AI Says...
Algeria, a land of dreams and revolutions, has watched its intellectuals, like migratory birds, leave their homeland, forced into a progressive exile, whether physical or internal, sometimes leading them to patriotic suicide, as described by Malek Haddad: "Exile is a long suicide, and there are no swallows in winter."
The First Illusions: An Ephemeral Spring
In the aftermath of independence, a nation in the making, carried by the revolutionary flame and pan-African, pan-Arab, and Third World ideals, offered intellectuals a space for expression and engagement. Figures like Frantz Fanon, an anti-colonial intellectual, or Kateb Yacine, a committed writer, embodied this hope. But this era of complacency was short-lived.
The Fall into the Abyss: Dictatorship Takes Hold
Under the rule of Ben Bella, and then Boumédiène, the populist, security-focused, and ideological dictatorship stifled dissenting voices. Intellectuals, trapped, wavered between hope and despair, between resistance and compromise. Some, like Mohammed Dib, chose exile, while others, like Malek Haddad, remained but were silenced.
The Deceptive Respite: A Mirage of Freedom
After Boumédiène's death, a glimmer of hope appeared. The fall in oil prices and the events of October 1988 opened a breach towards more truth and freedom. Intellectuals like Tahar Djaout or Abdelkader Djemai emerged, carrying a new voice. But this improvement was fleeting.
The Cold Snap: The Halt of Elections
The brutal halt of the 1992 elections marked a turning point. Intellectuals, attached to the morality of the ballot box and anxious to avoid a civil war, opposed this decision. But their warnings went unheeded.
The Long Night: A Bloody Decade
The civil war against Islamists plunged the country into chaos and violence. Intellectuals, caught in the crossfire, were silenced, forced into exile or hiding. Tahar Djaout was assassinated in 1993, a symbol of the repression that befell intellectuals.
The Return of the Chill: Democratic Exhaustion
After a decade of terror, a semblance of normality returned. But the hope for a true democracy dwindled as oil prices rose again and the political-military mafia consolidated its power. Oxygen became scarce for the sincere, humanist, and optimistic reflection of intellectuals.
The Last Breath: The Hirak and its Brutal Interruption
A flash of hope sprang forth with the Hirak, this massive popular uprising that shook the regime. Intellectuals, briefly freed from their internal exile, found their voice again. But the Covid-19 pandemic, like a cynical reaper, put an end to this remission.
The Ultimate Exile: A Deferred Suicide
The tyranny of the political-military mafia strengthened, the country's decay accelerated. Intellectuals, disillusioned, felt like prisoners of a corrupt system. Some chose definitive exile, whether external or internal, while others, like Kamel Daoud and Boualem Sansal, sank into a patriotic suicide, a renunciation of their own nation.
A National Tragedy
The exile of Algerian intellectuals is a tragedy that has been repeated for decades, with each generation losing a part of its intellectual substance. But "patriotic suicide" takes two distinct forms. First, there is excommunication, the rejection of the nation, its culture, its identity, as an ultimate cry of despair in the face of political and social deadlock. This is the path taken by Kamel Daoud and Boualem Sansal, who, through their works and their positions, have in a way excluded themselves from the national community, becoming critical, even dissident figures in the eyes of some.
Then there is the euthanasia of patriotic sentiment, a form of adaptation, of survival in a globalized world that shows no mercy. For these intellectuals, patriotism becomes a relic of the past, an outdated, even dangerous feeling, in a world where borders are blurring and where the stakes are global. They turn to other horizons, other causes, sometimes at the risk of losing their roots, their identity.
In both cases, it is a loss for Algeria, deprived of the critical and engaged thought of its intellectuals. A country deprived of its thinkers is a country on the path to ruin.
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