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Dr. Vish Sakthivel is a political scientist whose research focuses on political Islam, contentious politics, and authoritarianism in contemporary North Africa. A Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, her current book project examines Islamism in modern Algeria. Sakthivel is a regular source on Algeria and Morocco to the U.S. and foreign governments, and has been published in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The National Interest, among other publications, and with the Brookings Institution, the Hudson Institute and the Washington Institute. A graduate of Oxford University, she is Scholar and Lecturer in Political Science and Middle East Studies at Yale University.
Algeria’s Hirak: A political opportunity in COVID-19?
As Hirak’s primary repertoire of contention has been biweekly protests in key cities, some worry that the COVID-19 lockdown is tolling the movement’s death knell. However, Hirak’s intellectual leaders have long called for supplemental tactics, noting that despite being among the most significant social, political, and cultural phenomena in modern Algerian history, protests alone may no longer be as effective as they once were in extracting meaningful concessions from the regime. Thus, as ill-timed and worrying as this feels for many of the Hirak faithful, the global health crisis may come as a significant political opportunity for the movement.
