A-Infos (en) France, OCL: In memoriam Mohammed Harbi (1933-2026) by Nedjib Sidi Moussa (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

See online: originally published on "colonial and postcolonial history" 
https://histoirecoloniale.net/la-disparition-de-mohammed-harbi-1933-2026/ 
---- Mohammed Harbi died on January 1, 2026, in Paris. Nedjib Sidi 
Moussa, who was his student, comrade, and friend, recounts a life of 
commitment, dignity, and struggle: "A Life of Honor." ---- The passing 
of Mohammed Harbi, which occurred on the first day of this new year, 
imposes upon us a duty of reflection and introspection.

Beyond the sorrow that afflicts us, we must know how to express our 
gratitude and properly honor the memory of the one who was a teacher, a 
comrade or a friend - or even all of these at once.

For many of us, Mohammed Harbi embodied a model of moral decency and 
intellectual rigor, two qualities that characterized him along with 
kindness and generosity. This is why his death represents an 
immeasurable loss for truth seekers and defenders of just causes alike.

But the scope of such a character cannot be accurately conveyed in a few 
lines.

Indeed, from his birth in El Harrouch, in the North Constantine region, 
until his death in his Parisian exile, Mohammed Harbi was successively 
an activist for the independence of his country - from the age of 15 -, 
a supporter of self-managed socialism, a meticulous archivist of the 
anti-colonial revolution, a major historian of the Algerian national 
movement, a professor appreciated by his students and an engaged 
observer on the international scene.

His works, some of which have been reissued in recent times - such as 
his "classic", Le FLN, mirage et réalité , originally published in 1980 
- represent only a fraction of his important work carried out over 
several decades.

Reconstructing the impressive scholarly and activist trajectory of 
Mohammed Harbi - who did not refuse the label of "man of letters" - 
leads us to consider all of his production, up to his arrest in 1965 - 
following the coup d'état which overthrew Ahmed Ben Bella (1916-2012), 
the first president of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria - as 
well as his texts published since his escape in 1973, with the help of 
companions of the Trotskyist leader Mikhalis Raptis (1911-1996) known as 
"Pablo".

It is this "second" period that we wish to focus on here, since it is 
not only the longest and richest, but also-paradoxically-the most 
overlooked in certain respects. Yet, it reveals what Mohammed Harbi was 
for nearly half a century: a fully-fledged postcolonial intellectual and 
an unrepentant internationalist socialist.

Let's judge for ourselves.

The declaration dated May 1973 in Rome - a ruse to avoid making his 
personal situation even more delicate - signed with his comrade Hocine 
Zahouane (1935-2025), concludes with these lines which still resonate 
with the same force:

"  The Palestinian people's struggle for liberation is today the most
advanced stage in the fight for national and social liberation in the 
Arab world. It is
ours. Along with all revolutionaries, we consider it our duty to
participate in it and defend it against Zionism, imperialism, and the
Arab ruling classes who are its gravediggers.  "

Certainly, since the publication of this text - reproduced in its 
entirety in the magazine Sous le drapeau du socialisme and in part in 
the weekly Rouge , with a presentation by Edwy Plenel alias Joseph 
Krasny - Mohammed Harbi's relationship to politics has evolved, whether 
in terms of the forms of his intervention or the content given to his 
commitment.

Yet, we can easily detect in him, over the years, the same concern for 
fair speech, far from sterile polemics, as well as the desire to break 
with the isolation - which was imposed on him by circumstances, on both 
sides of the Mediterranean - in order to better show, through actions, 
that the path to emancipation will be collective or it will not be.

This is probably how we should understand the meaning of the 
declarations signed jointly with other figures of the independence 
movement who, like Hocine Aït Ahmed (1926-2015) - who had also joined 
the Algerian People's Party (PPA) in his youth - continued their 
legitimate fight against colonialism by fighting for the triumph of 
democratic freedoms in an authoritarian Algeria marked by the 
single-party system.

As an example, let us mention their communiqué dated April 7, 1982 - 
published in the weekly Sans frontière - in which the two former leaders 
of the National Liberation Front (FLN) denounced the methods used by 
representatives of the Association of Algerians in Europe who prevented 
Ahmed Ben Bella from speaking at a public meeting in Belfort.

Later, during the trial of former Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie (1913-1991) 
which opened in Lyon in 1987, Mohammed Harbi and Hocine Aït Ahmed 
protested - in a statement published in the magazine Sou'al - against 
the manipulations of morality, history and law:

"The defense of human rights before French courts during the Algerian 
War finds its logical continuation in the defense of human rights in 
newly independent countries and not in that of a man, Barbie, whose 
victory would have meant the extermination of the Jews."

These positions, repeated during the 1980s, express a deeply rooted 
humanism in this intellectual sensitive to the fate of the peoples of 
the Third World, without however endorsing the most caricatured versions 
of Third Worldism which could accommodate authoritarian excesses under 
the pretext of resistance to Western imperialism.

This exile - and former head of the FLN Federation of France - has once 
again shown himself attentive to the fate reserved for immigrant workers 
or their descendants, constant victims of racism, as evidenced by his 
support for petitions initiated by those who would be called the 
"Beurs", such as "  The manifesto of the allogenes  " - published in 
1981 in Sans frontière with the signature, among others, of the 
sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad (1933-1998) - or the appeal intended to 
stop the campaign of attacks - taken up again in 1986 in the magazine 
Baraka - supported by Hocine Aït Ahmed and the former minister Bachir 
Boumaza (1927-2009).

Despite his permanent move to the French capital, Mohammed Harbi 
followed the evolution of Algerian society and did not hesitate to 
support its aspirations for dignity, peace, and pluralism, which for 
many were synonymous with the completion of independence.

In the wake of the repression of the Berber Spring in 1980, he demanded 
in Sans Frontière the release of the detainees - whom he described as 
"sowers of hope" - and proclaimed the legitimacy of "the struggle for 
the teaching of Berber." When questioned by a reader, he clarified that 
his opposition to "Arab-Islamism" was nothing other than a rejection of 
"the attitude of those who confuse language, culture, and state, or who 
believe that the Arabic language and Islam are forever inseparable."

Far from giving in to the sirens of fundamentalism or political Islam, 
Mohammed Harbi instead warned, in the same year in Jeune Afrique , 
against the temptation of "mystical populism" - which was particularly 
lurking for Ahmed Ben Bella, then deprived of his freedom - and rejected 
the interpretation that equated "the North-South conflict with a 
conflict between Islam and the West".

This intransigence led him, ten years after the Islamic revolution in 
Iran, to support the writer Salman Rushdie - expressed in an editorial 
by Sou'al reprinted in Les Cahiers d'Article 31 - but also to refuse to 
defend the wearing of the veil in public schools, through an opinion 
piece published in the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and an article 
published in Critique Communiste , the journal of the Revolutionary 
Communist League (LCR).

However, these positions should be related to his constant commitment to 
equality between men and women, from his interview given in 1980 to the 
sociologist Christiane Dufrancatel for Les révoltes logiques - devoted 
to the role of women in the Algerian revolution - to his foreword for 
the 1990 reissue of the work of the sociologist Mansour Fahmy 
(1886-1959), La condition de la femme dans l'islam which ended with 
these words:

"In an impoverished era where those in power allow Islamists to shape 
the youth through a kind of persuasive or dissuasive tactic, and demand 
that intellectuals refrain from addressing religious issues, reminding 
people of what is being hidden from them or what they have forgotten is 
the thankless task of thought."

Let us also mention his statement, issued in 1981 on behalf of the Union 
of the Socialist Left (UGS) - reprinted nine years later in the Cahiers 
du féminisme - concerning the draft Family Code, in which he 
"unreservedly acknowledges the autonomy and specificity of the feminist 
movement," before adding:

"The UGS firmly condemns any attempt to hierarchize struggles as an 
obstacle to the regrouping of women, to the expansion and cohesion of 
their movement. It calls on all democrats and socialists to fight not 
for the 'democratic' amendment of this shameful code, which would be 
evidence of unacknowledged hypocrisy, but rather for its complete and 
utter withdrawal."

Following the October 1988 riots-which were brutally suppressed by the 
police-he participated in a debate moderated by the philosopher Félix 
Guattari (1930-1992) and the economist Gustave Massiah. His assessment 
was unequivocal: "The charade is over. The divorce between the state and 
society has been laid bare." In response to the question of multi-party 
politics posed by the middle classes, Mohammed Harbi again spoke out 
without hesitation:

"If these classes truly want to get closer to the working classes, they 
will have to address the democratic question in terms of water, schools, 
health, land, and housing. Then the debate on democracy, bogged down in 
declarations of principle, will get out of its rut."

The advent of partisan pluralism prompted him to reconnect with his 
native country. Back in Paris, in 1991 he shared his impressions with 
Gilbert Achcar, also known as Salah Jaber, and Sophie Massouri for 
Inprecor, the journal of the United Secretariat of the Fourth 
International. His analysis, hardly encouraging, highlighted an 
incompatibility between the middle and working classes, divided by 
economic considerations but also by their lifestyles:

"The working classes want social change, but are ideologically 
conservative, and it is through ideology that they can be co-opted or 
neutralized in their aims by the privileged."

However, the interruption of the electoral process in January 1992-which 
deprived the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) of a political victory-and 
the rise of extremism tore apart an Algerian society that had embarked 
on "the suicidal path of civil war," as he wrote in a 1994 article in Le 
Monde diplomatique . Faced with this chaotic situation where 
assassinations followed disappearances and attacks followed atrocities, 
he saw only two options for resolving the crisis, as he confided that 
same year to the Revue d'études palestiniennes:

"The first option is a serious dialogue that takes Islamism into 
account. There hasn't been one so far. The second is to continue 
applying the military 'solution,' with all the dangers that this 
entails, including the disintegration of the state and chaos."

With sociologist Monique Gadant (1930-1995), he published an article the 
following year in Esprit that deplored the assassination of 
"Francophone" intellectuals, rejected the deadly polarization at work in 
his country, and pointed out the flaws of the democratic movement:

"Everything is being done to silence those who refuse to equate the 
state with armed groups. Under these conditions, the ritualistic 
invocation of democracy contributes to a corruption of language. Without 
independence from the state, the unity of democrats will remain a pious 
wish for a long time to come."

Following the adoption of the Rome Platform in January 1995 by 
opposition representatives such as Ahmed Ben Bella and Hocine Aït Ahmed, 
as well as by leaders of the FIS, he signed an appeal by 
intellectuals-published in 1997 in Libération -calling for the creation 
of an international commission of inquiry into the situation in Algeria. 
To this end, he participated in a meeting in Paris on February 21, 1998, 
alongside Hocine Aït Ahmed.

Everyone is free to claim the right to hand out praise and blame. 
Nevertheless, Mohammed Harbi was guided - in this matter as in others - 
by a concern for justice and truth, thus responding to the grievances of 
his compatriots who had no voice in the matter. However, the best 
intentions clashed with the concrete difficulties caused by the shock of 
the "civil war" and the dramatic weakening of the forces of social 
transformation, as he stated in 2000 to Alternative libertaire :

"The Algerian left, once dominated by statists, is in complete disarray. 
One part has converted to neoliberalism. Another part defends the public 
sector and democratic freedoms and opposes Bouteflika. Among others, it 
includes Trotskyist currents, repentant Stalinists, and others. There is 
still no adequate critical reassessment of statist socialism or debate 
surrounding the self-management perspective."

Alongside his numerous interventions - through opinion pieces, 
interviews, meetings, petitions, etc. - which marked the period of 
"maturity" following his move to Paris, Mohammed Harbi engaged in 
several collective endeavors of which he could rightly be proud. Such 
was the case with the journal Sou'al - founded in Paris with Claude 
Sixou (1931-2011), co-founder in 1956 of the Committee of Algerian Jews 
for Negotiation, and Mustapha Khayati, a former member of the 
Situationist International - and whose editorial in the first issue 
(dated December 1981) summarizes the intention of this initiative, which 
deserves to be rediscovered by new readers:

"Create, regroup, confront. These are the main mechanisms that can give 
life to the implementation of a field of original reflection and 
analysis, to the enactment of a rigorous and proactive framework for 
bringing together the most conscious forces of the intelligentsia and 
all activists in Arab countries. It is around these tasks and for these 
objectives that Sou'al will thrive.  "

In the same spirit, he supported the creation, in Algiers, of the 
journal Naqd - whose first director was the sociologist Saïd Chikhi 
(1944-1993) - and which had set itself the ambition, from its launch in 
October 1991, of "giving birth to a bold thought".

While Mohammed Harbi's personal work-widely mentioned in the tributes, 
which is the very least that can be done-rightly deserves recognition, 
it would be unfair to overlook his collective activity, which reflects 
not only the aforementioned qualities but also his loyalty in friendship 
and the depth of his vision, which extended far beyond Algeria and the 
Francophone world. Indeed, towards the end of his life, he returned in 
particular to the Irish and Mexican cases.

However, it is worth recalling, for those who may not know, his decisive 
role in writing about the independence movement and the Algerian 
revolution. His bibliography, which deserves to be revisited, 
disseminated, and translated, speaks for itself: * Aux origines du FLN. 
Le populisme révolutionnaire en Algérie * (1975); * Le FLN, mirage et 
réalité. Des origines à la prise du pouvoir * (1980); * Les archives de 
la révolution algérienne * (1981); * 1954, la guerre commence en Algérie 
* (1984); * L'Algérie et son destin. Croyants ou citoyens * (1992); * 
Une vie debout. Mémoires politiques * (2001).

Alongside these works, which feature prominently in the libraries of all 
connoisseurs, there are those published in 2004 in collaboration with 
other historians, such as Le FLN, documents et histoire avec Gilbert 
Meynier (1942-2017) - for which he had written the preface to his 
Histoire intérieure du FLN (2002) - and La guerre d'Algérie: 1954-2004. 
The end of amnesia , co-directed with Benjamin Stora - whose 
Biographical Dictionary of Algerian Nationalist Activists (1985) he had 
prefaced - not forgetting, for the most recent period, the postface to 
the reissue of the book by Jim House and Neil McMaster, Paris 1961. The 
Algerians, State Terror and Memory (2021), that to the thesis of Ali 
Guenoun, The Kabyle Question in Algerian Nationalism (2021), or the 
publication, in 2022, of Self-Management in Algeria: Another 
Revolution?, with the collaboration of Robi Morder and Irène Paillard.

Mohammed Harbi was undoubtedly an "iconoclastic" historian in light of 
the monolithic narrative that long prevailed in Algeria regarding the 
national movement and its obscured figures, some of whom were unjustly 
slandered, such as Messali Hadj (1898-1974), "the unfortunate pioneer of 
the Algerian revolution," to borrow the title of his article published 
in Les Africains (1977), edited by the historian Charles-Robert Ageron 
(1923-2008). His text opened with these weighty words:

"Few figures in contemporary Algerian history have been as much debated 
as Messali Hadj. This man, who had foreseen the future, had to spend the 
rest of his days struggling to clear himself of the accusation of 
treason. History, which judges the world, has as its first duty to lose 
respect," wrote Michelet. "To lose respect by recounting Messali's life 
is to restore the truth and to reveal, without embellishment or bias, 
the face of the man who presided over the destinies of the organizations 
that prepared the Algerian revolution."

Unsurprisingly, he wrote an afterword to the Memoirs of Messali Hadj 
(1982), edited by the journalist Renaud de Rochebrune (1947-2022). He 
also spoke at the symposium on Messali Hadj organized in 2011 by the 
Ecolymet association in Tlemcen. It's an understatement to say that he 
was haunted by the "fratricidal" struggle among Algerian nationalists 
and that he abhorred the after-the-fact justifications of assassination 
or terrorism to settle political disputes.

In recent years, marked by fatigue, health problems and some 
disappointments, he never ceased to honor the memory of his deceased 
companions, one after the other, such as the orientalist Maxime Rodinson 
(1915-2004), whom he praised in Le Monde, the historian Pierre 
Vidal-Naquet (1930-2006), whom he saluted in the Revue d'études 
palestiniennes , or the libertarian Daniel Guérin (1904-1988) during a 
day of tribute organized in 2018 in Paris.

A convinced rationalist - he contributed to the magazine Raison présente 
and described himself, in a 2019 interview with Le Monde, as 
"non-believer, non-practicing and libertarian Marxist" - Mohammed Harbi 
was concerned with transmitting, training and helping rising 
generations, doing justice to the marginalized or relaying the voice of 
the most fragile.

To conclude on a personal note, I cherish the memory of our numerous and 
fruitful collaborations and convergences, which materialized, among 
other things, in a declaration released on March 11, 2019, entitled 
"Algeria is on the verge of blossoming," and then the one published the 
following year in Le Monde, entitled "Algeria: reopening a future for 
the revolution."

All of Mohammed Harbi's companions will be keen to keep alive the 
abundant work of this man of great sensitivity and rare elegance.

It is up to us to work on it, collectively, with respect, in the image 
of what our teacher, comrade and friend taught us.

Paris, January 3, 2026.

Nedjib SIDI MOUSSA had already mentioned Mohammed Harbi in the columns 
of Courant Alternatif in December 2024 in his text Colonialism: 
Palestine and Kanaky through the prism of the Algerian revolution , 
noting how much this militant of Algerian independence still offered 
rising generations an experience and a lucidity that are sorely lacking 
in the times we live in.

On his website sinedjib.com , Nedjib Sidi Moussa has been publishing 
Mohammed Harbi's writings daily since the beginning of January... And a 
number of the texts cited here are also referenced there...

https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4605
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en