Kabylia had always managed to maintain its freedom and its political independence well before the terrorist Arab-Islamist invasion in the 6th century. However, with the advent of the French colonialism, Kabylia found itself fighting on two fronts; against the barbarous Arab-Muslim imperialism on the one hand and against the traditional allies of the fascist totalitarian Arab-Islamists, the fascist French colonists, on the other hand.

Before the French occupation in 1830, Kabylia was in perpetual rebellion against the Ottoman oppressors. It often succeeded to make of its autonomy an accomplished fact. This was evidenced by events such as that where At-Umeqwran (Kabylian Confederation) who were exercising their influence over the majority of Kabylian territory, that of Babors, Bibans, the Soummam region and the south-eastern of Djurdjura, had prevented, in 1808, the Turks of the Bey of Constantine, from passing through the Soummam to get to the west. "Amuqran imejanen" had turned the tables and had demanded the Turks to pay a toll in order to cross their terroitory. Another uprising in 1808 was led by the Iflisen (Kabylian Confederation) of the North of Kabylia which the Ottomans could not defeat until 1816. In 1824, all Kabylia was in revolt against the Turk colonial rule. The revolt covered in a short time the entire Soummam valley and the spread up to Vgayeth Soummam. Various rumors on the insurgents spread like wildfire throughout Kabylia. In Algiers it was learned that a Kaid was killed at close range in a market that the Cadi Hanafi of Vgayeth was kidnapped, that all roads between Algiers and the East were cut. The alarming news prompted the dey Hussein to stop all Kabylians living in Algiers.

These events of 1824, which can be likened to our many "Tifsutin tiberkanin” [Black Springs], showed that the Kabyle people at that time was already akin to those “free peoples” of the West. So when dey Hussein has ordered to arrest and execute all Kabylians living in Algiers, Turkish police (Chaouches) went to the house of the consul of England to apprehend his Kabylian employees. This resulted in protests and diplomatic complications which caused a rupture between London and Algiers, and a few days later, the presence of the English fleet in the bay of Algiers. This event shows us that the Kabyle people was not cut off from Europe at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and they did not need to be enslaved and expropriated by the French colonialism to be affected by the "light" of civilization that the colonists claimed to have brought to Kabylia.

The Kabylians, like all attacked peoples, needed the "free peoples" of the world, the peoples who had escaped the Arab-Islamic and Turkish imperialism. The French preferred to come to dominate and humiliate them rather than to release them. Why? Because the role of the French colonialism in Kabylia was the continuity of Ottoman rule.

An event may illustrate the compromises of France with the Turks in North Africa: Always in 1824, Lord Exmouth was putting pressure on the dey to force him to sign an agreement to fulfil certain conditions laid down by the European powers concerning slavery and other matters. As this attack was repulsed, the dey Hussein closed through the bey of Constantine all the English establishments at Bône before giving them to the French. To those same French for whom dey Hussein had abandoned Algiers in 1830.

French colonialism had been able to dominate and humiliate the Kabylians; what the Turks could not do. Kabylia, without colonialism, would have continued to fight to maintain its freedom. And the Islamic faith, having always been limited, would eventually have given in, be it with the active support "free peoples" or only with the contact that Kabylians had with these peoples.

Algeria would have never been its destiny.

Winna
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