Algerian Court Outlaws Islamic Political Party

Algeria’s experiment with Islamic politics officially ended Wednesday when an administrative court banned the Islamic Salvation Front, the first Muslim fundamentalist political party ever legalized in the Arab world.

The administrative tribunal of Algiers accepted the new military-backed government’s argument that the party had pursued “subversive activities whose objectives imperiled public order and the institutions of the state.”

The Islamic Front has a week to appeal the ruling to Algeria’s Supreme Court. But in a communique issued before the court decision, the front warned that any action to ban its operations would “drive the country toward an uncertain future” and force the public “to find other means of combatting oppression and realizing their aspirations.”

“Whatever the judicial situation, the (Islamic Front) remains a legitimate Islamic political party, for it is in the prisons, the living rooms, the mosques, the streets, the schools, the universities, the factories, the fields, the administration and the army,” the front declared.

Wednesday’s court ruling appeared to short-circuit calls on the part of many Algerian political leaders to attempt a dialogue with the Islamic Front.

The front won 3.5 million votes in the aborted national elections in December, in which fundamentalists appeared headed for a majority in the National Assembly, winning 188 of 430 seats in the first round of voting.

But shortly before the second round of elections, army leaders stepped in and forced the resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid, installed a new five-member high committee of state headed by former revolutionary leader Mohammed Boudiaf, and began rounding up thousands of Islamic militants in large detention centers in the Sahara Desert.

In recent days, the secretary general of the National Liberation Front, the party that ran Algeria for 30 years after independence, called for talks with the Islamic Front; former President Ahmed Ben Bella joined in the appeal.

Banning the front, a number of political leaders have argued in recent weeks, simply drives Islamic militants underground and ignores the huge constituency of young, unemployed youths who have turned to Islam out of dissatisfaction with the current regime.

“The whole issue remains, how do you bring the constituency that voted for the (Islamic Front) back into the political process? How do you have a dialogue with the constituency . . . if there’s no organization representing them?” asked a diplomat in the Algerian capital, interviewed by phone.

The order banning the operations of the Islamic Front, should it stand, leaves Jordan as the only Arab country that allows an Islamic group to field political candidates; even there, the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations are tightly restricted. In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood candidates must run as independents in cooperation with the Socialist Labor Party. Tunisia’s Islamic group, An Nahda, has been banned.

(Iran has an Islamic government, but it is a non-Arab nation.)

After weeks of violence in Algiers and surrounding cities that left more than 50 people dead in the wake of the army takeover in mid-January, the capital has remained calm in recent days, except for sporadic pro-Islamic demonstrations at the universities.

Clashes between security forces and fundamentalists have been reported in recent days in the eastern city of Constantine.

The government has reported up to 5,000 militants detained in southern camps, but the Islamic Front says 30,000 or more have been arrested, mostly since a state of emergency was declared early last month.

Among those detained, the front asserts, are 200 fundamentalist mayors, 28 regional assembly leaders, 109 parliamentary deputies and 43 women. It said that at least 150 people have been killed, including seven babies suffocated by tear gas and an eighth who was shot.

Three fundamentalists were sentenced to die in the northwestern city of Tlemcen on Tuesday for their alleged complicity in armed attacks by a clandestine Muslim faction known as Hezbollah, or Party of God. The attacks resulted in the death of a watchman at a mine in July, 1990, during a theft of explosives and the wounding of three worshipers at a mosque in April, 1991. The death sentences were the first to be issued against Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria since 1987.

Diplomats in the Algerian capital say that, while the Islamic Front may threaten retaliation for its banning, its leadership has been largely gutted and the party has little chance of mounting any organized national campaign.

Its two top leaders--philosophy professor Abassi Madani and preacher Ali Belhaj--have been imprisoned since last June; most of the rest of the party’s governing council has been rounded up since the army takeover in January. Islamic Front communiques now appear to be issued by a small number of front leaders who have gone into hiding.

The front “as an organization is probably pretty weak, but you still have the problem of all these kids, and you can have on any given weekend all kinds of trouble,” said one envoy.

Most of the violence, so far, has followed high prayers on Fridays; fundamentalist mosques in Algiers, however, have been surrounded by riot police on Fridays for weeks. Public prayer in the streets outside the mosques has been banned.