Morocco is indigenous Amazigh

Morocco is indigenous Amazigh women unite against Islamists and Arab elites

MOROCCO'S INDIGENOUS BERBER PEOPLE ARE STRUGGLING TO MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD DESPITE THEIR ANCIENT AMAZIGH LANGUAGE WINNING OFFICIAL RECOGNITION IN 2011. (FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

In North Africa, Berber women have banded together to fight political Islamism, polygamy, child marriage, and impunity for perpetrators of domestic violence.

Their ancestors in ancient Carthage worshipped goddesses and venerated female warriors, queens, prophetesses and poets, but today the indigenous women of North Africa?s Amazigh or ?Berber? people say their matriarchal traditions and native language are under threat from Arab elites and burgeoning Islamism.

In Morocco, home to the largest population descended from the region?s original inhabitants, activists blame the dominant contemporary Arabic culture as well as imported religious extremism and ideologies aligned with Islamic State. ?Women?s groups always speak of ?the Arab woman? but we are not Arab women ? we have an Amazigh culture, language and identity which has nothing to do with the Arab woman from the Middle East,? Amina Zioual, President of The Voice of the Amazigh Woman told Women in the World.

Feminist activists ? Amazigh means free men or ?freeborn? ? argue they are ?doubly oppressed? for being female and indigenous, and are usually ignored by Arab feminists. So they have banded together to fight for recognition of their rights in the face of ?Arabization? ? official government policy since independence from France more than half a century ago ? political Islamism, persistent polygamy, underage marriage, and impunity for perpetrators of domestic violence.

Morocco?s first official Amazigh women?s association is pushing for access to justice, health and education. It says Berber women are members of an ethnic majority ? there are no official figures but some estimates put the Amazigh population as high as 70 percent ? yet are treated as a minority by a political regime privileging the Arabic language and conservative Islam.

?We created our group because the Amazigh woman ? who typically speaks her native Tamazight, not French or Arabic ? is not listened to and is even marginalized by the system in Morocco,? says Zioual.

?We have been in all the countries of North Africa for 3,000 years. We are oppressed by our government. They are always talking about Arabs but we are fighting to rewrite the history of Morocco.?

Outside of the southern Mediterranean, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya are typically assumed to be homogenous Arab-Muslim majority nations, where French is often also spoken because of the colonial past.

However, Amazigh groups insist there are around 25 million Berbers in North Africa, including two-thirds of Moroccans because they are descended from original inhabitants who predated the Romans, the Arab Muslim conquests beginning in the 7th century and later French colonizers.

?We want to debunk the common myth that Morocco is an exclusively Arab country and challenge our forced assimilation,? says The Voice of the Amazigh Woman on its online platform, highlighting its official United Nations? recognition as an indigenous people.

?The government wants to classify us as a minority people. We are more than 67 per cent of the population but there is a political program of ?Arabizing? the population so that Arabic is the predominant mother tongue.

Amina Zioual, President of The Voice of the Amazigh Woman.

Even if most Berbers have been Muslim for many centuries, Amazigh women want secularism, tolerance and religious diversity to be accepted too. ?We are not all Islamic or Arab ? we are also Jews and Christians and non-believers and we want a Morocco that is multi-cultural and where everybody can feel at home,? says Zioual.

The Voice of the Amazigh Woman prioritizes servicing poor indigenous women living in remote areas outside the big cities. These vulnerable groups are excluded because they are overwhelmingly illiterate (more than 70 percent of Moroccan women in country areas cannot read or write and the figures are much higher for Amazigh women) and they don?t speak Arabic or French. ?Amazigh women are at the receiving end of all the violence Moroccan woman in general suffer,? says Zioual. ?But then they are further marginalized because they cannot communicate in their language with government agencies, hospitals and the justice system where Arabic is almost compulsory.?

Following a sustained campaign, the Amazigh succeeded in 2011 in forcing the government to recognize their mother tongue Tamazight as the second national language. ?Unfortunately the reality is that this has not been put into practice,? explains Zioual.

Profiled in a new book Feminists of the Arab World, by French journalist Charlotte Bienaime, The Voice of the Amazigh Woman counts secular and religious, veiled women, Muslims and non-believers among its supporters.

Despite most Amazigh women today being Muslims, feminists claim their culture?s traditional interpretation of the religion of the ?invaders? did not involve men having multiple wives or women being considered as their chattels.

Zioual points the finger at the imposition of harshly patriarchal customs from the Middle East, particularly in recent decades. ?The active marginalization and oppression of women has come from Arab countries ? it is the Arab male who has this culture,? she says of escalating pressure on women to be heavily veiled, and the enduring practice of ?repudiation? (instant male-pronounced divorce), polygamy and an unwillingness to punish men who beat their wives.

?But in our culture the woman is queen,? she said. ?We never experienced polygamy until the arrival of Arab culture. And now the problem has been aggravated with the arrival of the Islam of Daesh (Islamic State) which has penetrated regional areas? ? a problem Zioual says the Moroccan government too often turns a blind eye to.

Morocco was recently severely criticized in a Human Rights Watch report for its abysmal treatment of women victims of domestic violence.

Although Western nations sometimes hail Morocco as an example of ?moderate Islam? when it comes to women?s status, around 10 percent of marriages involve girls under 18, and in rural areas they can be as young as 13.

Moroccan law allows a girl?s guardian to ask a judge for an exemption. The penal code also allows rapists to escape prosecution if they marry their victims, leading to horrifying cases of abuse, particularly in conservative country areas where families pressure girls to marry their attackers to avoid the social opprobrium and reduced marriage prospects for those known to no longer be virgins.

The Voice of the Amazigh Woman cites the 2012 case of a 16 year-old girl Amina Filali, who drank rat poison and died after being forced to marry and live for several months with the man who raped her. A woman who wants to divorce her husband meanwhile faces a legal and social minefield, while the procedure is relatively easy for men. ?Since 2004 in Morocco, a man is not supposed to repudiate and divorce his wife and take another spouse without her unforced permission. But the reality is most women don?t know they have these rights or can?t exercise them,? says Zioual.

?With this government presided over by an Islamic political party there is always the pressure to put an Islamic reference into all the laws. But as a feminist movement we denounce all these changes to the civil code and the penal and family code.?

For Zioual a pressing problem in today?s Morocco is that ?everything is seen through the Islamic prism.?

?Twenty years ago in regional areas you could go out without a veil or a headscarf, and you could wear a skirt or pants. But that doesn?t exist anymore in the provinces ? it is either the headscarf or the jellaba that are obligatory.

?This is all imposed by religion but also by the culture in our media, and on the radio. There have been radical changes and they have been pushing this for 50 years since Independence (from France).?

Women are sold the lie that in order to enter paradise they must be veiled and obey men, says Zioual. ?Most Moroccan women are illiterate, and don?t have financial resources. They depend on their husband so they tend to obey this culture that tells them not to ask for anything, whether it is schools, hospitals or roads. They are told if they are you are calm and placid they will go to paradise.?


The association?s next project is to lift the voter participation of Amazigh women in local and national elections. It has worked closely with Spain?s Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation in trying to make young girls and women aware of the importance of finishing school and not marrying until the legal age of 18.

Women in regional areas like the Atlas Mountains are educated about their legal rights when it comes to marriage and divorce ? and the importance of obtaining official papers when they wed, to avoid being thrown out later by a husband taking the ?back door? to polygamy or marriage with an underage girl. ?We have a problem in the family legal code which indirectly encourages men to take minor wives,? says Zioual.

?There are some regions where men and women are married by Imams without having official papers. Then when the man doesn?t need his wife anymore she has no proof of the marriage. Men have taken advantage of the practice to remarry with minors or to be polygamous. We are pushing for women to be able to officialize these marriages.?

Asked why she decided to found the association, Zioual, a married banker with a daughter, says she experienced firsthand the sense of exclusion and discrimination in elementary school when she realized she did not speak or understand Arabic like most of her classmates. ?Injustice and violence pushed me to work in different human rights and women?s groups, but the particular needs of Amazigh women were never discussed so we were obliged to found our own association,? she said.

?I will always be a feminist because when you live in Morocco and you see everything a woman must submit to, you automatically become feminist.?

Follow Emma-Kate Symons on Twitter @eksymons

From : NTimes

Auteur: EMMA-KATE SYMONS 
Date : 2016-03-28 

The Empire Without Borders

Berbers: The Empire Without Borders

The Berbers and the Bushmen are among the oldest people on earth.

Berber Versus Mazigh & Etymology of Imazighen:

The perplexed term 'Berber' is shrouded with mystery, just as the Berbers themselves. Regardless of whether some people like or dislike the use of the term 'Berber' the name had entered the international vocabulary and therefore it will be used here when writing in English. The matriarchal name 'Tamazight', albeit more popular in its recent masculine and patriarchal form Amazigh, is gradually becoming known to the outside world.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with using the term Berber, just because it was mistakenly associated with Greek barbarous and the negative connotation it conveys – as it existed long before the Greeks and the Romans, and also was used by the Ancient Egyptians and the Berbers long before them. There is no doubt that the etymology of the name 'Berber' was altogether misunderstood, and it never meant 'barbaric' or 'savage' simply because the Romans used it to describe the Ancient Egyptians whom we all know were far more advanced and civilised than both the Romans and the Greeks.

Generally speaking the term "Berbers" was used by foreigners (or aliens some would say) to describe the native inhabitants of North Africa, while the Berbers call themselves Imazighen. Likewise, its etymology of  "Free People" or "Freemen" has neither etymological basis nor historical foundation, and it was merely a superstitious conjuncture that somehow gained widespread popularity amongst both Berberists and European scholars, probably after it was introduced to them by Berber Leo Africanus, without questioning its authority or explaining how it came to have this bizarre etymology. Which part in the term 'Imazighen' that says 'free' and which part that means 'people' remain to be explained. The only etymology that can be concluded so far is "noble", as in Tamaheqt majegh ('nobel'). Noble they are, no doubt; but free is far from true. Freedom starts in the mind, then magically manifests in the real world.

Imazighen is the plural form of the masculine singular Amazigh or Mazigh, while 'Timazighin' is the plural form of the feminine singular Tamazight. This means that the recent use of the term 'Amazigh' to describe a group of people (as in the Amazigh of Libya) is incorrect because the term is singular; and therefore the correct form to use is the plural form: the Imazighen of Libya. The popular and masculine form used almost world-wide, namely "Amazigh Language", does not exist; violates the sacred Tamazight; and seemingly is heading towards threatening the very base on which it was based – the matriarchal nature of the Berber society. Tamazight by itself means exactly that: 'Berber language'. For some unknown reason there seems to be the alien tendency to abandon the original matriarchal form Tamazight and ultimately all its associated forms!

'Tamazgha', meaning the 'land of the Imazighen' (or North Africa), was also invented by activists to describe what the Berbers have always prescribed as Thamorth, ('land, town, country'). Terms like 'Amazighity' (mixing the English suffix -ty with  Berber a-Mazigh-) and 'Imazighenautes' (the Berber geeks of the internet) give the amusing impression that things are getting complicated.

Some might say this should not pose a threat, so long as modernisation is applied to illuminate (rather than integrate then eliminate). But nature has already taken care of this process in a natural way. TEK ('Traditional EnvironmentalKnowledge') is continually modernising all aspects of human existence in one complete system we know as evolution – with the free 'will' to steer one's destiny.

This extensive TEK knowledge of indigenous People's heritage and accumulative wisdom, which modern scientists now seek for new insights, insures cultural continuation and inspires new inventions of material types, smart tools and even new human societies altogether; encompassing all aspects of human's existence. Yet despotic democracies, in contrast, emphasise only one single aspect on the expense of all other aspects including the desecration of nature, policing indigenous principles, impoverishing people, and even feeding the earth with toxic waste. This transitional expression will not succeed in evolutionary terms, because it violates long range perspective with which nature sees her future offspring thriving as ever!

The Berbers' mentality, their cheerful attitude to life, their customary egalitarian justice and tribal council of the elders (of both female and male transparent members of the society who lead by example), and all the good, unique elements that distinguish Tamazight society from the 'warring' ideals thriving in neighbouring and far distant countries may all become affected by, if not infected with, the new cultureless direction towards which the Berber society may one day find itself led to –> something the Imazighen of today ought to be concerned-with right now, rather than shortsightedly endure in decades to come. If the Berbers loose their unique sense of identity, as a Berber, one may no longer wish to remain a Berber, simply because there will be none in essence.

To take away from indigenous people their pride, then deprive them of the values at the heart of their existence, rather than preserve their priceless world heritage, goes against all human ideals allegedly reverberating across the moral world. The Berber Tuareg of the Sahara were also brought under the hammer in recent decades when they were forced to perform some patriarchal con-sessions to abandon a number of Tamazight matriarchal institutions including the "sacred matrilineal naming system".

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, I guess every problem has to look like a nail."

Estimated number of Berbers in North Africa: 38 million

Berber Origins & Fake Genealogies

Berber Origins & Fake Genealogies:

The Berbers’ supposed Iberian, Cretan, Canaanite or/and Yemenite origins are wholly unfounded, if not colonially impostored to divide and ruin, as anthropologists and historical linguists are increasingly pointing to the native nature of the Berbers. Regarding Ibn Khaldun's widely-quoted Berber ancestors, Olwen Brogan points out that his genealogies are “as artificial as are most similar genealogies.” While specific Oric Bates states that ”The literary opinion generally current among the Arab writers acknowledged several lines of descent for the various groups of Berbers, each group being referred to an imaginary, and usually eponymous, ancestor.” 

The histories of al-Bakari and Ibn Qotaybah (who identified the Berbers with the vanquished Philistines and the giant Goliath) Ibn Khaldun calls a "mistake". So are those genealogies tracing the Berbers to Yemen, H'imir or Ber-Bin-Qis, which according to the anonymous author of Mafakher Al-Barbar (‘The Boasts of the Berbers') are false and exist only in the minds of "jahilite" (1312 AD, p. 78).

In relation to the Berbers' Canaanite origin, who adopted the language of the conquered Hamites, myth has it both Phoenix and Cadmus were the sons of Agenor, the son of goddess "Libya" by Poseidon, who left Egypt to settle in the land of Canaan; and thus one reads in Genesis (09: 22): “Ham [is] the father of Canaan” (not vice versa). Unfortunately, both sources are now deemed by science unfit to recorded history; while the science of linguistics does confirm Hamitic languages are much older than both Semitic and Indo-European languages.

It is probably because of these and similar other influences, like Oric Bates had said, “The Byzantine historian Procopius has, like  Sallust, preserved a story of African origins which reflect this tendency on the part of the Libyans to relate their remote ancestry to Asia  Minor.” 

In fact Ibn Khaldun himself, nearly 700 years ago, made it clear that people "chose" to relate their origin to Semitic ancestors because Sam had five profits when Ham had none. One can only wish prosperity for the "chosen ones", and equally hope mercy and forgiveness for the "cursed" son of Ham – the "servant of servants" Genesis says (09:25).

In addition to the above genealogies, relating our biological origin to eponymous male-ancestors, "mitochondrial DNA" genes trace all modern humans back to one female ancestor scientists called "African Eve", who lived 100,000 years ago, in, Africa.

The Massacre of the Berber Guanches of the Canaries

The Massacre of the Berber Guanches of the Canaries:

The indigenous Guanche inhabitants of the Canary Islands (west of Morocco, in the Atlantic Ocean) were also Berbers right down to the 16th century, just before they were condemned to oblivion by barbarians from medieval Europe.

Probably the most disastrous event in Berber history in relation to European conquests is the terrible massacre of the Guanche tribes of the Canaries. Unimaginable catastrophe; effected in the name of piracy.

They were completely isolated from the outside world, living in peace and tranquility, and reportedly had no contact with the outside world until Spanish conquerors broke-in to embark on their systematic genocide – a brutal job that took nearly 90 years of savage slaughter to complete.

Still worse, those 'Berbers' who hid in the sacred caves of the mountains were slowly hunted to extinction like poor animals; while the captured survivors were sold as “first-class slaves" in Europe's aristocratic markets.

Without learning much about them, or about their painful tragedy, the Guanches were forced not-only to give up their beloved pride, and see their women & children slaughtered before their eyes, but also were forced to vanish off the surface of the 'earth'.

Imagine. Imagine what it would be like had they survived to-day! Imagine what it would be like today if the Berber Guanche civilisation remained so onto the present day; a rare treasure from our prehistoric past, where anthropologists say they did not even know about the "wheel" – the wooden wheel first invented by the Berber Garaments; the brakeless wheel that goes round an empty circle; the ouroboros wheel that eats itself to infinity; and yet more wheels to spin from the merciless "wheel of misfortune" – else known as the wheel of fortune to the chosen ones.

“Unfortunately, in the case of the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century”, notes Elsdon Best, “that nation appears never to have considered it a duty to hand down to posterity any detailed description of the singularly interesting races they had vanquished. As it was with the Guanches of the Canaries, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Quichuas of Peru, so was it with the Chamorro of the Ladrones, and the Tagalo-Bisaya tribes of the Philippines” (Pre-Historic Civilization In The Philippines, Journal of The Polynesian Society, vol. 1,1892, p. 118).

Perplexed as it might seem, tragedy after another, the Berbers' destiny is fraught with pain and perpetual struggle against the destruction of their peaceful legacy – the untold saga of human's longest misery in history – the massacre of identity. 

Like the Arab war generals themselves had later said (in their wars against Queen Kahina) :– whenever a Berber tribe is slaughtered, another emerged from the mirage like the jinn of the desert. 

When Berber Hannibal crossed the Alps and besieged Rome, the Roman emperor fled to hide behind his city walls – for 12 years – apparently afraid to give the Berber general a fair fight. When Hannibal was advised by his war generals to end the 12-year siege and burst through the city gates (as the Romans later did Carthage), he wisely reprimanded them that 'women & children' shall never be 'collateral damage'. Commanding Hannibal declined to murder women and children because he was a man.

Hannibal even refused to be made 'dead', when he voluntarily declared the return of his soul to the lone stars; not because he was scarred of death, but because he was afraid to live a matricidal master.

No wonder a single glimpse of the Berber Gorgon's eyes instantly turns 'man' to 'stone'. The blood droplets that fell off her severed head were said to have infested the Sahara with 'serpents'.

The berBer gorGon

Archaeological History & Evidence

Archaeological History & Evidence:

The authors of "The Berbers" (1996) came under sharp criticism by a number of scholars and activists for the poor picture they claim to be the first comprehensive guide to the Berbers in the English language. In their Introduction, M. Brett and E. Fentress state that, “No general book on the Berbers is available in English. One of the most unfortunate consequences of this is the total ignorance in both Great Britain and the United States of the existence of the Berbers . . . This book is intended as a step towards answering the question, and perhaps toward a modification of the idea that Mediterranean history can be divided between black Africans and white Europeans.”  

This sounds a good book, especially when its back cover carries the approval of the Journal of North African Studies (JNAS), and perhaps when the cover is black – with the title ('The Berbers') written in 'white'. However, starting Berber history from 7000 BC is either a mistake or 'somethingelse'. No doubt, ignorance could have played its role, as they say, but London is a great city for books about the Berbers and conceivably about any other culture in the world. So what does that say?

Colour too still plays its usual part, where some Afrocentricists, Eurocentricists, Arayanists and other exotic specialists are getting lost in the web, applying colour to the pagan gods of the ancient world. But the most devastating factor is nothing but 'persecution' itself – going back not 42 years (as some now say) but centuries upon centuries, legally depriving the Berbers from expressing "themselves".

Hence it is about time the Berbers start writing their own history. It is about time the Berbers break away from this long period of darkness in which supremacists wrote like tyrants, and in which brutal dictators and democratic conquerors ruled like "brats", barring free speech and the flow of information and hunting down what Gaddafi called "rats".

Simply put, the amount of material available in libraries – especially London's wonderful British Library (in English and conceivably in any other language) – would easily allow any 'independent' student to write a comprehensive Berber history going back not to 7000 BC but to the beginning of Afroasiatic language itself, and perhaps all the way back to the lost civilisations of the Sahara and beyond.

There are several studies and fossil remains from Casablanca, Cyrenaica, Ternifine and Rabat, documenting the existence of the indigenous Berbers (or/and their extinct ancestors) in North Africa for at least one million years (1,000,000) – when the first wave of early modern humans began to leave Africa – presumably to explore the "prim-eval world', still infested with cannibals.

The Lower Pleistocene sites of Algerian Ain Hanech and Moroccan Casablanca have, long time ago, provided some of the earliest evidence for "human behaviour", which arriving at a time when most archaeologists believed no human artifacts older than the Pleistocene can be found can only confirm tool-making humans had lived in North Africa in the Pliocene.

Among the sprung, flourished and vanished cultures of North Africa are the Libyan Pre-Aurignacian culture (85,000 BC); the Libyan Dabba culture (40,000 BC); Aterian culture (40,000-20,000 years); Ibero-maurusian culture (22,000 BC); the Eastern Oranian culture (15,000-9,000 BC); and the Mesolithic culture of Murzuk in southern Libya (10.000-6.000 BC).

The Garamantian civilisation was also one of the cultures involved in the Sahara's cultural proliferation. Rüdiger and Gabriele Lutz (1955) recall the cultures of Fezzan to have evolved over the past hundreds of thousands of years and vanished under adverse conditions. “Stone tools of bygone eras are lying about in millions, from the relics of early and late Acheulian (up to 500.000 years), Levalloisian (100.000 years) and Mousterian (50.000 years).”

The unique Haua Fteah Cave in Cyrenaica was previously documented by McBurney and others to preserve a continuous archaeological history in Libya from about 100,000 BC to the present – one continual line of living entities in one single cave, the largest cave in the Mediterranean basin, and one of the largest caves in the (visible) world. This means that the cave was occupied by Libyans at about the same time African Eve left Africa to colonise the savage world some 100,000 years ago.

Septimius Severus: Libyan-Roman Emperor (193-211 AD); Africa's first Roman Emperor.
Born in Berber Leptis Magna.
Died in York, UK; upon taking part (indirectly) in the brutal massacre of Boudica's indigenous tribes of Britain.
Boudica, dear father, was our friend who defended her nation to death – the bravest of the British.

History of Málaga and Timeline of Málaga

History

Main articles: History of Málaga and Timeline of Málaga

La malagueña (1919) by Julio Romero de Torres

The Phoenicians from Tyre founded the city as Malaka about 770 BC. The name Malaḥa or mlḥ is probably derived from the Phoenicianword for "salt" because fish was salted near the harbour. (Cf. "salt" in other Semitic languages, e.g. Hebrew מלח mélaḥ or Arabic malaḥ).

After a period of Carthaginian rule, Malaka became part of the Roman Empire. In its Roman stage, the city (Latin name, Malaca) showed a remarkable degree of development. Transformed into a confederated city, it was under a special law, the Lex Flavia Malacitana. A Roman theatre was built at this time.^[5] After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it was ruled first by the Visigoths and then by the Byzantine Empire (550–621)

In the 8th century, during the Muslim Arabic rule over Spain, the city became an important trade center. Málaga was first a possession of the Caliphate of Córdoba. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty, it became the capital of a distinct kingdom ruled by the Zirids. During this time, the city was called Mālaqah (Arabic مالقة). From 1025 it was the capital of the autonomous Taifa of Málaga, until its conquest by theEmirate of Granada in 1239.

The traveller Ibn Battuta, who passed through around 1325, characterised it as "one of the largest and most beautiful towns of Andalusia [uniting] the conveniences of both sea and land, and is abundantly supplied with foodstuffs and fruits". He praised its grapes, figs, and almonds; "its ruby-coloured Murcian pomegranates have no equal in the world." Another exported product was its "excellent gilded pottery". The town's mosque was large and beautiful, with "exceptionally tall orange trees" in its courtyard.^[6]

Málaga in 1572

Málaga was one of the Iberian cities where Muslim rule persisted the longest, having been part of the Emirate of Granada. While most other parts of the peninsula had already been conquered by the reconquista, the medieval Christian Spanish struggled to drive the Muslims out. Málaga was conquered by Christian forces on 18 August 1487,^[7] The Muslim inhabitants resisted assaults and artillery bombardments before hunger forced them to surrender, virtually the entire population was sold into slavery or given as "gifts" to other Christian rulers,^[8] five years before the fall of Granada.

On 24 August 1704 the indecisive Battle of Malaga, the largest naval battle in the War of the Spanish Succession, took place in the sea south of Málaga.

After the coup of July 1936 the government of the Second Spanish Republic retained control of Málaga. Its harbour was a base of the Spanish Republican Navy at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It suffered heavy bombing by Italian warships which took part in breaking the Republican navy's blockade of Nationalist-heldSpanish Morocco and took part in naval bombardment of Republican-held Malaga.^[9] After the Battle of Málaga and the Francoist takeover in February 1937, over seven thousand people were killed.^[10] The city also suffered shelling later by Spanish Republican naval units. The well-known British journalist and writer Arthur Koestler was captured by the Nationalist forces on their entry into Málaga, which formed the material for his book Spanish Testament. The first chapters of Spanish Testament include an eye-witness account of the 1937 fall of Málaga to Francisco Franco's armies during the Spanish Civil War.

After the war, Málaga and Koestler's old haunts of Torremolinos and the rest of the Costa del Sol enjoyed the highest growth of the tourism sector in Spain

Le think-tank américain FPRI

Le think-tank américain FPRI: comment passer d’une société des lois des Mafias organisées à une société des lois des citoyens?

La spécificité particulière du moyen orient d’être une terre des religions, des crises sociales, politiques et religieuses a fait de lui depuis plus d’un demi-siècle le focus des medias. Après plus de 50 ans de focalisation sur le conflit arabo-israélien, c’est le tour des conflits arabo-arabe et arabo-perse.
Le moyen orient est plus que jamais une poudrière en plein explosion. Il est en plein point d’inflexion qui veut dire en mathématique : le chemin parcouru hier n’est plus possible aujourd’hui. Les peuples régionaux (arabes, kurdes, israéliens et perses) et avoisinants doivent se préparer au plus grand changement de leur histoire.
De ce fait, les think-tank internationaux et américains en particulier ne débattent que de ce sujet. A ce titre le think-tank l’institut de recherche sur les politiques étrangères (foreign policy research institute FPRI) a organisé à Philadelphie une conférence (voir vidéo) du journaliste, auteur et spécialiste du Moyen-Orient Mr Joseph Braude. Parlant couramment l'arabe, l'hébreu et le persan, Joseph Braude a vécu, étudié et travaillé dans la plupart des capitales du Moyen-Orient. Il a même passé par le Maroc en diffusant via Med radio depuis juillet 2010 son programme Rissat new York.

ici dans une émission de MED Radio

Dans sa conférence (voir vidéo), il résume la situation au moyen orient comme suit :

1. Un héritage épineux des arabes : qui se résume dans les conflits arabo-israélien, arabo-perse et arabo-arabe sous la couverture religieuse Sounni/Chiite ou Juif/Musulman. Ajoutant a ceci, l’intervention des Russes et des chinois qui visent à s’approcher des arabes principalement Chiites. Ils ont même investit massivement dans la création des chaines Roussya Al yam russe et CCTV chinoise en langue arabe et qui invitent les chefs d’états russes et chinois a parler aux arabes. De l’autre côté, l’intervention des américaines en créant la chaine de Tv Al hourra pour contre carrer Al-jazeera et donner aux arabes un autre point de vue différents de celui véhiculé par Al jazeera depuis des décennies.
2. L’existence des plumes de liberté : encore embryonnaire, oui, mais des voix moyennes orientales s’élèvent pour essayer de concilier la loi civile à la loi islamique. Ceci en montrant aux peuples arabes qu’il y a intérêt dans la suprématie de la loi civile faite par les citoyens par rapport à la loi divine.
3. Les différentes options pour l’Amérique : C’est trouver un moyen de résoudre l’équation d’un dilemme d’une société gouvernée par un gouvernement otage des Mafias organisées. La société s’allie avec les Mafia pour se protéger des Mafias qui elles utilisent la société pour continuer à faire les lois qui leur permettent de gouverner. Il faut donc arriver à faire de la région un terrain de compétence des forces vives par la reforme de l’éducation et des medias afin d’arriver au point où les Mafias comprennent qu’ils n’auront plus le soutien de la société et de même la société arrive à comprendre que les Mafias n’auront plus la domination des domaines de la vie : la politique, le commerce, la culture etc.. L’Amérique à un grand rôle à jouer pour faire comprendre aux arabes que la société civile peut gagner les Mafias, pour cela il faut trouver les personnes qui peuvent porter ce projet. L’objectif est d’arriver à une société où règne la culture du respect et la suprématie de la loi se définit par trois points principaux :
1. Chaque citoyen a le droit de participer à la législation de la loi, le regard sur la loi et son application.
2. L’application sans condition de ces lois sur tous les citoyens sans exception aucune, y compris le gouvernement lui-même.
3. Les lois sont faites pour protéger les droits de tous les citoyen sans exception et de l’intérêt communale.

Atteindre cet objectif est bien pour la région et pour les USA. USA doit faire un rôle important pour réussir à inverser cette situation au moyen orient : une société de loi et non une société de la jungle, Ajoute le conférencier.

Résumé :

Pour résumer, et en dehors des points de vue des think-tank américains, il est clair que le moyen orient va subir des transformations profondes de son histoire après celles qu’il a subit à la suite des accords de Sykes-Picot qui ont donné naissance à tous les pays arabes d’aujourd’hui et qui n’existaient pas avant. La partie de l’empire Ottoman colonisée par la France a donné naissance à la Syrie, le Liban. La partie colonisée par la grande Bretagne a donné naissance à la Jordanie et l’Irak et le pouvoir a été donné aux hachémites d’Arabie qui ont laissé leurs postes aux Al-saoud qui ont été compensé par les britanniques pour leur alliance fidèle à la cohabitation occidentale contre la Oumma Islamique dirigée par le Calife Ottoman. Les juifs ont droit à la rive Est de la rivière de Jordan, l’actuel Israël avec la Cisjordanie.

Quant aux Kurdes, ils n’avaient droit qu’à un génocide ethnique orchestré par la Turquie. Mais aujourd’hui leur temps est venu. Ils ont montré au monde et à l’alliance occidentale en particulier que c’est un grand peuple avec des valeurs et des aspirations beaucoup loin de leurs voisins arabes. En termes de mesure, leur sacrifices est beaucoup plus important que ce qu’ils ont apporté les Wahhabites aux britanniques il y a 60 ans.

Vidéo de la conférence du think-tank FPRI :

The fight for a Kabyle identity

By Dimitri DOMBRET
ESISC Research Associate

Many demonstrations are expected to take place on 20 April 2010, in Algeria, most notably in Tizi-Ouzou, Vgayet and Bouira, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the ‘Berber Springtime’ which saw the region thrown into a state of unrest in the spring of 1980 and the population demand that the Tamazight language be officially recognised along with the Berber identity in Algeria. But thirty years later, where is Kabylie? Let’s move one step back and take stock of the situation.

1) The fight for a Kabyle identity since Algerian independence

Kabylie is a densely populated mountainous region located in the North of Algeria, to the East of Algiers. Surrounded by littoral plains in the West and in the East, with the Mediterranean Sea to the North and the High Plateaus in the South, it is devoid of an overall administrative existence and is the home to a Berber population: the Kabyles. There are between 3 and 3.5 million Kabyle speakers in Kabylia out of a total population of around 35 million inhabitants in Algeria. The Kabyles also number between 2 and 2.5 million in the rest of the country, particularly in Algiers, where they represent a large proportion of the population. There are a million of them as well in France and in other European countries plus Canada.

Since 1962 and the independence of Algeria, the idea of autonomy and of a political plan for Kabylie has moved along; the FFS, or Front of Socialist Forces, challenges the authority of the single party and the fundamental laws of Algeria which conceal the Berber dimension of Algeria. The party of Hocine Aït Ahmed led an armed insurrection which was considered to be a secessionist attempt by the authorities. In 1965, there was a military coup d’état. Despite the fact that the Revolutionary Council was essentially composed of Berbers, Berber propaganda was brutally suppressed and Algeria remained Islamic and Arab. Kabylie has always aroused the anxiety and distrust of the government for fear that its claims infect other fringe groups of the population.

At the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the idea surfaced again even though the public fight for an Amazight identity goes back to April 1980 and the Amazight Spring or Berber Spring: Kabylie and the Algiers universities demonstrated for many months, demanding the rehabilitation of the Berber identity, political and trade union pluralism, the promotion of human rights, etc. The riots of Constantine in 1986, then of October 2008 ‘carried forward’ the multi-party cause but caused between 500 and 800 deaths.

The initial objective of placing the country under a state of emergency was to prevent the Islamic Salvation Front (ISF) from winning the elections. This measure, put in place in 1992, served as a pretext for ‘maintaining order’ but above all was used to suppress the Opposition. Ever since then, each dramatic event which Kabylie experienced only strengthened the conviction that autonomy is the only solution to escape from the impasse which the Algerian central authority created (the school boycott of 1994-1995, the riots which followed the murder of the singer Matoub Lounes – a crime which remains unpunished up to the present day -, the promulgation in 1998 of a law generalising the use of the Arab language in all domains, etc.).

But it was virtually the day after the tragic events of the Black Spring in April 2001 that the movement gained breadth and structure. The murder of a young Kabyle student, Massinissa Guermah, by gendarmes at Béni Douala (near Tizi-Ouzou) and the arbitrary arrest of three college students by the same police body gave rise to a profound feeling of injustice. The population rose up and the serious rioting which followed over the course of several weeks accentuated the break with the authorities.

One hundred twenty-five Kabyles were killed by the Algerian state services; thousands more were wounded and mutilated; and dozens of people disappeared. After the insurrection, some intellectuals signed a petition demanding a status of broad autonomy for Kabylie, and the MAK (Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie) was born and took shape.

The idea of autonomy has been present in the public debate in Algeria ever since the Issad Commission which was established by the President of the Algerian Republic to shed light on these tragic events held the security services and the gendarmerie responsible for many acts of violence. The commission stressed that ‘the violent reaction of the population was provoked by the no less violent action of the gendarmes, which for more than two months prepared the way for the event: firing live ammunition, ransacking, pillaging, carrying out provocations of all sorts, making obscene statements and beatings;’ 1 ‘The violence recorded against civilians is that of a state of war, making use of the munitions of war;’ 2’ The death of Guermah and the incident at Amizour were just the immediate causes of the reported disturbances. The deeper causes are to be found elsewhere: social, economic, political, identity issues and abuses of all kinds. Responsibility is with the higher-ups.3

2) The Kabyle struggle today: RCD, FFS, MAK

Two parties in Algeria defend the plan for the ‘autonomy of Kabylie’: the RCD (Union for Culture and Democracy) and the FFS (Socialist Forces Front). The FFS came out against the absolute power of the authorities right after independence while the RCD fought for acceptance of linguistic diversity and the Kabyle identity. The MAK is the logical consequence of the various initiatives striving for recognition of the Kabyle people and its rights. Relying on international law and democratic action, since its creation this peaceful movement has made an effort at calm reflection and defining a clear message with realistic claims both for Kabylie and for the Kabyle people. In June 2003, a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) explained that the MAK was a movement which tried ‘to channel the anger of Kabyle young people

into a form of nonviolent political protest and, this movement had shown from the very start a remarkable ability to mobilise citizens and eclipsed the political parties of the region (… ).’ The MAK is directed by the singer Ferhat Mehenni, who is also one of the four founders of the RCD from which he resigned in 1997. Ferhat Mehenni also created the Berber cultural movement MCB-National Coordination on 4 April 1993, then the MCB-National Union at the end of the school boycott of 1995. · During the night of 18/19 June 2004, Ameziane Mehenni, the son of the Kabyle leader, was murdered in Paris. From the very start of the investigation, the police believed that the ‘had no political connections.’4 Four weeks before the murder of his son, Ferhart Mehenni received death threats. Now, nearly 5 years later, the crime remains unexplained. More generally, these past few years various human rights organisations including ICG5, have warned public opinion about the worsening situation in Kabylie: ‘This conflict carries risks for the whole of Algeria insofar as it aggravates the instability of the regime and puts in question the relations between Kabylie and the nation. In a more general way, it reflects the fundamental problem of Algeria ever since its independence: the absence of appropriate political institutions allowing regular representation of interests and peaceful expression of grievances (…) .’

The report also criticises: ‘the abuses of authority which occur at all levels and the fact that the agents of the state are not accountable and can violate the law and the rights of citizens with full impunity.’ The ICG is not the only organisation to point its finger at the Algerian regime. In April 2009, a report by Amnesty International denounced the fact that: ‘the authorities are actively trying to gag discussions and criticism and they obliterate the memory of domestic conflict without looking into its consequences for the victims and for the general situation of human rights.’ 6

3) Repression, the only response of Algiers

In March 2002, a seminar brought together in Paris many Kabyle personalities having special skills (economics, linguistics, sociology, etc.) in order to jointly brainstorm and start preparing a plan. This was also the year of the first negotiations between the Aârrouchs, the committees of villages, and the government after a wave of arbitrary arrests. The negotiations led to a revision of the constitution and to the recognition of Tamazight as a national language though not as an official language (which means that Tamazight is not taught).

· In January 2005, a delegation led by Belaïd Abrika, leader of the Kabyle cause immediately after the events of 2001, negotiated an end to hostilities with the central government and wrote up the full 15 claims made by the representatives of the villages and the Kabyle communes – the El-Kseur platform. Today, 5 years later, the state has still not respected a good number of the commitments made then. Apart from the payment of an indemnity to the parents and families of the victims of the repression of the ‘Black Spring,’ most of the other points of the agreement remain unimplemented.

· In October 2006, Rabah Aïssat, president since 2002 of the departmental assembly of Tizi-Ouzou and mayor of his village, was murdered in Aïn Zaya: while he was on the terrace of a café, he was riddled with bullets to the head and abdomen by an unknown assailant. This assassination took place at the moment when his party, the FFS, was preparing for a congress and denounced the constitutional revision. Though the authorities in Algiers tried to attribute the murder of Rabah Aïssat to the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), it remains no less true that: ‘(…) the feeling of powerlessness of the population and its weariness with politics have enabled the regime to impose its law, and one cannot exclude the determination (editor’s note: of the regime) to deal a blow to a party which even in its weakened form remained representative. Indeed, to destabilise Kabylie, a very sensitive region where insecurity linked to kidnapping with demands for ransom and other rackets have taken a disturbing turn.’

During the last presidential race, all the Kabyle political forces called for a boycott of the presidential balloting on 9 April. For the first time, the recognised parties (FFS and RCD), the Aarchs (a movement born during the riots of 2001) and the MAK all rejected the presidential election.

· In 2009, the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie spoke of the many acts of intimidation against its leaders.

· In August 2009, in Tadmait, Kabylie, agents of the Algerian security forces were arrested by the population while they were about to set fire to agricultural fields. Skirmishes broke out with the population when the Algerian Armed Forces tried to free the agents responsible for setting fires! The practice of arson (setting fire to forests, olive groves and houses) was repeated in many Kabyle villages.

· In October 2009 at Tizi-Ouzou, the worsening social situation, the exasperation of the inhabitants with difficult living conditions and the negligence of the authorities in failing to deal with recurrent problems of housing, roads, electricity outages, breaks in water and gas supply prompted demonstrations which were harshly put down by the police forces.

· During the night of 9 January 2010, the Protestant church of Tizi-Ouzou was set ablaze. The Algerian newspaper El Watan reported that the religious site was ransacked by: ‘(…) persons sent by the authorities in Algiers.’7 These were acts of violence which are unacceptable to Kabylie, a profoundly tolerant region where the various religions have been able to coexist up until the past few years in conditions of total mutual respect.

· On 12 January 2010, on the occasion of the Amazight New Year, two major demonstrations were organised in Tizi-Ouzou and in Béjaïa. They brought together nearly 15,000 persons according to the organisers, 7,000 according to the Algerian police. These were demonstrations which once again disturbed the authorities and two days before they took place 10 leaders of the MAK were arrested and held for many hours by the special forces before finally being released during the night. Overall, the gatherings went rather well but according to independent observers present on the ground, the forces of law and order nonetheless unleashed violence, firing rubber bullets on the crowd and many adolescents were clubbed at the sidelines of the 7 El Watan, 10 January 2010. demonstrations. Other Algerian media speak of ‘police violence’8 and of ‘many seriously wounded following clashes with the Algerian police.’9 If general, conflagration and the mass demonstrations have become rarer these past few years in Kabylie, but it nonetheless remains true that ‘ microrevolts’ have become common and, as José Garçon emphasises: ‘there is something new: muscular intervention of the forces of order and numerous arrests, often followed by sentences of imprisonment.’10 And the journalist goes on to say: ‘A new Eldorado (editor’s note: Algeria) which has 60 billion dollars of hard currency reserves displays arrogant financial health thanks to the successive rises in the price of hydrocarbons. Negligence and the absence of the state, just like the lack of infrastructures, are nonetheless obvious there.’

The negligence of the state is also evidenced by the exposure of the Kabyles to Islamic terrorism and crime: ‘(…) the Kabyles complain more and more about a resurgence of crime, particularly kidnappings for ransom, and, above all, the setting up of armed Islamist groups including the GSPC of Emir Droukdel, rebaptised Al-Qaeda in the Ilsamic Magreb (AQIM).’11 In August 2009, at Ichekalen in the area of Tadmaït, four civilians were murdered in the middle of the street and before the powerless inhabitants.

It is clear that the Algerian regime is truly engaged in a struggle at many levels to curb the Kabyle demands. This is a campaign which is orchestrated both at the national and international levels. At the national level, inciting violence and repression of the pro-autonomy movement are a constant phenomenon: arrests, exile, imprisonment, ‘unexplained murders,’ etc. The forces of law and order regularly close their eyes to acts of violence against the population. This policy also takes the form of the repressive laxity of the police, the gendarmerie and the Army with respect to crimes and offences which never stop hindering the public peace in Kabylie. Moreover, the Algerian state is isolating Kabylie economically by allocating government funds with a medicine dropper. This is an untenable situation and the region survives today only thanks to the financial flows arriving from the diaspora.

At the international level, all means at the disposal of the authorities are deployed to ‘empty Kabylie of all substance’: the secret services, diplomacy and disinformation – notably spread through certain media – are constantly used for this purpose. This is a campaign which nonetheless has not prevented the Swedish authorities from ‘recognising the Kabyle cause’ and they recently gave their consent to MAK opening a ‘representation bureau’ in Stockholm.

Today, it has to be said that the situation in Kabylie is critical. Though, on the one hand, the democratic and peaceful movement is organising and meeting with a certain success, it remains true that the resources deployed by the central state to harm the region have finally borne fruit: the security situation is disastrous, unemployment and delinquency are advancing while national and international investments are becoming rarer. This is an explosive cocktail which should raise awareness in the international community and, a fortiori, the European authorities before it is too late.

Rally of Solidarity

Rally of Solidarity for Mozabite People in Algeria

The North American Committee for the Support of Amazigh Mzab (NACSAM).?
Rally of Solidarity for Mozabite People.
Sunday, January 12th 2014 at 3pm.
Canadian Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Canary Islands

                                     Canary Islands

FREPIC-AWAÑAKflag

Beginning with Antonio Cubillo's MPAIAC in the early 1970s, some Canarian nationalist organizations have supported Berberism in order to emphasize native Guanche cultural difference with Spanish culture and highlight "Spanish colonialism".^[3][4] Although the movements attracted sympathies among local Canarios, the violent terror actions used initially by Cubillo's movement brought about a general rejection.^[5] Thus, even after Cubillo publicly renounced the armed struggle in August 1979, he failed to inspire much popular support.

Currently some political organizations in the Canary Islands such as the National Congress of the Canaries (CNC), the Popular Front of the Canary Islands (FREPIC-AWAÑAK), Alternativa Popular Canaria, Canarian Nationalist Party (PNC),^[7] Nueva Canarias (NC),^[8] Alternativa Popular Canaria (APC),^[9] Alternativa Nacionalista Canaria (ANC),^[10] Unidad del Pueblo (UP), Inekaren and Azarug espouse the pro-Berber cause in a higher or lower degree.^[11] Some of the symbols and colors of the flags of the Canarian pro-independence organizations,^[12] as well as the use of the word 'Taknara' (rejected by Cubillo himself) to refer to the archipelago, are seeking to represent Berber cultural roots