Amazigh/Berber Memory Work

4

Berber/Amazigh Memory Work

BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN

The transnational Berber lAmazighl culture movement that emerged in

recent decades has been a multifaceted phenomenon. As is the case with

all ethnonational projects, the 9!a!-o-141i9g-apd.diss-esi-n-aflpn-o-f-modern

lerber identity has been accompanied by th-e fashiaa-i-ng*-o-f-a*memory-

communityi' This involved a search for a useable past and, once found, its

enshrinement in new narratives, rituals, and collective commemorations.

Shared memory, Anthony Smith tells us, is as essential to the survival of

a collective cultural identity as is the sense of a common destiny.2 It goes

without saying that the greater the success of the process of "remembering,

recovering and inventing" Berber history,3 the greater the influence it will

have on Algerian and Moroccan societies.a

Berber "memory worK' is carried out in a variety of ways and on a num-

ber of different levels. In its more popular form, the promotion of Berber

history and memory involves a considerable degree of myth making and

essentializing of the Berber "spirit" (embodied in |ean Amrouche's mem-

orable phrase, "the eternal fugurtha").5 In the realms of scholarship and

journalism, the_te-o*pe_fllug_OfNsrth Africanhistory to includelheBerher-q

pften pqqgs* real challenges ts*the 1'offieiat:-history propagated"bg-e9,nIglT"t-

p_g1ary !.igrth. Affiean states and .the-.larger Arab.=Islamic,milieg-nfrathich

Ee-rbrrs.are a pafi. Related to but distinct from the work of historians are

acts of commemoration, namely, the creation, elaboration, and vigilant pro-

tection of "memory sitei' (Iieux de memoire) that enable groups to buttress

their identities against the constant push and pull ofhistorical currents that

threaten to sweep them away.6 Musicians, poets, and writers have taken a

preeminent role in this regard, and some, such as writer Mouloud Mam-

meri and singer-poet Lounes Matoub, havebecome a kind of "memory site"

themselves, as either cultural icons, martyrs to the cause, or both.

The task of Berber memory work is formidable. From the begirrrrirrg of

recorded history in North Africa, the Berlrers havc lrcctt clcpiclecl rts scttt i

Berber/Amazigh Memory Work / 51

savage qqls,iders requiring a Siv,illzi{lglad. Iheyhav"e"he.en especially. .b,"ur-dengd by the lpg+gy_-o"-f Iplamie h_Lrtory4*riehprovide-d thgm yilh gl]"F3;-tsrn

1pd Arab" origin.myth::-that,-legitimize&theie"i.nelusion inJhe-zrn4g,"gL!-eitas 4 pgimitiv.e" c.ommunity,r€-qqtr-"ing the..Islamic-faith..to."iustify theiErnis-gion and-assumption.of-power.7 Part of this istislam, or "submissionj' in-volved the seemingly natural superiority conferred on the Arabic language,the language through which God's word was transmitted and subsequentlyinterpreted by the doctors of the holy law. Ironically, it was a non-Berber,the premier Maghribi historian Ibn Khaldun, writing nearly seven hundredyears after the Islamic conquest of North Africa, who made the Berbers a'great nation'like others inthe umma. even as he used them to demonstratehistorical laws of the rise and decline of societies.

Up until recently, the essentially oral culture of the Berbers and the

4earth of written texts in Tamazight placed Berber memory workers at a

-_severe di_sadv'?n-tage..The steady political, social, and cultural marginaliza-tion of Berber communities over the last five hundred years made memorywork even more difficult. Smith's description of the difficulties confrontingdemotic and peripheral ethnies seems apt for the Berbers: "Excluded from

lhc instlumcnls of political q1,nsmlssion p,ndbq1eft of institutional support,and sometimes without 1-!bT of.sp_eci3lip{s- and developed codes of com-munication[,] , , . thei-r me3gdg:-.j"lttg"ll_s,r"l,tr,'9if hqq"ggs-shadowy, and their

.qf.udttisnu ".,., l+t-.'h"g;rd jiooity ao-9"m"ni"a:'t .Nonetheless, the threats pg.s_ed 1o Bgrber lapguage and identity_-b-y.{r-pl-""1y-

lndependent statesl.policies o-f centralizalipn 4nd Alabi-zgtioq, qp.ming on

lgp -o_-f Jhe.m-as-si-v..e-,rrphe.avals.g9ng5ated bl Eur-ope,g1 coloniaJig;p pnd lm-p*qrgl!.s,9.pd. tqppsd.off by the.often pernicious homogeq!7i.ng gffects ofglobali?ation pfoq_e,-s 9S on local cultures, have also had a salutary effect. Thequest for cultural authenticity, perceived as the basis of collective dignityand hence freedom, is a worldwide contemporary phenomenon in whichBerber intellectuals and activists actively participate. As Smith says, if "the

secret of identity is memory, the ethnic past must be salvaged and re-ap-propriated, so as to renew the present and build a common future in a worldof competing national communities."e No wonder, then, that the Amazighmovement places a premium on memorywork.

The Premodern Past

Moroccan history, as it appears in lhe oftc1al ep11qg!_iq.-c-p1.{,i_qu,!ggr-,_!s.eI-plicitly "nalionalist/clynastici' incorporating Islamic histoly_ lnto a specific

52 / Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

Moroccan historical experience beginning with the arriYal of Islam and

continuing through the establishment of the Idrisid dynasty in A.D. 788 by

Idris I, a descendant of the family of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-

law. Although Berbers are subsumed in this history, they at least carry some

implicit standing: The Idrisis are known to have married Berber women'

and Moroccan dynasties between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries

were Berber-based.l0 By contrast, narrative history as taught in indepen-

dent Algeria's schools has been strikingly lacking in any Algerian-centered

orientation. Thus Algeria's Berberity has been consigned to Algeria's distant

past or ignored entirely. Moreover, the twentieth-century Algerian Salafi

historian Tawfiq al-Madani regarded the Berbers as "noble savages" in a

pristine state, a cultural blank page. It was the Islamic conquest, he wrote,

that brought about the "perfection" of the Maghribi people through a fusion

of Arabs and Berbers into one comtnuniryll Only recently has this official

Salafi reading of Algerian historybegun to be questioned, for example, with

Mahiedine Djender's representation of Algeria as the product of the interac-

tions of a Mediterranean civilization.lz

4uqz-tgLnLeo0*o-ry-,1c-p,rkers*regar-dle-rg.althertcpcnlrx-sf qligll]LsPggqc

nstipn-a!1-lerritpr,.r"alp""riqrilie-s-,.d.pgr-e-e''''''''p1:n-il*p:s-x"sr.g9--*gsJgtvlthlheil*fjgr..ds.of .historical-accura,c;"a.r,e-Jiks:mjn$sdin..their-emphasisnnJhelgr-

P..pxs astravinga+re*Islanic"pasLand"p.ne.invs..hi€lilt"h-eJ"*\eeJs.aq[ivg3ggqts,poJ.merel}"xoicc!e-qs.".namelp".s-aJo--ql"s-oJdi.e.:"s-"ga-d-rll.rlsrglgJnr-he-s4sgg j.pd

f.pasants- Illustrated books for children tell the stories of ancient Amazigh

heroes, such as fuba, Massinissa, and the Berber queen Dihya/the Kahina.

The Kahina holds particularly rnythical status among Arnazigh memory

workers as the heroic leader of Berber resistance to Islamic invaders (for a

recent and contested use of the Kahina in Algeria, see below).l3Mohamed Chafik, the dean of Moroccan Berberist intellectuals, has con-

sistently sought to redefine Maghribi collective memory, and hence its iden-

trty,by rehistoricizing Morocco's pre-Islamic past. Recorded North African

history, he emphasizes, dates back to the Rornans, Greeks, Carthaginians,

and even, at times, Pharoanic Egypt.The native Amazigh-speaking popu-

lation was part and parcel of this history, according to Chafik, and pro-

duced numerous historical figures, such as Terentius (a Carthage-bornplaywright writing in Greek and Latin during the second century B.C'),

Tertullianus (an important Christian writer from Carthage in the late first

century-early second century A.D.), Arnobius (another Christian writer'

born in a Numidian village in the second half of the third century A.D)'

and St. Augustine.la For Chafik and other Amazigh activists, language is

Berber/Amazigh Memory Work / 5j

the defining feature of culture and history (notwithstanding the fact thatAmazigh heroes during the Roman and Byzantine period had Latinizednames and may or may not have been fluent in the Amazigh language).As such, Amazigh history can be traced even further into the past, manyhundreds of years before the barbaroi began appearing in Greek chronicles.Moroccan-born ethnologist Helene Hagan has written a fascinating mono-graph on the Amazigh underpinnings of ancient Egyptian civilization basedon the etymological roots of its language.ls The "Libyan' pharoanic dy-nasty founded by Sheshounk I in 945 B.C. is now commonly referred to byAmazigh memory workers as the moment of entry of the Amazigh peopleinto history. Indeed, the Paris-based Acadimie Berbdre chose to propagatea Berber calendar with the year of Sheshonk's ascent as its starting point.Accordingly, the year A.D. 2005 is equivalent to 2955. Both dates are usedon the masthead of the Rabat-based monthly Le Monde Amazigh (al-'Alamal - Am a zi ghi I Am adal Am a zigh) .

No less importa!-t &r Amazigt-A9m.g1'_yo_1kp_1g, {t"-",Jplgntr9!19g g_lt-he

$mZrgb-wasnoUneend of hi.story Tf did nof srrbor inatefheirjdgtJ-iff_perse, nor brin&it tp a mqst Berfect state.In fact, it was the Amazigh peoplethemselves, Chafik emphasizes, who played an important role in the dis-semination of Islam in both Africa and Spain. To that end, Tariq BinZiyad,the fabled Berber commander of the Muslim forces that first crossed intoIberia in A.D. 711, very much belongs in the pantheon of Berber heroes,epitomized today by the Rabat center disseminating Berber culture thatbears his name.l6 Conversely, and not surprisingly, the destruction wroughtin Andalusia in the twelfth century by the troops of the religiously zealousAlmohad Berber dynasty founded by Ibn Tumart is conspicuously absentfrom Berber memory work. Collective memory as we know is always selec-tive, as much about forgetting as about remembering.lT

Chafik laid out his interpretation of Moroccan Amazigh history duringthe Islamic period starkly, and at times polemically, in the Berber Manifesto,issued in March 2000 and signed by more than two hundred Berber intel-lectuals. While providing a detailed exposd of the shortcomings of the inde-pendence era, the manifesto also places them in abroader historical context,albeit one not commonly found in the history books. Most people, it says,recognize that the imposition of colonialism in 1912 was made possible bythe sorry state to which Morocco had sunk. The reason for this was the tri-umph of the makhzeniants political tradition of despotism and oppression,accompanied by "haughtiness, ostentation and pomp." This tradition is saidto have been inherited from the Ummayad and Abbasid empires, 'tontrary

54 / Brurc Maddy-Weltzman

to the spirit of political consultation prescribed by Islami' and practiced

by the Prophet Muhammad and the first four Caliphs. Coincidentally or

not, this latter spirit, as defined by the manifesto, was in line with Amazighpolitical traditions, which were 'geared towards managing the affairs of thejama'a ('local community') . . . through dialogue and consultationl'Themakhzen, "pursuant to its heavy Heraclian-Khurasan heritagej' was steeredfor centuries by "influential peopleJ'those who could "make or breaki'whopreached hatred toward anything Amazigh, while reducing the historicalroles played by "Berbers." Occasionally, the rnanifesto stated, enlightenedSultans made commendable efforts toward the Amazigh population. How-ever, the makhzenian circles "taught hatred towards anything Amazigh togeneration after generation oftheir offspringi'Their desire to preserve theirprivileges led them to blindly adhere to political traditions based upon dog-matic and tightly closed religious thinking. The clash between these twoworldviews resulted in violence and disorder, rendering the country easyprey for foreign invaders.

Chafik's emphasis on the purlty of Muhammad and his immediate suc-cessors, the rashidun (the "rightly guided" caliphs), is a theme commonto Islamic reform currents dating back to the late nineteenth century. In

that sense, Chafik's approach is a consensual one, which seeks to incorpo-rate Moroccan Islam into Amazigh identity. To be sure, Chafik seems tobe advocating a more thoroughgoing liberal reform of Islam than that ofreformers of earlier generations, in line with modern times. Still, even this

Iglcls neLtruivgpe :sg"I!9i-1g-fl p*ama-zigb-"LcgyrslseJlr[ggitr glugrcontains many militanl g-gpSl.ar.:sls,"amp-ng-tk3$SSd"t:gfg*dJgbhqhsl*of

7s Wr!:!nqzts.!',,.-hiih*s*'sr'-:tt*I-'vs-l,x-4gg.-"q-el*'set**lhel1ltl'.!.lendardateonitsmasthS_+.d,_$g'l?4x_tlS_:Ig!sip"99j9l9gJg*itg!-RsyildeleC-g.l-tu:c.A$ez1ghe"fi RCAM)"isnptuniyersalk-iriewedwirhfuvs*arnonerle-M

On occasion, Chafik's writings have also been criticized for being essen-tialist and ahistorical and hence unhelpful to the Amazigh cause. Moroccanscholar Rachid ldrissi takes Chafik to task for ignoring history for statingwithout proof, for example, that ancient Berber kings sought to uniff all ofthe Berber tribes under one central power, or for trying to forcibly bridgeMorocco's pre-Islamic and Islamic eras (for example, by holding up boththe Kahina and the twentieth-century Riffian leader Abd al-Krim as Berberheroes and models; for more on the latter, see below). Chafik's declarationthat the conquering Arabs were the enemies of the Berbers, like all otherconquerors of North Africa from ancient times to modern, ancl that it was

Berber/Amazigh Memory Work / SS

due to them that the Berbers did not write down their own history wassimply inaccurate, according to Idrissi. such a view, he said, ignored the factthat "the Berbers mixed with the Arabs like pure water with wine,' (quotingMokhtar soussi, a famous Berber Muslim intellectual of the early tr,rrentiethcentury). The Berbers, said Idrissi, began to have a collective memory whenthey learned to write in Arabic, as part of the Islami c umma.z0

France,s Moroccan protectorate

The Berber Manifesto's critique of 'bfficial" Moroccan history during theyears of the French protectorate is withering. Makhzeniancircles, it claims,actually welcomed the French protectorate and were the main beneficia-ries of its rule. Together, they were aligned against the "rebellious Berbers,"who were militarily subjugated and then consigned to marginalization andnondevelopment. when the time came for national rebellion against theFrench, it was the Irnazighen who willingly provided the necessary man-power. At the same time, the manifesto studiously avoids any mention ofthe most powerful Berber leader during the protectorate years, Thami al-Glawi, an omission that can only be understood as a willful act. A positivereference to Glawi, whose power rivaled that of the Sultan's, would situatecontemporary Berber discourse on the side of the French colonial powerand opposed to Moroccan nationalism, not to mention the legitimacy ofthe monarchy; mere repetition of the dominant national narrativet negativetreatment of Glawi would run counter to the manifesto's overall critique ofthat narrative. Given Glawi's prominent role in Moroccan history duringthose tumultuous decades, one can perhaps expect that at some point bothdispassionate historians and Amazigh activists more militant than thoseaffiliated with the manifesto will take up the subject.2r

In contrast to the silence on Glawi, the leader of thelg2l-26Rif rebellionagainst spanish and French forces, Muhammad bin Abd al-Krim Khattabi,has become a preferred, even revered figure for modern-day Moroccan Ber_bers engaged in memory work. Abd al-Krim combined charisma, militaryprowess' education both traditional and modern, and a political agenda thatled him to seek to uniSr the historically feuding tribes of the Rif into a singlepolitical unit. In the process, he accumulated the ultimate anti.imperialistcredentials, inflicting a crushing defeat on Spanish forces at the battle of An-oual in 1921, an outcome that resonated widely throughout the Middle Eastand beyond. This triumph also supplies important ammunition to modern-day Berber activists determined to combat the accusations that Berbers too

56 / l l r t t t t Mtul t ly Wti lzt t r t r t r

olicn collitboratcd witlt colottiarl rule and that their assertion of Berber iden-

tity is linkcd to olcler colonialist projects to divide Berbers from Arabs.

At {irst glance, appropriating bin Abd al-Krim may not seem like an en-

tirely smooth matter for secular Berberists. He is generally understood by

historians to have been a promoter of Islamic reform,23 in line with wider

Islamic currents at the expense of popular religious practice, which Berber

activists often recognize as central to their specific heritage. Nor did bin

Abd al-Krim emphasize an explicitly AmazighlBerber identity in his ef-

forts to mobilize fellow Rifians against the foreigner. Hence, in addition to

his Islamic reforrnist creder.rtials, he is often viewed as a premodern type of

leader, leacling a nol-untyl.rical and ultimately futile nativist revolt against

the corrcluerors.

As with all lristorical personalities, bin Abd al-Krim'.s actual behavior and

views do rrot corrpletely lit the requirements of an idealized Berber hero.

But contemporary Arnaz.igh activists have not been deterred by these cave-

ats. They concentrate on portraying bin Abd al-Krim as a leader who hero-

ically led his people against the occupier, unlike the urban Arab class, which

sat on its hands during the Rifian revolt rather than lend a hand against the

colonial oppressor. The recovery of the history of bin Abd al-Krim and his

short-lived "Rifian Republic" is hence an ongoing project, intimately con-

nected to the themes of marginalization and identity denial that character-

ize the contemporary Berberist discourse. Only recently, Amazigh activists

initiated a campaign to return Abd al-Krim's remains from Cairo, where he

died in 1963, and to construct a combination mausoleum-museum-cultural

complex in his Ajdir redoubt.2a In August 1999, the newly crowned King

Muhammad VI conferred an important measure of legitimacy on Rifian

Amazigh memory work. Aware of the Rif's problematic status, economi-

cally, socially, and historically vis-ir-vis the Moroccan central authorities,

and seeking to bolster his own legitimacy in a region that his fathet as

crown prince, had bombed and repressed in 1958-59, Muhammad made

a high-profile visit to the region, something his father had always avoided.

Moreover, his gestures to the Rifian Berbers were not limited to pledges

for material improvement but also included a promise that the Ajdir ruins

would be reconstructed and a visit with bin Abd al-Krim's son, who came

especially from Cairo for the occasion.

Notwithstanding Muhammad VI's gestures, however, he has failed to ad-

dress a painful episode that highlights the makhzent historic indifference


to the Rifian war, namely, the Spanish military's systematic use of poison

gas against Rifian fighters and civilians, with the assistance of French andGerman manufacturers. It is only in recent years that this matter has cometo light, thanks in part to the work of a number of Spanish scholars andBritish historian Sebastian Balfout25 as well as two German journalists, whorevealed German involvement in Spain's actions. Le Monde Amazigh,which

has played a prominent role in recent years in promoting and disseminatingthe Abd al-Krim story through articles and conferences, has given promi-

nence to this shocking and sorry episode in a number of issues. The battle

qg_ .q!I]9I marginalizatiqn and official. indifference.extendsto,.the- ptgqent: S.ul,

yfvols 9f pgison gas attacks and their offspring"are. said-_t9".pgftr fr.o-m pu-

mer_o99..l.r;qlthp5'abl-e_ms, including inordinatqlyhigh,faleEpJge.1r 9r.But upuntil now, Moroccan authorities have ignored Amazigh demands and beenunwilling to raise the matter of possible acknowledgment and compensa-tion for elderly survivors with the Spanish government, fearing that it wouldadversely affect bilateral ties.26 In response, one speaker at a conference held

in the Rifian city of Tetouan in the spring of 2004 proposed a number ofconcrete measures, including suing the German and French companies thatparticipated in the manufacture of the toxic gases usedby Spain and appeal-ing to the European Court of Human Rights.27

Praising bin Abd al-Krim's anticolonial exploits is only part of the

{paTigh movement!^effo-rts to. deb.unk the stigrna-of eollaboration-wiflthe 99!9n!gl r-qlers, whicf., gqlp-ed,currency especially.after -the.jssuing."ofthe qo;_q?lle-d "Berber .dahiir (royal ed.ic"t) b-y.the French authorities in.JgS0"France's attempt to institutioqalizg Berber customa.ry law.at.the expense.of

Qurani-c law served a$.a.cruci.al.catalyst.in the.,formation of.-the..natipnaliClmovement. In recent years, some Berber activists have taken another lookat the episode. Muhammad Mounib blamed the nationalists for the false"Berber" appellation of the dahir, for it implicitly implicated the Berbers inthe French project to divide them from the Arabs.z8 Chafik found anotherway to debunk the myth of Berber collaboration with the Protectorate, em-phasizing the importance of transcribing and studying Amazigh poetry asllte reservoir of the memory of resistance to the French occupation during191244.2e Commemorations of battles against the colonizers, such as theorte of llougafer in the Middle Atlas in 1933, are connected by organizerskr olht:r historical and contemporary events in different regions, so as tot.rrrplrirsizc t lre supra-tribal, collective nature of Berber identity.3o


Battling the lstiqlal

The Moroccan Berberist counternarrative has drawn an almost straightline between official indifference to the Rif and the subsequent foundingof the state and marginalization of the Berber communities by the Istiqlal-dominated nationalist movement. The failure of the state to officially com-memorate the battle of Anoual or other episodes of resistance to the Frenchpacification campaigns, wrote one commentator, contrasted sharply withits attention to events commemorating the Istiqlal.3l The murder of RifianLiberation Army leader Abbas M'sa'adi in 1956, apparently on the order ofthe Istiqlal's Mehdi Ben Barka, has become another subject of discussionin recent years,32 as has the authorities' forcible repression of the 1958-59rebellion. Ironically, one of the eighteen demands submitted to the king inNovember 1958 by a Rifian committee (which included bin Abd al-Krirdsson) was for the rapid Arabization of the educational system throughout thecountry. The context of this demand was the use of French in the formerSpanish zone, to which the Rif belonged, which put the local population ata disadvantage relative to the central authorities.33 Subsequently, ofcourse,Arabization became one of the chief bugaboos of the Amazigh moverirent,owing to the overt threat it posed to Tamazight and to the already unequal,subordinate social status of its speakers.

As with the Rifian demands for indemnity for the victims of Spain's poi-son gas attacks, reopening the wounds of tr958 is not just a matter of concernto historians, or even to identity builders. In February 2004, the Committeeof Victims of the 1958 Walmas Events was established. The committee de-manded not only the revelation of the truth but also indemnity for the sur-vivors of the repression of the mostly Berber Army of Liberation members,from the Walmas tribal grouping, by the "militia" of the Istiqlal party. As isusually the case, the royal family's role in the events was downplayed.3a

The first Amazigh intellectual to speak out publicly against the falsifica-tion of Moroccan history by the Istiqlal-dominated establishment and thesystematic ignoring of the Berbers, those who represent the "real culture ofthe countryi'was the recently deceased Ali Sidqi Azaykou (d. 2004). Char-acterrzingthe historical origins of Morocco's cultural problem as stemmingfrom repeated colonization by outsiders, including Arabs, and publishinghis views in Arabic, no less (adding fuel to the fire), he was convicted in 1982of 'disturbing the security of the state" and imprisoned for one year.35 Begin-ning in the 1990s, however, the Moroccan authorities began treating suchexpressions more benignly. By 2001, the Berber Manifesto could address


Morocco's more recent history in an unabashedly revisionist and explicitlypolitical tone. It hammered away at the denial of Morocco's'Amazighness"and the arrogation by professional politicians and most members of Moroc-co's elites, since 1956, of "monopolistic rights to 'patriotism' and 'politicalaction."' Even speaking of this monopolization, the manifesto noted, haslong been a taboo in Moroccan life.

Little by little, stated the Manifesto, it became clear after independencethat none of the extant political forces, whether pro-monarchy or not, weregoing to give the Amazigh their due and include them in the definition ofa modern Morocco. Instead, successive national goyernments pursued thepolicy of building an exclusively 'Arab Maghribi' led by an Arabized Mo-rocco. In presenting their demands for a reordering of national priorities,the signatories of the manifesto were determined "to combat the culturalhegemony" that has been programmed in order to bury a very importantpart of [Morocco's] civilizational heritage [emphasis in original].36

Although the broad dichotomy laid out in the manifesto between the"good' Berbers and the "bad" Istiqlallmakhzen may be generally acceptedby the Amazigh movement, a more complex reality has begun to be ac-knowledged. Some Berbers, including former Liberation Army members,joined the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP) in 1959, whichwas formed by Ben Barka as a breakaway from the Istiqlal. They did so,according to veteran activist Muhammad al-Kassimi, in order to stop theinjustice caused to authentic "resisters" by the appointment to high posi-tions of "collaboratorsi' e.g., Gen. Muhammad Oufkir, who served in theFrench army (as did tens of thousands Berber goums [tribal irregulars])and eventually became the king's right-hand man until his ultimate demiseinl972, and "feudalistsj' a reference to the Berber rural notables who madecommon cause with the monarchy through the Mouvement Populaire.3TThe state's crackdown on the tribes of the Khenifra region inI973 followedan attempted uprising in Moulay Bouaza by the UNFP's secret military wingled by Sidi Muhammad Umed, which, according to Kassimi, had won ameasure of sympathy among the civilian population. The punishment in-flicted on his family, friends and the region in general is now being spokenof openly, along with demands for indemnities. Meanwhile, Umed fled toAlgeria, where he had previously resided for twelve years, died during the1980s, and was buried there with honors. To complicate the picture further,the UNFP itself may have been involved in the unsuccessful coup d'6tatagainst King Hassan II the previous year, through Lt. Col. MuhammadAmokrane. This of course was the event that brought Oufkir, held up by

v60 / Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

Kassimi as the'tollaborator" par excellence during the 1950s, to ruin.38 The

very fact that Le Monde Amazigh published the interview with Kassimi

while he was being treated in an army hospital at the state's expense for

injuries he suffered while in prison, indicates the increasing possibilities of

conducting open discussion of formerly repressed episodes of Morocco's

recent past. It also signals that at least some within the Amazigh move-

ment are opposed to reductionist, one-dimensional representations of that

past.3e

Subaltern History

Recovering and remembering rural and tribal history is very much part of

the Amazigh culture movement's agenda. Here the primary factor in de-

termining identity is not language per se but land, around which society

is organized. In Morocco, the authorities, whether French or Moroccan'

are depicted as running roughshod over Amazigh communal land rights

and traditions. For example, Le Monde Amazigh published a long article

denouncing the administrative confiscation of the lands belonging to the

Zayan tribes in the Khenifra region, pointing to similarities between cur-

rent policies and those used by the Protectorate authorities, who had bought

out one of the leadingcailds, Mouha U Hamou Zayani. Previously, he had

joined with Arab tribes in their fight against the French during their "paci-

fication' campaign. However, in return for his agreement not to fight the

French any further, Mouha U Hamou was granted the lands of neighboring

tribes.

The confiscation of communal lands also had important negative effects

on social and cultural life. For example, a traditional spring holiday gather-

ing of the Zayan tribes, which featured a theatrical performance by tribal

notables involving pledges of mutual solidarity and a sharing of the lands,

according to Berber customary law, vanished with the transfer of the lands

to Mouha U Hamou. The administrative means for doing so were and re-

main Royal dahirs, which do not recognize customary law and view tribal

lands as belonging to the state.ao

The question of the relationship between customary law and Islamic law

has been ofcontinuing interest to scholars. The French Protectorate author-

ities stepped into a minefield when they tried to formally institutionalize

customary Berber practices and thus officially place them on an equal fool-

ing with the Sharila. It is generally held that Berber customary law (izcr.l) is

not diametricallyopposed to the Shari 'a and takes it irrto accourrl. Howcvcr,

Berber/Amazigh Memory Work / 6I

Injaz Abdallah Habibi, in writing about the Zayan tribes, openly questionswhether this is the case, indicating a desire to diminish the religious aspectsof Berber identity. His emphasis on the positive aspects of communal villagecustoms is part of a broader theme of Amazigh memory work, namely, theessentially democratic nature of village society and, by extension, Berberculture as a whole (as articulated in the Berber Manifesto). The upland vil-lage is presented as the repository of deep-rooted Berber traditions, withthe traditional art, handicrafts, and household management bywomen whostood at the center of daily life.ar S_uch trgatmgn-!.al timgg spills over into anidealization of tra{ltlgqal life, reminiscent of the"nostalgiarladen presentatlg gf th" Eptern European lewish shtetl (v!f!agg) by writers and publicistsk99n on promotlng and presel-ving Jewiqh.i_denil* "and culture, even as its

fgg was being eroded and then violeqtly qr.a{lcated. Another writer even

went so far as to describe village societyt organizing concept of jama'a,which is usually associated with a (negative) tribal mentality, as having theattributes of love, altruism, love of the land and the 'bther," and hence be-ing not in contradiction with the requirements of modernity but rather inharmony with it.az This may seem contrived; however, it may also fit thecategory of reinterpreting one's history and society in a useful fashion.

Ali Azaykou, for his part, recommended studying Morocco's past via themethod of /?istoire tatoude, a metaphor for unwritten documents preservedby geography and archaeology, in addition to the oral traditions embodiedin the Amazigh collective memory. In addition, one may learn somethingevcp from the actual taltoo often engraved on the Berbers'skin. Use ofthetattoo metaphor is especially poignant, given the fact that in contemporaryMorocco, the tattoo is often seen as an emblem of inferiority inflicted by

.one's parents, and considerable efforts are made to surreptitiously removeit, often resulting in scarring of the skin.a3

Algeria's Berbers - Kabyle and Chaoui or Amazigh?

The Berberist reading of the broad historical themes of Amazigh historyin both the pre-Islamic and Arab-Islamic periods, as well as the challengesposed by the postcolonial state, cut across contemporary inter-state bound-rries. France's aborted efforts to base its rule on a policy of dividing Berberslhrnr Arabs, underpinned by a well-constructed set of origin and charactertttylhs,aa pr<lved a difficult legacy for Berbers in both Morocco and Alge-liir, wlro werre irl. pains to demonstrate their patriotic and anticolonial cre-rlcnlil ls. l{cgardless of their efforts, contemporary opponents of the Berber


culture movement accuse it of promoting colonialism in a new guise. Butunlike earlier decades, Berber insistence on their anticolonialist credentialsdoes not deter them from sharply criticizing Arab nationalism, the domi-nant ideology of all modern states in North Africa. More and more, Arabnationalisrn appears in Berber discourse as a pernicious foreign import, itsfuller appellation being'Arab-Islamic Ba'athism" or, alternately,'Arab-Is-larnic totalitarianism." In rejecting the Arab nationalist doctrine of a singleArab homeland (al-Watan al-'Arabi) from the Atlantic Ocean to the per-sian Gulf, Berberists emphasize the existence of a single Amazigh peopleexisting from time immemorial in its homeland (Tamazgha), stretchingfrom the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis in western Egypt. Efforts to desa-crahze the Arabic language include labeling the Arabic script'Arameanl'asConcurrently, a modified version of the ancient Tifinagh script, preservedfor usage by the Touareg Berbers of the Sahara, is held up as an importantsymbol of Berber identity, and its usage is actively promoted. In the realmof commemorative efforts, pan-Berber identity was recently manifested ina petition by the Paris-based Congrds Mondial Amazigh to the UN's Com-mittee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) demandingthat France add to its list of officially sanctioned holidays the Amazigh holi-days of Yennayer (Amazigh New Year, a traditional agricultural festival),occurring on |anuary 12, and the'Amazigh Spring" (commemorating theevents in Algeria in 1980; see below), on April20.a6

At the same time, the particular historical experiences and social realitiesof the berberophone communities have shaped their memory work, result-ing in a type of"Berberism in one countryi'carrying at least a potential ten-sion with the pan-Berberist view. Nowhere is this more evident than withthe Kabylians, who make up two-thirds of Algeria's berberophone popula-tion. To be sure, Kabylians have played a vanguard role in laying the foun-dation for the modern Berber culture movement, embodied over the lastfour decades by the France-based intellectual production ofsuch bodies asthe Acad6mie Berbdre/Agraw Imazighen, the Group d'Etudes Berbdres delluniversitd de Paris-vIII, and the centre de Recherche Berbdre at InstitutNational des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in paris. How-ever, the same factors that placed them in the vanguard of "pan-Berberism"also resulted in a sharpening ofKabylian specificity. By contrast, the secondlargest berberophone group, the Chaouia (from the Aurds Mountains), hashistorically been less isolated from its Arab surroundings and slower to de-velop a modern Amazighidentity.

The first manifestations of a modern type of Kabylian-Berber conscious-


ness' expressed through new kinds ofcultural expressions such as the po-etry of resistance of colonization, were already making their appearance atthe end of the nineteenth century. At this point, there was no intermediatereference to an 'Algerian" or "Maghribian' community, only the immedi-ate Kabylian identity and the wider Islamic one.47 |ean Amrouchds chantsBerbdres de Kabylie (1939) was followed by many other works in the fieldsof music and poetry (e.g., works by Mouloud F6raoun, Taos Amrouche,Mouloud Mammeri, and Ait Menguillet). Their recovery, transmission, andproduction of Kabylian cultural artifacts were crucial to the developmentof modern Kabylian identity. on the more explicitly political level, youngradical Kabylian militants who fomented the so-called Berberist crisis in1948-49, sharpened matters further. According to the analysis of MelhaBenbrahim, the texts of these militants are dominated by references to theBerber, and specifically Kabylian, patrimony: the reclaiming of the pre_Islamic historical figures Massinissa and fugurtha, and the heroic resister tothe Arab conquest, the Kahina; the fierce Kabylian resistance to the Frenchforces (1857, l87l); references to the Djurdura and the montagneladrar asa symbol of resistance; the honor of the group; and their fidelity to theirancestors and symbolic heritage. Young Kabylian intellectuals, states salemchaker, were thus situated at the intersection of radical nationalism of themodern type (laique) and the specific Berber cultural tradition.as

Interest in the "Berberist crisis" is part of the wider interest among Kab-ylian activists in reopening for scrutiny the events of Algeria's war of in-dependence and its immediate aftermath. Scholars have generally down-played the specific Berber dimension of the Algerian revolution's internalblood-lettings and political purges, for example, the assassinations ofAbaneRamadane and Belkacem Krim and the failure of Hocine Ait Ahmed's op-position to the newly independent authorities in 1962-63.ae Nonetheless,these episodes, underpinned by the wholesale denial of Kabylian specific-ity-and any diversity, for that matter-in favor of a stridently uniform anduni-dimensional nationalism, are now increasingly viewed as part of thebackground to the cultural flourishing and simmering proto-political op-position among the Kabylian community during the 1970s. politically, AitAhmed organized his supporters in 1963 under the banner of the Forces desFront socialistes. This organization would be joined at the end of the l9g0sby the smaller, more militantly secular-Berberist Rassemblement pour laCulture et la D6mocratie.so

The problematic nature of the Algerian state and its failure to adequatelyacconrmodate the Kabylian region generated a confluence of circumstances

6'4 / llrure Machly..Wellenun

that fed tcr the now-mythical "Berber Spring" (Le Printemps Berbdre).sr Ac-eorellng to Benjamin Stora, "The effect of the 'Berber spring'was to produce,fur the first time since independence and from within Algeria, a publiccounter-discourse of real import, in a country operating on the principle ofunanimism. In that compact universe, where society and state, private andpublic mingled together in a single bloc, the blossoming of autonomouspopular associations and organizations gave texture to Algerian society.The appearance of cultural, democratic pluralism allowed conflicts existing'within the people'to be expressed and resolved by political means."sz

In terms of memory work the anniversary of the Berber Spring has be-come a central commemorative event for Amazigh cultural associations inAlgeria and the diaspora.53 Since 2001, it has been joined by Le PrintempsNolr (Black Spring), the bloody events sparked by the death of a young Kab-ylian in police custody that resulted in the deaths ofover one hundred peo-ple, a veritable civil revolt against the authorities and the creation of a newbody outside of existing political parties, the aarouch (lit. 'tribes"), whichled an ongoing struggle to change the nature of Kabylian-state relations and,by extension, the nature of the Algerian state itself. The extent to which theaarouch constituted a modern, grass-roots organization drawing sustenancefrom traditional collective village symbols or, alternatively, constituted anunwelcome reversion to factionalized, premodern antidemocratic tribalnorms remains to be determined.sa

The two "Springs" of 1980 and 2001 serve as bookends, of a sort, to thebreakdown of the postindependence FLN Algerian state and the descentinto horrific violence during the 1990s between the authorities and Islamistopposition forces. These tumultuous times resulted in the creation of Kabyl-ian "martyrs," from the numerous intellectuals and artists slain during theviolence of the 1990s,ss to Guermah Massinissa, the youth whose killingtouched off the Black Spring in 2001. Singer and poet Lounes Matoub isperhaps the most prominent martyr of them all. His murder in fune 1998,allegedly by Islamist extremists, touched offmassive antigovernment dem-onstrations throughout Kabylia, and his last CD, released posthumously,contains a withering indictment of the postindependence Algerian state,set to the tune of Algeria's national anthem, with the refrain of "Betrayal,BetrayalJ' The cover of the CD drawn by Ali Dilem, one of Algeria's leadingcaricaturists, contains images of dripping blood, the Amazigh flag, Algeria'smilitary and political leaders and leading Islamists, a reference to the Ara-bization language policy, and a sign that reads 'Algeriassic Park." It servesas an almost iconic posteq being used by Berber satellite televisiorr (llRl'V)

drff&itil,,


broadcasting from paris, for example. Matoub's death, and those of others,quickly came to serve as a reference point for increased Kabylian militancy.Given the centrality of cultural producers in the fashioning of modern Kab-ylianlAmazigh identity, it was fitting that a veteran singer/poet/activist, Fer-hat Mehenni, has taken the reacl in recent years in proiroting autonomy forKabylie, a radical idea indeed.s6 whatever the course eventJwould take, itwas clear that the fears of Mouloud Mammeri, the Kabylian cultural icon ofthe previous generation, of another "absurd death of the Aztecs,, was pre-mature, at the very least.57

Although Kabylia has been at the center of the Argerian Amazigh move-ment's political and cultural ferment, it would be misiaken to assigi it exclu_sivity.ss Berber memory work in the Aurds region, the site of th. Lbl"d 8".-ber resistance to the invading Arab-Muslim forces at the end of the seventhcentury, has recently reached a new level. In February 2003, rlAssociationAurds El-Kahina erected a large statue of the heroic Berber queen in thecenter of the town of Bagha'i in the wiraya of Khencher". Th" statue wasdesigned by a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts dAlger. ofcourse' such a public commemorative act could not be done in Algeria (ex-cept perhaps in Kabylia) without the consent of the authorities. In fact, theceremony was attended by the president of the republic himsel{, Abdel AzizBouteflika. The president's presence was clearly intended as a gesture to theAmazigh community, with whom the state has been at logge-rheads for somanyyears (though primarilyin Kabylia, not in the Aures); ii also indicateda desire to place greater emphasis on specifically Algerian history, albeit aparticular reading of it. Indeed, one shouldn't take this too far; hispresenceat the unveiling of the Kahina statue was ignored entirely by the nationalpress.

of course, Amazigh activists contest the state's orientation to Berber heri-tage, whether it involved appropriation or neglect. one Aurds-centered website, displaying the picture of the new Kahina statue, added superimposedimages of the Amazigh flag on both sides of the Kahina statue's pedestal.seActivists bemoan the degradation and official neglect of the archaeologi-cal site' which is considered to have been the mountainous redoubt of theKahina. Some academics have urged that uNESCo be approached to in-clude it on its list of protected world Heritage sites, and that the Ministryof culture take the lead in promoting its va1ue, as it was inhabited fromprehist.ric times until the eleventh century Hilalian invasion.60 Accordingto chaouia activists, the endangered status of another site poses a threatlo their collective memory: the mausoleum of Imadghacen, a cylindricar

I f

aa I l lkrr , i l f t r r l r l t , l r t l l ; r t r tur

lrcderldl eighteerr and a half meters high and fifty-nine meters in diam-clrlr' iu tlrc' wilirya of Batna, which is among the oldest material evidencerl'tlre Massyle Amazigh dynasty, and which under the subsequent rule ofMassinissa is considered to have sought to unifr the Maghrib into a singleentity. A suggestion to rename the Batna airport after Imadghacen (Imed-hassen) was rudely rejected, prompting the following rejoinder from thedisappointed former governor of Batna, who had been removed by Boute-flika allegedly following the pressure of the "local mafia": "|ust as you havenegated our origins at this moment, there will come a generation which willnegate youi'61 Meanwhile, chaoui Amazigh activists have begun using thename anyways.62

Concluding Thoughts

As Lawrence Rosen has shown in his study of a Moroccan village, day-to-day social boundaries between 'Arabs" and "Berbers" are generally fluidand negotiable,63 belying the all-too-common tendency among pundits andpolicy makers, past and present, to cast in stone the "Berber-Arab dichot-omyi' Nonetheless, in light of the social, cultural, and political developmentsin Morocco over the past thirty years, it would behoove researchers to re-visit this relationship, particular as Berber memory work proceeds apace.The same is true regarding neighboring Algeria. In his insightful analysisof "the Berber" as a national signifier in Algerian historiographies, famesMcDougall warned against the possibility that the development of a Berbercounter-narrative to the Algerian state's dominant narrative might hardensocial boundaries and intolerance in the name of cultural authenticity, aprocess that would in effect substitute one essential "authenticity" for an-other.6a Indeed, one can identifii without difficulty this tendency amongsome Amazigh militants.

At this point, Berber memory work, and the Berber/Amazigh culturemovement to which it belongs, is clearly a genie that has been let out ofa bottle whose cork was then discarded. Its future course, permutations,and points of emphasis will depend in no small measure on the policiesof the Algerian and Moroccan states toward the phenomenon. will theirdominant national narratives be sufficiently modified to include Amazighelements? can one imagine, for example, that daily newspapers will includethe Amazigh year on their masthead, alongside the year according to theMuslim and Gregorian calendar? (Perhaps this is not so far-fetchec.l; after all,the Moroccan palace's French-language mouthpiece, Le Motitt tlrt snltttrtt,


includes the date according to the Jewish calendar on its masthead!) Alter-natively, will space be made for multiple, even competing narratives? willAmazigh commemorative efforts be legitimized or repressed? And whatmay be the impact on the Amazigh movement's memory work of varyingstate policies? one may only say that the fashioning of Amazigh identitythrough memory work promises to be an ongoing and ever_increasing en_terprise that will surely have an impact on, and interact with, parallel pro-cesses currently reshaping the identity of Algerian and Moroccan societiesas a whole.

Notes

Note: This studywas supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no.5 25104_2U5).special thanks to samir Ben-Layashi for his assistance in researching this article.

1. For convenience's sake, the terms "Berber" and .Amazigh'will be used interchange-

ably throughout this chapter.2. Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationarism in a Global Era (carnbridge: polity

Press, 1995), 133.3. Bernard Lewi s, History-Remembered, Recovered, Invented (princeton, N.J.: prince-

ton University Press, 1976).4' The percentage ofberberophones in Algeria is generaily deemed to be 20-25 per-

cent, and in Morocco 40-45 percent.5' fugurtha was the king of a united Numidia between 156 ancr 104 B.c. and grand-

son of Massinissa. He died in a Roman prison. The article is remembered as depictingthe Berbers as eternally rebellious; in fact, there was much more to Amrocuhes 1946article, which described the duality of Berber culture in response to the .bther"

andrecommended the shedding of (female) cultural characteristics that prevented the Ber_lrers from becoming agents in history. Michael Brett ancl Elisabeth Fentress, The Berbers( l,ondon: Blackwell, 199 6), 269 -7 0.

6. Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mdmoirel' Representa_/iors, Memory and Counter-Memory special issue, 26 (Spring l9g9): 12.

7. Abdelmajid Hannoum, coronial Histories, post-colonial Memories: The Legend oflha Kahina, a North African Heroine (portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2001), 7-9; Brettittttl l:entress, Berbers,l20-32;Michael Brett,..Ibn Khaldun and the Arabisation of NorthA liica," Maghreb Re v i e w 4, no. I (f anuary_Feb r rurry 197 9),: 9 _16.

ll. Srnith, Nations and Nationalism, 64.9. l l ) i (1., 146.f 0. Mrrya Shatzuriller, The Berbers and the Islamic state: The Marinid Experience in

Itrt l'rolcclorrila Morocco (princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner,2000).ll. lirn('s Mcl).ugall, "Myth and counter-Myth: 'The Berber'as National signifier in

Algcl irrrr I l is loriogrirplr icsl ' I ladical l l istory Review g6 (Spring 2003): 75, g0_gl.l , l . l l t i r l . . t l?.

Amazigh/Berber Memory Work

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