Kabylia’s unilateral declaration of independence last December seeks to put on the map a people who have endured centuries of Arab Islamist pressure, yet still find no allies in today’s complex world.

It was one April day in 2011, amid a chain reaction that shook the Middle East and North Africa and came to be known as the “Arab Spring.” Mazigh Buzakhar, a young Amazigh from Libya, showed me a document on his laptop that he himself had helped draft five years earlier. He said it had circulated only among trusted people. It couldn’t be otherwise: in Gaddafi’s Libya, a project for self-government in the Nafusa Mountains—the main Amazigh stronghold in the northwest of the country—would have landed its author in prison without fail.

Buzakhar, a political prisoner released amid the 2011 uprising, explained that they had drawn inspiration from the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK). Founded in 2003, the MAK moved from demanding autonomy for its land to claiming the right to self-determination a decade later.

“Kabylia has always been the reference point for the Amazigh movement as a whole. Our struggle cannot be understood without knowing it,” the activist insisted, extending an open invitation to visit the enclave in northeastern Algeria. It is a landmark territory for the Amazigh people, an indigenous North African population stretching from Morocco’s Atlantic coast to the Siwa oasis in western Egypt.

Arcadia and prison

Roughly the size of Denmark, Kabylia was an independent entity for centuries before being incorporated into Algeria during French colonisation in the mid-nineteenth century. With its defiant stone villages clinging to mountains rising straight from the Mediterranean shore, Kabylia appears to the outside world as a place of overwhelming beauty. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” remarked Hocine Azem, a MAK member, as he drove his Dacia along impossible roads. “At first glance, no one would think this is an open-air prison,” added the activist.

He had been jailed dozens of times by the same regime which has ruled the country since independence in 1962. Azem spoke of a mere “transfer of power” in which Arab Algeria replaced French Algeria, leaving the Amazigh, or Berbers, on the sidelines.

That moment was the seed of an activism that would crystallise in the so-called Berber Spring of 1980, when protests challenging the centralisation of the Algerian state and breaking the silence around Amazigh identity were met with extreme repression. Two decades later, the Black Spring of 2001 reopened those unresolved wounds. The death of a young student in police custody triggered a wave of protests across Kabylia. More than one hundred civilians were killed in Algiers’ brutal response.

Such a painful past did not push the MAK toward insurgency or armed struggle. Even so, the MAK is one of only two organisations officially designated as “terrorists” under Algerian law since May 2021, the other being the Islamist movement Rachad. For Algiers, Azem was a terrorist, plain and simple. Despite speaking Arabic as fluently as any other Algerian, the activist made it clear from the outset that he would speak only French or Tamazight. He was also eager to change his name to a non-Arab one, as Hocine was merely an adaptation of Hussein. The road signs along those winding mountain roads, their Arabic lettering spray-painted over, spoke of a shared sentiment.

“We have been subjected for centuries to an intense campaign of Arabisation that has had a devastating effect across all of North Africa, in every sense. Vgayett became Bejaia, Tubirett became Bouira,” the activist recited from memory, listing Arabized place names. But that was the least of his concerns. In the village of Ait Yenni, known in Arabic as Beni Yenni, locals wondered how Islamist attacks could still take place despite the constant security checkpoints in the area.

“The gendarmes have explosive detectors at every post, yet they made us open the trunk three times on the way here. How is it possible that Islamist attacks keep happening in our region? What is more, almost everyone here is Berber, an atheist, a Christian, or a very moderate Muslim. How can the government insist this is a breeding ground for Islamists?”

A few days later, from a café in central Algiers, Bouaziz Ait Chebib, then president of the MAK, asked the same question.

“More than 40 per cent of Algeria’s security forces are stationed in Kabylia: the army, the gendarmerie, the police, DRS agents. And yet groups like AQIM operate in the area with astonishing ease.” Ait Chebib ventured an explanation. “Although they are presented as antagonists, both the Islamists and the government have never hesitated to join forces to eliminate a people like ours, one that is neither Arab nor Islamist.” Government and Islamists, he added, were “two sides of the same coin.”

After the bloody Algerian civil war triggered by the annulled 1991 elections, which left some 200,000 dead, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika launched a reconciliation process that included an amnesty for armed groups. Paradoxically, jihadist attacks seemed to have become endemic in Kabylia. But there was more. Alongside disappearances and arbitrary arrests by security forces came kidnappings.

In the previous month alone, fourteen people had vanished in Kabylia. MAK members also spoke of a “campaign of extortion orchestrated from Algiers against local business owners.” There was also a far more visible campaign of deforestation. Olive trees were burning, depriving farmers of olive oil, the backbone of the local economy and, by extension, of the entire region. As elsewhere in the world, the ultimate aim of this deliberate deforestation was depopulation. Many residents headed for the outskirts of the capital to start over.

Azem insisted on taking me to Maraghna, a picturesque mountain town of deep significance for Kabyles. It was the birthplace of Ferhat Mehenni, a renowned Amazigh singer who became the founder and first president of the MAK. A tribute was being paid to his son, Ameziane Mehenni, murdered in Paris in 2001 at the age of nineteen. For many, it was part of the price his father paid for his political activity. Since 2010, Ferhat Mehenni has served as president of the Provisional Government of Kabylia in exile, based in the French capital.

The cemetery could not contain the crowd that gathered. After flowers were laid on the martyr’s grave, before which no one prayed, a man holding a megaphone wrapped in an Amazigh flag repeated phrases I had already heard during my stay in Libya. “We are not Arabs or Islamists. We did not come from the Persian Gulf. We are North Africans. We are the legitimate owners of this land.” The speech ended by reminding those present that Paris was “the only authority recognised by Kabyles.”

“Murderous power”

Every subsequent visit to Kabylia felt like déjà vu of that first trip in 2012. There were always new arrests and cases of torture, new disappearances, or protests violently repressed in Tizi Ouzou, the regional capital. In the mountains, olive trees continued to burn while new mosques were being built in a land where they were hardly in demand. Witnessing all this always required navigating a bureaucratic obstacle course designed to keep inconvenient observers like journalists out of the country.

Repression escalated sharply in 2019 when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, severely weakened by illness, sought a fifth term in office. The public reacted, and Kabyles joined the crowds that peacefully filled the streets of Algeria’s major cities every Friday. They demanded the end of military rule and corruption, and called for the country’s modernisation through democratic governance.

Beyond central Algiers, Kabyles also mobilised at home. Thousands gathered in the coastal city of Bejaia for a concert in memory of Matoub Lounès, the writer, thinker, poet, outspoken atheist, and Berber scourge of Arabist orthodoxy in this part of the world. After he was shot dead on June 25, 1998, the government blamed Islamists. Berbers pointed to Algeria’s intelligence services.

“Imazighen, imazighen,” the crowd chanted rhythmically. They paused only to welcome Lounès’ widow on stage, after which the audience erupted. “Pouvoir assassin, pouvoir assassin,” they shouted in French (‘murderous power’), thousands of people raising the victory sign. They fell silent for a minute to honour the martyrs, then resumed.

Yet the pressure in Algiers and Kabylia did not bring change. The gerontocracy of the National Liberation Front controlled the pace masterfully, knowing when to tighten its grip and when to ease off to prevent the pot from boiling over. Those huge marches in Algiers gradually turned into a festive weekly performance, after which protesters themselves organised to clean the city centre. Once the protests vanished from the streets, the authorities went door to door to target the most visible figures from opposition parties, civil society organisations, and sympathetic media outlets.

Human rights observers denounced these practices in reports under titles as stark as A Society Behind Bars by Amnesty International in September 2023, or in appeals to the United Nations Security Council to monitor the “accelerating deterioration of human rights in Algeria,” issued by Human Rights Watch in March 2025. No one listened. By then, the pandemic, the conflict with Morocco, and the war in Ukraine had become the pulleys of a heavy curtain behind which the country managed to disappear from the world’s scrutiny.

“Independence”

Suspense lasted until the end on December 14. Just two hours before Kabylia’s declaration of independence ceremony, attendees received a text message giving the time and place. “1:30 pm, Salons Hoche, Paris 8th.” Despite an initial ban by French authorities, the venue just steps from the Arc de Triomphe hosted the event where Mehenni, flanked by his supporters, declared the Federal Republic of Kabylia established. It was a private gathering attended in a personal capacity by political figures from France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel.

“The declaration was originally planned for April 20, 2025, but we gave the government time to release our political prisoners, ease its grip on our population, and demilitarise Kabylia. The deadline expired on December 14, and instead of backing off, Algiers intensified repression,” explained Soraya Sough, the MAK’s representative in southern Europe. Speaking by phone, she declined to reveal her current location for security reasons. “The pressure on us is growing by the day,” she added.

Sough describes the step taken in Paris as the “materialisation of the MAK’s political project to move toward a state of our own” and insists on the declaration’s political and legal value. “It is a unilateral declaration of independence, but unlike [Catalan President Carles] Puigdemont’s, it is meant to last forever,” she stressed.

The presence of Israeli lawmakers in Paris surprised no one, recalling that Mehenni had visited Jerusalem in May 2012 as president in exile. “Both countries share a common path, but Israel already exists. That is the only difference,” Mehenni told The Jerusalem Post at the time. It was then that the label “the Israel of the Maghreb” was coined.

In December 2025, Algerian newspapers echoed the government line. “A symbolic act with no legal basis,” read one headline. “A farce orchestrated by France and Israel through their postcolonial puppet,” read another, referring to the MAK. While the rest of the world largely looked away, the Israeli media welcomed what had happened in Paris. Carried away by enthusiasm, several analysts began dusting off the map of the so-called Periphery Doctrine.

Developed during the Cold War, this strategy centred on Israel’s need to build alliances with non-Arab states and minorities in the region. That the idea remains alive is evident in post-Assad Syria, where Tel Aviv openly courts Kurds and Druze as these lines are written. Within that same logic, Kabylia appears as a natural ally, particularly given Algeria’s close ties to the Kremlin and the absence of diplomatic relations with Israel. Hostility between the two borders on the atavistic.

The Israeli government has been more cautious than its press and has made no public statement regarding the Paris declaration. Twelve days later, Israel became the first country to recognize Somaliland as an independent state, a move that confirmed Tel Aviv’s willingness to act decisively. Kabylia, however, is not on the board. Validating an Amazigh political entity in the Maghreb would be tantamount to stabbing Morocco in the back. With Berbers making up more than half of Morocco’s population and a region like the Rif, where repression has sent many men to prison or exile, Rabat would not take kindly to such a snub from Tel Aviv.

On the northern shore of the Mediterranean, France, the former colonial power, has stepped aside and set the pace for the rest of the European Union. Minority rights and cultural inclusion are common mantras in Brussels, but sovereignty challenges at home, from Scotland to Catalonia, tend to neutralise any real momentum in that direction.

Still, something has been said from Brussels. On January 23, 2025, after years of deafening silence over serious human rights violations in Algeria, especially during and after the 2019 protests, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning abuses in the country and called on Algerian authorities to review repressive laws, respect freedom of opinion and expression, and immediately release prisoners of conscience.

Three days later, Algeria, a key supplier of natural gas to the EU since the war in Ukraine, convened its cabinet to respond to its trading partner. The EU-Algeria Association Agreement would be put under review. The rest of 2025 passed in silence. Not even a cry was heard from Paris.