Kabylia or Kabylie is a mountainous coastal region in northern Algeria and the homeland of the Kabyle people. It is part of the Tell Atlas mountain range and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
Ahmed Ouyahia is an Algerian politician who was Prime Minister of Algeria four times. A career diplomat, he also served as Minister of Justice, and he was one of the founders of the Democratic National Rally (RND) as well as the party's secretary-general. He is considered by Western observers to be close to the military of Algeria and a member of the "eradicator" faction in the 1990s civil war against Islamist militants. Ouyahia resigned as prime minister in March 2019 following President Bouteflika's announcement that he would not seek reelection, and Ouyahia was arrested in June 2019 for crimes related to corruption. He was later convicted and is currently serving 19 years in jail.
The Rally for Culture and Democracy is a political party in Algeria. It promotes secularism (laïcité) and has its principal power base in Kabylia, a major Berber-speaking region. Some consider it to take the position of a liberal party for the Berber-speaking population in Algerian politics.
Ali Benflis is an Algerian politician who was Head of Government of Algeria from 2000 to 2004. In 2003, he became the general secretary of the National Liberation Front party. Benflis was a candidate in the 2004 presidential election, but the poll resulted in the re-election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Benflis ran yet again as an independent candidate in the 2014 Algerian presidential elections held on 17 April 2014. The result was that Abdelaziz Bouteflika was reelected as president with 81.53% of the votes, with Benflis ending as runner-up with 12.18%.
Kabyle or Kabylian is a Berber language (tamazight) spoken by the Kabyle people in the north and northeast of Algeria. It is spoken primarily in Kabylia, east of the capital Algiers and in Algiers itself, but also by various groups near Blida, such as the Beni Salah and Beni Bou Yaqob.
Lounès Matoub was an Algerian Kabylian singer, poet, thinker who sparked an intellectual revolution, and mandole player who was an advocate of the Berber cause, human rights, and secularism in Algeria throughout his life.
Berberism is a Berber political-cultural movement of ethnic nationalism, started mainly in Kabylia (Algeria) and in Morocco later spreading to the rest of the Berber communities in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The Berberist movement in Algeria and Morocco is in opposition to cultural Arabization, the pan-Arabist political ideology and Islamism.
The Arouch Movement or Berber Arouch Citizens' Movement is an organization in Algeria representing the Kabyle people, a Berber group of the province of Kabylie. Their name, Arouch, is the plural form of the word Arch, referring to a traditional Kabyle form of democratic political assembly. The movement was started after the Black Spring disturbances in 2001, in which 126 Kabyle protesters were killed by Algerian gendarmes. The Arouch have a horizontal leadership and it has no leader, although charismatic arouch representatives like Belaïd Abrika have emerged.
Ferhat Mehenni is an Algerian separatist, political activist, singer, and founder and first President of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK). He has been President of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia since June 1, 2010.
Hamid Cheriet, better known by his stage name Idir, was a Kabyle Algerian singer-songwriter and musician. Referred to as the "King of Amazigh music", he is regarded as one of the most significant modern day figures in Algerian and Amazigh culture, history, and struggle.
The Berber Spring was a period of political protest and civil activism in 1980, claiming recognition of the Berber identity and language in Algeria, with events mainly taking place in Kabylia and Algiers.
The Kabyle people are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber population of Algeria and the second largest in North Africa.
The Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie, officially named the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie before 3 October 2013, is a Kabyle nationalist and separatist political organization seeking autonomy, self-determination rights of the Kabyle people, and ultimately independence of the Kabylie region from Algeria. It was founded by the Kabyle Berberist Ferhat Mehenni, now president of the Provisional Government of Kabylie in exile, after the "Black Spring" disturbances in 2001.
The 2000s in Algeria emerged from the 'Black Decade' of the 1990s. The 'Black Decade' was characterised by a civil war beginning in 1991 and ending at the beginning of the following decade in 2002. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is accredited with ending the civil war, continued to be in power throughout the 2000s following his election in 1999. Despite being in power for 20 years and being Algeria's longest running president, Bouteflika's politics have been widely opposed and contested, with accusations from the BBC “of widespread corruption and state repression”. In April 2019 Bouteflika officially resigned from his position as president after months of public protest and loss of the army's support. The 82 Year old President was widely considered unfit for the role after experiencing a stroke in 2013. His resignation was reported by the BBC to have been met with "huge celebrations".
Barbacha is a commune in northern Algeria in the Béjaïa Province in the Kabylia region. The population is mainly composed of indigenous Amazigh people from the Kabyle Region.
The 2010–2012 Algerian protests were a series of protests taking place throughout Algeria, lasting from 28 December 2010 to 10 January 2012. The protests had been inspired by similar protests across the Middle East and North Africa. Causes cited by the protesters included unemployment, the lack of housing, food-price inflation, corruption, restrictions on freedom of speech and poor living conditions. While localized protests were already commonplace over previous years, extending into December 2010, an unprecedented wave of simultaneous protests and riots, sparked by sudden rises in staple food prices, erupted all over the country starting in January 2011. These were quelled by government measures to lower food prices, but were followed by a wave of self-immolations, most of them in front of government buildings. Opposition parties, unions, and human rights organisations then began to hold weekly demonstrations, despite these being illegal without government permission under the ongoing state of emergency; the government suppressed these demonstrations as far as possible, but in late February yielded to pressure and lifted the state of emergency. Meanwhile, protests by unemployed youth, typically citing unemployment, hogra (oppression), and infrastructure problems, resumed, occurring almost daily in towns scattered all over the country.
Events from the year 2011 in Algeria
Presidential elections were held in Algeria on 17 April 2014. Incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected with 82% of the vote. Issues in the campaign included a desire for domestic stability after the bloody civil war of the 1990s, the state of the economy, the frail health of the 15 year incumbent and 77-year-old president whose speech was "slurred and inaudible" in his only public outing during the campaign, and the less-than-wholehearted support given the president by the normally united and discrete ruling class.
Events from 2021 in Algeria.
The 2014 Algerian protests or Barakat Revolution was mass protests and a wave of nonviolent demonstrations against president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s plans for a fourth term, ending up winning the 2014 Algerian presidential election despite boycotts and opposition protests, which is dispersed usually by Tear gas. Thousands continued to resist the violence for the next 2 months.
