North-Africa Roundup

  • The 4th Congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les Mondes Musulmans will be taking place online 28 June – 2 July, with panels including Islam and activism in North-West Africa, post-2011 sociopolitical upheavals through a gender lens, and language education and identities in Morocco and Algeria. Registration is free. More info here.
  • The Funambulist have made their back issues available, including two articles on the inter-related history of Algeria and Palestine. Building on her exhibition Discrete Violence: Architecture the French War in Algeria, Samia Henni discusses landscapes of colonial violence in Palestine and Algeria with Mostafa Minawi. In the second article, Lina Soualem relates how her encounter with Yannis Arab’s research on Palestine’s Algerians / Algeria’s Palestinians stroke a personal chord. Yannis Arab’s talk is available here.
  • The Arab Uprisings Project is a continually updated website with new resources, and event recordings made available monthly. This is a fantastic resources if you’re teaching or researching North Africa, or political engagement more widely.
  • Maghreb Maghrek‘s latest issue focuses on the Hirak and “street politics” in Algeria.

Stalemate in Algeria six months after start of protests that ousted leader

Six months after a wave of protests began in Algeria, people are still demonstrating and the military-backed government appears determined to keep its grip on power.

The demonstrations have gained a familiar rhythm since tens of thousands of Algerians first took to the streets on 22 February. Thousands of students turn out on Tuesdays and there are larger protests each Friday.

“We didn’t come to negotiate, we came to kick you out,” read one placard brandished last Friday. On Tuesday this week the number of demonstrators swelled as older Algerians joined students in the heat, defiant in the face of government efforts to curb the protests by closing off areas of the capital and introducing new rules for demonstrations.

The movement that unseated the former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is now locked in a stalemate with a regime bent on showing it can keep the upper hand and outlast the protests.

Weeks of mass demonstrations forced the 82-year-old Bouteflika to resign in April, and the protesters pressured the authorities to cancel presidential elections originally scheduled for 4 July.

Since then, the opaque coalition of political and military figures considered the country’s true power, known as le pouvoir, has been reluctant to make any further concessions.

Read more on The Guardian