From the outset, what is common between Kabylia, a mountainous Berber region in the western Mediterranean and Kurdistan, a mountainous region in the Middle East?

However, if we look closely, the parallel fate that history has reserved for these two entities is startling. Same demographic weight (a fifth of the population of Iraq and Algeria), populated from ancient times by hardened mountaineers very attached to their autochthonic culture which are marginalised and oppressed by the regimes in place, Kabylia and Kurdistan are confronted to similar challenges. At the time when major historical events are shaking these two regions (The Black Berber Spring in Kabylia, the fall of Saddam Hussein for the Kurds in Iraq), a comparative study of the way Kabyles and Kurds are preparing for their respective future is food for thought.

From the 1960s, Kabylia and Kurdistan have both paid dearly for the crimes of Baathism. As the Algerian and Iraqi governments only swore by the doctrine of Arab nationalism, little Kabyle and Kurdish children learnt classical Arabic at school, as their parents had to face a ferociously Arab-speaking administration that they couldn’t possibly understand. Evidently, Kabyle singers and poets were as scarcely broadcasted on state-owned Algerian TV/ Radio as were their Kurdish counterparts on Iraqi TV/Radio. In general, Kabyle culture suffered the same fate in Boumediene’s Algeria as did the Kurdish culture in Saddam’s Iraq: downgraded, purposely pushed to disappear under the Baathist hammer. In both cases, the cultural tragedy resulted in Arabo-baathist cultural imperialism being largely ignored by the rest of the world. As good French souls, like Pierre Bourdieu, a renowned sociologist, called Algeria “A lighthouse of the Third World” for its progressive politics especially in education, the UNESCO awarded Saddam Hussein a prize for his fight against illiteracy in Iraq and the excellence of his education policy for the masses. The world was congratulating the dictators and pretended to think that what was actually a cultural genocide could be hidden under the slogan of “education policy” for the benefit of the people! The fate of Algerian Kabyles and Iraqi Kurds as distinct cultural communities looked like it was sealed already.

Despite all this, the political oppression brought about a strong resistance from the populations concerned. While “berberist” Kabyles were the first Algerians to enter in open opposition to the regime, first with the episode of “the bombers” of Mohammed Haroun in the 1970s, then in a more massive and spectacular manner in the large-scale riots of the Berber Spring in 1980, the Kurds have always led an active armed resistance against the successive regimes in Baghdad, especially under the leadership of the charismatic “general” Barzani. Culturally, Kabyle and Kurdish poets have produced works that have been very close: militant songs and texts in Tamazight or Kurdish to counter the official influence of the Arab language, historical research to re-appropriate the properly Berber or Kurdish history by the local population. Even the errors of the Berberist and Kurdish movements evolved in parallel fashion: While in Kurdistan, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Talabani becomes the main political rival of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Barzani in 1970 (the rift between the two parties degenerated into civil war between 1994 and 1998), in Kabylia, the Rally for Culture and Democracy of Said Saadi was created in the 1980’s in opposition to the older Socialist Forces’ Front of Hocine Ait Ahmed, resulting in a bitter split and dangerous rivalry inside the Berber Cultural Movement.

Kabyles and Kurds seem engaged for decades in a similar fight for the defence of their cultural rights against Arabism. However, one cannot but notice that historically, the content and form of Kabyle and Kurdish demands have remained very different to this day.

Historically, there exists a fundamental difference between the fates of Algerian Kabyles and Iraqi Kurds. To put it bluntly, the Kabyles have freely chosen to espouse Algeria while the Kurds have been forcefully wedded to Iraq. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, allied to the German and Austrian-Hungarian empires at the end of the first world war, the Sevres treaty, signed on the 10th of August 1920, dismembered the Ottoman empire with, amongst other things, the creation of an independent Kurdistan. This solution was refused by the new Turkish head of state, Mustafa Kamal “Ataturk”. A new treaty, signed in 1923, gave to the new Turkish republic a large share of Kurdistan. The rest of the Kurdish territories have then been distributed between various states, along some artificial borders drawn by the imperialist French and British powers. That is how in 1924, the new, mostly Arab, state of Iraq, sees the addition of various Kurdish provinces. In all this, the Kurdish people never had their say. For them, the Iraqi nationality was imposed from the exterior. The Iraqi state was but a way to replace the Kurdish state expected in 1920. It’s very logical then that Kurds have always felt strangers and always in revolt in such a state with which they share neither language nor culture and of which they never asked to be part of.

On the opposite, the history of Kabyles in Algeria is that of too much love. There is no doubt that Algeria was a colonial creation with as artificial borders as Iraq’s, assembling Berber Touaregs, Berber Chawis, Berber Kabyles and Arabs who have nothing in common or little more the Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Chaldeans and Turkmen of Iraq (“Algeria is but a touristy denomination”, Kateb Yacine, an Algerian writer, used to say). However, contrary to Kurds who tended to reject Iraq, Kabyles have adhered to these borders, to this Algerian political space. When they started to form nationalistic anti-colonialist movements in the 1920s, they always refused to put up front properly-defined Kabyle demands which systematically faded in favour of an Algerian state. This political vision was really massive in Kabylia, which provided the bulk of nationalist Algerian militants against French rule, from the creation of the “North African Star” liberation movement in 1920 to the numerous guerrillas of Province III (Kabylia) during the Algerian war of independence from 1954-1962. When in 1948-1949 (the Berberist crisis), some Kabyles in the nationalist movement timidly tried to assert Berber cultural rights alongside Arab’s, they were violently silenced by the other mostly Kabyle militants, notably Krim Belkacem. In other terms, while Kurds regarded Iraq with suspicion since 1924, Kabyles hugged Algeria with passion.

Another major difference between Kabyles and Kurds that helps to understand their different way of envisaging their struggle is the nature of the oppression they suffer.

In Algeria, one year after independence, in 1963, the army repressed the revolt by the Socialist Forces’ Front in Kabylia. Although no reliable historical study was conducted on the subject, we estimate the number of victims of this operation to number in the hundreds if not thousands. We have to note however that the Socialist Forces’ Front never claimed to fight in the name of Kabyles or Kabylia, but that it intended to assert national demands relating to the exercise of power in Algiers. Next, the anti-Kabyle repression has been two-dimensional: cultural on the one hand, with the generalisation of arabisation and the quasi-prohibition of any form of Kabyle cultural expression, police-related on the other hand, with the squaring of the region and the imprisonment (usually accompanied by torture if not targeted assassination) of anyone who voiced an opinion favourable to Berber culture and a change of regime. It is only recently, during the large-scale riots of 2001-2002 that the Kabyle people had to face a repression at the hands of the state that was openly bloody and indiscriminate. The 123 dead and thousands injured unarmed Kabyles of the Black Berber Spring have marked a “qualitative” and quantitative change in the nature of repression of Kabylia by the regime of Algiers.

In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Kurds have from start only experienced brutal and genocidal repression. The mass executions culminated in 1987 during the Anfal campaign that Saddam Hussein launched against Kurdistan: besides the monstrous gas-poisoning of thousands of innocents in the town of Hallabja, the Anfal compaign included a veritable program of ethnic cleansing: hundreds of thousands of Kurds were forcefully displaced, especially in the oil-rich region of Kirkuk and had to flee to the mountains in the north to escape Baathist terror. They were replaced in their original land by Arab settlers. The repression of Kurdistan by terror persisted till 1991 when access to the three northern provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan was prohibited to Iraqi forces by Anglo-American military aircraft. In total, the campaigns of the Baathist government against Kurdistan have caused the death of tens of thousands of Kurds and the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Clearly, if a fine stream of blood runs between Kabylia and the rest of Algeria, it is enormous red rivers carrying along thousands of corpses that separate Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq. It is not surprising that today, Kurds of Iraq, finally rid of Arabo-baathism after the American campaign of 2003 against Saddam Hussein, want at least a large autonomy in a federal Iraq or at most a full and entire independence. After decades of armed fight and huge suffering, they have forged a true Kurd national conscience that demands, as a people, its cultural and political rights in face of the regime in Baghdad.

In comparison, Kabyles are still prisoners of their “Algerian” history. Tens of thousands of Kabyle martyrs have given their life in 1954-1962 for the cause of Algeria, not Kabylia. All the political and social movements in Kabylia put forward their intention of preserving the unity of Algeria. While Kurdish parties openly assert that “ the unity of Iraq is not sacred”, the militant Aarchs of Kabylia emphasize their will to “not divide the Algerian people”. However, the events of 2001 have resulted in an acceleration of history and a renewal of Kabyle political thought. In the face of brutal repression and the evident lack of solidarity from the rest of the Algerian population, a Kabyle movement, the Movement for Autonomy of Kabylia, asserts, for the first time in history, an autonomous state for Kabylia and is receiving some echo amongst the Kabyle people. Following this new and radical proposition in the Kabyle political discourse, a number of Kabyle parties (RCD, UDR, FFS) have, despite condemning the MAK, put forward a number of proposition for the regionalisation of Algeria, an Algerian federalism or a large decentralisation.

In other terms, the bloody repression endured during the Black Berber Spring has apparently put Kabylia in a scenario “a la Kurd”, according to which, Kabyles, like Kurds before them, take act of their singularity in the national ethno-political landscape and decide to put forward their claim as a specific people. At this time, Kabylia is still very far from Kurdistan: no one is asking for independence and no Kabyle guerrillas can be found roaming the streets of Tizi Ouzou or Bgayeth as the Kurdish Peshmerga do in Erbil and Sulemanyeh. However, the process of a properly Kabyle political assertion has been put in motion. Let us hope that the response of the government of Algiers in face of this emergence of a new Kabyle discourse will not be similar to the one Saddam Hussein made to the Kurds.

By Yidir Djeddai