Building a Kabyle state

Pan-Arabism, a creation of colonialism
Building a Kabyle state
19 January 2010
The necessary steps.
Before talking about the stages of state building, let us first talk about the state itself. What is the state? Briefly, the state is a set of institutions headed by a government with public power. This is embodied by an army and an administration. It pursues different objectives depending on its nature. Protecting a people or a power.
The necessary stages.
Before talking about the stages of state building, let us first talk about the state itself. What is a state? Briefly, the state is a set of institutions headed by a government with public power. This is embodied by an army and an administration. It pursues different objectives depending on its nature. To protect a people or a power. There are states that enslave people and those that liberate and develop them. The states of antiquity and the Middle Ages were those of slavery and subjugation. The colonial states we have inherited still continue practices that are the antithesis of democracy and human rights.
For a people, the establishment of a state responds to a vital necessity: to be master of its own destiny, to govern itself and to stop being abused by a state that is hostile and foreign to it. The state is to the people what the home is to the family. It is an organised living space, sheltering its members from the elements and predators, a haven for comfort and privacy. A people without a state is nowadays an orphaned people, a colonised people. This is the case of the Kabyles.
The Kabyle people are still a colonised people.
After the French colonisation, the Kabyle people believed that they could finally have their own state. They were seriously mistaken in taking the Algerian state for their own. The latter turned out to be their worst enemy. Through the armed uprising behind the FFS (29 September 1963 to 14 March 1964), Kabylia had lost its final battle for control of the Algerian state. The attempts of the neo FFS and its clone RCD to recuperate it therefore appear very derisory, even puerile, in view of this impossible undertaking. As “Kabyle” parties, these two formations are in fact only modern-day Don Quixotes!
As Algerians, the Kabyles do not even have official recognition as a “national minority”. The Kabyle people are denied their existence and live under the threat of their disappearance through the policy of depersonalisation to which the Algerian state subjects them through the school, the administration and the media. Having no state of its own, Kabylia is colonised by another. The Algerian state is not that of Kabylia, but its gravedigger, its declared assassin. This explains why, since 1962, open or underhand confrontation has always characterised their relations. The military occupation of Kabylia since 2004 is there to remind us of at least two things:
1) the Algerian state’s objective is to shoot at us and not to protect us.
2) It has never trusted us, and is now more than ever suspicious and hateful towards us. He has always watched us like milk on fire. He has not hesitated to shoot our children and assassinate our elites when he could not corrupt them. He will never hesitate to do it again whenever he feels the need. Through repression and lack of opportunities, he has driven most Kabyles into exile. Through taxation, he insists on squeezing the Kabyle economy to the point of suffocation. By setting himself up as Algeria’s only banker and boss, he blackmails our municipalities, which have become relays of misery and corruption, of dictatorship and free rides. Through the mosque, he rehabilitates murderers who try to impose Islamism and intolerance in the heads of our youth and illiterate villagers… This shows how much Kabylia is politically, militarily and culturally colonised.
Today, it has no choice. Kabylia must at all costs give itself a state if it wants to continue to live, to perpetuate the breath of those who have made its soul since the dawn of time. It has reached a point of no return for the construction of its future, which passes first and foremost through the construction of its State.
The first stage is the reconstruction of a Kabyle national consciousness.
After remaining latent and timid for decades, it is beginning to make great strides. The reconstruction of Kabyle national consciousness began with the FFS war. The defeat of 1964 was so bitter to digest that every Kabyle instinctively began to brood, alone or in groups, on a desire for revenge. Faced with a still savage repression, the Kabyle elites maintained a consciousness of their own through the Amazigh avatar. The generosity they have always shown through their calls for fraternity, for the redefinition of Algerianity to which they vainly tried to incorporate Kabylia, was only a way for them to legitimise a little more our need for a Kabyle national consciousness. The experience of the FFS and the RCD ended up producing this certainty which is found in “Aɣurru”, the testament song of Matoub Lounès, and according to which when the Kabyle is so isolated, he has no other choice but to build his homeland. The ‘black spring’ of 2001 was the moment when this awareness came to light. Timidly in the “El-Kseur platform”, courageously with the MAK. The last marches organised by the MAK brought tens of thousands of people into the streets of Kabylia in favour of a Kabyle state.
The Kabyle associative movement, which used to hide behind Amazighity, is beginning to shift towards the demand for a specifically Kabyle identity. In France, for example, the federation of ACBs (Berber cultural associations) has renamed itself CABIL, an acronym that reaffirms its Kabyle identity. Another witness to this changeover is the ACB des Kabyles de l’Essonne in Athis-Mons. Otherwise, the ATKP (Association des Taxis kabyles de Paris) is the first corporatist organisation to clearly claim to belong to the Kabyle people, to give reality to its Kabyle national consciousness. The Association des Kabyles de Suisse, Solidarité Québec-Kabylie, amitié Allemagne-Kabylie, radio kabyle-FM… are all buds that will amplify the emergence of this Kabyle national consciousness. Punctuated regularly by marches, daily actions on the ground, in Kabylia or abroad, its future is guaranteed. We can even say that this stage is now nearing completion. Many singers, poets, caricaturists, intellectuals, the few film-makers and writers of today are beginning to dedicate their time, their works and their hopes to it.
The amplification of this movement through a greater involvement of the elites and cultural producers is expected. The associative movement is called upon to expand as much as possible in favour of Kabylia and its identity. The aspiration to a destiny of freedom for the Kabyle people is more and more massively shared.
To this end, I call on all those who still remain outside this movement to join it through productions, official positions and contributions to combine our efforts in brotherhood and solidarity for the future of peace and freedom for our current youth and our future generations, for the children of our children. The MAK extends its hand and opens its arms to them so that together we can quickly win this unprecedented battle for our common destiny.
The second step: to give ourselves the attributes of sovereignty.
The MAK has already begun the phase of a Kabyle identity card. A competition has been launched and by the month of June, this document will be operational and put into circulation for all those who wish it. Later, it will be possible to move on to the creation of a Kabyle passport, a human rights organisation, a Kabyle parliament and a government in exile. The Kabyles have to set up their own administration, their own economy and their own spheres of consultation and decision-making. To this end, the outlawing of the Algerian judicial institution is a necessity. To escape the injustice to which the Kabyle people are subjected, it is necessary to return to the Kabyle tradition of conflict resolution and stop turning to the arbitrariness of a ‘justice’ of another language, another jurisprudence and another penal code that is foreign to our culture and opposed to our interests.
Courses in Kabyle should be generalised through teaching in the villages and neighbourhoods of our cities, among the emigrants.
The third stage: the internationalisation of the Kabyle question
Since its emergence, the MAK has undertaken actions with international bodies. It has been received by institutions of the European Union, parliamentarians from many countries, the State Department in the United States, the Quebec Parliament and, on 26 May 2009, at the UN in the framework of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples. Today, the MAK is represented in many Western countries by executives who canvass and raise awareness about the fate of Kabylia and its people. To accentuate the action, having our own media is an absolute necessity.
The last step: the establishment of official institutions, including a Kabyle government.
The establishment of a state and its departments based on the authorities of Kabylia will complete this process.
Solemnly, on this January 16, 2010, from Montreal, before men and before History, I declare open the official construction of the Kabyle State. It will take the time that the trials will impose, but it will go all the way. This is my certainty.
Communication given at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM)
January 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Management Pavilion – 315 Ste-Catherine Street East, (Berri Metro), Montreal
Declaration made by Ferhat Mehenni and published by the former site Afrique du nord.com on January 16, 2010