your enemy in a fright. Corruption was another big thing that changed between 2011 and 2019. 287 00:29:49,470 --> 00:29:50,940 Like most countries in the region, 288 00:29:50,940 --> 00:29:57,870 Algeria had a long problem with corruption and almost inevitable result of the same people being in power for extended periods of time. 289 00:29:58,770 --> 00:30:05,310 However, what was slightly different in Algeria was that corruption had increased, notably in the years up to 2019. 290 00:30:05,910 --> 00:30:13,140 One of the main factors why President Bouteflika had been popular and how he was able to help Algeria come for trauma of the 1990s, 291 00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:18,150 was the substantial rise in the international price of oil soon after he became president. 292 00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:26,010 This gave a government substantial resources, as we saw, to rebuild Algeria, construct houses and give jobs and subsidies to ordinary Algerians. 293 00:30:26,310 --> 00:30:31,470 However, the availability of large amounts of money led to increasingly corrupt practices. 294 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:36,799 Wealthy businessman who funded Bouteflika's successive re-election campaigns were awarded 295 00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:41,200 with huge government contracts and became key figures in the presidential entourage. 296 00:30:41,970 --> 00:30:46,980 Although enough money was spent to improve a lot of ordinary Algerians and effectively eradicate poverty. 297 00:30:47,370 --> 00:30:52,409 Knowledge. But huge amounts of money were being stolen angered ordinary Algerians, 298 00:30:52,410 --> 00:30:56,250 especially as government spending began to be reduced with a fall in the price of oil. 299 00:30:56,580 --> 00:31:00,210 The current president doing an anti-corruption drive, announced this week. 300 00:31:00,540 --> 00:31:09,390 But in somebody's private house in the town in the east, they been found, I think it was something like 5500. 301 00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:15,770 But in terms of dollars, that's about 30, $36 billion worth, 302 00:31:16,050 --> 00:31:19,890 I think was owner of a mattress or in the wardrobe or something that they found in somebody's house. 303 00:31:19,890 --> 00:31:23,640 The thought of it probably not billion. It was billion, wasn't it? 304 00:31:23,790 --> 00:31:27,510 I think it was, Bill. It was billion. It was I'll that this was exaggerated. 305 00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:33,270 We're talking a lot of money, huge amount to get out. But yeah, I, I had to get an accusation as well. 306 00:31:36,060 --> 00:31:42,990 But that's just to give you an evidence of it. It was therefore not surprising that denunciations of corruption and calls for 307 00:31:43,020 --> 00:31:46,670 departure of specific major businessmen featured on banners and chants of protesters. 308 00:31:47,310 --> 00:31:50,400 That's the equivalent of what we call in Britain, the CBI. That Alec dead? 309 00:31:50,970 --> 00:31:54,299 Yes. Again, he's in he's portraying now. This is what the Algerians are saying. We don't have a president. 310 00:31:54,300 --> 00:31:57,450 We just threw him in the portrait. And these are the prime ministers and that's them. 311 00:31:57,750 --> 00:32:00,660 That's the president's brother as well. The family have got in on the act. 312 00:32:01,050 --> 00:32:10,920 Another factor that explains why things changed between 2011 and 2019 was a very Algerian desire to not be in step with the rest of the region, 313 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,090 which sounds rather strange, but it's, I think, matters Algerians. 314 00:32:15,090 --> 00:32:22,290 And I don't want to. I've got Algerian friends here to to generalise have a very huge sense of national pride and exceptionalism, 315 00:32:22,770 --> 00:32:27,149 the belief that they are different from other countries. And although all countries have it to a certain degree, 316 00:32:27,150 --> 00:32:32,310 it is particularly strong in Algeria because it comes from a feeling of pride and distinction 317 00:32:32,490 --> 00:32:37,799 in having won their independence from France and created their own country for an uprising, 318 00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:41,520 but against the odds and achieved at the cost of great bloodshed. 319 00:32:42,180 --> 00:32:48,180 This has led most prominently to Algerians being hugely resistant to any form of foreign intervention or interference, 320 00:32:48,510 --> 00:32:53,700 and also a belief that Algeria has forged its own path irrespective of other states. 321 00:32:54,390 --> 00:32:59,190 But when popular protests erupted across the rest of the Arab world in early 2011, 322 00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:04,110 there was resistance among Algerians to the idea that they should merely follow their neighbours. 323 00:33:04,710 --> 00:33:09,540 In fact, Algerians were almost universal in asserting that we were not joining the Arab 324 00:33:09,540 --> 00:33:13,380 Spring because they had already had their own Arab Spring more than 20 years. 325 00:33:14,050 --> 00:33:22,060 When Algerians had come on to the streets in October 1988, leading to a partial opening up the system, but was ultimately just shut down in 1992. 326 00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:32,500 Now, this was not empty rhetoric, the tale of popular protests, political openings, Islamist electoral victories and regime repression. 327 00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:37,240 But unfolded in the late 1980s and early nineties in Algeria was one that had 328 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:41,889 remarkable echoes in the events that unfolded across the region from 2011, 329 00:33:41,890 --> 00:33:43,990 especially in Syria and Egypt. 330 00:33:44,950 --> 00:33:51,879 In this way, Algerians like to think that the 2019 protests were not a late Arab Spring, as some commentators like to argue. 331 00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:59,680 But perhaps Algeria leading the way in a second wave of popular protests against the authoritarian and undemocratic regime. 332 00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:10,579 So what became of the hirak and what are now the prospects for Algeria now that Iraq was able to sustain its weekly mass 333 00:34:10,580 --> 00:34:17,630 protests for over a year and only suspended them voluntarily in March 2020 with the arrival of the COVID pandemic. 334 00:34:18,170 --> 00:34:21,140 They were successfully revived in February 2021, 335 00:34:21,470 --> 00:34:29,030 but by the spring had been obliged to spend once again in response to renewed surge in the pandemic, but also due to pressure from the authorities. 336 00:34:29,390 --> 00:34:33,650 A campaign of arrests, intimidation and repression of the activists. 337 00:34:33,950 --> 00:34:37,340 Together with a huge police presence on the streets of Algiers, 338 00:34:37,670 --> 00:34:44,450 Algeria's main cities each Friday has ensured that Hirak has been unable to revive for a third time. 339 00:34:44,750 --> 00:34:49,790 This is a picture taken on one of the Fridays after its council. This is what one of the main street I'm trying to work out. 340 00:34:49,790 --> 00:34:56,240 Exactly. What I'm trying to work out is if this isn't Mohamed promises it or not, or this it is to do [INAUDIBLE]. 341 00:34:56,270 --> 00:34:59,870 I wonder if to do one of the main street and this is every Friday. 342 00:35:00,230 --> 00:35:03,640 You wouldn't really want to go out and protest without mounted police there. And this is a live event. 343 00:35:03,650 --> 00:35:04,459 This is every Friday. 344 00:35:04,460 --> 00:35:10,900 I think it's still most of you know, it's still turning out these sort of these sort of numbers of police to stop people coming out to protest. 345 00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:14,270 Just basically huge numbers of police on the streets. Not anymore. 346 00:35:14,630 --> 00:35:22,940 Not anymore. But this is in 2020, 2021, although a significant presence of my friends have been showing me still on the streets in many places. 347 00:35:24,390 --> 00:35:27,570 What happens next in Algeria is really beyond the scope of my book. 348 00:35:27,570 --> 00:35:30,240 My book is really trying to understand these these first two decades. 349 00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:36,390 But what I can do is give some pointers based on what I learned through writing this book about Algeria and its politics. 350 00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:41,610 First, it's the remarkable resilience of the regime and political system in Algeria, 351 00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:48,390 surviving a series of serious challenges since its independence in the wake of a departure from the French in 1962. 352 00:35:48,690 --> 00:35:53,670 An enormous financial crisis in the 1980s. Electoral victories by opposition parties. 353 00:35:53,850 --> 00:35:56,820 A large scale insurrection and most recently, a mass protest movement. 354 00:35:57,420 --> 00:36:04,650 One of the facets of this, and part of the explanation of it was the ability to change the regime senior personnel, 355 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:10,830 including those at the very top with minimal impact on the structures and exercise of power. 356 00:36:11,430 --> 00:36:15,960 The Hirak movement, for example, was able to secure the departure of President Bouteflika in 29, 357 00:36:16,260 --> 00:36:21,030 followed by every single senior figure in the regime but had surrounded him for two decades. 358 00:36:21,450 --> 00:36:26,459 However, these figures were swiftly replaced from within the system with hardly an external, 359 00:36:26,460 --> 00:36:29,460 perceptible ripple in the control operation of the system. 360 00:36:29,700 --> 00:36:38,370 So you basically replace the entire leadership with new people, and it was with hardly a beat with this, which is quite unusual and quite remarkable. 361 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:43,440 The new in reality recycled figures who have now assumed the formal positions 362 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:48,440 of power in the system show no real intent to replace or meaningful reform 363 00:36:48,450 --> 00:36:52,739 the undemocratic and sclerotic power structures that they have inherited and 364 00:36:52,740 --> 00:36:56,160 which have become an established feature of the Algerian political system. 365 00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,020 In my view, and I set this out in chapter two of the book. 366 00:37:01,590 --> 00:37:06,210 This phenomenon illustrates one of the characteristics features of the Algerian political elite, 367 00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:13,140 the lack of the importance of of individual figures and leaders, in contrast to much of the rest of the Arab world. 368 00:37:13,470 --> 00:37:18,210 Power seems not to reside in a few specific, sometimes individual hands, 369 00:37:18,570 --> 00:37:23,790 but in a set of institutional actors for change by leading figures with seeming ease. 370 00:37:24,330 --> 00:37:28,590 These institutions include the army, the intelligence services and the administration, 371 00:37:29,070 --> 00:37:33,240 without one institution ever predominating for any sustained period, 372 00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:38,640 resulting in what one observer, Thomas Serres, has called a cartel arrangement of political power. 373 00:37:39,750 --> 00:37:45,780 How are these structures the profoundly unsuited and unprepared to deal with the future challenges that Algeria faces? 374 00:37:47,750 --> 00:37:53,120 The emerging consequences of these challenges, which we've been talking about, particularly on the economic level, 375 00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:58,580 strongly suggest that even though the Hirak movement ultimately seems to have been defeated by the state, 376 00:37:59,090 --> 00:38:06,920 another popular movement will take its place as Algerians seek to secure a better leadership for the state and a better life for themselves. 377 00:38:07,610 --> 00:38:15,230 Now, in Chapter six of a book, I've tried to get a sense of what ordinary Algerians impulsively just want to give the go. 378 00:38:15,950 --> 00:38:17,090 Think about politics. 379 00:38:17,270 --> 00:38:23,990 And I did it through combing through survey data I could find in cross-references with ethnography and my own interviews and experience. 380 00:38:25,130 --> 00:38:31,160 And one noticeable feature that seemed to come through consistently in surveys of a period that I've been 381 00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:36,680 examining was that despite a deep sense of cynicism and alienation from formal political processes, 382 00:38:37,220 --> 00:38:43,040 Algeria seemed to retain a more profound optimism about the efficacy of political action more generally. 383 00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:47,660 There was still a belief that things could change and things could be improved for the better. 384 00:38:47,810 --> 00:38:49,970 Which, given everything has happened, is quite remarkable. 385 00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:56,870 And I think this demonstrates what I think is the profound and unusual resilience of the ordinary population, the resilience state, 386 00:38:56,870 --> 00:39:04,550 the resilience of the population even more than the regime, which is not only survived the huge trials and traumas of the past century, 387 00:39:04,820 --> 00:39:12,230 but is constantly surprised outside observers going back to the liberation struggle against the French, which it should not be forgotten, 388 00:39:12,380 --> 00:39:19,010 was launched with few hopes of success against one of the major world power continuing through 389 00:39:19,010 --> 00:39:24,220 the emergence out of a brutal civil war and expressing itself peacefully in the right. 390 00:39:24,890 --> 00:39:30,680 How do we explain this resilience of the population to keep on coming back and keep on believing? 391 00:39:31,250 --> 00:39:34,490 Well, I think it lies in a very clear belief held by most Algerians. 392 00:39:34,820 --> 00:39:38,840 But Algeria is a country that belongs to them, the ordinary people. 393 00:39:39,410 --> 00:39:43,190 The great slogan of the liberation struggle was One hero, the people. 394 00:39:43,190 --> 00:39:52,380 Again, no individual heroes. And it helps explain why individual leaders are so unimportant in Algeria in Chapter seven of a book. 395 00:39:52,910 --> 00:39:59,720 I look at some of the distinctive subregions of Algeria that have experienced significant political upheaval in the last two decades. 396 00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:08,390 Kabylie the Mosab and the Sahara and South. Now, one striking thing about these very distinctive regions is despite being very distinct, 397 00:40:08,510 --> 00:40:13,760 that despite having upheavals and frequently enormous unhappiness with the central government, 398 00:40:14,240 --> 00:40:20,600 there are virtually no calls for separation or autonomy from the Algerian state. 399 00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:28,530 Rather, there are demands for greater involvement, an integration of state that pays them more heed, notably through greater democracy accountability. 400 00:40:28,550 --> 00:40:33,200 These regions don't say we need to separate. They said, you need to give us more. We need to give us as part of Algeria. 401 00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:34,250 You need to do more for us. 402 00:40:35,180 --> 00:40:43,160 Indeed, I think it is this fervent belief among Algerians more generally, but a better governments and better rulers are what is owed to them. 403 00:40:43,730 --> 00:40:48,980 After the sacrifices of the anti-colonial struggle of the 1950s and the horrors of the 1990s, 404 00:40:49,220 --> 00:40:57,470 that may continue to surprise outside observers and may one can only hope one day will bear full fruit. 405 00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:09,020 Thank you very much. Michael, thank you so much. 406 00:41:09,030 --> 00:41:12,510 You've given us all a foretaste of the pleasures of reading your book, 407 00:41:13,110 --> 00:41:18,599 and you've really told us the gaps with the book is filling in terms of our understanding and the analysis of 408 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:24,390 the transformations that Algeria has experienced in the course of the first two decades of the 21st century. 409 00:41:25,110 --> 00:41:31,740 And I think your explanations for why a hit that happens in 2019, did it happen in 2011? 410 00:41:32,790 --> 00:41:39,029 It's been fun to be your colleague through this period because you've shared the jokes with us and you take tremendous pleasure in the 411 00:41:39,030 --> 00:41:46,080 deployment of humour by the crowds mobilised to challenge what they saw as the absurdity of a political order with a dead man at its head. 412 00:41:47,550 --> 00:41:53,730 And it's wonderful that they didn't deploy anything sharper than their wit in the demonstrations that they mobilised. 413 00:41:54,870 --> 00:42:04,590 So I guess the question that I have for you, in light of Algeria's history of fighting conflicts for independence or against Islamist insurgency, 414 00:42:05,310 --> 00:42:13,640 is what accounts for the fact that the regime itself did not turn to violence, that you had a peaceful response from demonstrators is remarkable. 415 00:42:13,650 --> 00:42:17,610 But we saw that the Arab Spring, too, and in many of the Arab Spring uprisings, 416 00:42:17,610 --> 00:42:21,510 it was the moment when the government turned on the people that the people took up arms. 417 00:42:21,810 --> 00:42:27,720 And what's quite striking in Algeria is that what had once been a very ferocious two world. 418 00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,300 Do not deploy as violence is time. Why do you think that is? 419 00:42:32,660 --> 00:42:39,020 I think that's a that's a very interesting question. And I think in many ways it learned lessons like the hereafter. 420 00:42:39,350 --> 00:42:46,760 But where does this end up? The initial response since the 1990 had been to try and stop any protests. 421 00:42:47,090 --> 00:42:52,640 But I think in there's been a ban on any street protests in in Turkey, in Algiers. 422 00:42:52,970 --> 00:42:56,980 And the way they dealt with it was just flooding the streets, as you saw with police. 423 00:42:56,990 --> 00:43:00,400 The people couldn't do anything. So in one sense, you don't have to be violent if you can't if you. 424 00:43:00,430 --> 00:43:04,370 So it's like kettling, like we do in British in policing here. 425 00:43:05,030 --> 00:43:08,750 And I think they did that and they they thought they could they could exhaust the hirak. 426 00:43:08,810 --> 00:43:15,470 They wouldn't have to be violent. We've just run out of steam eventually with COVID and gradually a bit more repression did run out of steam. 427 00:43:15,770 --> 00:43:22,190 But what we're seeing now is the violence of a regime, a much lower level, but equally insidious ways. 428 00:43:22,460 --> 00:43:27,940 The numbers of arrests of people involved in the hirak and activists of people online. 429 00:43:29,110 --> 00:43:35,749 They I saw a commentator say recently that the regime isn't worried about the street anymore. 430 00:43:35,750 --> 00:43:42,320 It's worried about Facebook. And it's going through. Somebody said to me, you used to get in trouble for posting things on Facebook. 431 00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:47,390 Then you got in problem for retweeting things on Facebook and now you're getting arrested for liking things like that. 432 00:43:47,790 --> 00:43:51,919 Yeah, that's the sort of level and we're talking huge scale and it's really quite 433 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:55,100 depressing what's happening at the moment with the repression of lots of parties. 434 00:43:55,250 --> 00:44:01,100 The main human rights organisation which is really held, held aloft in light of liberty in Algeria, 435 00:44:01,370 --> 00:44:08,240 is now being tried to be officially broken up by the regime. So the violence that happened subtly and effectively against the Iraqi model. 436 00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:13,010 But it is notable it didn't use it. It tried in the face of the crowd, resisted it. 437 00:44:13,730 --> 00:44:21,559 So you did have this rather interesting standoff that the but the absence of the Hirak movement obviously convinced that if they went to violence, 438 00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:25,520 then it would just unravel again. But it didn't. And the regime also looked at as well. 439 00:44:25,530 --> 00:44:28,579 Exactly. Which is it? Was it learned the lesson of the 1980s? Well, 440 00:44:28,580 --> 00:44:32,960 I think the whole thing involved and this is the this is the thing I hope that influences 441 00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:36,469 you get this situation in the nineties where you get extreme levels of violence, 442 00:44:36,470 --> 00:44:42,200 both from the state and from the opposition. And then you get this peaceful movement where both of the people said, 443 00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:47,509 let's just let this let us know where this went nowhere on this and trying some of it. 444 00:44:47,510 --> 00:44:50,899 Right. But ultimately, the violence of of people being beaten up and tortured, 445 00:44:50,900 --> 00:44:56,470 the police stations and prisons and being arrested, how this sort of violence is now happening, which is very depressing. 446 00:44:57,530 --> 00:45:03,640 Michael, what are the things that you're seeing with your work on this book is? Of course, you did get to Algeria to do fieldwork in the country. 447 00:45:04,190 --> 00:45:11,990 Could you just show us a little brief reflection on what it is like to be doing political research in Algeria and from your experiences? 448 00:45:12,260 --> 00:45:19,850 Yes, it was it was great. I hadn't been able to because of my my Ph.D. I haven't been able to go to our job and do fieldwork in the 1990. 449 00:45:19,940 --> 00:45:25,130 It was the height of the violence, but I was able to go this time, so I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity. 450 00:45:25,430 --> 00:45:28,580 As I said, Algeria isn't an easy country to do research in. 451 00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,580 All these are is difficult. Getting a visa. 452 00:45:31,590 --> 00:45:35,930 I can no longer get a visa to go to Algeria and that's just been a restriction on a lot of people getting it. 453 00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,800 I was lucky. I had support. I was able to get a visa and got four or five to go. 454 00:45:40,550 --> 00:45:45,230 It's not particularly easy. It's not a culture where people are open to open up. 455 00:45:45,230 --> 00:45:50,730 And I'd worked on the other two countries to work on Morocco and Tunisia, where you you would you get a lot done much more quickly. 456 00:45:50,750 --> 00:45:56,130 People would talk to you. I mean, I it is a common feature, particularly for foreigners settling into Algeria. 457 00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:59,180 You start to get a bit paranoid because you don't get very far. 458 00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,840 People don't talk to you can't make interviews, you don't get much out. 459 00:46:03,380 --> 00:46:07,790 And I began to think that there was something wrong with me as a researcher. After two weeks, I was finding very little out. 460 00:46:08,090 --> 00:46:14,000 And then I started talking to other researchers and I saw experience for my PhD students, my Dphil students, and it was very similar. 461 00:46:14,630 --> 00:46:18,970 But you just you carry on. And I found that it was difficult because you go and see the opposition. 462 00:46:18,980 --> 00:46:22,130 The opposition say what I think is a bit bad and we're really unhappy about it. 463 00:46:22,490 --> 00:46:25,700 And you go and see people who like the regime. They said, well, she's not too bad, such quite good. 464 00:46:26,030 --> 00:46:29,040 And that was more difficult, but it was face. 465 00:46:29,090 --> 00:46:34,130 No, what I used it to do was just have ordinary conversations with people, get a sense of how people felt about things. 466 00:46:34,670 --> 00:46:39,920 The little clip in the book from conversations I've had with people just illustrating how things work. 467 00:46:40,460 --> 00:46:47,030 I also used it to try and gather. A big thing was to try and gather locally produced material written by Algerians, 468 00:46:47,030 --> 00:46:51,409 things that weren't being available outside Algeria but could actually get out. 469 00:46:51,410 --> 00:46:57,860 And to be able to use that, I think is very important to general moving this culture to move away from people who aren't connected. 470 00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:03,500 I wanted to get local voices coming through and get us to try and create a picture, a picture of that. 471 00:47:03,500 --> 00:47:09,590 So it wasn't easy to do research there. But as I said, just because it wasn't, it wasn't particularly easy to do it. 472 00:47:09,590 --> 00:47:13,250 And I still found all sorts of interesting things out from my time there. 473 00:47:13,430 --> 00:47:15,229 Oh, I think it made a huge difference to the work. 474 00:47:15,230 --> 00:47:19,340 And I think it's going to have it's going to ring true for the effort you made to go and do your work there. 475 00:47:21,020 --> 00:47:27,990 Well, Michael, and bringing this evening to a close, I speak on behalf of all of your colleagues in the media, etc., and I'm pleased to see. 476 00:47:28,410 --> 00:47:32,180 To those here tonight. Congratulations. You've done this proud. 477 00:47:32,190 --> 00:47:36,630 Thank you. Not only do you put a movie centre on the map in North African studies, 478 00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,470 but as you've just done again with this book, you really put us at the top of the game. 479 00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:47,430 So we're all delighted with thrilled to see the book out in print and for encouraging such an amazing audience to show up tonight. 480 00:47:47,430 --> 00:47:51,160 And so, dear audience, in a word to you, celebrate. 481 00:47:51,810 --> 00:47:56,970 Come on upstairs and join us in a drink to continue the conversation with Michael. 482 00:47:57,000 --> 00:48:04,050 Grab a copy of the book for yourself and just mix and mingle around in this beautiful building so we can all enjoy tonight as a very special night. 483 00:48:04,500 --> 00:48:17,459 Now, please join me back in. Thank you very much for coming. 484 00:48:17,460 --> 00:48:18,720 I really appreciate it. Thank you.