Kabylian Pride - An Extract from CONIFA: Football For The Forgotten by James Hendicott

James Hendicott is a freelance sports and music journalist based in Dublin. He writes for the Dublin Gazette and various national and international publications. In 2019, he published his first book, CONIFA: Football For The Forgotten. Listen to James' appearance on the Extratime.ie Sportscast here and read Tom O'Connor's review of the book here.

Northern Algerian Berber-separatist football side Kabylia were one of sixteen teams competing at London’s 2018 CONIFA World Football Cup, a tournament for unrecognised nations and state-like entities.

Rank outsiders, the yellow-clad side, made up almost entirely of emigrants, had been shrouded in secrecy in the build-up to the tournament, as their management struggled past arrests and harrassment back home in Algeria, and were ultimately forced to pick players drawn mostly from the French and Belgian lower tiers, but of Kabylian Berber origin.

Needing an unlikely victory over a young Western Armenia side to progress from the tournament’s group stages, the passion of the Berber side and their supporters came to the fore...

It’s the fans of Kabylia, though, in town for the early game, who immediately draw the eye. Kabylia need a win against Western Armenia to stand any chance of progressing - a result that would be a miracle of sorts, given they lost their opening game 8-0 to CONIFA World number one Panjab in Slough. Western Armenia top the group, yet it’s the blue and yellow halved flags of the northern Algerian region that dominate the stands and the feel of the game.

I’d heard about their Berber passion before. A fan at a game earlier in the week had told me of an encounter with the group earlier in his life. Having spent some time traveling in the north of Algeria, he recognised that someone serving him in a north African fast-food joint in London was probably of Berber Algerian origin. On asking, he’d been greeted with hugs and excitement at the specific recognition. Having made friends, he wasn’t allowed to pay for anything in that particular takeaway for over a year.

Sat in the back of Enfield’s cafe-cum-main-stand, I soon get talking to one of the fans in yellow and blue. As we speak, rows of Kabylians dance passionately to a boombox they’ve set up in their midst.

“I couldn’t play this music when I was young,” the Kabyle supporter explains of the twirling melodies. “It was banned in our country. If I was caught listening to it, I’d have been arrested. Berbers have been repressed for a long time, and this movement is quite new. For a lot of people, this is our first real experience of pride in who we are, and we don’t care if we win or lose. We care that we get to be here.”

A few minutes into the game, the dancing intensifies. Despite needing a win to have any chance of progressing (it turns out they’d have needed a big win, with results elsewhere), Kabylia offer little on the pitch, but the party goes on.

Eventually, my new friend grabs me by the arm and points excitedly at a man who’s arriving slightly lower down Enfield’s tiny seated stand, and causing quite a stir as he does so. Ferhat Mehenni is a former folk singer, and current President of The Provisional Government of Kabylia in exile. “This is the man whose music I couldn’t listen to,” he explains in stunned recognition. “He is our leader.”



Mehenni watches on quietly for a few minutes, his security detail ensuring nobody gets too close to the seat hastily cleared to one side of the partying fans. My neighbour has now whipped out a book of Mehenni’s writing from his bag, and is trying to pluck up the courage to take it down the stand and  try to persuade the pair of bulky adjacent guards to let him ask for an autograph. I later look up the music that’s blasting in the background. Even when he wrote the songs, it’s clear Mehenni had unapologetically strong views on Berber nationhood. His song titles include ‘Berber Songs of Struggle and Hope’ and ‘Hymn to Kabylia’.

The passion is intense, but also mellowed slightly, at least in its numbers, by the game taking place in London.“If this game was in France,” another man in yellow leans over to tell me, “We’d be playing in front of thousands. There are not many of us in London. It’s a small community here, but this is important to us, because it’s so rare to see Kabylia represented like this.”

On the pitch, things aren’t going so well for the North Algerian side. They’re young and a little naive, and don’t look like they’ve played together a great deal. The more experienced Western Armenian squad is outthinking the energetic Algerians, and offer and efficient, effective passing approach as they pile on the pressure.

Arman Mosoyan opens the scoring for the men in orange early on, just as the Kabylian party was getting underway, though the score causes barely a blip in the dancing. His goal comes as the result of consistent pressure and is fired in from a tight angle after a series of attacks on the Kabylia backline.

The Armenians were dominant, in fact, but relatively poorly supported. When Kabylia did get a rare foray forward, they snuck a ball beyond the casual Armenian goalkeeper to equalise, only to be correctly flagged offside. They did finish the first half on top, but were in for a poor start to the second half, with Vigen Valenza-Berberian breaking in from the left wing to net from close range and put the Western Armenians in total control.

Valenza-Berberian, who’s normal hunting ground is the French lower tiers, added an emphatic feel to the scoreline late on, as he and Vahagn Militosyan of Slovak side FC Nistra added two very late goals, the first after Armenia smacked the post from a free kick, and the second a classy effort on the break, finished into the roof of the net. The Armenians aren’t spectacular, but they are efficient. The Kabylie side have been well beaten, but are passionately and emphatically applauded from the pitch.



Kabylian footballers - or rather footballers who can trace some kind of Kabylian routes - include Zinedine Zidane, Samir Nasri and Karim Benzema, so the potential is clearly quite substantial.

The Kabylian region has a population of around 10 million people, and its politics, particularly that of a burgeoning separatist movement, have long been a cause for substantial concern in Algerian political spheres. Kabylia, one of the poorest and parts of Algeria, would very much like not to be part of the north African country at all.

Currently, the main political representatives of the Kabyle people are MAK (Mouvement pour l'Autodétermination de la Kabylie), a political party that views Algerian governance of the region as a form of annexation. From a Kabyle perspective, there has been a consistent issue with the repression of Kabyle views - in affect, a conflation of what it is to be Algerian and Arabic, and a systematic attempt to repress Berber culture.

Today, Algeria and Kabylia do not recognise each other. Kabylia considers itself to be colonised and a significant part of the population is thought to want to exercise a right to self-determination. In order to deal with the diplomatic successes of the Kabyle Provisional Government, Algiers seems to be painting the Kabylian separatists as a borderline terrorist entity, and seems unwilling to offer many concessions.

Kabylia - or at least the separatists amongst its population - says it’s fighting against the attempt from the Algerian government to “Arabise” its children through education, media and the administration. Complaints also touch on economy, and the overwhelming impact of regionalist Algerian tax spending, which include the blocking of economic projects and the refusal of investment authorisations. Its natural resources, including oil, lead, zinc and water are also, in the eyes of Kabyles, abused by the Algerian government.

This shopping list of grievances has meant substantial and growing insecurity in the region. Over the past 10 years, more than 100 CEOs, merchants or members of their families have been kidnapped in Kabylia, which in turn has pushed a large number of Kabyle business owners move their businesses away from the region due to concerns about their own safety. This, naturally, has further exacerbated the issues with investment into and unemployment in the region. It’s also driven a culture of departure of young people, with those who are able typically heading for Europe, or sometimes French-speaking Canada.

In June and July 1998, the region flared up in mass protest, after the assassination of protest singer and political activist Lounès Matoub. This took place around the same time a new law requiring the use of Arabic in all fields of education entered into force, as opposed to the Berber Kabyle language further worsening tensions.

The problems flared again a few years later. In April 2001 a high school student called Massinissa Guermah died in police custody, leading to major riots in Kabylia. The riots, known as the Black Spring, resulted in 123 deaths more than two thousand injuries as Algerian authorities tried to shut down protests.

Ultimately, the national government was forced to negotiate with the Arouch, a confederation of ancestral local councils over the the ongoing tension and conflict, a negotiation that also touched on wider issues such as social justice and the economy.

The government saw Kabylia as a danger to nationality unity, but did take small steps, recognising the Berber language, Tamazight in 2002. As of 7 February 2016, after a campaign of pressure, Tamazight became an official language of the State alongside Arabic, but this felt very late to Kabyles, who continued to complain of forced removal of their culture.

All this tension also spilled over into the football. When the majority of CONIFA squads were announced ahead of the London tournament, the Kabyle one was conspicuous in its absence. The team had been training and playing in secret in Paris, to avoid political consequences, and had chosen not to be identified ahead of the tournament due to the political risk that might be posed to them should they be named.

The players are not drawn from the heights of Kabylia-linked stars, because many simply wouldn’t take the risk. Instead, they are drawn mainly from the lower tiers of the French league, though six brave players currently competing in Algeria chose to take part in events in London. The consequences of CONIFA ahead of the tournament were substantial for their football association president Aksel Bellabacci.

Bellabaci was arrested and held for questioning for 15 hours by Algerian authorities when the team’s participation in London was announced, while some players families were threatened, too, and forced to swear that their relatives were not members of the independence pushing MAK.

Team manager Lyes Innemai wasn’t held for quite as long as Bellbacci, but also had serious issues in the build up. “I was arrested, and they were blackmailing the players and their families,” Innemai explained in London. “We have many players who didn’t come because of those threats. The Algerian government still tries to block us and keep everything inside.”

It’s relatively unusual for Kabylia to be represented in a substantial way outside of the borders of their own disputed territory. Around 5-6 million people in Algeria consider themselves Kabyles, with another one million in France of the same background, date back to at least the 18th century as an independence movement, and show no signs of calming.

“We are not Algerian, but most of all we’re not Arabic,” Immemai tells me, perhaps unsurprisingly. “Algeria is afraid of Kabylian independence. We’re not afraid of them.”

 

This article is an extract from James Hendicott’s book ‘CONIFA: Football For The Forgotten’, out now digitally on Amazon, or in hard copy for €10 including postage within Ireland on James’ website.