Algerian Protesters March on in Defiance of 'The Power'

A demonstrator with tapes over her mouth takes part in a protest against the country's ruling elite and to demand an end to corruption in Algiers, Algeria October 29, 2019. (Reuters)
A demonstrator with tapes over her mouth takes part in a protest against the country's ruling elite and to demand an end to corruption in Algiers, Algeria October 29, 2019. (Reuters)
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Algerian Protesters March on in Defiance of 'The Power'

A demonstrator with tapes over her mouth takes part in a protest against the country's ruling elite and to demand an end to corruption in Algiers, Algeria October 29, 2019. (Reuters)
A demonstrator with tapes over her mouth takes part in a protest against the country's ruling elite and to demand an end to corruption in Algiers, Algeria October 29, 2019. (Reuters)

Riad Mostefai has marched through the capital of Algeria every Friday since February to demand a purge of the ruling hierarchy, an end to corruption and the army’s withdrawal from politics.

Though some of his demands have been met, Mostefai plans to keep on marching each week along with tens of thousands of others who don’t believe an election in December will change anything, as long as an opaque ruling elite remains in charge.

“We’re continuing to protest because we don’t trust the system. It might regenerate,” said the 23-year-old apprentice hairdresser, according to Reuters.

Since the popular protests started, Algeria’s veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika has quit after two decades in power, many of his coterie have been arrested for corruption and his once all-powerful security chief is behind bars.

Now, the old guard, known by Algerians as “Le Pouvoir”, or “The Power”, hope the December 12 presidential election will end a state of constitutional limbo and create a government with enough legitimacy to wear down the demonstrators.

But with six weeks to go, the election is increasingly regarded by both sides as a pivotal test of strength after the most sustained public demand for peaceful change in decades.

The nebulous, leaderless opposition movement known as Hirak in Arabic has rejected the election, saying it won’t be free or fair under the ruling hierarchy and that it hopes a small turnout will compel the authorities to accept bigger changes.

The government, meanwhile, has been increasing the pressure on the protesters since the summer by ramping up the police presence at marches, arresting dozens of demonstrators and also detaining prominent opposition figures.

An informal network of politicians, generals and security chiefs has dominated Algeria since independence.

‘Finish the job’

For some of the hundreds of thousands who marched at the peak of the protests in the spring, the departure of Bouteflika in April and the jailing of his senior allies was enough for them to stop.

“I think Hirak has achieved most of its goals, now we need to move forward,” said Jalal Alalou, one Mostefai’s friends.

About 22 candidates have registered for the presidential poll and, for the first time, none is from Algeria’s liberation movement, the FLN, that won independence from France in 1962 after a bloody eight-year guerrilla struggle.

The country’s army, which has long been an influential political powerbroker, has also said it won’t back any specific candidate to try to convince voters the election will be fair.

But that’s not enough for others still committed to the protests.

“Those who are no longer marching with us are wrong because they think the departure of Bouteflika and his men is enough. They are wrong. We must finish the job,” said Chawki, 23, a student at Blida University, 25 km (16 miles) south of the capital Algiers.

Abdou, a 21-year-old student at Algiers’ Bab Ezzouar University, agreed.

“Bouteflika was a cancer. He has been removed. Now we need chemotherapy to kill the cells. This is why we must continue the protests,” he said.

Both students, who declined to give their family names, said they want all senior figures associated with Bouteflika to leave office and for the army to step back from politics, before they will accept the December election.

“No one can be against elections to end the crisis and move forward but we believe conditions for free and fair elections are not secured yet,” said Chawki.

Economic frustrations

For Mostefai, the protests represent an opportunity for Algeria, the biggest country in Africa, to join the club of democracies, with civilian governments that operate within the rule of law.

He is from the Jolie Vue area near downtown Algiers, one of six children living in a modest apartment with their retired parents. Like most of the country’s modern leaders, his father is a veteran of the fight for independence.

This Friday, the anniversary of the start of the uprising against French colonialism on November 1, 1954, the opposition is seeking a particularly big protest in an effort to seize that mantle of freedom from the old guard.

His family’s economic frustrations, such as his failure to find a job and his father’s small pension of $290 a month, have added to Mostefai’s determination to secure sweeping changes in a country that is a major oil and gas exporter and OPEC member.

Corruption provoked much of the outrage behind this year’s protests as many Algerians believed it was getting worse in recent years as the government carried out economic reforms to encourage the private sector.

Economists said the changes were necessary to reduce the state’s reliance on oil, which accounts for 85% of Algeria’s exports. But as members of the ruling elite, their relatives and friendly businessmen made fortunes, people grew angry.

Algeria came in at 105th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index last year with a score of 35 out of 100, below the average for the Middle East and North Africa.

To make matters worse, when global oil prices plunged in 2014, hitting Algeria’s foreign currency reserves, the government responded by cutting back its lavish spending on social welfare programs.

“Our rulers have stolen the country’s resources. Algeria is rich but Algerians are poor,” Mostefai said.

Still, draped in the national flag as he marches each week, he acknowledges that broader change will be hard and that the protest movement lacks a clear strategy.

“We understand that it has to stop one day, but not now. Bouteflika’s men must go first ... We have launched the Hirak, but we don’t know how to end it,” he said.



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.