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.



Israeli Soldiers Describe Clearance of 'Kill Zone' on Gaza's Edge

Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
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Israeli Soldiers Describe Clearance of 'Kill Zone' on Gaza's Edge

Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

Israeli troops flattened farmland and cleared entire residential districts in Gaza to open a "kill zone" around the enclave, according to a report on Monday that quoted soldiers testifying about the harsh methods used in the operation.

The report, from the Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence, cited soldiers who served in Gaza during the creation of the buffer zone, which was extended to between 800-1,500 meters inside the enclave by December 2024 and which has since been expanded further by Israeli troops.

Israel says the buffer zone encircling Gaza is needed to prevent a repeat of the October 7, 2023 attack by thousands of Hamas-led fighters and gunmen who poured across the previous 300 metre-deep buffer zone to assault a string of Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.

"The borderline is a kill zone, a lower area, a lowland," the report quotes a captain in the Armored Corps as saying. "We have a commanding view of it, and they do too."

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, Reuters reported.

The testimony came from soldiers who were serving in Gaza at the end of 2023, soon after Israeli troops entered the enclave, until early 2024. It did not cover the most recent operations to greatly enlarge the ground held by the military.

In the early expansion of the zone, soldiers said troops using bulldozers and heavy excavators along with thousands of mines and explosives destroyed around 3,500 buildings as well as agricultural and industrial areas that could have been vital in postwar reconstruction. Around 35% of the farmland in Gaza, much of which is around the edges of the territory, was destroyed, according to a separate report by the Israeli rights group Gisha.

"Essentially, everything gets mowed down, everything," the report quoted one reserve soldier serving in the Armored Corps as saying. "Every building and every structure." Another soldier said the area looked "like Hiroshima".

Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers that aims to raise awareness of the experience of troops serving in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, said it had spoken to soldiers who took part in the operation to create the perimeter and quoted them without giving their names.

One soldier from a combat engineering unit described the sense of shock he felt when he saw the destruction already wrought by the initial bombardment of the northern area of the Gaza Strip when his unit was first sent in to begin its clearance operation.

"It was surreal, even before we destroyed the houses when we went in. It was surreal, like you were in a movie," he said.

"What I saw there, as far as I can judge, was beyond what I can justify as needed," he said. "It's about proportionality."

'JUST A PILE OF RUBBLE'

Soldiers described digging up farmland, including olive trees and fields of eggplant and cauliflower as well as destroying industrial zones including one with a large Coca Cola plant and a pharmaceutical company.

One soldier described "a huge industrial area, huge factories, and after it's just a pile of rubble, piles of broken concrete."

The Israeli operation has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and armed fighters. The Israeli military estimates it has killed around 20,000 fighters.

The bombardment has also flattened large areas of the coastal enclave, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in bomb-damaged buildings, tents or temporary shelters.

The report said that many of the buildings demolished were deemed by the military to have been used by Hamas fighters, and it quoted a soldier as saying a few contained the belongings of hostages. But many others were demolished without any such connection.

Palestinians were not allowed to enter the zone and were fired on if they did, but the report quoted soldiers saying the rules of engagement were loose and heavily dependent on commanders on the spot.

"Company commanders make all kinds of decisions about this, so it ultimately very much depends on who they are. But there is no system of accountability in general," the captain in the Armored Corps said.

It quoted another soldier saying that in general adult males seen in the buffer zone were killed but warning shots were fired in the case of women or children.

"Most of the time, the people who breach the perimeter are adult men. Children or women didn't enter this area," the soldier said.