The Nuclear Option, Algeria and David Hume's Perfect Commonwealth

Juan Cole
Monday, May 02, 2005

The Nuclear Option, Algeria and David Hume's Perfect Commonwealth
What has the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s got to do with the dictatorial way the US Senate Republicans have begun acting with regard to judicial appointments? The war pitted secular and religious forces against one another, killing over 100,000 persons in constant village massacres and urban assassinations over more than a decade. One of the extreme religious factions, the Armed Islamic Group (French acronym GIA), became angered at US and French support for the secular-leaning military government.
The Algerian Civil War is an intimate part of the US War on Terror. The GIA established a cell in Montreal and loosely hooked up with al-Qaeda affiliates planning a spectacular set of bombings for New Year's Eve, 2000. Part of the Millennial Plot targeted tourist hotels in Jordan, which would have been overflowing with American Christian tourists eager to visit the Jordan River and other religious sites. The Montreal cell decided to blow up Los Angeles Airport, and sent Algerian petty thief Ahmed Ressam with a trunkful of high explosives to carry out the operation. He was apprehended by alert US border inspectors at the entry point to Washington state.
The Algerian Civil War and the GIA Millennium Plot was provoked by a crisis that was foreseen by US Founding Father James Madison. You see, the military government announced in the late 1980s that it would hold free elections for parliament. Unexpectedly, in 1991, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front won 188 of the 231 seats contested in the first round. It was clearly headed for an overwhelming majority. The problem was that the Algerian constitution then allowed parliament to amend the constitution by a simple majority vote, which would then be approved in a popular referendum. (Unlike in the US, the provinces had no say in the matter, and anyway provincial governors are appointed by the central government everywhere in the Arab world except Iraq).
The Algerian military could plainly see that the Islamic Salvation Front (French acronym FIS) could now change the constitution at will. It could arrange for there never to be another vote, if the fundamentalists so desired. It could have the Algerian officer corps taken out and shot if it liked (as had happened in revolutionary Iran). It is not clear that FIS would have gone that route. But in strategy you don't worry about your opponents' intentions, you worry about their capabilities.
The military therefore cancelled the election results. The fundamentalists were enraged and turned to violence and terrorism. All this happened because Algeria was structured as an uncomplicated democracy where a tyranny of the majority was enabled by the constitution, and where a single religion-backed faction could hope to impose its will on the whole country, with no real checks or balances.
It is away from our republican system and toward the old Algerian system of simple majority rule that the Bush administration is now attempting to take us. And it will will produce the same turmoil and violence, ultimately, as the rather stupid 1963/1976 Algerian constitutions produced in that country....