Procedimientos Metodológicos de la investigación

The third part of the Algerian regime’s structure is: ‘Professional Military Officers’.

Before engaging in a discussion of “Professionalism” in the Algerian military, the meaning of the term must be clarified. Let us start with a general understanding, and then move to a more specific discussion relating to the meaning of the word as it is used in the case of the Algerian military.

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Generally speaking, professionalism is a key factor required to do any job; it is a fundamental requirement in the military sphere. The nature of war itself, perhaps the most brutal and destructive force facing mankind, requires that those who do the fighting do so with extreme levels of discipline, commitment, and skill. Such things are thought to be the essence of military professionalism. However, there are different views about professionalism in the military; some scholars have refused to accept that the profession of arms is a true profession. Their objections centre around two points – that soldiers are paid to be on military bases, and there are obvious and extreme violations of their duty and professionalism reported with some regularity in combat situations, although “…not in the obvious sense of its practitioners generally being paid for performing their duties.”⁴⁰² Rather, such unprofessional conduct in military establishments usually relates to severe human rights violations, especially in civil war.⁴⁰³

Scholars have specified the definition of military professionalism according to their research area. John Allen Williams stated that the topic of military professionalism is one more often approached from a social science perspective than a military science one.⁴⁰⁴ In this view, providing a definition would be more relevant to scholars of social science than to military strategists. Scholars who have considered the subject of ‘military professionalism’

include Samuel P. Huntington, Morris Janowitz, Charles Moskos and Sam C. Sarkesian.⁴⁰⁵ According to Thomas Young, the term ‘professionalism’ could be defined as “volunteers who choose to serve, as distinct from conscripted soldiers.”⁴⁰⁶ This definition is extensively detailed in many works including those of Huntington, and Janowitz. Janowitz took a more sociological approach to the concept of military professionalism. In his book, The Professional Soldier, he argued that the military is a “reflection of the society it serves, although it will not be a carbon copy”.⁴⁰⁷ John Williams noted from Huntington:

[For Huntington], the military was to operate as a conservative institution that “stuck to its knitting” and developed professional values that were consistent with its traditional mission: fighting and winning wars on behalf of its nation, as directed and controlled by the government and legislature.⁴⁰⁸

402 John Allen Williams, “The International Image of the Military Professional”. African Security Review, 4, No 5, 1995.

403 Snider, D. M., Major J. A. Nagel, Pfaff M. T. Army Professionalism, the Military Ethic, and Officership in the 21 st Century (U.S. Army War College, December 1999).

404 Williams, J. A. (1995).

405 Williams, J. A. (1995).

406 Thomas-Durell Young, “Military Professionalism in a Democracy [Chapter 1], Pub:

<https://www.ccmr.org/public/library_details.cfm?library_id=5152 > [pdf] n/d.

407 Young, Thomas-Durell, Chapter 1 [pdf] n/d.

408 John Allen Williams (1995).

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According to Huntington’s view, the professional work of the military is not concerned with political or social matters, but rather is related to the management of war and the structuring of violence. The military profession, like other professions, develops internally. To achieve success and effectiveness it must determine the most appropriate strategy for the mission. From this perspective, civilian control represents the possibility of additional resources, and this also tends to engender more civilian trust. In this case from Huntington’s view, “the military would remain a purely professional, corporate and expert war-fighting entity whose members differed significantly from the population of its host society in terms of values, beliefs and attitudes.”⁴⁰⁹

In his book The Soldier and the State,⁴¹⁰ Huntington clearly gives a definition of

‘professionalism’ to simplify the difference between a professional corps as an association, which is professional body, and the military professional officer who is a professional man;

he also examines the differences between profession in the military and civilian professions.

Professionalism in Huntington’s view is a characteristic of the modern officer in the same sense that it is a characteristic of any other profession, such as that of lawyer or physician.⁴¹¹ But, “when the term ‘professional’ has been used in connection with the military, it normally has been in the sense of ‘professional’ as contrasted with “amateur” rather than in the sense of profession as contrasted with “trade” or “craft.”⁴¹²

Huntington identified three criteria for a profession and indicated that the true military professional has to meet all of these three elements. The first characteristic is expertise: “the professional military officer has to be an expert in the management of violence.”⁴¹³ By this definition, the military professional is a soldier who has good ethics to deal with violence while not creating the violence, and that is somewhat different to enlisted personnel, who are experts in the application of violence. According to Thomas, military professionalism is the

“systematic creation of a class of people for whom war is a profession, and who pursue general and sub-specialisations in the art and science of conflict’.⁴¹⁴

409 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957).

410 Huntington, S. P. (1957).

411 Huntington, S. P. (1957), p. 7.

412 Huntington, S. P. (1957), pp 7-8.

413 Williams noted in: Huntington, The Soldier and the State.

414 Young, T. D., Chapter 1, [pdf], n/d p.2.

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The second characteristic is responsibility.⁴¹⁵ Huntington states there are three basic clients of any real profession, including that of professional military: the society, individuals, and the collective.⁴¹⁶ Huntington, in his statement, connected the three, noting that “…the general character of the service and his monopoly of his skills impose upon the professional man the responsibility to perform the service when required by society”⁴¹⁷. Thomas states that the management of violence, which should be a part of the military officer’s duty, can be considered legitimate only in the context of service to the state. Due to the responsibilities that the officer has in front of his civil society, he should employ his skills in arms only in the interests of society. If a professional officer has utilized his skills in arms for his personal benefit, he will be transformed immediately from society’s protector into a criminal threat to social stability.⁴¹⁸

A professional officer is he: “who could execute manoeuvres in an effective and disciplined manner on the battlefield.”⁴¹⁹ The professional officer is a man in charge of mistakes that could happen under his control, because he is thought to be a practicing expert.⁴²⁰ Professional officers in democratic militaries must be competent across a range of skills, particularly in force and formation management.⁴²¹ Many of these skills have been transformed completely by new technology. This is particularly true in democracies that aspire to deploy forces outside of national borders and participate in high-intensity warfare.⁴²²

The third characteristic is ‘corporateness’.⁴²³ By definition soldiers constitute a class who live apart from general society. Soldiers must learn how to give their loyalty to their association first, and to put personal considerations aside for the good of the group with which they serve.⁴²⁴ This observation prompted Janowitz to argue that professionalization of a military establishment actually increased the likelihood that it would intervene in the political processes. There is a sense among professionals themselves that they are a part of a profession, with certain standards for admission to their ranks, and a set of competencies that should be exhibited by its members. In Huntington’s view, “…the members of a profession

415 Huntington used the word ‘responsibilities’ (1957), p. 9.

416 Huntington, S. P. (1957), p. 9.

417 Huntington, S. P. (1957), pp. 9-10.

418 Thomas-Durell Young, Military Professionalism in a Democracy, Chapter 1 [pdf] p.2.

419 See Hans Delbruck, History of the Art of War, Volume I: warfare in Antiquity, Translated by Walter J.

Renfroe, Jr. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), pp 412 – 413; noted by Young, T.

Military Professionalism in a Democracy, Chapter 1, p.3.

420 Huntington, S. P. (1957), p. 9.

421 Thomas-Durell Young, Military Professionalism in a Democracy, Chapter 1 p. 4.

422 Morris Janowitz. Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (NY: Free Press, 1964), pp 21 – 37.

423 Huntington, S. P. (1957), p. 8.

424 Thomas-Durell Young, Military Professionalism in a Democracy, Chapter 1, p 6, [2001] [pdf]

<www.ccmr.org/public/library.../bruneau_mil_professionalism.pdf> .

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share a sense of organic unity and consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen.”⁴²⁵ The profession has to have strong ethics and discipline, running in parallel with the training, knowledge and skills that are required. This allegiance is fostered by lengthy training and discipline, and the sharing of their “unique social responsibility.”⁴²⁶

4.6. ‘Professionalism’ and the Algerian Military at Independence

The case of Algerian crisis and the military intervention in politics has many similar factors with many caces in Africa and South America particular. However, indeed, each country has potentially distinct principles and regime structures According to Amos Perlmutter, the modern military regime is distinctly and analytically a new phenomenon, restricted to the developing and modernizing world.⁴²⁷ However, since 1979, military regimes have controlled over 30 countries around the world. About 20 of these were in Africa and Arab Countries, nine in Latin America and the rest in Asia. During the 1970s, there were also military regimes in two South and South- east European states.⁴²⁸ In the 1980s and 1990s, the military regime ideology spread to neighrbouring countries, increasing the total number of military regimes in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Military regimes have different degrees of dictatorship; authoritarian and autocratic.

The military in Latin America for example played a key role in the nation-building process immediately after independence from Spanish rule. The intervention of the military in some countries in Africa and South America began as an attempt to fill the leadership vacuum until the arrangement of new elections. But, more often than not, after the military took the power, they found “legal” ways to hold on to it. Wiarada and Howard noted that the competition for power and the wealth of the country among local militia headed by landowners, who took part in the independence wars, caused weak central governments in 19^th century Latin America.⁴²⁹ The formal armies, which were then weak and poorly institutionalized had to put down these local militias in the national integration process of Latin American countries. ⁴³⁰ By the 19^th century, the military regime in Latin America facilitated the expansion of capitalist forces by conquering or securing territories rich in raw materials or maintaining

425 Huntington, S. P. (1957), p. 10.

426 Williams, J. A. (1995).

427 Perlmutter, Amos, The Compoarative Analysis of Military Regimes: Formations, Aspirations, and Achievement (The Trustees of Princeton University, 1980).

428 Ibid.

429 Wiarda, Howard J., and Harvey F. Kline, Latin American Politics and Development.

430 Ibid, Westview Press, Boulder and London, 1979.

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commercial routes. Examples of such conquests are the wars of Chile with Peru and Bolivia, the war between Ecuador and Peru, and the war between the Triple alliance of Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia against Paraguay.⁴³¹

According to Frederick M. Nunn, the professional military in Latin America today has changed and has moved from the dictatorship and political leadership to professionality and political respect. In Brazil, the coup d’état of 1964 overthrew President Goulart, a populist, who ascended to presidency, as the legal successor of President Quadros after the latter's resignation in 1961. To appease the military's objection to Goulart's ascent to power, the 16 Brazilian state governments compromised by creating a parliamentary system by which Goulart and his cabinet were accountable to the congress. But in the 1961's plebiscite, the full presidential system was restored.⁴³² For the following 20 years,, the country was governed by successive regimes dominated by the armed forces and presided over by army generals, which is the similar to what Algeria has experienced since independence. But the professional officers in Brazil as well as in other Latin American states today are separate from the political civilian regimes.⁴³³ The control of any country by military regimes is claimed under the principles of nationalism and ideology, similar to the claims of revolutionaries as they seek to overturn the political status quo. By 1970 the young officers of Brazil decided to embark on a slow process, to end the military regime and to restore the civilian electoral process.

In “Brazil Shatters Its Wall of Silence on the Past,” Eduardo Gonzalez wrote that the establishment of military professionalism was not accomplished without a measure of professional militarism in Brazil. Today’s Brazilian military is united, dominated by the political system of the country. Its evolution is inseparable from the political, social and economic evolution, and the army has always been a force to be reckoned with.⁴³⁴ According to Amos Perlmutte, Brazillian elites are professionals who took on the responsibility of the

431 Augusto Varus, Militarization and the International Arms Race in Latin America (Westview Press, Boulder and London, 1985), p.7. Varsa elaborated three main functions of the Latin American armies in the past: (1) serving as the foundation of the nation; (2) supporting the expansion of dependent capitalist forces; and (3) supporting key private interests.

432 Thomas E.Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 176-177.

433 Daniel Zirker, “Rethinking the Failure of Agrarian Reform in Brazil: Social Pacts and Political Elites, 1985-1988.” Martin Journal of Peace Research, No. 1 (1996).

434 Perlmutter, Amos, “The Comparative Analysis of Military Regimes: Formations, Aspirations, and Achievements.” World Politics, 33, No. 1 (Oct., 1980), pp. 96-120.

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country in difficult times. They “have always been the leaders of the army in time of stress.”⁴³⁵

The professionalism of Brazil’s military regime provided a model, which has been exported for other military regimes and dictatorships around Latin America, systematizing the “Doctrine of National Security” [which justified] the military’s actions as operating in the interest of National Security in a time of crisis, creating an intellectual basis upon which other military regimes relied.⁴³⁶

However, the theory of military professionalism as applied to Latin America countries does not produce the same outcomes in Africa. The military’s approach in Africa has been more complex than simply taking the positions of power; the soldiers’ solution was to abrogate political activity and to rule by administrative approval in cooperation with civil servants.⁴³⁷ According to Edwar Fiet, the military-civil service coalition as one without a consensus or basic legitimacy in which both military officers and civil servants often have a reluctance to assume responsabilities through direct involvement in politics even after a military-civil service alliance has been established.⁴³⁸ Soldiers look to the civil servants to help them establish legitimacy while the civilians look after their own personal and institutional interests.⁴³⁹ In Nigeria for example, the 1963 Republican Constitution of the country was suspended by the military rule. Feit referred to African armies as the ‘apotheosis of administration’ and saw them as reconstructing an administrative- traditional order.

The Nigerian army is a basic part of the society and is not separated from the community.⁴⁴⁰ Bienen-Fitton and Campbell explain the interesting mechanism of the Nigerian dyarchy.⁴⁴¹ This system of dual-powers (dyarchy) in Nigeria is a result of civil wars, which strengthened the military and established proper constitutional arrangements between federal and regional authorities. Civilians in Nigeria play important roles in consultative and advisory groups, while the political center in Nigeria is not powerful enough to dominate a vast country with a booming oil economy.⁴⁴² Indeed, throughout the civil war and while

435 Ibid.

436 Gonzalez, Eduardo, "Brazil Shatters Its Wall of Silence on the Past". International Center for Transitional Justice. (December 6, 2011), retrieved Mar. 18, 2012.

437 Samuel Keith Panter-Brick, Soldiers and Oil: The Political Transformation of Nigeria (London, Frank Cass, and Co. 1978), pp 312-325; Daniel C. Bach, “Nigeria's 'Manifest Destiny,'” in: “West Africa: Dominance without Power,” Africa Spectrum, GIGA, Page 303.

438 Fiet, Military Coup and Political Development, op. cit., p 100.

439 Ibid.

440 Panter-Brick, Soldiers and Oil, p. 326.

441 David C. Emelifeonwu, “Anatomy of a failed democratic transition: The case of Nigeria, 1985- 1993,” (Ph.D in political science) McGill University [Canada: August 1999].

442 Panter-Brick, Soldiers and Oil, p. 326.

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General Yakubu Gowon presided over the Central Government, Nigeria’s political affairs were ruled by a healthy respect for the central tenets of the spirit of the Nigerian constitution that was inherited from the civilian era of governance before the onset of military rule. The military regime imposed a new constitutional framework that sharply revised the doctrine of Nigeria’s Independence Constitution. It is that new framework, introduced by an ideologically impassioned military regime from 1975 onwards, which has taken hold in post-military Nigeria.

In applying the different definitions above as well as the case of Brazil to the Algerian case after independence, one central question that might be addressed is whether the Algerian military is a professional military, or rather a loose organisation of military groups periodically brought together in their desire to hold power. How about the soldiers who joined the military after independence in 1962: are they, rather, to be counted as professionals? In this case the most important thing to consider is whether there is any relationship between professionalism and the violence that has played such a big part in Algerian life since the independence. To make a clear analysis of the connection between professionalism and the military violence in Algeria it is necessary to clarify the meaning of

“professionalism” that has been used in this case study. Using the definition of Riadh Saidaoui, the professional elite of the Algerian Army are the young officers who joined the military after independence in 1962.⁴⁴³ Most of these officers were born during the colonial period, but their age did not allow them to attend military schools; some were born after independence. They made up the majority of the Algerian military, and entered into the military by their own volition and with apparent personal satisfaction about the decision.

They apparently chose the Army as their source of upward social mobility.

Zitout, Chouchane and Zaoui have denied that Algeria has ever had a professional military, insisting that the military of Algeria was established from three groups. French trained officers, revolutionary officers and officers commissioned after independence.

Soldiers who joined the military straight after independence are not professional soldiers, they insist. Zaoui divided this group into two kinds of officers, the first are soldiers who joined the military voluntarily of their own personal choice and chose it to be their own profession. This group are paid according to their education levels and their work experience, exactly the same as civilians. The second are the officers in the regular military forces. These

443 Reyadh Saidaoui, Siraa’at al-Nukhab al-Syasiya wa al-Askarya fi al-Djazaa’ir [the Conflicts among the Political Elites and the military in Algeria] (the Arab association of distribution and publishing, Syria, 2009), pp.

39-54.

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men entered the military under general conscription to serve for two years, a law that was later changed at the end of the 1980s to eighteen months.

Zaoui’s view has been supported in a speech by president Bouteflika, where he mentions the national army, saying “…Algeria needs a professional military.”⁴⁴⁴ The clear meaning here is that the Algerian Army is not professional, in the common understanding of the word, that is: well trained, working with a clear mission, which has been limited by the constitution of the country. In Zaoui’s view, a professional military cannot engage in political competition or be part of any kind of organisation or political party. This view has been supported by Anthony Forster, as well as Timothy Edmunds and Andrew Cottey, who note

Zaoui’s view has been supported in a speech by president Bouteflika, where he mentions the national army, saying “…Algeria needs a professional military.”⁴⁴⁴ The clear meaning here is that the Algerian Army is not professional, in the common understanding of the word, that is: well trained, working with a clear mission, which has been limited by the constitution of the country. In Zaoui’s view, a professional military cannot engage in political competition or be part of any kind of organisation or political party. This view has been supported by Anthony Forster, as well as Timothy Edmunds and Andrew Cottey, who note