Imaginary Geographies of Algerian Violence

Jacob Mundy

Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2015.

 

REVIEW

Imaginary Geographies of Algerian Violence by Jacob Mundy gives an interesting analysis of the neoliberal framework of contemporary conflict science and management, and how it shapes and is shaped by our understanding of the Algerian conflict in the 90’s. Mundy does a good job in deconstructing multiple narratives in the context of the violence in Algeria and what that tells us of post-Cold War conflict science and management in general. His analysis of concepts like terrorism and genocide are intriguing, and makes us realize the effects of certain categorization. Although one might not agree directly with all his criticism, his perspective is still an engaging one: by challenging the frameworks used in conflict science, he prompts the reader to reconsider how they perceive conflicts themselves.

Perhaps the biggest downside of Jacob Mundy’s work is that it is in fact mostly criticism and deconstruction. He fails to give the reader a satisfying positive analysis of how to understand the Algerian conflict, or conflicts in general. Many of his own concepts such as ‘antipolitics’ and ‘power of violence’ are poorly defined. His lack of positive analysis also devalues his more intriguing criticism somewhat: at the point that the reader might accept Mundy’s points against the original framework, he fails to give an alternative perspective to look at the matter. Overall, the book is thus a challenging read, but fails to completely satisfy the reader’s yearn for understanding.

SUMMARY

Introduction

IThe introduction is important to consider because it encompasses some of Mundy’s most important analysis. Mundy attacks the neoliberal framework of conflict studies and management that has risen from the end of the Cold War. He argues that this framework is mostly characterized by the antipolitics of marginalism by using economic reductionism and not taking into account questions of power, geography and history through the use of depoliticized concepts such as civil war, terrorism and genocide. Concerning Algeria, Mundy believes that this framework has been employed post facto to both explain the 90’s conflict’s violence, and use it as a validation of its methods and conclusions, even though there was not enough factual knowledge of the violence to support this application. Not only are these reductionist conclusions often wrong, they can materialize the framework into the world themselves by their adaptation of conflict management, which perpetuates the limited framework through self validation.

1. Civil War

In the first chapter, Mundy discusses the concept of civil war and how it became attached to the Algerian conflict. He first discusses how in general categorizing something as a civil war is highly political; it employs graveness to the situation, yet at the same time does not make it imperative for outside factions to intervene due to the internal aspect of a ‘civil war’. He then discusses how the international community had a hard time defining Algeria conflict as a civil war during the 90’s due to the seemingly paradoxical nature of the violence. Thereafter he states that conflict scientists were however quick to define Algeria as a civil war sometimes solely based on the number of casualties, which have never been truly verified.  

2. Greed and Grievance

In this chapter, Mundy deconstructs the mainstream discourse about the motives and causes of the 90’s violence that has been formulated post facto. He first discusses the ostensible political explanations of the violence causes, which tend to focus on the denial of political rights and on the events of ‘88 and ‘92. According to Mundy, this neglects the more gradual procession of events leading up to the conflict and contradicts the fact that violence escalated during times of political progress. Secondly he discusses the economical explanations, which understand violence as a struggle of the insurgency to gain resources, thus assuming that a) the insurgents are the only causers of the conflict b) that the insurgents motives are essentially economic. Therefore, according to Mundy, actual motives of the violence are reduced to normative assumptions.

3. Identity, Religion and Terrorism

This chapter focuses on how identity has been used in explaining the nature and causes of the 90’s violence. After discussing Huntington’s  “Clash of civilization” thesis, Mundy discusses how identity became a popular angle in explaining the brutal nature of the killings. This was tied to an ostensible essential part of Algerian and Islamic identity. The problem is that the identity of the killers has been quite ambiguous till this very day, which Mundy emphasised by focussing on the  “Qui tue?”(Who kills?) narrative at the moment of the 90’s killings.

4. Counterterrorism

In this chapter Mundy focuses on the concept of terrorism. He begins to talk about how after the 9/11-attacks the “Qui tue?” narrative disappears and all the violence is framed as radical Islamic terrorism. He explains that most studies on terrorism are based on correlative analysis and not on ethnographic understanding, while counterterrorism uses elimination strategies to fight them, often unsuccessfully. Mundy argues that the homogenisation of Algeria’s violence –though describing it with common labels and geography– allowed for its reduction to terrorism. Mundy then reminds us of how many theories there were about who was involved in the killings during the 90’s, thus showing that the simple use of the term ‘terrorists’ is just the antipolitical solution to understand the unsettling mystery of Algeria’s killers.

5. Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect

Mundy then challenges the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), by focusing on its recent different approaches to Syria and Libya. He links that back to Algeria, by discussing how the R2P project does not actively refer to the 90’s massacres as a failure of humanitarian action. This is mostly because Algeria’s violence has been hard to frame in the humanitarian context, since it was more complex and ambiguous than genocide and there was no collapse of the state. He highlights how the term genocide depoliticizes violence and how it can be used as a tool to legitimize military action without further debate. He then discusses how throughout the 90’s there were calls for intervention and international truth commission at the height of the violence, dealing with the same framework problem.

6. Truth, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice

In the final chapter, Mundy focuses on Transitional Justice (TJ) and its absence in Algeria. He first discusses the presumed opposition between the International Criminal Court and Transitional Justice Committees for managing post-conflict situations. He argues that they are actually more similar than generally assumed, since both are morality plays and attempts of neoliberalism to homogenize conflict management. He is critical of Truth and Dignity Committees and believes that their actual success in ‘healing’ a society has yet to be proven. He then focuses how history is paradoxically imagined in conflict science as a mystical force that causes violence and at the same time has a healing effect on society. Mundy then discusses Algeria’s relation to TJ, including the defamation trial in France in 2002, the amnesty laws, the lack of a truth narrative, and current civilian archivist organisations.

 

(By Samuel Langelaan)