By Rachid RAHA
Reply to my friend Mass Stéphane Mérabet Arrami, editor of Kabyle.com: The only legitimate and legal « World Amazigh Congress » is named « AGRAW AMADLAN AMAZIGH, » which is now translated, faithfully and accurately into English, as « WORLD AMAZIGH ASSEMBLY”, as French “Assemblée Mondiale Amazighe” according to its amended statutes registered in the Belgian Official Gazette of Brussels.
Dear friend Mass Stéphane Arrami,
On October 24th, you published on your website Kabyle.com an interesting reflection entitled “Tamazgha Needs Unity: Strength Lies in the Grassroots ” [1].
First of all, I wish to congratulate you for this relevant and timely reflection concerning the representativity of Amazighs at the international level and your ambitious idea of uniting Amazigh communities and the Amazigh people of Tamazgha and the wider world.
You wrote that: “If the Amazigh people continue to resist, it is neither thanks to institutions nor to political regimes, but thanks to the will of a people deeply attached to its freedom, dignity, and memory. It is the anonymous men and women of this struggle—teachers, students, artists, villagers, exiles, cultural activists—who have kept the Amazigh cause alive. This is where the strategic truth of our future lies: strength is in the grassroots, nowhere else. Today, as decisive steps are being taken for the Amazigh future, one necessity stands out: to regain unity of action and strategic coherence, not through political slogans but by aligning the Amazigh movement with its natural backbone: the people.”
But what caught my attention most—and which, unfortunately, risks sowing confusion—is your statement treating “the World Amazigh Assembly (AMA) as a parallel structure to the World Amazigh Congress (CMA),” by writing that: “The World Amazigh Congress (CMA), weakened by external pressures, had to face the emergence of parallel structures such as the World Amazigh Assembly (AMA)…”
Amudukel Mass Stéphane,
Allow me to protest vigorously against this false claim and to clarify that the World Amazigh Assembly is by no means a “parallel structure” to the World Amazigh Congress. In fact, the only Amazigh Congress that enjoys full legality and legitimacy is the World Amazigh Assembly—AGRAW AMADLAN AMAZIGH—its authentic indigenous name. Why?
Recently, we heard about a sterile controversy over the organization of two so-called “9th World Amazigh Congresses,” between two factions—one that just concluded its meeting in the Moroccan city of Essaouira (October 24–26), and the other planning to hold its congress in the Canary Islands in April 2026.
Your reflection expresses the deep concern—or rather, the eternal dream—of Amazigh activists to achieve UNITY, when you write: “Today, as decisive steps are being taken for the Amazigh future, a necessity stands out: to regain unity of action and strategic coherence, not through political slogans but by aligning the Amazigh movement with its natural backbone: the people. The moment calls for lucidity and responsibility.”
What surprises Amazigh activists from North Africa and the Euro-American diaspora is to see, sadly, that their international organization—created in Saint-Rome-de-Dolan in 1995—has once again become the object of a new division, the third one after that of October 2008 [2], noting that the first division arose following the First General Assembly of the Amazighs of the World held in Tafira (Canary Islands) in August 1997. That was followed by two General Assemblies: one in Lyon (where I had the opportunity to be elected President) in August 1999, and another in Brussels in 2000.
The case was brought before the French courts, since the CMA headquarters was then in Paris, and the court ruled in our favor simply because we had respected the rule that the General Assembly must be held every two years. Later, according to the statutes, the term was extended to three years. However, the factions of Essaouira and those planning the upcoming meeting in the Canary Islands have clearly failed to respect their own statutes—if they even have any—since they should have organized their 9th General Assembly three years after the one allegedly held in Tunisia in 2018, that is, in 2021, not seven or eight years later!
What I would like to emphasize to all Amazigh activists is that division has become an ordinary and normal phenomenon everywhere in the world, within all types of organizations — political, civil, trade union, cultural, and even armed. Let me give you a simple example: Morocco currently has around forty political parties, most of which were created as a result of successive splits from the Istiqlal Party!
Indeed, this same phenomenon of division has not spared the Amazigh Movement either. Malika Matoub once confided to me, when we visited her native village of Taourirt Moussa in September 2008, that fortunately her family had created the Lounès Matoub Foundation, thereby protecting it from any attempt at division. She explained that the MCB (Berber Cultural Movement) had itself experienced two trends — MCB National Coordinations (close to the RCD) and MCB National Commissions (close to the FFS).
Similarly, the Aarchs Movement had split between the “dialoguists” and the “non-dialoguists,” and the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK) had divided between those defending the autonomy project and those who radicalized it into separatism (who are now preparing to unilaterally declare the “independence of Kabylia”!).
Regarding this phenomenon of divisions — often provoked by intelligence and security services of our various states across Tamazgha — I once wrote the following [3]: “I would like to draw the attention of our young internationalist activists to the inevitable game of division. Whenever an organization disturbs one of our states, it quickly becomes the target of a division, orchestrated by security services and intelligence agents. If our North African regimes manage to reproduce themselves and maintain their dictatorial nature, it is because they have mastered the art of ‘divide and rule’.
As long as we do not have truly democratic regimes — whether monarchies or republics — that believe genuine opposition is an integral and essential part of democratic life and has the right to alternation, the game of division will always persist.”
A certain H. Hellu expressed this very well in a comment on Kabyle.com — even if he was completely mistaken about me personally — when he wrote: “It is a method used to destroy an independent organization (association, union…) by sowing confusion inside and outside of it. The approach is simple: the state creates or encourages the creation of a ‘dissident’ group within the autonomous organization it wishes to destroy. This leads to a split, the fragmentation of the targeted organization, by manipulating its most opportunistic or fragile members through either the carrot (corruption, promises) or the stick (threats, fear). The risk of ‘dissidence’ within autonomous organizations is an old and well-known phenomenon that must be anticipated in every organization’s strategy, since its goal is to destroy or at least neutralize them.
The technique of ‘cloning’ is very dangerous because it can prove effective. It seeks to make people believe that certain ‘militants’ no longer agree with the official line of their organization (deemed too ‘radical’ or too ‘soft’), thus justifying their decision to ‘rectify the course’ by launching a so-called ‘reform movement’. With the complicity of state services and media close to power, this ‘new’ group is then brought to the forefront, ready to compromise with the government. To convince the public, the group will stage ‘ultra-radical’ initiatives that are doomed to fail — thus weakening the targeted organization and discouraging citizens from organizing and resisting”. Indeed, this is exactly what often happens with Amazigh movements…
Dear friend Stéphane,
Let me remind you that the CMA (World Amazigh Congress) has not escaped such attempts at division — fundamentally orchestrated by Algerian intelligence services, with the complicity and manipulation of certain Moroccan agents as well. And to face these attempts at division and destabilization, UNITY is essential.
In fact, the real issue is that we cannot possibly unite honest, independent, and autonomous Amazigh activists with so-called pseudo-activists who are opportunists, profiteers, or even outright delinquents [4].
We cannot unite democratic Amazigh activists — those who uphold democratic principles — with those who are admirers of dictatorships, such as the one of the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi [5].
We cannot unite Amazigh activists who respect the objectives, statutes, and resolutions of their associations with those who completely disregard them and only seek to take advantage of international and UN meetings — using them as opportunities for illegal immigration operations, like the human trafficking incident that took place during the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva in April 2009!
Dear friend Mass Stéphane,
Ultimately, allow me to emphasize that no one is against UNION. On the contrary, as the saying goes, “unity is strength.” But unity must be built among respectable, honest, and credible individuals — people who honor their commitments, and never with those who fail to respect even the minimum rules they themselves have adopted and voted for.
Unity is indeed our constant aspiration, but it must be pursued with determined militants, ready to fight and sacrifice themselves selflessly for the Amazigh cause — without expecting material rewards or misappropriating funds, as happened during the 5th General Assembly in Tizi-Ouzou [6].
In short, unity is built with people of principle and conviction — with “free men and women” capable of sacrificing for Amazigh values such as freedom, solidarity, secularism, equality, and democracy.
And above all, unity requires activists who have a clear social project, such as the one proposed in the “MANIFEST OF TAMAZGHA: For a Democratic, Social, and Cross-border Confederation, Based on the Right to Autonomy of the regions” [7].
Dear friend Mass Stéphane, we invite you to attend the upcoming Eleventh General Assembly of the Amazighs of the World, which AGRAW AMADLAN AMAZIGH hopes to organize in May 2026/2976, likely in a city in Western Sahara, Morocco, according to a majority vote based on our current statutes [8] and the election of members of the Confederal Council and the Confederal Bureau. This will allow you to see for yourself how the work is conducted and how decisions are made within our international organization, as well as the importance and caliber of the participants, delegates, guests, and those who, coming from various Moroccan cities, different countries of Tamazgha (North of Africa), and the European countries hosting our Amazigh-speaking diaspora (and perhaps also from the North American diaspora), will bear the burden of travel expenses at their own expense to actively participate in the General Assembly with full responsibility and transparency.
Notes :
[1]- https://kabyle.com/tamazgha-a-
[3]- https://rachidraha.com/454-2/
[4]- https://www.amazighnews.net/
[5]- https://rachidraha.com/le-
[6]- https://www.lexpressiondz.com/
[7]- https://amamazigh.org/wp-
[8]- https://amamazigh.org/statuts-
