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Amid Algeria's Political Standoff, Coronavirus Offers Opportunity for
Economic Dialogue: Report

Lisa Bryant

   PARIS - As Algeria extends a partial coronavirus lockdown across much
   of its territory, a new report warns of an intensifying political
   conflict between the government and a months-long protest movement,
   urging both sides to turn to economic dialogue as a way to help the
   country forward.'¯

   "If political dialogue is unrealistic in the short term, the government
   and members of Hirak should at least engage in a national economic
   dialogue" to avoid "a severe economic crisis," the International Crisis
   Group said in a report published Monday.'¯

   It also urged Algerian authorities, accused by rights groups of using
   the lockdown as a pretext for continued political arrests, to adopt a
   "lighter touch" towards the grass-roots movement, including some of its
   citizen initiatives.

   Without such discussions and as economic hardship mounts, the Crisis
   Group warned, the largely peaceful Hirak movement risks becoming more
   aggressive and leaving space for more radical action by smaller groups.
   Such a prospect is particularly problematic in Algeria,'¯ where
   memories of the country's bloody 1990s civil war -- which killed some
   200,000 people -- remain very much alive.'¯

   "All the problems that have dogged Algeria -- structural, economic,
   political -- have been multiplied and reinforced by COVID-19," the
   report's lead author Michael Ayari said in an interview, adding, "and
   the national union against the pandemic is fading."'¯

   All the more reason, the Crisis Group says, for the government to
   capture a fast-vanishing "moment of national solidarity" to discuss
   with Hirak members a more sustainable economic path for the energy
   exporting nation that makes it less vulnerable to fluctuating oil and
   gas prices.

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