The Long Revolution of the Global South. Samir Amin
USFP rallied to the “Green March” bloc, as is well known. Concerning the Western Sahara, my personal viewpoint is not widely shared. Invited by leftist Mauritanians to explain my view of the problem, they suggested that I go say these things “at a higher level,” using their connections with the government. The Mauritanian president thus invited me to meet with him. My thesis was simple. We all, I said, are in favor of Arab unity. Then why create an additional Arab state, the Sahrawi Republic? Would this not be tantamount to allowing a small local ruling class to monopolize the earnings from phosphate exports? And if this region has to become part of an existing Arab country, is not Mauritania the best choice? The tribes of Western Sahara are the same ones found in Mauritania. Should not an attempt be made to convince Polisario and the Mauritanian government to make a joint declaration to this effect? And at the same time, why not go further and propose a confederation of Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania, and begin serious negotiations to provide substance to that proposition? I am sure that the peoples of the three countries would be more than favorable, even enthusiastic. The Mauritanian president seemed to be convinced by these views, although they came too late since the Madrid accords had already been signed, in which Morocco and Mauritania agreed to share the Western Sahara. Some time later, the president perished in an airplane accident. To others, I said: Why don’t parties, organizations, and important persons on the left in the three countries adopt this common position? They would be understood and would gain the support of their peoples. None of them would do it. Why?
The Algerian government at the time harbored extravagant expansionist ambitions. It treated its recent Mauritanian ally like a semi-colony. I heard Algerian leaders with my own ears refer to the Mauritanian president as the “wali [custodian/helper] of Nouakchott.” I laid into them. “Pardon me? Is that how you believe you will achieve Arab unity? Moreover, the Algerian model of which you are so proud is beginning to run out of steam. Is the question of the Western Sahara the major problem for the Algerian people today? Is it not the main priority of the Algerian left [because to cap it all, the statements mentioned above were made by important figures in the Algerian left] to have a closer look at this model and step up efforts to resolve the impasses in which it resulted?”
I never made any public declarations or wrote anything about this affair because I thought that would only throw oil on the fire as long as the leftist forces in the three countries refused to assume their responsibility. But this example illustrates two realities, in my opinion. The first is that the Algerian left had decided to align itself unreservedly with Boumediennism, of which it was no more than one wing. It subsequently had to pay dearly when the regime’s legitimacy eroded and then collapsed, to the immediate advantage of the Islamists. In the eyes of the working classes, the Algerian Communist Party did not appear to have a project different from that of the FLN. The second is that the division among Arabs is not only or even mainly the result of manipulation by outside forces. It is the product of the established ruling classes and the opposing forces, of their egotistical ambitions and narrow-minded views. I subsequently visited Morocco and Algeria on multiple occasions. I must say that I have unfortunately not seen any palpable progress made in any of these areas. There has been no self-critique.
Here is another interesting story. I was invited to Rabat around 1974 to “assist” the Secretaries-General of the Arab League and the OAU in negotiating some difficult issues poisoning Arab-African relations. The OAU had thought of me as a gesture of trust, recognizing that I was no chauvinist and that I placed a united front of Third World countries confronting imperialism above their internal conflicts. I therefore accepted. I listened to each Secretary-General make his case on Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, and Saharan Niger. I presented my personal analyses of these questions in the most neutral language possible, emphasizing the common interests of the peoples concerned and principles for solutions that could strengthen their united front. What I proposed, in short, was: formal respect for borders, democratization of all the countries concerned, complete respect for the rights of minorities, and rejection of any call for outside help in settling these problems. I would like to point out that neither one of the two Secretaries-General had thought of the question of democratization. I stressed the point by saying that, in my humble opinion, none of these conflicts would find a solution without democracy. I am not sure whether I was convincing or that I had any influence, even in the smallest amount, on their future behavior.
Algeria
I visited Algeria several times during the 1960s at the invitation either of the Ministry of Planning (notably by Minister Abdallah Khoja and his assistant Remili, later by Minister Hidouci) or universities (by the rector Ahmad Mahiou). Always the same topic: they wanted my opinion on the Plan. I must say that I saw nothing there that went beyond nationalist populism. That was not always easy to explain. The Algerian leadership—many friends among them—was justifiably proud of the glorious struggle led by the FLN. But this pride diminished their critical sense, above all when—this was the case for many—they had only participated in this struggle from afar.
Three major problems worried me. First problem: the attraction of the poorly studied Soviet model of industrialization—with few connections to agricultural development, the primary priority—financed by petroleum revenues, designed by pure technocrats indifferent to the political and social dimensions of choices, poorly justified, among other things, by the theory of “industrializing industries” (a rationalization of the Soviet model that Mao’s work “On the Ten Major Relationships” had, in my opinion, destroyed from top to bottom). Second problem: the rapid erosion of vague democratic impulses and the growing rhetoric against the “utopia of self-management,” etc. The 1965 Charter appeared to everyone—including the left of the old Communist Party—to be perfect. For me it only reproduced, often to the letter, the Nasserism of 1961. But to say too much would be mistaken for “Egyptian arrogance.” Third problem: the fragility of the Algerian nation. For me, that was obvious. Compared to Morocco and Tunisia, which were states before colonization, the Algerian nation was produced by the war of liberation. There is no shame in that. But its legitimacy was consequently fragile and linked to the legitimacy of the FLN government, the populist limitations of which I could clearly see. Subsequent events, with the war unleashed by the Islamists, have unfortunately proved me right. With the collapse of the FLN, basic national solidarity is now called into question. But there again, to say too much might be taken as a reminder of French colonialist rhetoric in which the Algerian nation did not exist. The language question, often cited, is only the tip of the iceberg. In this area, the Algerian government’s choice was disastrous: French for the elites, open to modernity and technology, and Arabic for the people, with education handed to the masters of old Koranic schools and supervised by no-less-backward graduates of al-Azhar. (It is a myth that the French wanted to extirpate Islam and thus fought against the Koranic schools. The French maintained the sharia for the native inhabitants; the FLN had attempted to attenuate its scope. By demanding complete respect for the sharia, the Islamists quite simply want everyone to return to the colonial-era practice!) The result is well known. It happened that I was able to assess the extent of the disaster when, invited to make a lecture at a university, I noted that the “Arabic speakers” did not know how to express anything that even remotely made any sense. Words followed one another without any concern for the meaning they carried.
In 1972, IDEP organized one of its large seminars in Algiers. The authorities, both state and university, welcomed us with great pomp by allowing us to use the National Assembly building, whereupon I commented that, for once, it would act as a forum for real debates!
Following this seminar, President Houari Boumedienne received me. It was a long meeting; two hours, I believe. He wanted to talk above all about international and Arab politics, criticizing the Rogers Plan for the Middle East, outlining his view of a “new international economic order” (to which the Non-Aligned Movement gave concrete expression in the declaration of 1974). I was convinced on these areas and attempted to move the discussion toward Algeria’s internal problems and my three reasons for worry. This visibly bothered the president, despite my diplomacy—I accused no one, cited no name, took the precaution of first speaking of the “positive aspects” and the “objective difficulties” before broaching the sensitive points. There was nothing in what he told me that was not already known from public speeches. I left convinced that the Algerian government would not find a way out of the foreseeable impasses and would end