ALGERIA'S MODERATE ISLAMIST LEADER: A VIEW FROM

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ALGIERS 000235

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/08/2019
TAGS: PGOV KISL PREL AG
SUBJECT: ALGERIA'S MODERATE ISLAMIST LEADER: A VIEW FROM
INSIDE THE TENT

Classified By: Ambassador David D. Pearce; reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP - Muslim
Brotherhood) President Aboudjerra Soltani gave the Ambassador
on March 4 Algeria's official Islamist vision of how to
increase political participation and create accountability in
local government. Soltani said the most critical need was
for political reform that would clarify the powers of local
officials, making them accountable as "local presidents."
The MSP, one of the three parties in Algeria's ruling
coalition, decided in its early 1990s beginnings that it
could accomplish more by participating in the political
system than by choosing what Soltani called "hard
opposition." Soltani was critical of the impotent Algerian
opposition, but also pointed out that with the lost decade of
1990s unrest, Algeria's democratic experience was only ten
years old. Because of this, Soltani said that countries like
France and the U.S., specifically with the annual Human
Rights Report, should judge Algeria not by their own criteria
but by yardsticks relative to Algeria's own experience. END
SUMMARY.

DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION
--------------


2. (C) In the Ambassador's March 4 introductory call, Soltani
was joined by chief of staff Noureddine Ait Messaoudene and
Mohamed Tebbal, MSP's shadow minister for international
relations. Soltani began the meeting by marking the October
5, 1988 riots as the birth of Algerian democracy, of the
multi-party system in particular. However, he pointed out
that Algeria had no prior experience with elections and was
unprepared for the swift rise and electoral victory of the
Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the 1991 elections. In the
civil unrest that followed, Soltani said that the political
scene became "survival of the fittest," within a context of
international isolation. "Nobody helped us in the 1990s,"
Soltani said, pointing out that the only international flight
into Algeria for a number of years was an Alitalia flight to
Italy. Soltani, a minister during the 1990s, said that
during his international trips he and other ministers were
received at "very low levels" and not by their ministerial
counterparts. In Soltani's view, Algerian democracy was
finally given the chance to develop in 1997-99, and was
therefore roughly ten years old.

HOW TO JUDGE DEMOCRATIC GROWTH
--------------


3. (C) Because Algerian democracy was so young, Soltani told
the Ambassador it was unfair for countries like France and
the U.S. to judge it by their own criteria. He referred to
the Department's annual Human Rights Report and did not say
it was wrong, but said that Algeria should be measured by
standards relative to its own experience. He stated that
Algeria was the "only country in the Arab world" without
prisoners of conscience in its prisons, and stressed that
freedom of expression was far more advanced relative to the
rest of the region. As an example of the external variables
he deemed unfair, Soltani referred to an international
conference he attended in 2000 as Minister of Labor.
Acoording to Soltani, the conference featured the statistic
that Algeria had 12 million poor people, measured by those
earning less than one dollar per day. "So that makes us all
poor?" Soltani asked, telling the Ambassador that the
statistic ignored the fact that in 2000, one dollar bought a
lot more in Algeria than it did in the U.S., and in Algerian
culture, mutual dependence among family members was far
stronger than in the West.

A VISION OF POLITICAL REFORM
--------------


4. (C) In response to the Ambassador's question regarding the
challenge of integrating Algeria's massive youth demographic
- 72 percent are under the age of 30 - into a political
system they feel has left them behind, Soltani said the MSP
was well-placed at the grass roots level to address this.
Fourteen shadow ministers at the national level are also
mirrored in MSP offices at each local baladiya (district),
and the MSP also relies on NGOs to reach out to university
students. Democracy, Soltani said, must grow like a tree.
"You cannot expect the same results if you plant a concrete
column and hope it will support democratic growth," he said,
saying this sort of grass roots approach is what he used to

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tell university students when he was a university professor
in the 1980s and early 1990s.


5. (C) Algerians do not participate in elections and the
political system as a whole, Soltani said, because they
believe in results more than in the system. Some of the
responsibility for this, he said, lies with "our members" at
the local level, who "do not deliver what is expected of
them." The solution Soltani proposed was to clarify and
increase the powers of local elected officials at the APC
(local council) and APW (regional/state legislature) levels,
so that the head of each APC and APW "would be like a
president" to those people served by that elected body.
This, he said, would create the accountability the political
system so desperately needed.


6. (C) Soltani also said that the state of emergency, in
effect since 1992, is blocking progress and democratic
growth. He told the Ambassador that the MSP was working to
get the government to lift it, which would dramatically ease
restrictions on freedom of association and permit civil
society to develop. With terrorism "finished" in his view
and the country relatively stable, Soltani felt the residual
strength of terrorists was "in their organization, otherwise
they are just criminals." Shaking his head, he said a
definition of terrorism was needed. "I have attended a lot
of discussions on the topic over the years," Soltani said,
"but I still have not heard a clear definition of this
concept."

WHY WE ARE INSIDE THE TENT
--------------


7. (C) The MSP, and Soltani himself, are viewed by many of
Algeria's more conservative Islamists as sell-outs for
casting their lot with the regime and remaining in the ruling
coalition. Soltani confronted the issue directly, telling
the Ambassador that the MSP made a clear choice in the early
1990s not to go into "hard opposition" as the opposition in
Algeria "merely watches" and is incapable of getting anything
done. Within the system, he said the MSP could focus
attention on issues of concern to party members, citing the
renovation and construction of local hospitals as one
example.


8. (C) Soltani outlined the MSP's three core beliefs as 1)
opposing violence, terror and the use of force, either to
obtain power or to retain it; 2) universal human rights,
without religious divisions; and 3) social justice and self
determination. Soltani said he was pleased with Secretary
Clinton and President Obama's attention to values thus far,
saying "we followed Obama's story from the very beginning."
He criticized former President Bush for "opening up too many
fronts" against terror and not differentiating in the use of
violence. "After using violence for 8 years," he asked, "did
it solve anything in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, or
elsewhere?" Soltani said that he was particularly troubled
by prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians,
blaming the U.S. for "double standards" and saying that since
1948, the parties have been going from country to country, to
each round of negotiations, yet there was still no result.
He said the Arab plan for peace proposed by Saudi Arabia was
a good plan, supporting a return to 1967 borders in exchange
for full peace and recognition.

COMMENT
--------------


9. (C) Throughout its history, Soltani's MSP has sought to
walk a fine line between a moderate Islam the regime finds
palatable enough for inclusion in the political system and
the demands of a frustrated Islamist base that does not
believe the system has brought change to their daily lives.
Along with its two ruling coalition partners, the FLN and
RND, the MSP is organized in each of Algeria's 48 wilayas and
1451 local districts. However, the MSP's grass roots
organization goes further, with ties to Islamic social
service organizations, educational groups and more. It is
thus not surprising to hear Soltani advocate the empowerment
of local government in a vision that sounds a lot like
federalism, but his view of decentralized political reform is
at odds with the prevailing regime belief that
decentralization is a recipe for instability. With its
emphasis on social services at the local level, the MSP is
arguably more in touch than the FLN and RND with a

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disgruntled and increasingly religious population. This
makes Soltani's tightrope act a delicate feat indeed - how to
avoid the ostracism and irrelevance that has befallen all
other Islamic political parties who have been cast out of the
tent since the FIS experience, while maintaining credibility
with an Islamist base for whom the MSP represents the only
real choice to participate in Algeria's political system.

PEARCE