Within seven weeks of its start on February 22nd, 2019, the people’s revolt (Harak) in Algeria forced the cancelation of the presidential elections scheduled for mid-April and shook the then teetering power equilibrium to its core. The militaro-oligarchic tripod, composed of the Presidency, Military High Command (MHC), Intelligence, and their respective foreign patronage and clientelist networks, which had carefully been crafted over the previous three decades, was dealt a significant blow by a peaceful but determined people’s movement. Yet despite these gains, the movement has been struggling against a three-dimensional counter-revolutionary constellation bent on aborting the potential of the movement and reproducing the system under a new guise.

On April 2nd, riding the popular wave, the MHC made its move against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, promising a power handover to appease the movement. Next, they went for the head of intelligence, Athman Tartag, bringing his security apparatus under its command and assuming total control of decision-making mechanisms in the country. In all but name, it was a coup d’état.

A wave of arrests ensued in the following weeks targeting former (prime) ministers, corrupt businessmen, political figures, and military/intelligence officers associated with the disgraced wings who might possess the capability to cause nuisance. The MHC hoped that the spectacular manner in which this settling of old accounts campaign was carried out and represented, would help to appease the people’s movement. It would demonstrate the seriousness with which the MHC approached the cleansing of “corruption” and the influence of “unconstitutional forces” within the state. Algerians, however, were not easily swayed by this performance of self-mutilation, in which the military-oligarchic cabal hacked some of its limbs to save its nervous system.

Bouteflika’s removal, and the jailing of his brother, Said, who was assumed to be the actual power behind the office for the last 6 years, automatically triggered the relevant constitutional transitional mechanisms. Most importantly, Article 102 allows for the interim head of state and interim government to organize presidential elections within a period of 90 days. Recognizing the MHC’s agenda- to use the elections (scheduled for July 4th) as a front to assure its own primacy, the Harak’s slogans on the street mutated to reflect the new stakes. The new slogans included “Yetnehaw Ga’a” (They must all be wrenched, “Makach intikhabat maa al-issabat“ (There won’t be any elections with these cabals), “Dawla Madaniyya, Machi Askariyya” (A Civilian, not a Military State), and “Jumhuriyya machi caserna/thakana” (This is a republic, not a barracks).

Having ensured the cancelation of the July 4th elections, the popular movement goaded the MHC into its nightmare scenario, a constitutional crisis. The MHC’s attempts to turn a political crisis into a constitutional one failed miserably. With the expiry of the 90 days period in early July, neither the interim presidency nor the interim government could claim any shred of legitimacy, even in the eyes of the most accommodating elements of the popular movement. As far as the movement was concerned, even by the standard of the ruling cabal’s constitution, the country had entered a period of de facto rule by the MHC. Although Algerians have always been aware of the centrality of the MHC to the country’s power constellation, it had always managed to shroud itself in a civilian façade to mystify its role in the country’s decision-making process. For the first time since independence, however, the MHC finds itself in a direct face-off with the people and, this time, there is nowhere for it to hide.

The MHC has turned its back on every single roadmap proposed by actors with an actual social base and presence in the movement, and have ignored all appeals for a genuine dialogue. This includes the National Coordination for Change in Algeria’s Platform for Change in Algeria in March, followed by propositions and appeals made in May and June by the National Organization of Veterans, the National Association of Ulama, the National Civil Society Conference, the Forces for a Democratic Alternative, as well as the multiple appeals and statements issued by various groups of independent national personalities.

By late June, realizing that the July 4th elections were a chimera, the MHC began a more concerted campaign of repression, this time targeting historical symbols and leaders of the movement. The counter-revolution revealed its ugly face—not only with its repressive security apparatuses on the streets, but also with its increasing assaults through the media. All audiovisual and most print media, public and private, were tamed. Not a single Algeria-based TV channel has covered the protests or the demands being made by the millions of Algerians on the streets. Social media campaigns led by an electronic army of trolls (humans and bots), operating from Algeria, Egypt, UAE and elsewhere, have worked around the clock to spread disinformation, fake news and pro-MHC propaganda. They work to stifle oppositional Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, and to defame and tarnish the reputation of historical symbols and popular opposition figures, etc.

Holding the people’s unity to be a red line, the Harak humored the least radical segment within it and accompanied it on its journey to discovering the impossibility of redeeming certain elements within the MHC. It became crystal clear to anyone involved that certain generals, along with their civilian and business counterparts, were hopeless. Their long, obedient and loyal service to the putschists and criminals of the 1990s, their total submission and active complicity in the plunder of the country in the 2000s and 2010s, their complete capitulation to foreign powers with jurisdiction over their ill-gotten assets, and their “treasonous” acts in surrendering national sovereignty and subservience to imperialist and neo-colonial designs on the continent—these are only a few of the reasons that prevent MHC from now claiming the vocation of “serving the people” with any legitimacy.

Ostensibly adopting as its motto Einstein’s definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results—the MHC directed a simulacrum of dialogue with Algeria’s D-list of political actors closely linked to the oligarchy. It appointed an “independent” electoral commission, amending the electoral law and setting December 12th, 2019 as the date for presidential elections. Such provocations galvanized the popular movement even more, mobilizing new sections of society. By mid-October, the numbers on the street regained the levels of March and April. Slogans targeting the MHC and specifically the Army Chief of Staff (Ahmed Gaid Salah) became common currency, e.g. “Generals to the trash bin, and Algeria will be independent,” “Gaid Salah, the UAE’s shoe-shiner,” “Release our children [political prisoners] and jail Gaid’s Children.”

The Harak has exercised its power in the form of a negation to the governing power. It has aborted the two previous elections and will do likewise for that scheduled for December 12th, 2019. The movement has been masterful in maintaining its unity by defusing every single boobytrap sown by status quo forces. The Harak has consistently insisted that the only lines of division are horizontal (between governors and governed/ haves and have nots) and not vertical as the oligarchy wants Algerians to believe (Islamist/secularist, Arabophone/Berberophone, men/women etc.). It is of the utmost importance to examine the hostile context in which a people’s revolution is unfolding and the ways in which counter-revolutionary forces labor tirelessly to crush the Algerian people’s resolve.