Kabylie or Kabylia (Berber: Tamurt n Leqbayel), is a region in the north of Algeria.
It is part of the Tell Atlas and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Kabylia covers several provinces of Algeria: the whole of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia (Vgayet), most of Bouira (Tubirett) and parts of the wilayas of Bordj Bou Arreridj, Jijel, Boumerdes, and Setif. Gouraya National Park and Djurdjura National Park are also located in Kabylie.
It is important not to confuse "Kabylia" and the global "Kabyle people" elsewhere: around 25% of Kabyle people live in the Algiers capital region. This article concerns only the territorial "Kabylie" region, and does not include Algiers's Kabyle population and society.
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History
Antiquity
Algeria was known as Numidia (202 BC – 46 BC).
Middle Ages
The Kabyle country remained as unconquerable as it was inaccessible to the Ottoman deys who had to content themselves with a few disturbed coastal military settlements and some valleys where the rule of the islamic ottoman empire was imposed. The mountainous core land however remained independent and the islamic faith found its way through peaceful means only, namely the Marabout movement, which many argue is the reason of the Kabyls' indifference towards Islam. The Ottoman threat disappeared with the arrival of the European and American Navies to put an end to the Islamic piracy from bases on the coast of North Africa.
Modern age
Though the region was the last stronghold against French colonization,[1] the area was gradually taken over by the French from 1857, despite vigorous local resistance by the local population led by leaders such as Faḍma n Sumer, continuing as late as Mokrani's rebellion in 1871. Much land was confiscated in this period from the more recalcitrant tribes and given to French pieds-noirs. Many arrests and deportations were carried out by the French, mainly to New Caledonia. Colonization also resulted in an acceleration of the emigration into other areas of the country and outside of it.
Algerian migrant workers in France organized the first party promoting independence in the 1920s. Messali Hadj, Imache Amar, Si Djilani, and Belkacem Radjef rapidly built a strong following throughout France and Algeria in the 1930s and actively trained militants who became key players during the struggle for independence and in building an independent Algerian state.
During the War of independence (1954–1962), Kabylia was one of the areas most affected, because of the importance of the maquis (aided by the mountainous terrain) and French repression. Several historic leaders of the FLN came from this region, including Hocine Aït Ahmed, Abane Ramdane, and Krim Belkacem.
After independence
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Tensions developed between Kabyle leaders and the central government on several occasions, initially in 1963, when the Socialist Forces Front party of Hocine Aït Ahmed contested the use of the name of a popular resistance movement as a political party, by Nasserian agents, of lower grade within the FLN, incapable of organizing their respective regions to provide delegates for the establishment of the 1st Legitimate Algerian Constitution. Organized as a temporary Government a Junta with allegiance, and military support from Nasser and other Pan-Arabists succeeded in preventing such a convention and a legitimate Constitution voted by a legitimate parliament. A year armed confrontation resulted, in which most FLN leaders from Kabylia and the eastern provinces were either executed or pushed to exile. In 1980, several months of demonstrations demanding the officialization of the Tamazight/Berber language, known as the Berber Spring, took place in Kabylie and Algiers, resulting in an extra-judiciary imprisonment of thousands of Kabyl intellectuals. The Government security forces sieged and violently prevented a conference on the old Kabyl poetry by the faculty and students of the main city of Kabylia, Tizi-Wezzu.
The politics of identity intensified as the imposed but rejected Arabization government program in Algeria intensified with the assignment of a religion (Islam) to a secular society followed by the sponsorship of Egyptian clerics as teachers, and the consecration of Arabic as the only official language in Algeria. Soon after, in 1994–1995, a full-year school boycott was followed by the ten million population of Kabylia, termed the "strike of the school bag." In June and July 1998, the area blazed up again after the assassination of singer Lounès Matoub and at the time that a law generalizing the use of the Arabic language in all fields of education went into effect worsening tensions. In the months following April 2001 (called the Black Spring), major riots — together with the emergence of the Arouch, ancestral local councils confederation as the only Authority in the region — followed the killing of a young Kabyle (Masinissa Guermah) by gendarmes, and gradually transformed into the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia MAK calling for self-government.
Since 23 March 2007, the Military of Algeria has conducted extensive searches in the Kabylie region in search of members of the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (QOIM). Two major roads, between Béjaïa and Amizour and between El-Kseur and Bouïra, have been partially closed. The bombings in Algiers on 11 April 2007 rendered this search all the more urgent, as the QOIM has recently become the Maghrebin arm of the al-Qaeda Network.
Geography
Main features:
- The Great Kabylia, which runs from Thénia (west) to Bgayet (bejaia) (east), and from the Mediterranean Sea (north) to the valley of Soummam (south), that is to say, 200 km by 100 km, beginning 50 km from Algiers, the capital of Algeria.
- Kabylia of Bibans and Kabylia of Babors, which form the Little Kabylia.
Three large chains of mountains occupy most of the area:
- In the north, the mountain range of maritime Kabylia, culminating with Tifrit n'Ait El Hadj (Tamgout 1278 m)
- In the south, the Djurdjura, dominating the valley of Soummam, culminating with Lalla-Khedidja (2308 m)
- Between the two lies the mountain range of Agawa, which is the most populous and is 800 m high on average. The largest town of Great Kabylia, Tizi Ouzou, lies in that mountain range. At Iraten (formerly "Fort-National" in French occupation), which numbered 28,000 inhabitants in 2001, is the highest urban centre of the area.
Ecology
There are a number of flora and fauna associated with this region. Notable is a population of the endangered primate, Barbary Macaque, Macaca sylvanus, whose prehistoric range encompassed a much wider span than the present limited populations in Algeria, Morocco and Gibraltar.[2]
Population
The area is populated by the Kabyles, a Berber ethnic group , the second most populous Berber people after the Chleuhs in Morocco. They speak the Kabyle variety of Berber. Since the Berber Spring in 1980, Kabyles have been at the forefront of the fight for the official recognition of the Berber language (see Languages of Algeria) and secularism (laïcité) in Algeria .
Economy
The traditional economy of the area is based on arboriculture (orchards, olive trees) and on the craft industry (tapestry or pottery). The mountain and hill farming is gradually giving way to local industry (textile and agro-alimentary).
Today Kabylie is one of the most industrialised parts of Algeria.[3] Kabylia product 60% of Algerian GDP (excluding oil and gas).[4] Industries include: pharmaceutical industry in Bejaia, agro-alimentary in Ifri and Akbou, mechanical industry in Tizi Ouzou and other little towns of western Kabylia, and petrochemical industry and oil refining in Bejaia.[4]
Bejaia's port is the second biggest in Algeria after Algiers, and the 6th largest of the Mediterranean Sea.
Politics
- Two political "algerianist" parties have their principal support base in Kabylia: the FFS, led by Hocine Aït Ahmed, and the RCD, led by Saïd Sadi. Both parties are secularist, Berberist and "Algerianist".
- The Arouch emerged during the Black Spring of 2001 as a revival of a traditional Kabyle form of democratic organization, the village assembly. The Arouch share roughly the same political views as the FFS and the RCD.
- The MAK (Movement for the autonomy of Kabylie) also emerged during the Black Spring, and is the predominant political movement that militates for self government in Kabylia.
- On 21 April 2010, Ferhat Mehenni, the then leader of the (Movement for the autonomy of Kabylie) proclaimed in Paris a Provisional Government of Kabylia in exile (ANAVAD) which was established officially on 1 June 2010 at the Palais des Congrès. He was elected President by the National Council of the MAK and he named nine Ministers.
Since the Black Spring, Kabyle politics can be divided into two sides: the "kabyle movement", or kabyle nationalists, which fight for a large autonomy statut, or independence of Kabylie, and "algerianists", who are kabyle political supporters of remaining with the rest of Algeria.
These last years, the Movement for the autonomy of Kabylie, the Kabyl nationalist party, is considered as the most important political movement in Kabylia[5]
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