Berbers see farther than corner shop

Parisians know them simply as l'Arabe du coin, the corner shop that sells fruit and vegetables, wine and bread. Whether or not they are Arab is disputed - most of these small grocers are in fact Ihchelhiyen Berbers from the Souss region of southern Morocco.

An estimated third of Paris cafes are owned by Kabyle Berbers from northern Algeria, If you take a Paris taxi, the chances are your driver will be a Berber-speaking Algerian from Kabylie or a Berber Moroccan from the Rif. Most of France's 1.2 million Berbers live in Paris, making it the Berber capital of the world.

So it is not surprising that Paris is the seat of the two-year-old World Amazigh (Berber) Congress, which today begins its first international conference in the once Berber Canary Islands, with 350 delegates from more than a dozen countries. The congress president is Mr Mabrouk Ferkal (31), an Algerian Kabyle who earns his living as a physics professor.

The group claims to have only cultural goals, but its contention that Arabic and Islam have been artificially imposed on North Africa is as explosive as its demand that the Berber language Tamazight be officially recognised and taught throughout the region. Mr Ferkal is not joking when he says intelligence agents from a half dozen countries will sneak into the four-day conference.

"`Berbers' is the name given to us by the invaders and colonisers of North Africa," explains Mr Ferkal. (Most westerners remember the Berbers as the pirates of the Barbary Coast, who long ago plagued Mediterranean shipping.) "We prefer the name we give ourselves, `Imazighen'. Our historic territory goes from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Canary Islands, and from the Mediterranean to Burkina Faso."

He claims more than 30 million people in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Niger, Burkina-Faso, Mauritania and Spain are Berberophone.

Berber activists often clash with north African governments and Islamic fundamentalists. In 1980, the Algerian authorities banned a Berber lecture in the Kabyle capital of Tizi Ouzou, sparking weeks of protests and strikes known as the "Berber springtime". Two of the main opposition parties in Algeria are led by Kabyle Berbers; because fundamentalists view their secularism as a form of atheism, civil war casualties among Kabyles have been high. One Islamic Salvation Front leader said he would Islamicise Kabylie even if he had to burn the entire region.

The World Amazigh Congress vehemently denounced new constitutions drafted in Algeria and Morocco last year because they did not recognise those countries' "Berber identity". In the early 1990s, hundreds of Berber Touaregs were massacred by government forces in Niger and Mali, the congress says. In Libya the use of Tamazight is banned in public, and Tunisian authorities have tried to exploit Berber culture as a curiosity for tourists.

"We're trying to reconcile North Africa with its history, with its identity," Mr Ferkal says. "But governments see our demands as divisive, even treacherous."

The 7th-century Arab conquest of north Africa was only one invasion among those of Phoenicians, Vandals, Turks, Byzantines, Romans, Spanish and French, Berber activists note. To them, Arabic is a foreign language. "The Berbers go back at least as far as Pharaonic Egypt, thousands of years before Christ," Mr Ferkal says. "We were the first recorded presence in North Africa, and our language is one of the oldest in the world. The Arabs who came here 13 centuries ago were very few. A lot died on the way or in wars, and they came without women. They were diluted among the Berbers."

To the uninitiated, Berber script looks similar to Greek, or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Few Berber-speakers can write it.

"Berber studies are now conducted with Latin characters," Mr Ferkal says. "We want to develop the language, so we mustn't be fanatical about it."

Tamazight has no past, present or future tenses, only completed and uncompleted acts. It has been passed down through poems, songs, riddles and proverbs, where the triumph of good over evil ogres is a constant theme.

It is also a language close to nature, with dozens of names for stars, camels, fig trees.

Mr Ferkal compares the repression of Tamazight by Arabic speakers to that of the Irish language by the English, or Breton by the French. His group is not demanding a pan-Berber state - yet. It maintains close ties with the Bretons, and he has also invited Occitan (from France and Italy) and Kurdish activists to this week's meeting in the Canary Islands. The Welsh group Plaid Cymru and the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages in Dublin sent messages of support.

Is it a conference of lost causes?

Mr Ferkal laughs: "We are trying to save civilisations that are threatened with extinction. We are saving the heritage of mankind, preventing it from being amputated. All these groups have to unite together to be strong - there's a beginning to everything."