THE KABYLIE: RELUCTANT REFUGE FOR TERRORISTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 ALGIERS 000984

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/12/2018
TAGS: PGOV PTER KISL AG
SUBJECT: THE KABYLIE: RELUCTANT REFUGE FOR TERRORISTS

REF: A. ALGIERS 918

B. ALGIERS 467

C. ALGIERS 317

D. 2007 ALGIERS 1618

E. ALGIERS 523 (AND PREVIOUS)

F. 2007 ALGIERS 1749

Classified By: DCM Thomas F. Daughton; reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: A string of suicide bombings just east of
Algiers (ref A) has brought renewed focus on the Kabylie
mountains and the disproportionate amount of terrorist
activity occurring there. A fiercely independent center of
Berber culture and tradition for centuries, the Kabylie
region has served as a perennial refuge for
anti-establishment guerrillas who take advantage of its
relative lawlessness and rugged terrain. Today the romance
of the "maquis" -- the mountainous areas from which Algerian
"freedom fighters" launched the struggle for independence
against the French -- has faded, as the Kabyle people grow
tired and angry at the Islamic extremists in their midst.
Today's terrorists exploit the same lawless maquis that
generations did before them, but they are largely new
arrivals and opportunists whose principles the Kabyles do not
share and whose objectives they do not understand. The
Kabyles helped expel the national Gendarmerie from the region
in 2001, feeling neglected by a central government they
believed was more interested in oppressing the Berber culture
than in providing for their security. Today they suffer from
that resulting power vacuum, feeling victimized by the
terrorists who take cover in the hills around their homes.
The result is an appetite for the central government to
return and restore order to the Kabylie, most visibly
demonstrated by the highest voter turnout among young people
of any region of the country in the November 2007 local
elections. But some have charged openly that the government
is simply not nimble enough to take advantage of this
opportunity, lacking the competence to redeploy the
Gendarmerie and army to retake areas of the Kabylie they
secured in the late 1990s but have since lost. END SUMMARY.

TAKING THE MAQUIS
--------------


2. (U) The foot of the Kabylie mountain range lies less than
50 kilometers east of Algiers and is the traditional home of
Kabyle Berber tribes. The geographic difficulty in
controlling the rugged mountainous zone is amplified by the
fierce independent streak of the Kabyle character, which has
spread throughout the Algerian population writ large -- so
much so that the expression "taking the maquis" has come to
mean stubborn, resolute rejection in common parlance. For
centuries, the Kabylie has afforded excellent cover to
fighters of various stripes, most recently Algerians fighting
French colonial forces in the 1950s and Algerian Islamists
attacking government forces in the 1990s. In the last few
years, the region has been the focal point of sustained,
often vicious violence. On September 4 the independent
French daily El Watan listed 18 significant terrorist
incidents in the Kabylie region between October 12, 2006 and
August 28, 2008, including kidnappings, ambushes and
bombings. Because of the security situation, virtually no
American diplomat has ventured overland to the Kabylie
capital of Tizi Ouzou in more than 15 years. Recently, a
Dutch diplomat made the journey to conduct a consular visit
to a Tizi Ouzou jail. In addition to the armed escorts
normally assigned to a diplomatic delegation traveling by
road outside the capital, the government insisted that he
travel in an armored personnel carrier. In spite of that,
many of our local employees (LES) who hail from the region
traverse the only highway between Algiers and Tizi Ouzou on a
regular basis.

ROADBLOCKS AND ROADSIDE RECONNAISSANCE
--------------


3. (U) One of our local staff who has worked at the Embassy
for 17 years recently made several trips to his home village
of Beni Yenni in the mountains southeast of Tizi Ouzou. He
observed that the drive to the village should take
approximately two hours under normal road conditions, but
usually takes at least three. He must pass an average of ten

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military and police checkpoints between Algiers and Tizi
Ouzou, and traffic congestion is exacerbated because a
portion of the highway is also the main trucking route
between Algiers and the eastern commercial hubs of Setif and
Constantine. The drive back is no better: the father of a
youth program participant who traveled to Algiers on July 31
for a reception at the Embassy told us it took him nearly
three hours to drive from just outside Tizi Ouzou -- barely
100 kilometers.


4. (C) According to our staff the drive is usually
uneventful, if slow. However, our colleague from Beni Yenni
told us that whenever the army launches offensives against
terrorist camps in the mountains, it can be seen massing
troops in fields along the highway several days in advance,
and the staging of ambulances always signals the start of
operations. He saw such a mobilization during a return drive
to Algiers on August 7. The day before, the military
encircled Tizi Ouzou and several nearby villages and warned
residents to be alert for military operations in the coming
days. Upon returning to Algiers, our colleague called his
father, a retired Algerian official, who told him he could
see and hear helicopters in an area not far away near a
river, along with the sounds of battle. Press sources the
following day reported that the military had raided a
terrorist camp and killed a dozen terrorists.

THE KABYLE: FIGHTING FOR CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE
-------------- -


5. (U) The Kabylie Berbers are the second-largest group of
Berber tribes in North Africa, with millennia-old traditions
still evident in their unique language, dress, jewelry and
music. Fiercely independent and loyal to their culture, the
Kabyles have periodically clashed with the central
government. Violent riots erupted in 1998 when Kabyle singer
Lounes Matoub was murdered by masked assailants at a
roadblock. Demonstrators claimed the government assassinated
Matoub for his outspoken opposition to a law making Arabic
the only official language of Algeria. Others blamed Islamic
extremists for his death, alleging he was killed for his
irreverent and non-religious music and lyrics. In 2001,
violent clashes again broke out across the Kabylie after a
student died in police custody. These clashes, resulting in
over 100 deaths, came to be known as the Black Spring, an
allusion to the Berber Spring of the 1980s when civil society
rallied to lift the restrictions placed on Berber culture.
The Black Spring of 2001 culminated in a massive march of
Kabyles from the mountains to Algiers. Police confronted
what was publicly deemed an "invasion" of the capital, which
led to a ban on marches in Algiers that is still in effect.
The government offered some capitulation when, in October
2001, the national Gendarmerie were largely withdrawn from
the Kabylie, and traditional, local democratic assemblies
known as "Arouch" sprang up throughout the region.

TOTAL LACK OF INVESTMENT
--------------


6. (U) Today, the region is plagued by unemployment and lack
of social mobility, leaving young men "bored and frustrated,"
one colleague said. With no jobs, infrastructure or even
security in their villages, the young men "have only the
mosque and crime to turn to," he added. In the September 4
issue of El Watan, local Kabyle parliamentarian Tahar Issadei
tried to portray the terrorist threat in his home region as a
"media exaggeration," but then admitted that "there is a
cruel lack of infrastructure in the region." Issadei, the
president of the APC (local legislative council) of Yakouren,
despaired that "It is a catastrophe -- there is a total lack
of investment." The paper also quoted a local teacher, who
lamented that the only businesses providing jobs were private
builders, and that everyone works in construction. It is
perhaps not coincidental that Algeria's suicide rate (ref C)
is highest in the Kabylie, and the rate of exodus of young
people is also high. One of our staff reported that his
village has lost nearly a third of its population over the
last five years as young people left for urban centers and
foreign shores. Another Embassy employee from the Kabylie
blamed the government for the lawlessness exploited by the
terrorists, saying "they found refuge in our mountains, and
in the fact that the government neglected the region for so

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long." Anecdotally, our Consular colleagues note that for a
number of reasons, a large percentage of the Embassy's
Diversity Visa caseload comes from Tizi Ouzou. A professor
from the University of Tizi Ouzou told us on August 12 that
his region is enthralled with things American, and that
English is becoming the preferred foreign language of choice
amongst young people. "They need hope," he said, "and their
hopeful dreams are no longer of France, but of America."
Issadei summed up his region's efforts to promote tourism and
economic growth as continuously frustrated by the security
situation. "Without security we simply cannot attract
investment," he said.

WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?
--------------


7. (C) Many of the terrorists of the 1990s who hid in the
Kabylie were fighters seasoned in battle against Soviet
forces in 1980s Afghanistan. Our contacts tell us that an
increasing number of terrorists hiding in the Kabylie today
are Algerians who fought in the Islamist insurgency of the
1990s and were released from prison under the government's
national reconciliation program (ref D). The Berbers of the
region insist that the terrorists are not indigenous Kabyles,
but opportunistic outsiders from elsewhere in Algeria and
even from abroad who are taking advantage of the difficult
terrain to evade capture. On August 6, one of our colleagues
visiting his family for a wedding asked the locals if
terrorists were recruiting from the villages above Tizi
Ouzou. They universally said no, insisting the terrorists
are not Kabyles but are "recycled" fighters of the 1990s
recently released from prison. They say that the "repentant"
1990s-era terrorists were not able to re-assimilate into
Algerian society, so they returned to their old ways.
Several recent suicide bombers have been identified as former
convicted terrorists, some released under the national
reconciliation amnesty (ref E).


8. (C) Many Kabyles ascribe to a conspiracy theory that holds
that the Algerian government is complicit in the region's
instability, and uses persistent lawlessness to justify
oppressing the Kabyle people, keep Berber autonomy movements
in check and expand police powers nationwide. Today,
however, our Kabyle colleagues tell us they feel victimized
by the Islamic extremists who move among them but are not
really of them. They talk about false checkpoints, a common
terrorist tactic, and of cousins who have been stopped by
Islamists. The most common use of the roadblocks is to
sermonize: the Islamists chastise men who allow the women in
their cars to dress too liberally, and they castigate
passengers for drinking alcohol, listening to music or acting
too Western. The Islamists manning the false checkpoints
often ask for money, and generally allow families to pass
unscathed but warn of future retribution if they do not
behave more devoutly. In addition to sermonizing and raising
cash, the checkpoints are sometimes used as means to enhance
the logistics of terror cells. One of our colleague's
cousins was ejected from his truck, given a small amount of
money to hire transport to his village, and provided a
general description of an area in Tizi Ouzou where he could
find his vehicle several days later -- which he did. The
most extreme use of the false checkpoint is for violence:
another of the same colleague's cousins was returning to his
village on holiday from military service when he was taken
from his vehicle and his family was told to go home without
him. His body was found in a riverbed later that week.

REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE
--------------


9. (C) The August 6 wedding-goers also insisted that stories
of cooperation by Kabylie villagers with the terrorists are
exaggerated. While they do see Islamists walking publicly in
the streets and interacting with the locals, they assert that
more than 15 years of brutal experience has taught the
Kabyles that to oppose or confront these men only invites
retribution. El Watan noted that the region has a
particularly high rate of kidnappings, for example. Thus, a
certain level of tolerance and acquiescence also focuses the
fight against the government rather than the people. One of
our colleagues who attended the wedding said that during his
conversations with family most agreed that, in contrast to

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the 1990s, they do not know what the terrorists are fighting
for today. At the outset of the dark years following the
cancellation of elections in 1991, the Islamic Salvation Army
(AIS) and later the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) fought in the
mountains against what seemed to many Algerians to be a
corrupt, oppressive government. Most of the initial targets
were government organs. Today, while targets also tend to be
government security forces, civilians are increasingly caught
in the carnage. Moreover, the objectives of today's
terrorists are unclear and do not enjoy significant popular
support among the Kabyles. "There is a gap" between the
terrorists and the people, one of our Kabyle colleagues
stated, "we simply don't know what they want." He added that
in Tizi Ouzou, the language spoken on the street is Kabyle
Berber, not Arabic, further isolating the Islamists from the
locals.

RETURNING TO THE NATIONAL FOLD?
--------------


10. (U) One of our colleagues admitted that the extremists
have been able to exploit an almost innate antipathy among
the Kabyles toward the government. As long as the extremists
do not harm the population, he observed, what they do to
government forces is of little concern to local inhabitants.
That attitude is changing, he claimed. With every trip to
his home village, he sees signs of increased cooperation
between government forces and the Kabyle population. For
example, he noted that drivers are more cooperative and
interactive with troops at the security checkpoints. While
waiting in line at a checkpoint outside of Tizi Ouzou on
August 6, he saw a local resident give several bottles of
water to the soldiers standing guard in the hot sun. On
August 11 Reuters quoted a resident of the Kabylie beach town
of Azzefoun, who said of the security forces moving through
the region, "as long as they protect the people and do not
beat them up, they are welcome."


11. (C) Voting patterns also suggest that the Kabyle attitude
toward the government is improving. In the November 2007
local elections, otherwise marked by widespread apathy and
low voter turnout (ref F),the Kabylie region reported the
highest youth turnout in the country. Ruling coalition
parties like the National Liberation Front (FLN) and National
Democratic Rally (RND) made gains over the two traditionally
regionalist Berber parties, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS)
and the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD). Part of this
shift, our contacts in both the FFS and RCD tell us, was also
due to those parties' inability to produce results, either
because of internal divisions or government intimidation. As
one of our Kabyle colleagues said, "people see no results
from the regional parties, and so the political landscape is
more fragmented today." He said even the local Arouch have
been discredited and are largely ignored, and the Kabyles are
sufficiently frustrated that they are cautiously willing to
give the government another chance.

KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON
--------------


12. (U) Despite the checkpoints, real and false, the threats
of terrorist attacks, and the bombardments launched by the
government, the Kabyles have proved as resilient as the
extremists in their midst. One of our colleagues spoke with
a cousin who had been on a bus in Tigzirt when a bomb
exploded in the city in early August. The cousin said the
bus driver simply continued with his route, and even kept his
music playing. Another colleague, who had taken her family
on vacation in the Kabylie, noted that throughout the several
tense weeks of August, the beaches were still full. "We are
beyond fear," she said, "The bombers make us angry, but we do
not fear their bombs anymore. Sadly, we are accustomed to
it." In April an Algerian journalist affiliated with a major
Western news outlet described to us a trip he had just taken
through the Kabylie region. He spoke of an idyllic scene in
one town where men drank tea at an outdoor cafe, workers
swept sidewalks and painted lampposts, and wedding
processions wended though the streets, all while the distinct
sound of artillery bombardment rang through the nearby hills.
"It was as if it was just another public works project," he
mused.


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COMMENT: OPPORTUNITY KNOCKING?
--------------


13. (C) The government in Algiers has an opportunity to
reassert itself in the Kabylie region in the face of what
appears to be a greater degree of support -- or at least
resignation -- from the local population. Our staff and
contacts who live in the Kabylie say that today's maquis is
the domain of opportunist terrorists whose presence has
become a serious nuisance, preventing stability and thwarting
efforts to attract desperately needed investment. While a
series of much-needed infrastructure projects in the region
testifies to the government's awareness of the need for
economic development, the rift between the Kabyles and the
central government remains wide, and will take time and
effort to bridge. To reestablish law and order in the region
and take back the maquis, the government must essentially
"redo work already done ten years ago," as a September 1
Liberte cover story put it. The Liberte article doubted the
government's ability to recognize and respond to the
opportunity. The main challenge for the regime in Algiers
will be to take advantage of this opening while treading as
lightly as possible on Berber cultural pride. To do so will
require a sensitivity that has little precedent in the past
several decades.
PEARCE