Algeria is a rich nation in need of maintenance, renovation

ALGIERS - Kamal Sanjakdar

December 2003

Despite the revenues it draws from its booming oil industry, Algeria is still far from being a prosperous country. Poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment are the landmarks of its economy while violence and corruption are the features of its politics.

Algiers, the capital, summarizes Algeria’s several problems. It is overcrowded with traffic and pedestrians. Some areas such as the Kasbah are so dense that no cars can pass. Middle and low class large residential buildings are all over the city, with each and every balcony having a receiver dish.

Everything there needs renovation: the roads, the bridges, the buildings, the cars, the airport and even policemen’s uniforms. Speaking about law enforcement officers, they are massively present in hotels, mosques, squares and on bridges and important intersections.

At the airport passengers and their luggage might be searched up to five times. Security might request passengers’ passports for an equal number of times. Security deployment is also evident on flights heading to Algeria. On each flight, armed undercover policemen mingle in plainclothes among the passengers to ensure the security.

Touristic monuments in Algiers are also heavily guarded. Among those, the monument commemorating the million martyrs who fell during the war of independence in the mid 20th century stands with grandiosity.

Built on a hill overlooking the city, the monument, a concrete structure under which lies a flame, includes a museum recording the history of and glorifying the heroes of independence.

But the long war of independence did not eradicate French influence in the country. In fact, the most striking feature about Algeria is French including cars, publications and market banners.

The French language has also heavily influenced Algeria’s Arabic.

According to residents, French colonialism constructed most of the buildings. The architecture is similar to old four-story buildings found in Paris: small balconies, wooden green and blue window shields.

In the suburbs of Algiers, large agricultural properties and farms still stand to remind visitors of the basic economic activity of the “Pieds Noirs”, the French settlers who first arrived here in 1830.

In the streets, the mass of young people is incomparable to that of any other Arab country. Half of those a visitor encounters are less than 25 years old. Most of them are reportedly unemployed, wandering in the city in small groups as if they are looking for trouble.

The youngsters’ hope, however, could be summarized in one word: Oil, and Algeria has plenty of it. Some 1,000 kilometers to the south of Algiers, in one of the most desert areas of the world, lays the underground richness of Algeria.

The oil area is quite modern and similar to oil production areas in Gulf countries: sandy dunes with several burning flares. Foreign oil companies have their ultra modern offices and compounds here where the general atmosphere is more relaxed than in Algiers.

During Ramadan, hotels’ restaurants are open unlike in Algiers where the only way to grab a bite is by ordering food to the hotel room.

Relaxity is due to the fact that the only people living in the area work in the oil business. Foreigners need a special pass to access it.

To get from the capital to the desert, the most feasible option is an internal one-hour flight unless you do not mind risking your life by hiring a car and going through the Algerian countryside, the fief of Algerian Muslim fundamentalists. Note here that, although safer, internal flights are not necessarily faster than cars. Delays of up to 8 hours can be experienced in local airports.

The atmosphere of the South is completely different from that of the north: Endless dunes and groups of camels wandering the area as if it were a natural protectorate.

Further to the south west of Algeria is the town of Tindouf. This city does not derive its importance from oil but from politics. Close to the Moroccan and Sahrawi borders, the town is the base of the Polisario front, the Movement for the Liberation of Saguiet el Hamra and Rio de Oro.

This guerilla movement, opposed to the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara, is supported by Algeria. The war opposing Morocco to the Polisario front has been raging since 1975 resulting in an exodus of thousands of Sahrawi refugees to Algeria. Those are now living in poor conditions in refugee camps to the south of Tindouf.

The Algerian support for the Polisario, probably because of the underground richness of the Western Sahara, has been a major source of discord between Algeria and Morocco.

Algeria has a long path towards development. Before oil revenues can flow into the economy, a great deal of internal and external political problems is to be overcome.