Algeria

/al jear"ee euh/, n.

a republic in NW Africa: formerly comprised 13 departments of France; gained independence 1962. 29,830,370; 919,352 sq. mi. (2,381,122 sq. km). Cap.: Algiers.

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Algeria

Introduction Algeria
Background: After a century of rule by France, Algeria became independent in 1962. The surprising first round success of the fundamentalist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) party in the December 1991 balloting caused the army to intervene, crack down on the FIS, and postpone the subsequent elections. The FIS response has resulted in a continuous low-grade civil conflict with the secular state apparatus, which nonetheless has allowed elections featuring pro- government and moderate religious- based parties. FIS's armed wing, the Islamic Salvation Army, disbanded itself in January 2000 and many armed militants surrendered under an amnesty program designed to promote national reconciliation. Nevertheless, residual fighting continues. Other concerns include Berber unrest, large-scale unemployment, a shortage of housing, and the need to diversify the petroleum-based economy. Geography Algeria -
Location: Northern Africa, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Morocco and Tunisia
Geographic coordinates: 28 00 N, 3 00 E
Map references: Africa
Area: total: 2,381,740 sq km water: 0 sq km land: 2,381,740 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly less than 3.5 times the size of Texas
Land boundaries: total: 6,343 km border countries: Libya 982 km, Mali 1,376 km, Mauritania 463 km, Morocco 1,559 km, Niger 956 km, Tunisia 965 km, Western Sahara 42 km
Coastline: 998 km
Maritime claims: exclusive fishing zone: 32-52 NM territorial sea: 12 NM
Climate: arid to semiarid; mild, wet winters with hot, dry summers along coast; drier with cold winters and hot summers on high plateau; sirocco is a hot, dust/sand-laden wind especially common in summer
Terrain: mostly high plateau and desert; some mountains; narrow, discontinuous coastal plain
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Chott Melrhir -40 m highest point: Tahat 3,003 m
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, phosphates, uranium, lead, zinc
Land use: arable land: 3.21% permanent crops: 0.21% other: 96.57% (1998 est.)
Irrigated land: 5,600 sq km (1998 est.)
Natural hazards: mountainous areas subject to severe earthquakes; mudslides and floods in rainy season Environment - current issues: soil erosion from overgrazing and other poor farming practices; desertification; dumping of raw sewage, petroleum refining wastes, and other industrial effluents is leading to the pollution of rivers and coastal waters; Mediterranean Sea, in particular, becoming polluted from oil wastes, soil erosion, and fertilizer runoff; inadequate supplies of potable water Environment - international party to: Biodiversity, Climate
agreements: Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands signed, but not ratified: Nuclear Test Ban
Geography - note: second-largest country in Africa (after Sudan) People Algeria
Population: 32,277,942 (July 2002 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 33.5% (male 5,512,369; female 5,311,914) 15-64 years: 62.4% (male 10,175,135; female 9,950,315) 65 years and over: 4.1% (male 610,643; female 717,566) (2002 est.)
Population growth rate: 1.68% (2002 est.)
Birth rate: 22.34 births/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Death rate: 5.15 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.42 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.04 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.85 male(s)/ female total population: 1.02 male(s)/ female (2002 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 39.15 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.) Life expectancy at birth: total population: 70.24 years female: 71.67 years (2002 est.) male: 68.87 years
Total fertility rate: 2.63 children born/woman (2002 est.) HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: 0.07% (1999 est.) HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/ NA
AIDS:
HIV/AIDS - deaths: NA
Nationality: noun: Algerian(s) adjective: Algerian
Ethnic groups: Arab-Berber 99%, European less than 1%
Religions: Sunni Muslim (state religion) 99%, Christian and Jewish 1%
Languages: Arabic (official), French, Berber dialects
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 61.6% male: 73.9% female: 49% (1995 est.) Government Algeria
Country name: conventional long form: People's Democratic Republic of Algeria conventional short form: Algeria local short form: Al Jaza'ir local long form: Al Jumhuriyah al Jaza'iriyah ad Dimuqratiyah ash Sha'biyah
Government type: republic
Capital: Algiers Administrative divisions: 48 provinces (wilayas, singular - wilaya); Adrar, Ain Defla, Ain Temouchent, Alger, Annaba, Batna, Bechar, Bejaia, Biskra, Blida, Bordj Bou Arreridj, Bouira, Boumerdes, Chlef, Constantine, Djelfa, El Bayadh, El Oued, El Tarf, Ghardaia, Guelma, Illizi, Jijel, Khenchela, Laghouat, Mascara, Medea, Mila, Mostaganem, M'Sila, Naama, Oran, Ouargla, Oum el Bouaghi, Relizane, Saida, Setif, Sidi Bel Abbes, Skikda, Souk Ahras, Tamanghasset, Tebessa, Tiaret, Tindouf, Tipaza, Tissemsilt, Tizi Ouzou, Tlemcen
Independence: 5 July 1962 (from France)
National holiday: Revolution Day, 1 November (1954)
Constitution: 19 November 1976, effective 22 November 1976; revised 3 November 1988, 23 February 1989, and 28 November 1996
Legal system: socialist, based on French and Islamic law; judicial review of legislative acts in ad hoc Constitutional Council composed of various public officials, including several Supreme Court justices; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal
Executive branch: chief of state: President Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA (since 28 April 1999) head of government: Prime Minister Ali BENFLIS (since 26 August 2000) cabinet: Cabinet of Ministers appointed by the president elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 15 April 1999 (next to be held NA April 2004); prime minister appointed by the president election results: Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA elected president; percent of vote - Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA over 70%; note - his six opposing candidates withdrew on the eve of the election citing electoral fraud
Legislative branch: bicameral Parliament consists of the National People's Assembly or Al- Majlis Ech-Chaabi Al-Watani (389 seats - changed from 380 seats in the 2002 elections; members elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms) and the Council of Nations (144 seats; one-third of the members appointed by the president, two- thirds elected by indirect vote; members serve six-year terms; the constitution requires half the council to be renewed every three years) elections: National People's Assembly - last held 30 May 2002 (next to be held NA 2007); Council of Nations - last held 30 December 2000 (next to be held NA 2003) election results: National People's Assembly - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - FLN 199, RND 48, MRN 43, MSP 38, PT 21, FNA 8, Nahda 1, PRA 1, MEN 1, independents 29; Council of Nations - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - RND 79, FLN 12, FFS 4, MSP 1 (remaining 48 seats appointed by the president, party breakdown NA)
Judicial branch: Supreme Court or Cour Supreme Political parties and leaders: Algerian National Front or FNA [Moussa TOUATI]; Democratic National Rally or RND [Ahmed OUYAHIA, chairman]; Islamic Salvation Front or FIS (outlawed April 1992) [Ali BELHADJ and Dr. Abassi MADANI (imprisoned), Rabeh KEBIR (self- exile in Germany)]; Movement of a Peaceful Society or MSP [Mahfoud NAHNAH, chairman]; National Entente Movement or MEN [Ali BOUKHAZNA]; National Liberation Front or FLN [Boualem BENHAMOUDA, secretary general]; National Reform Movement or MRN [Abdellah DJABALLAH]; National Renewal Party or PRA [leader NA]; Progressive Republican Party [Khadir DRISS]; Rally for Culture and Democracy or RCD [Said SAADI, secretary general]; Renaissance Movement or EnNahda Movement [Lahbib ADAMI]; Social Liberal Party or PSL [Ahmed KHELIL]; Socialist Forces Front or FFS [Hocine Ait AHMED, secretary general (self-exile in Switzerland)]; Union for Democracy and Liberty [Mouley BOUKHALAFA]; Workers Party or PT [Louisa HANOUN] note: a law banning political parties based on religion was enacted in March 1997 Political pressure groups and NA
leaders: International organization ABEDA, AfDB, AFESD, AL, AMF, AMU,
participation: CCC, ECA, FAO, G-15, G-19, G-24, G- 77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, MONUC, NAM, OAPEC, OAS (observer), OAU, OIC, OPCW, OPEC, OSCE (partner), UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNMEE, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (observer) Diplomatic representation in the US: chief of mission: Ambassador Idriss JAZAIRY chancery: 2118 Kalorama Road NW, Washington, DC 20008 FAX: [1] [phone] telephone: [1] [phone] Diplomatic representation from the chief of mission: Ambassador Janet
US: A. SANDERSON embassy: 4 Chemin Cheikh Bachir El- Ibrahimi, Algiers mailing address: B. P. Box 549, Alger-Gare, 16000 Algiers telephone: [213] (21) 69-11-86, 69- 12-55, 69-18-54, 69-38-75 FAX: [213] (21) 69-39-79
Flag description: two equal vertical bands of green (hoist side) and white; a red, five- pointed star within a red crescent centered over the two-color boundary; the crescent, star, and color green are traditional symbols of Islam (the state religion) Economy Algeria -
Economy - overview: The hydrocarbons sector is the backbone of the economy, accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. Algeria has the fifth- largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second largest gas exporter; it ranks 14th in oil reserves. Algeria's financial and economic indicators improved during the mid-1990s, in part because of policy reforms supported by the IMF and debt rescheduling from the Paris Club. Algeria's finances in 2000 and 2001 benefited from the temporary spike in oil prices and the government's tight fiscal policy, leading to a large increase in the trade surplus, record highs in foreign exchange reserves, and reduction in foreign debt. The government's continued efforts to diversify the economy by attracting foreign and domestic investment outside the energy sector has had little success in reducing high unemployment and improving living standards. In 2001, the government signed an Association Treaty with the European Union that will eventually lower tariffs and increase trade.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $177 billion (2001 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 3.8% (2001 est.)
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $5,600 (2001 est.) GDP - composition by sector: agriculture: 17% industry: 33% services: 50% (2000 est.) Population below poverty line: 23% (1999 est.) Household income or consumption by lowest 10%: 4.4%
percentage share: highest 10%: 25% (1995) Distribution of family income - Gini 35.3 (1995)
index: Inflation rate (consumer prices): 3% (2001 est.)
Labor force: 9.4 million (2001 est.) Labor force - by occupation: government 29%, agriculture 25%, construction and public works 15%, industry 11%, other 20% (1996 est.)
Unemployment rate: 34% (2001 est.)
Budget: revenues: $20.3 billion expenditures: $18.8 billion, including capital expenditures of $5.8 billion (2001 est.)
Industries: petroleum, natural gas, light industries, mining, electrical, petrochemical, food processing Industrial production growth rate: 6% (2001 est.) Electricity - production: 23.556 billion kWh (2000) Electricity - production by source: fossil fuel: 99.58% hydro: 0.42% other: 0% (2000) nuclear: 0% Electricity - consumption: 21.847 billion kWh (2000)
Electricity - exports: 210 million kWh (2000)
Electricity - imports: 150 million kWh (2000)
Agriculture - products: wheat, barley, oats, grapes, olives, citrus, fruits; sheep, cattle
Exports: $20 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
Exports - commodities: petroleum, natural gas, and petroleum products 97%
Exports - partners: Italy 23%, Spain 13%, US 13%, France 11%, Brazil 7%, (2000)
Imports: $1 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
Imports - commodities: capital goods, food and beverages, consumer goods
Imports - partners: France 29%, US 9%, Italy 8%, Germany 6%, Spain 5% (2000)
Debt - external: $24.7 billion (2001 est.) Economic aid - recipient: $100 million (1999 est.)
Currency: Algerian dinar (DZD)
Currency code: DZD
Exchange rates: Algerian dinars per US dollar - 77.889 (January 2002), 77.215 (2001), 75.260 (2000), 66.574 (1999), 58.739 (1998), 57.707 (1997)
Fiscal year: calendar year Communications Algeria Telephones - main lines in use: 2.3 million (1998) Telephones - mobile cellular: 33,500 (1999)
Telephone system: general assessment: telephone density in Algeria is very low, not exceeding five telephones per 100 persons; the number of fixed main lines increased in the last few years to a little more than 2,000,000, but only about two-thirds of these have subscribers; much of the infrastructure is outdated and inefficient domestic: good service in north but sparse in south; domestic satellite system with 12 earth stations (20 additional domestic earth stations are planned) international: 5 submarine cables; microwave radio relay to Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia; coaxial cable to Morocco and Tunisia; participant in Medarabtel; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean), 1 Intersputnik, and 1 Arabsat (1998) Radio broadcast stations: AM 25, FM 1, shortwave 8 (1999)
Radios: 7.1 million (1997) Television broadcast stations: 46 (plus 216 repeaters) (1995)
Televisions: 3.1 million (1997)
Internet country code: .dz Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 2 (2000)
Internet users: 180,000 (2001) Transportation Algeria
Railways: total: 4,820 km standard gauge: 3,664 km 1.435- m gauge (301 km electrified; 215 km double-track) narrow gauge: 1,156 km 1.055-m gauge (1999 est.)
Highways: total: 104,000 km paved: 71,656 km (including 640 km of expressways) unpaved: 32,344 km (1996 est.)
Waterways: none
Pipelines: crude oil 6,612 km; petroleum products 298 km; natural gas 2,948 km
Ports and harbors: Algiers, Annaba, Arzew, Bejaia, Beni Saf, Dellys, Djendjene, Ghazaouet, Jijel, Mostaganem, Oran, Skikda, Tenes
Merchant marine: total: 73 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 903,944 GRT/1,051,433 DWT ships by type: bulk 9, cargo 25, chemical tanker 7, liquefied gas 10, petroleum tanker 5, roll on/roll off 12, short-sea passenger 4, specialized tanker 1, includes some foreign-owned ships registered here as a flag of convenience: United Arab Emirates 2 (2002 est.)
Airports: 136 (2001) Airports - with paved runways: total: 52 over 3,047 m: 9 2,438 to 3,047 m: 26 914 to 1,523 m: 5 under 914 m: 1 (2001) 1,524 to 2,437 m: 11 Airports - with unpaved runways: total: 84 2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 1,524 to 2,437 m: 23 under 914 m: 18 (2001) 914 to 1,523 m: 40
Heliports: 1 (2001) Military Algeria
Military branches: Peoples National Army (ANP), Algerian National Navy (ANN), Air Force, Territorial Air Defense, National Gendarmerie Military manpower - military age: 19 years of age (2002 est.) Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 9,016,048 (2002 est.) Military manpower - fit for military males age 15-49: 5,513,317 (2002
service: est.) Military manpower - reaching males: 388,939 (2002 est.)
military age annually: Military expenditures - dollar $1.87 billion (FY99)
figure: Military expenditures - percent of 4.1% (FY99)
GDP: Transnational Issues Algeria Disputes - international: part of southeastern region claimed by Libya; Algeria supports exiled West Saharan Polisario Front and rejects Moroccan administration of Western Sahara

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officially Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria

Country, North Africa.

Area: 919,595 sq mi (2,381,741 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 31,261,000. Capital: Algiers. Most of the population is ethnically and linguistically Arab, while Berbers are the main minority group. Languages: Arabic (official), French, Berber. Religion: Islam (official). Currency: Algerian dinar. Algeria has the second largest land area (after The Sudan) on the continent. The coastline has few inlets, and the country's rivers are small and generally seasonal. Northern Algeria is mountainous and is crossed from east to west by the Atlas Mountains; its highest point, elevation 7,638 ft (2,328 m), is Mount Chélia. In central and southern Algeria is much of the northern Sahara. Algeria has a centrally planned developing economy based primarily on the production and export of petroleum and natural gas. After achieving independence, the country nationalized much of its economy but since the 1980s has privatized parts of the economy. Algeria is a republic with two legislative bodies; its chief of state is the president, and its head of government is the prime minister. Phoenician traders settled there early in the 1st millennium BC; several centuries later the Romans invaded, and by AD 40 they had control of the Mediterranean coast. The fall of Rome in the 5th century led to an invasion by the Vandals and later to a reoccupation by the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. The Islamic invasion began in the 7th century; by 711 all of northern Africa was under the control of the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty. Several Islamic Berber empires followed, most prominently the Almoravid (с 1054–1130), which extended its domain to Spain, and the Almohad (с 1130–1269). The Barbary Coast pirates menaced Mediterranean trade for centuries; their raids served as a pretext for France to enter Algeria in 1830. By 1847 France had established military control in the region and by the late 19th century had instituted civil rule. Popular protest against French rule resulted in the bloody Algerian War (1954–61); independence was achieved following a referendum in 1962. Beginning in the early 1990s, Islamic fundamentalist opposition to secular rule led to an outbreak in civil violence between the army and various Islamic extremist groups.

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▪ 2009

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2008 est.): 34,574,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Ministers Abdelaziz Belkhadem and, from June 23, Ahmed Ouyahia

      Throughout 2008, Algerians awaited news of Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika's plan to amend the constitution by removing the bar on more than two presidential terms for an incumbent, lengthening the presidential term to seven years, appointing a vice president, and making the government answerable to the president rather than to the parliament. Normally, approval for constitutional amendments was secured through a referendum, but this time the parliament, which was given a salary increase of 300% (presumably to ensure passage), was dealt the task; as expected, the parliament approved the proposed amendments by a wide margin, a vote of 500 in favour to 21 opposed, in November. In June, Abdelaziz Belkhadem was replaced as prime minister by his predecessor, Ahmed Ouyahia, and the government was restructured.

      The change in government was precipitated partly by the worsening security situation. Although there was relative calm following the devastating bombings in Algiers in December 2007, the summer of 2008 was violent, with several serious bomb attacks in June and August and at least 68 deaths. Calm during Ramadan was shattered at the end of September by another bomb blast at Dellys. The violence also spread into Skikda, Jijel, and Ain Defla provinces.

      The government took action against evangelical churches in Algeria, partly because of fears of proselytizing but also, according to the religious affairs minister, because of their alleged involvement in terrorism. In addition, there were riots over food and energy price rises in Oran, Chlef, and Berriane. Prices overall rose by 6%, and food prices jumped by 9.7% year-on-year in May; government expenditure increased by 10% to cover subsidy costs. Food imports climbed 64% by value to more than $5 billion and were expected to reach $9 billion in 2009. Algeria's foreign reserves surged to $125.9 billion, the equivalent of 67.5 months of imports. Foreign investment in Algeria faced additional constraints as the government complained of inadequate technology transfer and employment creation.

      Despite expansions in electricity provision, unseasonably hot weather in September led to supply failures, which also affected water supply to urban areas. A four-year drought in the Mʾzab valley suddenly broke in early October with torrential rains that led to 30 deaths in Ghardaia.

      In April, President Bouteflika visited Kuwait and Qatar, and in July he attended the opening summit of France's Union for the Mediterranean, despite Algerian skepticism over the project. The French premier arrived in Algiers in June to tie up details of the contracts agreed during French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy's state visit in December 2007. An arms deal with Russia was renegotiated during Bouteflika's February visit to Moscow; Algeria had rejected the aircraft supplied as defective. Despite overtures from Morocco, Algeria's border with that country remained closed owing to the dispute over the Western Sahara. Algeria's corruption rating improved slightly as Transparency International rated Algeria 92nd of 180 countries (it had been rated 99th in 2007).

George Joffé

▪ 2008

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2007 est.): 33,858,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem

 The turnout was a dismal 35%, a record low, for the legislative elections that were held in May 2007 in Algeria. Even though the National Liberation Front (FLN), the largest party in the three-member coalition government, lost 67 seats in the lower parliamentary chamber, its two allies in the coalition gained seats, with the result that the three-party alliance held 249 of the 389 seats (the upper chamber was indirectly elected). Because the FLN was also the party of Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the outcome bolstered presidential political hegemony. In the wake of the elections, a new law excluded from future elections smaller parties that did not achieve a specific electoral threshold. In local elections on November 29, the FLN won 30.5% of the seats, and its coalition partners won an additional 35.8%. Constitutional reform was again delayed. The proposed reform would extend the presidential term to seven years and allow incumbents to stand for reelection indefinitely (rather than only twice) and would make the government answerable to the presidency, rather than to the parliament.

      Following the sudden death in August of Smain Lamari, the head of civilian security, observers worried that President Bouteflika would try to appoint his own nominee to the post, against the wishes of the army and the advice of Mohamed Mediène, who was in charge of military security. Bouteflika's own position was tenuous; it was believed that he was still recovering from a serious illness that had resulted in his hospitalization in late 2005. Furthermore, presidential programs to provide one million new housing units and one million new permanent jobs by 2009 were seriously behind schedule. Many in government also faced embarrassing questions about the Khalifa affair, Algeria's biggest financial scandal in recent years.

      Political violence increased, owing to youth radicalization and attacks by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which claimed to have joined al-Qaeda in September 2006. Following the explosion of two truck bombs at police stations in Reghaia, several persons were killed in October 2006; a bus carrying Brown & Root personnel was ambushed in December 2006; and in February 2007 multiple targets were struck simultaneously in Kabylia—all police or gendarme stations. On April 11 coordinated suicide bombings, the first in Algeria in many years, wrecked the offices of the prime minister and the Interior Ministry, as well as a police station; 33 persons were killed and 200 injured. In July, just a few days after a suicide bomber in a truck destroyed a barracks at Lakhdaria and killed 10 soldiers, a mass assault was waged on a paramilitary base at Yakouren. While a crowd awaited the arrival on September 6 of President Bouteflika, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive that killed 22 persons and injured more than 100. Two days later a naval barracks in Dellys, on the Kabyli coast, was attacked by a car bomb; 34 people perished, and some 60 were injured. On December 11, two car bombs in Algiers, one at a UN compound, killed 37 people.

George Joffé

▪ 2007

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2006 est.): 33,354,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and, from May 24, Abdelaziz Belkhadem

      Throughout 2006 the Algerian political scene was dominated by Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika's insistence on national reconciliation in the wake of a decade of civil war. The president himself had taken a lengthy convalescence the previous year, owing to a stomach illness. It delayed the introduction of the enabling legislation for the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which had been approved by referendum in September 2005. The legislation, which came into effect on February 28, provided for a six-month amnesty period for those not directly engaged in violence and a partial amnesty for those dissidents who were involved. It also made provision for the victims of terrorism and the families of the “disappeared.” On the other hand, it gave a blanket immunity to the security forces, making it an offense to question this or other governmental decisions in this respect—a provision that caused considerable protest.

      The effect of the charter was limited, although by November no official details had been published. Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni claimed that between 250 and 300 persons had submitted to the authorities and that 41,000 cases had been examined, which led to compensation's being paid to the families of 6,146 “disappeared” and to 9,125 victims. Some 2,250 persons were also released from prison, and 900 cases still remained to be resolved by the end of the year.

      The disappointing results led party leaders, Abdelaziz Belkhadem—who had been elevated to the post of prime minister earlier in the year—and even the normally hard-line interior minister to assume that the charter's provisions would be extended indefinitely. At the opening of the legal term in September, however, the president made it clear that this would not be the case, despite a modest revival in violence by the 800 dissidents remaining at large and a declaration of allegiance to al-Qaeda by the major body, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). Nonetheless, one former leader of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Rabah Kebir, returned to Algeria with the obvious intention of reentering formal political life.

      The president's health was a constant preoccupation, with rumours circulating that he was chronically ill. His official schedule underwent a very significant reduction during the year, and his lengthy 50-day summer break abroad also raised questions. Most striking, the project for a constitutional amendment that would have removed the two-term limit, extended the presidential term to seven years, provided for a vice president, and ensured governmental responsibility to the presidency rather than to the parliament seemed to have been quietly shelved.

      The president announced an increase in public-sector wages and the national minimum wage just before Independence Day, which thus reversed long-established policy. The issue seemed to have led to the departure from office of Ahmed Ouyahia, the former prime minister, and to his replacement by the leader of the National Liberation Front (FLN), Algeria's biggest—and formerly its only—political party.

George Joffé

▪ 2006

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2005 est.): 32,854,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia

      The year 2005 in Algeria was one of consolidation. Despite a brief upsurge in violence in May, the capture in January in Algiers of Noureddine Boudiafi, the head of the Armed Islamic Group, meant that only the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) continued to be active. In June the GSPC was accused of having organized an attack on a Mauritanian army outpost just as the United States, Algeria, and Sahel countries were organizing military exercises in the Sahara. After a referendum held on September 29 on a plan for national reconciliation received 97% support from the 79% of the electorate who voted, some dissidents in western Kabylia submitted to the authorities, and others were expected to follow.

      The reconciliation plan was criticized by international human rights organizations in April because it implicitly offered immunity to the security forces for their involvement in abuses during the eight-year-long civil war. Their criticisms came after the official human rights monitoring organization in Algeria confirmed, in a report to the president on March 31, that 6,146 persons had “disappeared” in the struggle. As part of the complex legal package adopted after the referendum, the government offered families of the disappeared financial compensation rather than investigation. The public in Algeria was outraged by the kidnapping and murder of two Algerian diplomats in Baghdad on July 27. Ali Belhadj, the former deputy leader of the banned Islamic Salvation Front, was accused of having supported the murders; he was arrested and faced a 10-year prison sentence.

      In keeping with his hegemony over the domestic political scene, Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected head of the newly unified National Liberation Front (FLN), which had supported an alternative candidate in the 2004 presidential elections. The government's plans to end the crisis in Kabylia—which had begun in 2001 when a teenager was killed in gendarmerie custody—was abruptly thrown into confusion in mid-September when President Bouteflika unexpectedly reversed his policy to give the Berber language of Tamazight official status alongside Arabic in the constitution. The by- elections that were demanded by Kabylia as part of the deal did go ahead as planned at the end of November.

      On March 30 President Bouteflika met the king of Morocco at an Arab League summit in Algiers, raising hopes that they might negotiate a settlement to end the Western Sahara conflict and that the border between the two countries might reopen, but the situation was not resolved. Despite Algerian criticism of French legislation over colonialism, France and Algeria signed a Treaty of Amity at the end of the year. High oil prices ensured a buoyant economy, with foreign debt falling to $18.8 billion and foreign reserves rising to $50 billion, despite a poor cereals harvest in July of 2.5 million metric tons, compared with 4 million metric tons the previous year. Direct private foreign investment rose to $2.1 billion, and in March the parliament passed an energy-liberalization law that was expected to allow the Algerian oil concern Sonatrach to become an international company. The move came as Algeria sought to increase its oil-production capacity significantly.

George Joffé

▪ 2005

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2004 est.): 32,322,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia

      The April presidential election was the dominant event in Algeria in 2004. Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika's reelection was meticulously planned and executed, although the size of his victory—85% of the vote—led to complaints of vote rigging. Despite these complaints, the result was generally accepted as reflecting popular choice. In the run-up to the elections, the complex procedures for candidate registration were effectively used to exclude Bouteflika's major rival, Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, which thus also eliminated any chance of the emergence of a political vehicle for supporters of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). In the aftermath the National Liberation Front (FLN), which had fielded its secretary-general, Ali Benflis, as its presidential candidate, fell into disarray, and Benflis was forced to resign. Although the FLN had joined the “presidential alliance,” alongside the National Democratic Rally (RND) and the Movement for a Peaceful Society (MSP), the party itself was reduced to political impotence as factions squabbled about the FLN's future structure and role. Other opposition political parties also found themselves marginalized as a new centralized political system began to emerge.

       Army Gen. Mohamed Lamari remained faithful to his 2003 promise to distance the army from the political scene and retired in August 2004. Lamari had reportedly opposed Bouteflika's ambitions for reelection, and the two had some irreconcilable differences. The changes in the army's command structure that followed, however, were minor; both the head of military security, Gen. Mohamed Mediène, and Bouteflika's military adviser, Gen. Mohamed Touati, kept their posts, as did the president's adviser, retired general and former minister of defense Larbi Belkheir, who had long been rumoured to be the real power behind the throne.

      The violence that had plagued Algeria over the past decade was contained during the year; the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) was eradicated from central Algeria, and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) suffered heavy reverses in the eastern part of the country and to the east of Algiers. In August the GSPC leadership was killed close to the Soummam Valley, and for several months rural Algeria also enjoyed an uneasy calm. By October, however, a new round of attacks and ambushes had begun, despite the army's successes in Kabylia and in eastern Algeria. In late October Libya extradited Amari Saifi, the GSPC operative who had been held responsible for the 2003 kidnappings of European tourists in the Sahara. Saifi had been held by a rebel group in Tibesti, Chad, for seven months.

      The draft 2005 financial law marked the beginning of a new five-year plan that called for a $50 billion investment to renew Algeria's infrastructure and economy. The president promised that by the end of his term one million new homes would be built and a vast expansion in employment would occur. After agreement with the trade union confederation (the Algerian General Workers' Union), the government was poised to launch a privatization program that would affect all but “strategic” industries, including the hydrocarbon sector. The Sonatrach Petroleum Corp., however, would operate as an autonomous state company and seek an international role.

George Joffé

▪ 2004

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2003 est.): 31,800,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Ministers Ali Benflis and, from May 5, Ahmed Ouyahia

      During 2003 Algeria experienced a lessening in the violence that had plagued the country for 12 years, and the death toll dropped to below 100 persons a month. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) appeared fragmented by midyear, even though the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) continued to threaten the east of the country. In one bizarre episode the GSPC took hostage 32 European tourists traveling in the Sahara, holding some of them for up to five months. Although 17 were released by the Algerian army in May, the remainder had to be ransomed from Mali in August at a cost, it was believed, of about $5 million, apparently paid by Libya or Germany. Abassi Madani and Ali Ben Hadj, the two former paramount Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) leaders, ended their sentences in July and were set free.

      The Kabyle crisis quieted down as first the prime minister and then Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika himself indicated that the government would engage in dialogue with the aarchs (informal tribal and village councils) without preconditions. After considerable hesitation, the aarch movement agreed to enter into dialogue provided that the demands of the El Kseur Platform, which included regional autonomy, were first stipulated. At the same time, the aarch movement was weakened by the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), one of the two Berberist political parties, alongside the FFS, that tried to force it to engage in a wider national debate about political decentralization, and by the emergence of a new political party clearly designed to undermine the movement.

      Overshadowing all of this, however, was the run-up to the presidential elections to be held in April 2004. President Bouteflika intended to stand again despite hostility from the army, and he organized a massive electioneering campaign around the country during the year. When the National Liberation Front (FLN) refused to endorse him formally, the Ali Benflis government was removed in June and Ahmed Ouyahia, the National Democratic Rally leader, was installed in his place. Benflis was also the FLN leader and became the party's candidate at a special congress in October. Faced with a threat that the National Popular Assembly might refuse to endorse decrees he had issued during its summer recess, the president threatened to dissolve the body, although in October the measures were passed without FLN opposition.

      Bouteflika also turned on the press as revelations of scandals began to touch the presidential entourage. Two close presidential supporters, Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni and Energy Minister Chakib Khelil, were prime targets. Six newspapers were temporarily closed down, allegedly for financial irregularities, and the directors of two of them faced defamation charges. The government's proposed privatization program was delayed yet again by determined trade-union opposition. A new hydrocarbons law that would have opened Algeria up to greater foreign investment had to be scrapped for the same reason. In April Algeria signed the European Union's Euro-Mediterranean Partnership association agreement for free trade in industrial goods and subsequently applied to join the World Trade Organization. Despite increased oil-production capacity, Algeria agreed to abide by OPEC's quota reductions in September in order to keep world oil prices high.

George Joffé

▪ 2003

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2002 est.): 31,261,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Ali Benflis

      Despite major efforts by the Algerian army throughout 2002, violence continued to erupt in many parts of the country, including the capital. By October at least 1,200 persons had died. Algiers faced the reintroduction of security barriers, removed two years earlier, despite the dismantling of a major terrorist cell in August. Although Antar Zouabri—the head of the Armed Islamic Group—was killed in February, Hassan Hattab's Islamist guerrilla group, Salafist Group for Call and Combat, extended its control over parts of Kabylia and the Skikda region.

      Algerians continued to protest poor living conditions. In the central and eastern parts of the country, riots ensued over water supplies and poor administration. In addition, only 46.7% of the electorate voted in the May 30 legislative elections; it was the lowest turnout in any election since independence. The elections produced a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the former single party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), which trounced its rival, the National Democratic Rally (RND), to become the largest party by far in the Assembly, with 199 of the 389 seats. The event was marred, however, by a boycott in Kabylia by both Berber parties, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD); there the turnout was only 2%.

      In the local elections held on October 10, however, the FFS participated. The “citizens movement”—created from the local groups that had reacted to government oppression in 2001—promised to fight for the boycott to continue. The group sought government concessions as outlined in the May 2001 El Kseur Platform. These involved the granting of regional autonomy, the recognition of Tamazight as an official language, the removal of the gendarmerie—held responsible for oppression that had involved up to 100 deaths—from Kabylia, and the punishment of those officials directly responsible. The government had partially conceded by registering Tamazight in the constitution as a national language and withdrawing the gendarmerie from Kabylia in April.

      Nonetheless, election day was marked by riots, and in many communities in Kabylia, voting did not take place. The FLN was the overall victor, winning control of 668 of 1,541 town councils and 43 of 48 provincial councils. The Islamic parties suffered a decline in support except for El-Islah, which won control of 39 councils. The RCD again did badly, as did the FFS, because of the boycott in Kabylia, where the turnout was about 2%, compared with a national average of 52%.

      In June, Gen. Khaled Nezzar—former defense minister and a key figure in the 1992 army-backed coup—sued Habib Souaidia, a former sublieutenant and author of La sale guerre (2001), in a Paris court for defamation. Souaidia asserted that during the war against Islamic extremists Algerian troops tortured rebels and killed them in cold blood while disguising themselves as rebels. The trial judge reserved judgment in the case and warned that there could be no penalty “because this touches upon history”—to the regime's embarrassment. Relations with the United States continued to improve. In April, Algeria signed an association agreement with the European Union. Foreign currency reserves rose to nearly $22.5 billion for the year as a result of buoyant oil prices and Algerian overproduction of almost 46% by year's end.

George Joffé

▪ 2002

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2001 est.): 30,821,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Ali Benflis

      Throughout 2001 Algeria continued to suffer from the chronic and endemic violence of the past decade. Though the levels of violence had diminished from the peaks of 1998, the Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat continued to attack civilians and military targets. Violence even returned to the hearts of the cities, including the capital, Algiers. In July car bombs exploded and an assassination was carried out in Zeralda, and a spate of attacks on civilians took place in Annaba. Though official sources claimed that 3,000 people had died from terrorism in 2000, private military sources admitted that the number of dead was three times as high; the killing continued into 2001.

      More worrying for Pres. Abedelaziz Bouteflika was a protest in Kabylia in April on the 21st anniversary of the “Berber Spring” riots. This time the violence was triggered by the killing of a teenager in gendarmerie custody; the government claimed the death was accidental. In the aftermath in May and June, some 80 persons were killed and hundreds were injured. Massive demonstrations—more than 100,000 people protested in the provincial capital, Tizi Ouzou, in late May—spilled over into the capital. At the end of May, 300,000 Socialist Forces Front supporters demonstrated in Algiers, and more than one million people clogged the streets in mid-June. In the ensuing violence 4 persons died and 1,000 were injured. An independent commission established by the government reported in August that the gendarmerie was to blame for the teenager's death. In October the government reluctantly conceded that Berber languages should be given the status of “national languages,” but all political demands were refused. By September Berber demonstrators had been cleared from the capital, but the government was then faced with continuing confrontations in Kabylia and a widening circle of mass protest. Algerians elsewhere in the country, particularly in the East, protested worsening economic and social conditions.

      There was also growing discontent in the Council of the Nation, Algeria's upper house of the parliament, where one-third of the members were appointed by the president. The presidential choice for speaker was approved unanimously in April, but two members resigned in July, complaining of governmental indifference to the role of the parliament. In May the government lost one of its coalition partners; the Rally for Culture and Democracy, a Berber party, left over the conduct of the government during the riots in Kabylia. The army command—considered the country's power base—was faced with another problem when Gen. Khalid Nezzar was threatened with arrest for human rights abuses in France. The beleaguered president, at odds with the army command, visited the U.S. in July. Following the September terrorist attacks in the U.S., Algiers offered to hand over details of the Algerian nationals involved in the al-Qaeda movement. Though the economy benefited from high oil prices—foreign reserves rose to $15.4 billion in midyear—economic restructuring ensured that unemployment remained disturbingly high. In November massive flooding led to the deaths of some 700 persons.

George Joffé

▪ 2001

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(2000 est.): 30,554,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Ministers Ahmed Benbitour and, from August 27, Ali Benflis

      The year 2000 opened on a high note for Algerian Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika as the 600-strong Army of Islamic Salvation and an additional 1,500 militants from other clandestine Islamic groups surrendered under a six-month partial amnesty that ended on January 13. The eight-year-long struggle between the Algerian army and the clandestine Islamist opposition—which had begun after legislative elections were aborted in January 1992 to prevent a victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)—appeared to be over. Within six months, however, the violence again escalated around the capital. Two groups—the remnants of the Armed Islamic Group and a new group, the Groupe Salafiyyiste de Dawa et Djihad—continued to attract supporters.

      President Bouteflika had other troubles too. He lost key army support after relations with Morocco worsened (see Morocco , below), and he was roundly attacked in the press by leading army generals. Bouteflika's attempt to restructure the army command in February resulted only in the removal of his predecessor's supporters in charge of the police and coastal defense. The government that he had appointed in December 1999 collapsed in August, and former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour accused Bouteflika of contravening the constitution with his controversial privatization proposals. In the new government—led by Ali Benflis—Abdelaziz Belkhadem replaced Youcef Yousfi as foreign minister, Gen. Larbi Belkhair became presidential adviser, and Gen. Mohamed Touati became presidential adviser for military affairs, appointments that emphasized the army's stranglehold on government.

      Army opposition to extending the amnesty blocked Bouteflika's plans for a general amnesty during the year. Governmental opposition to reconciliation with the remnants of the FIS was underlined by Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni's refusal in May to allow the registration of a new political party that would be led by veteran politician and alleged FIS sympathizer Taleb Ibrahimi.

      Bouteflika's domestic problems were eased slightly by his official visit to France in June, only the second by an Algerian president since 1962. He met with Pres. Jacques Chirac, addressed the French National Assembly, and obtained a $60 million debt-swap arrangement and the promise of cooperation on defense issues. In July Prime Minister José María Aznar López of Spain made an official visit to Algeria—the first ever by a Spanish leader.

      The rise in world oil prices increased budgetary revenues by 16%. Early in the year foreign debt dropped by 7% to $28,310,000,000. Unemployment, however, continued to rise; it stood at 2.6 million at the end of 1998 and was expected to reach 4 million by the end of 2000 as privatization programs began to exact an impact. Inadequate rainfall also meant that Algeria's heavy dependence on imported food continued; two-thirds of the demand for cereal was met through imports.

      Following the December 30 parliamentary or Council of the Nation by-elections, the National Democratic Rally of former Algerian president Liamine Zeroual kept its majority in the Council by winning 36 of the 48 contested seats and securing a total of 76 seats. The National Liberation Front obtained 13 seats, the Socialist Forces Front gained 4 seats, and the Movement for a Peaceful Society captured 3 seats.

George Joffé

▪ 2000

Area:

2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

Population

(1999 est.): 29,910,000

Capital:

Algiers

Chief of state:

Presidents Liamine Zeroual and, from April 27, Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Head of government:

Prime Minister Smail Hamdani and, from December 23, Ahmed Benbitour

      In theory 1999 should have marked the beginning of a new era in Algeria in the wake of the departure of the Zeroual regime. The first three months of the year, however, were marked by an increasingly vituperative presidential election campaign that culminated, on April 15, in the withdrawal of six of the seven candidates, just before the elections were due to be held, on the grounds that the result would be fraudulent. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, long identified by a hostile press as the army's preferred candidate, did not withdraw, however, and was—not surprisingly—declared elected by close to a 75% majority of the votes cast. Voter turnout, however, probably represented only about 23% of the electorate.

      The new president immediately sought to win Algerians' approval, despite the manner of his appointment, by promising to end the terrorism crisis, in which he admitted that up to 100,000 persons had died, although the official figure up to then had been 28,000. He proposed a partial amnesty on May 29, decreeing a pardon for some 4,000 Islamists at the same time. In the event, 2,400 persons were freed from prison on July 5, Algerian Independence Day, and the National People's Assembly passed an amnesty law that was approved by referendum on September 16. The Army of Islamic Salvation (AIS), which had entered into a truce with the Algerian government in October 1997, agreed to lay down its arms in June. By the end of October, however, there were hints that its leader, Madani Mezraq, might call for a renewal of violence by the end of the amnesty period on Jan. 13, 2000, because the conditions of the truce had still not been met.

      Violence, which had escalated during Ramadan at the start of the year, died away as the presidential elections approached and as more effective security operations were established. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) split into a group under Antar Zouabri in the Mitidja Plain and a new group calling itself the Jamiʿyya Salafiyya liʾl-Dawʿa waʾl-Jihad under Hassan Hattab in the area east of the capital, which pursued different policies. Whereas the Zouabri group continued as in the past, the Hattab group targeted the security forces and eschewed the indiscriminate killings typical of the GIA. Sporadic violence occurred elsewhere as well, particularly in the supposedly pacified west of the country. A road ambush at Béchar in August in which 29 persons died led to official verbal attacks on Morocco for harbouring GIA groups. The Moroccans hotly denied it.

      By the end of the year, President Bouteflika's enthusiasm, although undimmed, had lost some of its sheen as his difficulties multiplied. The removal of 22 of Algeria's 47 provincial governors and, later, of urban officials as well did little to stem corruption. Apparently because of objections from his army backers, it was only late in December that he found it possible to name his own prime minister and reshuffle the government. Meanwhile, the economic situation worsened, with unemployment reaching 30%, despite the improvement in world oil prices.

George Joffé

▪ 1999

      Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

      Population (1998 est.): 30,045,000

      Capital: Algiers

      Chief of state: President Liamine Zeroual

      Head of government: Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and, from December 15, Smail Hamdani

      Violence continued to plague Algeria in 1998. Massacres during and just after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which coincided with January, were initially blamed on the extremist clandestine opposition coalition, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Subsequent investigations, however, suggested that government security forces were involved, and in early April two mayors in Relizane province were arrested for complicity in the attacks and 120 policemen were accused of involvement in murder, extortion, and kidnapping. At least 10 extrajudicial executions by the security forces were also revealed, and in September Pres. Liamine Zeroual authorized official support to resolve the issue of Algeria's "disappeared."

      Despite the ongoing violence, the security forces extended their activities against the GIA during the year. Security in major population centres improved, and the GIA seemed to have been pushed away from the central Mitidja plain toward the west of the country. The army's truce with the other major armed Islamic group, the Army of Islamic Salvation (AIS), held, and there were AIS-GIA clashes in June in which 50 persons died. Despite official claims that only 26,000 persons had died since 1992, outside observers estimated the true figure to be more than 70,000.

      The crisis in Algeria increasingly attracted external attention. Officials representing the European Union visited Algiers in early February, and a European parliamentary delegation followed later that month. Despite severe criticism over its human rights record at the UN Human Rights Conference in Geneva, the Algerian government invited a UN mission to visit in July. The mission concluded that the government was not involved in massacres and significant human rights abuses.

      Political conflicts continued throughout the year. Thirty small political parties that failed to meet electoral law criteria were banned in May. Ethnic tensions increased in June and July after the murder of a leading Berber singer and the introduction of an Arabization law, which required the use of Arabic in public. The president's adviser, Muhammad Betchine, and the prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, were subjected to a sustained hostile media campaign in July and August and, to general surprise, President Zeroual resigned in early September. New presidential elections were called for spring. Observers concluded that he had been forced out by the army command, despite Algeria's 1995 democratic constitution. His departure was followed in November by those of Betchine and the justice minister, Muhammad al-Adami. Prime Minister Ouyahia also resigned in December, to be replaced by Smail Hamdani, a former ambassador.

      Despite the International Monetary Fund's enthusiastic endorsement of Algeria's economic reforms in September, social tensions increased during the year, with unemployment at 28% and the national trade union threatening a general strike in April and October. The IMF standby facility, which expired in May, was not renewed, despite IMF prompting. The government agreed to speed up the privatization process, avoiding job losses as much as possible, and anxiety was expressed over the dominance of the oil and gas sector in the economy. The 21% increase in Algeria's oil quota granted by OPEC in January did not improve matters, and the budget had to be redrafted in June. Although Algeria's buoyant foreign exchange reserves would ensure that debt repayment would continue on schedule, the outlook for 1999 was bleak.

GEORGE JOFFÉ

▪ 1998

      Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi)

      Population (1997 est.): 29,476,000

      Capital: Algiers

      Chief of state: President Liamine Zeroual

      Head of government: Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia

      The situation in Algeria throughout 1997 was highly complex. On the one hand, the government moved ahead with its constitutional reform process, holding legislative elections in June and municipal elections at the end of the year. On the other hand, violence reached new levels of horror, with repeated massacres occurring in the hinterland of Algiers that the security services appeared to be unable to control. At the same time, the economy improved, with an enlarged trade surplus and the promise of significant foreign investment in the non-oil sector for the first time since 1990.

      The year opened (and closed) with intensified outrages during the fast month of Ramadan, giving the lie to Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia's claim that only "residual terrorism" remained to threaten the nation. Early in the year, preparations for the legislative elections began, with the formation in March of a new political party closely aligned with Pres. Liamine Zeroual, the National Democratic Rally (RND), and with other parties adjusting to the new electoral law that banned religion and ethnicity from their platforms. In January the expected leader of the RND, 'Abd al-Haq Benhamouda, was assassinated, apparently by an opposition faction in the regime.

      The elections, on June 5, resulted in the expected victory for the RND, which gained 37% of the vote and 41% of the seats (156) and thus, together with the pro-government National Liberation Front's (FLN's) 62 seats, enjoyed a majority in the 380-member lower house of the legislature (the upper house, which controls the legislative process, is indirectly elected). Two Islamist parties, Society for Peace (MSP, formerly Hamas) and an-Nahda, won 96 seats, and the veteran Socialist Forces Front, largely because of electoral manipulation, obtained only 20 seats.The new government, appointed in July, reflected the electoral results, with the RND taking 20 of the 28 ministerial posts and the remainder being split between the FLN (4), MSP (3), and an-Nahda (1). In essence, the government team did not change. Charging widespread fraud, the opposition vehemently protested the conduct of the local elections in October.

      Despite claims by the government that it had mastered the security situation, the tempo of horrifying massacres in central Algeria increased throughout the year, culminating in hours-long incidents on the outskirts of the capital and with a reprise in the last days of 1997. The perpetrators—ostensibly the Armed Islamic Group—appeared to reflect the increasingly complex political situation, with the security forces, paramilitary units, and even government representatives also being accused of involvement. The massacres seemed to result from an intensifying struggle within the regime between the presidency and the army leadership over the ultimate control of Algeria's fate. Further disagreements were caused by a decision in July to release from prison two Islamic Salvation Front leaders, Abbasi Madani and 'Abd al-Kader Hachani, and a truce negotiated between the government and the Army of Islamic Salvation—the other major Islamist armed group—for October.

      Despite the turbulent political situation, economic circumstances appeared to improve, with the half-year trade surplus rising to $3,140,000,000, compared with $1,640,000,000 a year earlier, a result of rising oil and gas prices. Gas exports were expected to increase to 60 billion cu m per year by 2000 as a result of the new trans-Maghreb pipeline, which began operations in November 1996.

GEORGE JOFFÉ

      This article updates Algeria, history of (Algeria).

▪ 1997

      Algeria is a republic of North Africa on the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi). Pop. (1996 est.): 28,566,000. Cap.: Algiers. Monetary unit: Algerian dinar, with (Oct. 11, 1996) a controlled rate of 55.83 dinars to U.S. $1 (87.95 dinars = £1 sterling). President in 1996, Liamine Zeroual; prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia.

      In the wake of his success in the presidential elections in November 1995, Liamine Zeroual (see BIOGRAPHIES (Zeroual, Liamine )) initiated in April 1996 a series of discussions with political leaders to plan a new course for Algeria. In a press conference on May 5, his first since the election, the president announced a three-stage program that included a national conference in mid-1996, a referendum on proposed constitutional reform, and legislative elections by mid-1997. The constitutional reforms were to consist of a new electoral law banning political parties based on language or religion and requiring all parties to have nationwide support, a limitation on the presidency to two five-year terms for any person, and the establishment of a new bicameral legislature with the lower house elected by proportional representation and the upper house chosen by appointment.

      The political parties were cautious in their response. The National Liberation Front, which had elected a new leader, Boualem Benhamouda, in January, supported the presidential proposal and became a close supporter of the regime. The Hamas Party (unrelated to the Palestinian organization called Hamas) was lukewarm, while others rejected the proposals. Chief among the opponents was the Islamic Salvation Front, which, in any case, had not been invited to participate in the consultative process. Despite the opposition, the proposals were endorsed by the promised national conference in September. The new constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a national referendum in November, but critics charged that the vote was rigged.

      One obvious casualty of the president's proposals was any hope of a negotiated solution to the Algerian crisis. Violence escalated throughout the year, with the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in particular taking an ever-more-radical stand. In March the GIA kidnapped seven Trappist monks from their monastery at Tibehirine, near Medea. Two months later, on May 21, the monks were killed, and on August 1 the French bishop of Oran, Pierre Claverie, was killed by a car bomb outside his residence, just after meeting the French foreign minister, Hervé de Charette, on a visit to Algiers. Security improved in Algiers throughout the year, but outside the capital conditions seemed to have degenerated, with widespread car bombings, attacks on railways, and repeated massacres.

      Algeria's economic situation improved. Approval by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank led to the release of $400 million in loans in March and a new $252 million loan in June.

      (GEORGE JOFFÉ)

      This article updates Algeria, history of (Algeria).

▪ 1996

      Algeria is a republic of North Africa on the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi). Pop. (1995 est.): 27,939,000. Cap.: Algiers. Monetary unit: Algerian dinar, with (Oct. 6, 1995) a controlled rate of 50.51 dinars to U.S. $1 (79.85 dinars = £1 sterling). President in 1995, Liamine Zeroual; prime ministers, Mokdad Sifi and, from December 31, Ahmed Ouyahia.

      During 1995 the Algerian government was unable to end its severe domestic crisis. As many as 40,000 persons had lost their lives in fierce fighting that began in January 1992 when the government canceled the second round of legislative elections and banned the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The government oscillated between all-out repression of antigovernment factions and sporadic efforts to seek peace through negotiations. At the same time, Islamic groups became increasingly divided between the uncompromising extremism represented by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the more moderate policies of the FIS.

      In January the FIS, the National Liberation Front, the Socialist Forces Front, the Hamas Party (unrelated to the Palestinian organization called Hamas), and several other legally recognized political institutions met in Rome. They agreed on the need to end violence, release prisoners, and form a government of national unity that could oversee new multiparty elections. The government rejected that proposal, even though it had the backing of France, Italy, Spain, the U.S., and most antigovernment groups. The GIA also accepted the proposal, but its demand that Algeria's current leaders be punished was unrealistic.

      The government riposted with a proposal that a presidential election be held in November. Only four persons were able to gather the required total of 75,000 signatures of support from at least 25 of Algeria's 48 provinces to qualify as candidates. Two who did were the respective leaders of the moderate Hamas Party and of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, which represented Berber interests and advocated a secular government. As expected, Pres. Liamine Zeroual was easily reelected. He later named as prime minister a man who had earlier negotiated a peace accord with guerrillas.

      From the president's point of view, the major advantage of the election was that it allowed him to escape from extremists in his own party and to renew the process of negotiating a settlement to the Algerian crisis. That, after all, had been the basis for choosing him to lead the country in late January 1994. A further attempt at negotiations with the imprisoned leaders of the FIS collapsed in July when the FIS said it could not agree to the terms the government set down as a condition for restoring the legal status of a renamed FIS. International complaints about the human rights situation in Algeria continued with Amnesty International's criticism of the government for the deaths of 96 inmates during a riot in Serkadji prison in Algiers early in the year and for its permission of extrajudicial killings by the security forces.

      The economy remained weak despite a new $1.8 billion extended fund facility with the International Monetary Fund in February. Agreement had first been reached on a new economic structural adjustment program. This enabled further rescheduling of Algeria's massive foreign debt ($29.6 billion at the end of 1994 and $32.3 billion at the end of 1995). In June the commercial debt was rescheduled, and in July $7.5 billion of the official debt was rescheduled. The first such rescheduling, which involved $5.3 billion, had taken place in June 1994. All in all, the economic situation still looked grim. (GEORGE JOFFÉ)

      This updates the article Algeria, history of (Algeria).

▪ 1995

      Algeria is a republic of North Africa on the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi). Pop. (1994 est.): 27,815,000. Cap.: Algiers. Monetary unit: Algerian dinar, with (Oct. 7, 1994) a controlled rate of 37.95 dinars to U.S. $1 (60.36 dinars = £1 sterling). Chairman of the High Committee of State in 1994, Ali Kafi until January 30; president from January 31, Liamine Zeroual; prime ministers, Redha Malek and, from April 11, Mokdad Sifi.

      Algeria in 1994 was once again dominated by the conflict between the government and the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). At the end of January the High Committee of State called a national meeting with the political parties in order to select a new president for the country. As all the major parties—except Hamas, the most moderate of Algeria's three Islamist parties—boycotted the meeting, the High Security Council, which was dominated by the army, appointed Liamine Zeroual, the defense minister and a former general, president for a three-year term.

      In his first public address, on February 7, Zeroual, who came from the moderate wing of the government, promised a dialogue with the FIS. Two weeks later two leading FIS members, Abdelkader Boukhamkham and Ali Djeddi, were released from prison. In mid-September three more FIS leaders were released, and the two top leaders of the movement, Abbasi Madani and Ali BelHadj, were transferred from Blida prison, where they had been held since June 1991, to house arrest. These releases came in response to a letter from Madani to the president confirming that the FIS would respect a pluralistic political system in any future election. The anticipated dialogue was delayed, however, as the FIS was not prepared to accept government demands for an end to violence.

      Violence, in fact, continued throughout the year at an intensified level as the government's security forces attempted to crush the Islamist opposition. The armed opposition split into two groups—the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in and around Algiers and the Armed Islamic Movement in the east and west of the country. The deaths of more than 60 foreigners led to the withdrawal of their nationals by most countries and to intensified government action against the GIA. Incidents included an Islamist attack on Algeria's secure prison at Tazoult during which 1,000 detainees escaped, a GIA attack on the French embassy that resulted in five deaths and a French government decision to expel supporters of the FIS in France, the assassination of the military chief of Algiers in November, and an airline hijacking that resulted in the deaths of three passengers and four terrorists (and four priests in retaliation) in December.

      Despite this violent background, the Algerian government continued to restructure the economy in accordance with International Monetary Fund (IMF) requirements. On April 10 the dinar was devalued by 40%, and an agreement was reached with the IMF to provide standby loan facilities worth $1,037,000,000. In June $5.3 billion of Algerian debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations was rescheduled, which significantly reduced the debt service burden on the country's $27 billion total of foreign debt. The IMF agreement was also marked by a change in government as Redha Malek, a well-known hard-liner, was replaced as prime minister by a technocrat, Mokdad Sifi, who was believed to be more prepared for dialogue with the Islamist opposition.

      (GEORGE JOFFÉ)

      This updates the article Algeria, history of (Algeria).

▪ 1994

      Algeria is a republic of North Africa on the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 27,029,000. Cap.: Algiers. Monetary unit: Algerian dinar, with (Oct. 4, 1993) an official rate of 19.20 dinars to U.S. $1 (29.09 dinars = £1 sterling). Chairman of the High State Council in 1993, Ali Kafi; prime ministers, Belaid Abdessalam and, from August 21, Redha Malek.

      The Algerian government had to grapple with continued social tension throughout 1993 in the wake of the 1992 removal of Pres. Chadli Bendjedid's government by the army and its replacement by the High State Council (HSC), headed by Ali Kafi. Violence continued at levels similar to those of 1992, when more than 210 security personnel were killed. By October 1993 around 1,000 Islamist sympathizers had died, 3,800 were before the special security courts, and 240 had been condemned to death. Despite the renewal of the state of emergency on February 9, attacks continued against prominent figures. On February 13 the defense minister, Khalid Nezzar, narrowly escaped assassination, and on August 22 former prime minister Kasdi Merbah was killed. A spate of killings of Algerian intellectuals led to a mass protest demonstration in Algiers on March 22, the same day on which 18 soldiers were massacred in their barracks at Bougzoul.

      Despite government claims that the killings were the responsibility of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the public continued to believe that others were involved, including independent Islamic groups, factions within the regime, and the clandestine secular opposition. The government's inability to end the violence only increased its unpopularity, despite a call for "dialogue" by Kafi in January with a promise that there would be constitutional reform later in the year. Neither dialogue nor reform occurred, however, as the major political parties resolutely remained opposed to the regime.

      Instead, Prime Minister Belaid Abdessalam remained dedicated to a course of economic centralism, refused to reschedule Algeria's massive foreign debt (estimated at $24.4 billion), and showed a willingness to incur a heavy budget deficit to cover increased security and social service costs. Abdessalam was forced from office on August 21 by the HSC and replaced by a new administration led by Redha Malek, the former foreign minister and a member of the HSC. Malek reversed the policies of his predecessor toward debt rescheduling, maintained a resolute opposition to the Islamist movement, rejected dialogue, and relied on renewed repression. Nezzar—seen as the strongman of the regime—retired from government for health reasons in July, although he retained his position on the HSC.

      On March 27 diplomatic relations with Iran were severed, and Algeria withdrew its ambassador from The Sudan on the grounds that both countries were aiding the Islamist movement. Algeria also joined with Tunisia and Egypt in a common front against regional Islamist influences at a meeting in Cairo in late June. Relations with Morocco declined during the year as a result of remarks made by King Hassan criticizing the suspension of the electoral process in Algeria. Support for Western Sahara improved as a result, although by the end of the year it appeared that Algeria had reluctantly accepted that Morocco would win control there. (GEORGE JOFFÉ)

      This updates the article Algeria, history of (Algeria).

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Introduction

Algeria, flag of   large, predominantly Muslim country of North Africa. From the Mediterranean coast, along which most of its people live, Algeria extends southward deep into the heart of the Sahara, a forbidding desert where the Earth's hottest surface temperatures have been recorded and which constitutes more than four-fifths of the country's area. The Sahara and its extreme climate dominate the country. The contemporary Algerian novelist Assia Djebar has highlighted the environs, calling her country “a dream of sand.”

 History, language, customs, and an Islamic heritage make Algeria an integral part of the Maghrib and the larger Arab world, but the country also has a sizable Amazigh (Berber) population, with links to that cultural tradition. Once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, the territory now comprising Algeria was ruled by various Arab-Amazigh dynasties from the 8th through the 16th century, when it became part of the Ottoman Empire. The decline of the Ottomans was followed by a brief period of independence that ended when France launched a war of conquest in 1830. By 1847 the French had largely suppressed Algerian resistance to the invasion and the following year made Algeria a département of France. French colonists modernized Algeria's agricultural and commercial economy but lived apart from the Algerian majority, enjoying social and economic privileges extended to few non-Europeans. Ethnic resentment, fueled by revolutionary politics introduced by Algerians who had lived and studied in France, led to a widespread nationalist movement in the mid-20th century. After a civil war (1954–62)—so fierce that the revolutionary Frantz Fanon noted, “Terror, counter-terror, violence, counter-violence: that is what observers bitterly record when they describe the circle of hate, which is so tenacious and so evident in Algeria”—France granted Algeria independence, and most Europeans left the country. Although the influence of the French language and culture in Algeria has remained strong, since independence the country consistently has sought to regain its Arab and Islamic heritage. At the same time, the development of oil and natural gas and other mineral deposits in the Algerian interior has brought new wealth to the country and prompted a modest rise in the standard of living; in the early 21st century its economy was among the largest in Africa.

  The capital is Algiers, a crowded, bustling seaside metropolis whose historic core, or medina, is ringed by tall skyscrapers and apartment blocks. Algeria's second city is Oran, a port on the Mediterranean Sea near the border with Morocco; less hectic than Algiers, Oran has emerged as an important centre of music, art, and education.

Land (Algeria)

      Algeria is bounded to the east by Tunisia and Libya; to the south by Niger, Mali, and Mauritania; to the west by Morocco and Western Sahara (which has been virtually incorporated by the former); and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. It is a vast country—the second largest in Africa and the 11th largest in the world—that may be divided into two distinct geographic regions. The northernmost, generally known as the Tell, is subject to the moderating influences of the Mediterranean and consists largely of the Atlas Mountains, which separate the coastal plains from the second region in the south. This southern region, almost entirely desert, forms the majority of the country's territory and is situated in the western portion of the Sahara, which stretches across North Africa.

Relief

 The main structural relief features in Algeria were produced by the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates along the Mediterranean margin, giving the country its two geographic regions. The Tell, home to most of the country's population, contains two geologically young massifs, the Tell Atlas (Atlas Tellien) and the Saharan Atlas (Atlas Saharien), that run generally parallel from east to west and are separated by the High Plateau (Hauts Plateaux). The south, consisting of the Sahara, is a solid and ancient platform of basement rock, horizontal and uniform. This region is uninhabited desert with the exception of several oases, but it conceals rich mineral resources, most significantly petroleum and natural gas.

The Tell

      In succession from north to south are intermittent coastal folded massifs and coastal plains. Along with the Tell Atlas (Atlas Mountains), High Plateau, and Saharan Atlas, they form a sequence of five geographically variegated zones that roughly parallel the coast.

      The coastal ridges and massifs are indented with numerous bays and are often separated from each other by plains—such as the plains of Oran and Annaba—that extend inland. In the same way, the Tell Atlas is not continuous; in the west it forms two distinct ranges separated by interior plains. Thus, the Maghnia Plain separates the Tlemcen Mountains to the south from the Traras Mountains to the northwest. Similarly, the plains of Sidi Bel Abbès and Mascara are nestled between hill ranges to the north and south. The Dahra Massif forms a long range extending from the mouth of the Chelif River in the west to Mount Chenoua in the east; it is separated from the Ouarsenis Massif to the south by plains of the Chelif valley.

      The relief as a whole, therefore, does not constitute a barrier to communications in the western Tell. However, this is not the case in the central Tell, where the Blida Atlas merges with the Titteri Mountains and the mountainous block of Great Kabylia (Grande Kabylie) joins with the Bibans and Hodna mountains to make north-south communications more difficult. Only the valley of the Wadi Soummam permits communication with the port of Bejaïa.

      Farther east, from Bejaïa to Annaba, one mountain barrier follows another to separate the plains of Constantine from the sea. The lands south of the plains are dominated by the Hodna, Aurès, and Nemencha ranges. The plains themselves, which have long been used for growing cereal grains, have a distinct local topography and do not present the same features as the High Plateau, which extends westward from the Hodna Mountains into Morocco. The latter is broken by sabkhahs (lake beds encrusted with salt) and is much less favourable to agriculture because it receives less precipitation.

      To the south of the High Plateau and the plains of Constantine runs the Saharan Atlas, which is formed from a series of ranges oriented southwest to northeast. These decline in elevation from the west, where Mount Aïssa reaches 7,336 feet (2,236 metres) in the Ksour Mountains, to lower summits in the Amour and Oulad Naïl mountains. Higher summits are again found in the Aurès Mountains, where the highest peak in northern Algeria, Mount Chelia, which reaches 7,638 feet (2,328 metres), is located.

      Only the northern Tell ranges, lying along the tectonic plate boundary, experience much seismic activity. Severe earthquakes there have twice destroyed the town of Chlef (El-Asnam), in 1954 and 1980. An earthquake in 1989 caused severe damage in the zone between the Chenoua massif and Algiers, as did another in 2003 just east of Algiers.

The Sahara

      The Algerian Sahara may be divided roughly into two depressions of different elevation, separated from one another by a central north-south rise called the Mʾzab (Mzab). Each zone is covered by a vast sheet of sand dunes called an erg. The Great Eastern Erg (Grand Erg Oriental) and the Great Western Erg (Grand Erg Occidental), which average 1,300 to 2,000 feet (400 to 600 metres) in height, decline in elevation northward from the foot of the Ahaggar (Hoggar) Mountains to below sea level in places south of the Aurès Mountains. The Ahaggar Mountains in the southern Sahara rise to majestic summits; the tallest, Mount Tahat, reaches an elevation of 9,573 feet (2,918 metres) and is the highest peak in the country.

Drainage

      Most of the rivers of the Tell Atlas are short and undergo large variations in flow. The largest river is the Chelif (Chelif River), which rises in the High Plateau, crosses the Tell Atlas, and flows through an east-west trough to reach the sea east of Mostaganem. The Chelif has been so intensively exploited for irrigation and drinking water that it has ceased to flow in its lower reaches during the summer months. South of the Tell Atlas there are only ephemeral rivers (wadis), and much surface runoff ends in chotts (salt marshes) within inland depressions. Several Saharan watercourses, in particular those flowing off the Ahaggar uplands, occupy valleys formed largely during pluvial periods in the Pleistocene Epoch (1,800,000 to 10,000 years ago). Some southward-flowing wadis feed the water tables beneath the Saharan surface, and desert oases appear in locations where the water, under hydrostatic pressure, rises to the surface in artesian wells or springs.

Soils

      Continued vegetation clearance and erosion have limited the area of fertile brown soils to those uplands where evergreen oak forests are still found. Mediterranean red soils occupy the lower elevations in much of the northern Tell. Farther south the soils become progressively immature as aridity increases; they are characterized by little chemical weathering or accumulation of organic matter. In the desert areas soil development is further impeded by strong and nearly constant wind erosion. An ambitious project was initiated in the mid-1970s to create a “green barrier” against Saharan encroachment northward, reforesting a narrow strip up to 12 miles (19 km) in width and some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in length; it proved only somewhat successful. Another plan, however, was introduced in the mid-1980s to reforest an additional 1,400 square miles (3,600 square km).

Climate

      Climate, more than relief, is the country's major geographic factor. The amount of precipitation and, above all, its distribution throughout the year, as well as the timing and magnitude of the sirocco—a dry, desiccating wind that emanates seasonally from the Sahara (often with gale force)—constitute the principal elements on which agriculture and many other activities depend.

      Algeria's coastal zone and northern mountains have a typical Mediterranean climate, with warm, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Algiers, for example, has afternoon temperatures in July of 83 °F (28 °C), which drop to about 70 °F (21 °C) at night, while in January daily temperatures range between 59 and 49 °F (15 and 9 °C). Four-fifths of the city's 30 inches (760 mm) of annual precipitation falls between October and March, and July and August are usually dry. Total annual precipitation increases along the coast from west to east but diminishes rapidly from the coast southward into the interior. The greatest amount of precipitation occurs in the mountainous regions of the eastern littoral, which are directly exposed to the humid winds that blow inland from the Mediterranean. From a point about 50 miles (80 km) west of Algiers to the Tunisian frontier, annual precipitation exceeds 24 inches (600 mm), and in certain places—for example, in the Great Kabylia, Little Kabylia (Petite Kabylie), and Edough regions—it reaches about 40 inches (1,000 mm). West of this location a considerable part of the Chelif Plain and the plains of the littoral and the region immediately to the south of it in the vicinity of Oran are insufficiently watered, receiving less than 23 inches (580 mm). Precipitation also diminishes after crossing the Atlas ranges to the south, except in the Aurès and in a section of the Amour Mountains, which still receive about 16 inches (400 mm).

      This east-west boundary roughly separates the two principal agricultural zones of the country. Dry farming is generally possible and commercially profitable in the eastern zone, where fine forests and abundant vegetation also exist. In the western zone cereal crops can be cultivated only with irrigation; pastoral activities dominate, and the forests disappear.

      Northern Algeria's relief, parallel to the coastline, limits the southward penetration of the Mediterranean climate. The plains and hills in the region immediately to the south of the coastal mountains still receive sufficient precipitation but have a much drier atmosphere, and temperature ranges are more varied. The High Plateau, on the other hand, is characterized by daily and annual extremes of temperature, hot summers and cold winters, and insufficient precipitation. Summer temperatures are typically above 100 °F (38 °C) in the afternoon and drop to about 50 °F (10 °C) at night, while in winter they range from about 60 °F (16 °C) during the day to about 28 °F (−2 °C) at night. Annual precipitation varies from 4 to 16 inches (100 to 400 mm).

      The Sahara proper begins on the southern border of the Saharan Atlas. The demarcation coincides with a diminution of the precipitation to less than 4 inches (100 mm) per year. The landscape and vegetation differ greatly from those in the north, with life and activity limited to a few privileged locations. Daily and annual temperature ranges are even more extreme than on the High Plateau, and precipitation is marked by greater irregularity. Three years may pass without precipitation in the Tademaït region, as many as five years on the Ahaggar plateau.

Plant and animal life

      Natural vegetation patterns generally follow the country's north-south climatic gradient, and elevation produces additional variations. All vegetation in Algeria, where all areas are subject to some seasonal aridity, is characteristically drought-resistant. Forests cover only about 2 percent of the entire land area and are found primarily in the less-accessible mountain regions, where remnants of evergreen forests remain on the moister slopes. Dominated by holm oak, cork oak, and conifers such as juniper, the forests today contain only limited patches of economically valuable cedar. Much of the entire Tell region in the north was once covered with woodland, but most of this has been replaced by a poor maquis scrubland consisting of evergreen, often aromatic, hard-leaved shrubs and low trees that include laurel, rosemary, and thyme. On limestone and poorer soils, however, maquis degenerates into garigue (or garrigue), a low-growing shrub association of gorse, lavender, and sage.

      Farther south, increasing aridity reduces the vegetation to a discontinuous type of steppe (treeless plain) dominated by esparto grass. A richer association containing Barbary fig and date palm, however, is still found along the wadis. In the desert proper, plant life is highly dispersed and consists of tufts of several kinds of robust grass species that need almost no water, such as drinn (Aristida pungens) and cram-cram (Cenchrus biflorus); several types of shrubs, which are always stunted and sometimes spiny; tamarisk, acacia, and jujube trees; and some more varied species that are found in the beds of wadis with underground water or in mountainous regions.

      The animal life of the northern mountains includes wild mouflons, Barbary deer, wild boars, and Barbary macaques. A multitude of migratory birds pass through the country, including storks and flamingos. In the Sahara, gazelles, fennecs, hyenas, and jackals can be found, together with many smaller mammals such as gerbils and desert hare. Insect life is abundant and is most spectacularly manifested in the region's periodic massive swarms of locusts. Scorpions are common in the arid and semiarid regions.

People (Algeria)

Ethnic groups

      More than four-fifths of the country is ethnically Arab, though most Algerians are descendents of ancient Amazigh (Berber) groups who mixed with various invading peoples from the Arab Middle East, southern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa. Arab invasions in the 8th and 11th centuries brought only limited numbers of new people to the region but resulted in the extensive Arabization and Islamization of the indigenous Amazigh population. Some one-fifth of the Algerians now consider themselves Amazigh, of whom the Kabyle Imazighen (plural of Amazigh), occupying the mountainous area east of Algiers, form the largest group. Other Amazigh groups are the Shawia (Chaouïa), who live primarily in the Aurès Mountains; the Mʾzabites, a sedentary group descended from the 9th-century Ibāḍī followers of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustam, who inhabit the northern edge of the desert; and the Tuareg nomads of the Saharan Ahaggar region. Nearly all the European settlers—mainly French, Italian, and Maltese nationals, who formed a sizable minority in the colonial period—have left the country.

Languages

      Arabic (Arabic language) became the official national language of Algeria in 1990, and most Algerians speak one of several dialects of vernacular Arabic. These are generally similar to dialects spoken in adjacent areas of Morocco and Tunisia. Modern Standard Arabic is taught in schools. The Amazigh language (Tamazight) (Amazigh languages)—in several geographic dialects—is spoken by Algeria's ethnic Imazighen, though most are also bilingual in Arabic.

      Algeria's official policy of “Arabization” since independence, which aims to promote indigenous Arabic and Islamic cultural values throughout society, has resulted in the replacement of French by Arabic as the national medium and, in particular, as the primary language of instruction in primary and secondary schools. Some Amazigh groups have strongly resisted this policy, fearing domination by the Arabic-speaking majority. The Amazigh language was adopted as an official language in 2002.

Religion

      Most Algerians, both Arab and Amazigh, are Sunni (Sunnite) Muslims (Islāmic world) of the Mālikī (Mālikīyah) rite. A source of unity and cultural identity, Islam (Islām) provides valuable links with the wider Islamic world as well. In the struggle against French rule, Islam became an integral part of Algerian nationalism. Alongside the more traditional institutions of the mosques and madrasahs (religious schools), Islam has possessed from its outset a deep mysticism, which has manifested itself in various, often culturally unique, forms. A distinctive North African facet of this tradition, stemming from Islamic folk practices and Sufi (Ṣūfism) teaching, is the important role played by marabouts (marabout). These saintly individuals were widely held to possess special powers and were venerated locally as teachers, healers, and spiritual leaders. Marabouts frequently formed extensive brotherhoods and at various times would take up the sword in defense of their religion and country (as did their namesakes, the al-Murābiṭūn; see Almoravids). In more peaceful times these local religious icons would practice a type of Islam that stressed local custom and direct spiritual insight as much as Qurʾānic (Qurʾān) teachings. Their independence was often perceived as a threat to established authority, and Islamic reformers and state bodies have historically sought to restrict the growth of marabout influence.

      While Algeria's postindependence governments have confirmed the country's Islamic heritage, their policies have often encouraged secular developments. Islamic fundamentalism has been increasing in strength since the late 1970s in reaction to this. Muslim extremist groups periodically have clashed with both left-wing students and emancipated women's groups, while fundamentalist imams (prayer leaders) have gained influence in many of the country's major mosques.

Settlement patterns

      Algeria's population density is highest in the plains and coastal mountains of the northern Tell—the areas of higher, more reliable precipitation. Density declines southward, so that much of the southern High Plateau and Saharan Atlas are very sparsely populated and, farther south, large stretches of the Sahara are virtually uninhabited. Traditionally, rural settlement in Algeria consisted of widely scattered hamlets and isolated dwellings, with nomads in parts of the Sahara and its fringes. Concentrated village settlements were sometimes found at oases and in certain upland regions, such as the Aurès Mountains and the Great Kabylia, the latter being an Amazigh stronghold renowned for its hilltop villages and traditional way of life.

      French settlers who arrived in Algeria in the latter half of the 19th century built several hundred “villages of colonization (colonialism, Western)” in the countryside. Often geometric in layout, these settlements replicated French villages and house designs and often provided important service centres in areas of dispersed rural population. The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) destroyed nearly 8,000 villages and hamlets and displaced some three million people. Many of the displaced were relocated to several thousand new resettlement centres, while others were moved to towns. Most of the resettlement centres continued to exist after the war and became regular villages as they acquired service functions. Another wave of rural settlement occurred in the 1970s through a government-sponsored agrarian reform program that constructed some 400 “socialist villages.” This program was abandoned by the 1980s, however, in favour of privately funded settlement efforts.

      Urbanization had increased greatly under French rule. As service centres were created in rural areas, European suburbs and new public buildings were added to the larger cities. Port and industrial activities also accelerated the development of certain coastal towns, such as Annaba (Bône), Skikda (Philippeville), and Mostaganem. During and after the War of Independence, the rural exodus to many towns changed them from mainly European settlements to overcrowded cities with a mixed population. The urban growth rate was so rapid that even the departure of some one million Europeans after the war, which made many dwellings available, and considerable new construction did little to alleviate overcrowding in the cities. Roughly half of the population live in urban areas, the largest concentration being along the coast. Algiers is by far the largest city.

Demographic trends

      Algeria's annual rate of population growth was high throughout much of the latter half of the 20th century, but by the late 1980s overall growth—birth rates in particular—had begun to decline. The population is youthful, about half being age 19 or younger. A drop in infant mortality rates has contributed to a decline in overall death rates, but these have been partly offset by the lower birth rates. The decline in fertility has occurred in the cities, where the government has focused some efforts at family planning. Life expectancy is about 70 years.

      Algerian emigration to Europe, once a viable alternative for the country's unemployed, declined in the late 20th century as France restricted further immigration, but decades of such migration (human migration) have left a large Algerian diaspora in France, Belgium, and other western European countries. In addition, Saharan nomadism was sharply reduced in the 20th century, stemming from the effects of drought in the desert region and because of government policies promoting settlement. A number of the country's Tuareg nomads, for example, now lead sedentary lives around oases such as Djanet and Tamanghasset (Tamanrasset), while others cling to a precarious and ever-declining way of life.

Economy

      Algeria's economy is dominated by its export trade in petroleum and natural gas, commodities that, despite fluctuations in world prices, annually contribute roughly one-third of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Until 1962 the economy was based largely on agriculture and complemented France's economy. Since then the extraction and production of hydrocarbons have been the most important activity and have facilitated rapid industrialization. The Algerian government instituted a centrally planned economy within a state socialist system in the first two decades after independence, nationalizing major industries and implementing multiyear economic plans. However, since the early 1980s the focus has shifted toward privatization, and Algeria's socialist direction has been modified somewhat. Standards of living have risen to those of an intermediately developed country, but food production has fallen well below the level of self-sufficiency, and an increase in international debt poses a major obstacle to continued rapid development.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

      Cultivated land is largely restricted to the coastal plains and valleys. These areas were colonized by French settlers, who established vineyards, orchards, citrus groves, and market gardens. The best farms were located in the well-watered fertile plains around Bejaïa and Annaba in the east, in the Mitidja Plain south of Algiers, and beyond Oran from Sidi Bel Abbès to Tlemcen. Rich vineyard areas were also maintained on the Médéa and Mascara plateaus.

      The country's aridity, however, renders more than four-fifths of the land uncultivable, and most of the remaining agricultural land is suitable only for pasture. The rest is tilled or devoted to vineyards and orchards. Winter grains—wheat, barley, and oats—are grown on the largest area of arable land in the drier High Plateau, notably around Constantine, and in the Sersou Plateau to the west. Also in the west, esparto grass grows naturally on the region's steppe plains. Tobacco, olives, and dates are important crops, as are sorghum, millet, corn (maize), rye, and rice. The climate is not well suited to extensive stock raising, but there are many scattered herds of cattle, goats, and sheep, and stock raising contributes significantly to the traditional sector of agriculture.

      Irregular precipitation has long been a threat to agriculture, but dam construction and irrigation projects have added some stability to crop production. At independence Algeria possessed some 20 sizable dams. An active and ongoing construction program nearly doubled that number by the late 1980s, adding substantially to the country's total irrigated acreage. Despite such efforts, the nation's meagre water resources are under increasing pressure to meet its urban-industrial demands as well.

      Since independence agriculture has been the neglected sector of Algeria's economy, suffering from underinvestment, poor organization, and successive restructuring; it now contributes less than one-eighth of GDP annually. As a result, cereal production has undergone large annual fluctuations, orchard and industrial crops have largely stagnated, and viticulture has declined markedly. Wine production, once the mainstay of colonial agriculture and exports, is now at only about one-tenth of its 1950s levels; because of Islam's ban on alcohol consumption, viticulture is increasingly deemed culturally inappropriate. Wine exports to France have substantially declined, and most vineyards have been uprooted, with considerable loss of employment. Only market gardening and livestock production have shown significant growth. As a result, Algeria changed from a food-exporting nation in the 1950s to one that by the late 20th century had to import about three-fourths of its food needs.

      In addition, the program to privatize former state farms since the 1980s caused legal wrangling over landownership. A substantial area of fertile agricultural land in and around Algiers and Oran has gone out of production because of the civil strife in the country that began in the early 1990s.

      Algeria's scant forests have relegated only minor importance to timber production in the country's economy, although some cork from the cork oak forests in the higher elevations of the Tell Atlas is processed domestically. Forest area has decreased rapidly since the 1950s through logging operations, forest fires, and urban encroachment, adding to the country's serious problem of soil erosion. However, the Algerian government aims at preserving and expanding the remaining woodlands.

      Even with the country's long coastline, the fishing industry is underdeveloped and lands only a portion of its estimated potential catch. Refrigeration and canning facilities, necessary for transporting the catch inland, are limited. The government, however, has taken steps to develop the industry by constructing additional fishing ports.

Resources and power

Hydrocarbons

      Extensive deposits of sulfur-free light crude oil were discovered in the Algerian Sahara in the mid-1950s. Production began in 1958, concentrated in three main fields: Hassi Messaoud, in the northeastern part of the Sahara; Zarzaïtine-Edjeleh, along the Libyan border; and El-Borma, on the Tunisian border. Deposits of natural gas were first discovered at Hassi R'Mel (Hassi RʾMel) in 1956, and since then discoveries have also been made at several other fields. Algeria ranks fifth in the world in terms of total gas reserves and second in gas exports. The gas has a methane content of more than 80 percent and also contains ethane, propane, and helium.

      The main petroleum prospectors and producers following the discovery of oil were two French groups, Compagnie Française des Pétroles-Algérie and Entreprise de Recherches et d'Activités Pétrolières. Other international oil companies soon followed. Algeria nationalized (nationalization) all international oil companies operating in the country in 1971 and gave control of their assets to the state-owned Algerian oil concern, Société Nationale de Transport et de Commercialisation des Hydrocarbures (Sonatrach), which had been set up in 1963–64. Sonatrach undertook its own exploitation and production activities, with some success, although much of this was made possible by Soviet assistance and, more recently, by the establishment of joint service companies with help from American specialists. State liberalization during the 1990s permitted North American and European petroleum companies to enter into joint ventures to explore and exploit Algerian reserves. More than a dozen foreign companies were involved in joint ventures in Algeria by the late 1990s, reversing the earlier state monopoly of Sonatrach.

      Four pipelines (pipeline) transport petroleum from Algeria's oil fields to the Mediterranean for export overseas. The Trans-Mediterranean natural gas pipeline from Tunisia to Sicily and on to Naples, Italy, was completed in 1981, substantially boosting the sales of Algerian natural gas to Europe. In 1996 a second Maghrib-Europe gas pipeline began to supply Spain with Algerian gas, and Portugal was linked to the system in 1997. With petroleum reserves expected to run out in the first decades of the 21st century, exports of natural gas hold the promise of being more important for the economy than sales of oil.

Mining

      The main mining centres are at Ouenza and Djebel Onk near the eastern border with Tunisia and at El-Abed in the west. Extensive deposits of high-grade iron (iron processing) ore are worked at Ouenza, and major deposits of medium-grade ore exist at Gara Djebilet near Tindouf. Nearly all the high-grade iron ore from the open-cut works at Ouenza is used to supply the domestic steel industry.

      Reserves of nonferrous metal ores are smaller and more scattered. These include sizable quantities of zinc and lead at El-Abed near Tlemcen—the source of most of the country's production—and of mercury ore at Azzaba. However, it is estimated that the zinc will be depleted in the early 21st century.

      Phosphate deposits of relatively inferior grade are mined south of Tébessa at Djebel Onk. About one-third of this supplies the Annaba fertilizer complex, but the remainder is exported as raw material. Overall phosphate production declined by the mid-1990s.

      Intensive prospecting for minerals in the Ahaggar Mountains has been carried out, and traces of tin, nickel, cobalt, chrome, and uranium have been found. Development of the Ahaggar uranium deposits began in the early 1980s. There are also sizable kaolin deposits at Djebel Debar and large reserves of marble at Djebel Filfila near Skikda.

Manufacturing

      The manufacturing sector was mainly confined to food processing, textiles, cigarettes, and clothing before independence. Since 1967, however, the main emphasis has shifted toward heavy industry. The state steel corporation, for example, completed its large El-Hadjar steelworks complex at Annaba in the early 1970s and has constructed a zinc electrolysis plant near the El-Abed mine, at Ghazaouet. Much of the steel produced for domestic consumption is allocated for machine tools, tractors, agricultural equipment, buses, trucks, and automobiles. Paralleling the Annaba steel complex is the vast Skikda petrochemical works, which includes a gas liquefaction plant, an ethylene factory, liquid petroleum gas separation facilities, a plastics factory, and a benzene refinery. Other gas liquefaction plants are located at Bejaïa and Arzew; the latter is also the site of a nitrogenous fertilizer factory, an oil refinery, and a liquid petroleum gas separation plant. A complex at Sétif houses methanol and plastics factories. The phosphate fertilizer factory at Annaba is a major component of Algeria's heavy industrial development.

      A large proportion of the country's industries were state-run until the 1980s, when the government restructured these large operations into smaller state-run units and encouraged these to pursue joint ventures with private concerns. Algeria was unable to use its full industrial capacity at that time, however, because its financial situation had deteriorated and the economy remained poorly managed. Nonetheless, the state continued to encourage private industry, and in the early 1990s a privately owned steel mill began operation. Joint ventures between Algerian and foreign companies have been promoted at a growing rate, especially in the field of petrochemicals. Agreements were also made with European countries to set up automobile assembly and engine production industries, and South Korean firms have become more involved in various endeavours, notably the manufacture of electrical goods, fertilizers, and automobiles. Within Algerian-owned industries, continued restructuring during the 1990s resulted in many factory shutdowns and job losses, and production levels varied from year to year.

Finance

      The Banque d'Algérie, an independent central bank established in 1963, issues the Algerian dinar, the national currency. The government restructured the commercial banking system in the mid-1980s, increasing the number of state-owned commercial banks in the country. The state also opened the financial market to private banks, including some foreign ones, in the 1990s. A law enacted in 1995 lifted government price controls on a variety of commodities. Price subsidies on various basic products have been gradually phased out, in line with Algeria's restructuring agreements with the International Monetary Fund. These agreements also resulted in the floating and subsequent devaluation of the dinar, which had formerly been artificially tied to the French franc.

Trade

      Virtually all of Algeria's foreign-exchange earnings are derived from the export of petroleum and natural gas products, both of which are refined domestically at an increasing rate. Other exports include phosphates, vegetables, dates, tobacco, and leather goods. The major imports are capital goods and semifinished products, consisting mostly of industrial equipment and consumer goods, followed closely by foodstuffs. About two-thirds of all trade is with countries of the European Union, and the United States is next in importance.

      Algerian trade with France dropped from four-fifths of the total trade in 1961 to about one-fifth in the late 20th century. French imports of Algerian agricultural products, especially wine, were severely restricted after independence. Algerians in France formerly remitted substantial sums of money annually to relatives in Algeria; this was partly responsible for Algeria's healthy balance-of-payments position. By the mid-1990s, however, the annual balance of payments was often negative, and Algeria had a high level of external debt.

Services

      The service sector contributes a relatively small amount to the country's GDP and employs only a small proportion of the labour force. Tourist-related activities have traditionally made up only a minute part of the service sector—this, despite Algeria's many striking natural features and significant historical wealth—and even this share declined beginning in the 1990s because of civil unrest.

Labour and taxation

      The right for labour to organize is guaranteed by Algerian law, although there is only one nationwide trade union, Union Générale de Travailleurs Algériens, which is also the country's largest labour organization. The government guarantees a minimum wage, and the workweek is set at 40 hours and—as in many Muslim countries—extends from Saturday to Wednesday. The largest employment sectors in Algeria are public administration, agriculture, and transportation. Unemployment, however, is high by any standard, with nearly one-third of the eligible labour force out of work.

      Proceeds from the sale of petroleum and natural gas are far and away the government's largest source of revenue. Despite fluctuations in the world oil market, this sector provides more than half the government's annual receipts, with other sources—such as tax revenue, customs duties, and fees—generating the balance. Of these latter sources, taxes, both income and value-added, constitute the largest proportion.

Transportation and telecommunications

      At independence Algeria inherited a transportation network geared toward serving French colonial interests. The network did not integrate the country nationally or regionally, and few north-south routes existed. However, a good road network was in place in the densely populated Tell region, complete with express highways around the city of Algiers. Fast and frequent rail service was established between Oran, Algiers, and Constantine by the late 20th century.

      The main rail line parallels the coast and extends from the Moroccan to the Tunisian border. Several standard-gauge lines branch from the main line to port cities and to some interior towns, and a few narrow-gauge lines cross the High Plateau to the Algerian Sahara. Two trans-Saharan roads have been built: one paved route from El-Goléa to Tamanghasset and then south to Niger, the other from El-Goléa to Adrar and then on to Mali. A state bus company and several private companies provide reliable intercity bus services.

      The principal ports are Algiers, Oran, Annaba, Bejaïa, Bettioua, Mostaganem, and Ténès, in addition to the primarily petroleum and natural gas ports at Arzew and Skikda. Algeria's merchant fleet has grown into a major world shipping line. Administered by the Algerian National Navigation Company, the fleet includes more than 150 vessels, including oil tankers and specialized liquefied natural gas tankers.

      Air Algérie, the state airline, operates flights to many foreign countries and provides daily domestic flights between the country's major cities and towns. There are international airports at Algiers, Annaba, Constantine, Oran, Tlemcen, and Ghardaïa.

      The Algerian government began investing heavily in the country's telecommunications infrastructure in the 1970s and '80s, and, beginning in the early 1990s, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), the sector's controlling body, began to slowly deregulate what had been a complete government monopoly. In 2000 a series of laws opened up the market even further—including allowing foreign companies to tender bids—and Algérie Telecom, a state-owned telecommunications company distinct from MPT, was founded. A separate regulatory body was formed to organize the free-market system.

      Despite intensive investment in Algeria's telecommunications infrastructure, telephone, mobile telephone, and Internet access is still limited. Few Algerians can afford the luxury of a home computer, and cable and telephone access has limited the number of Internet subscribers to a few thousand. Consequently, cybercafes are popular among those seeking Internet access.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

      Algeria was dominated for the first three decades following independence by the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale; FLN), until 1989 the sole legal political party. New electoral laws passed in that year made the country a multiparty state. The constitution adopted in 1996 provides for a strong executive branch headed by a president, who was to be elected by universal suffrage for a maximum of two five-year terms; in late 2008, however, the legislature approved a constitutional amendment that abolished the two-term limit. The president, who is chief of state, appoints numerous state officials, including a wide range of civilian and military leaders, provincial governors, and the prime minister, who acts as head of the government. The prime minister nominates a government for the president's approval, thus completing the executive, and presents a program to the lower house of the nation's bicameral legislature for ratification.

      Once the government is in place, the head of government presents draft legislation, which is debated first in the country's lower house, the National People's Assembly (Majlis al-Shaʿbī al-Waṭanī), deputies of which are elected for five-year terms by universal adult suffrage. Debate then passes to the upper house, the Council of the Nation (Majlis al-Ummah), members of which serve six-year terms. One-third of council members are appointed by the president, and the remaining two-thirds are elected indirectly by a secret ballot of local and district legislatures. In addition, the constitution requires that one-half of the council's members be replaced every three years. Both houses are able to debate any draft law put before them, but only the lower house may alter draft documents. The upper house is required to vote on material presented to its members by the lower house and must achieve a three-fourths majority to pass any legislation. The legislature meets twice per year, each session lasting no less than four months. It is empowered to draft and ratify legislation on a wide variety of issues, including matters of civil and criminal law, personal status, state finance, and the exploitation of natural resources.

      The constitution of 1996 also established a Constitutional Council (Majlis Dustūrī) to oversee elections and referenda, rule on issues of the constitutionality of treaties, negotiations, and amendments, and, when called on by the president, issue opinions on the constitutionality of laws. The Council is appointed jointly by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Local government

      Below the national level, the country is divided into wilāyāt (provinces), each with its own elected assembly (Assemblée Populaire de Wilaya; APW), executive council, and governor. The provinces are in turn divided into dawāʾir (administrative districts) and then into baladīyāt (communes), each one having its own assembly (Assemblée Populaire Communale) to run local affairs.

      The executive council of the province is the chief regional authority. It is composed of the regional directors of the state agencies that are located in the province. The council is thus responsive to both regional and national concerns. Through the provincial governor, the province exercises trusteeship and administrative control of local collectives, public establishments, independent enterprises, and national societies. As an organ of the national government, the provincial leadership participates in the planning and application of the national development plan and helps coordinate matters related to the province.

      The governor is solely responsible for interaction between the national government and the province. Appointed by the president for an indeterminate term, the governor assumes any necessary function in order to coordinate relations between the national government and its local constituency. As the representative of the province, the governor presides over the implementation of the decisions of the APW, and, as a senior state functionary, the governor is the direct representative in the province of each national ministry.

Justice

      At independence Algeria inherited colonial judicial institutions that were widely held by Muslim Algerians to have been established to maintain colonial authority. Judicial organization was based on two separate foundations: Muslim jurisdiction—practicing Sharīʿah (Islamic law)—and French civil courts; the latter were primarily located in the larger towns where the Europeans were concentrated. Sharīʿah courts were the first—and all too frequently the final—recourse for Muslims seeking judicial redress.

      Postindependence governments were quick to take steps to eliminate the French colonial judicial legacy. In 1965 the entire system was reformed by a decree that instituted a new judicial organization. This decree was followed a year later by the promulgation of new legal codes—the penal code, the code of penal procedure, and the code of civil procedure. A provincial court in each province and nearly 200 widely distributed tribunals were eventually created.

      The judiciary now consists of three levels. At the first level is the tribunal, to which civil and commercial litigation is submitted and which takes action in penal cases of the first instance. At the second level is the provincial court, which consists of a three-judge panel that hears all cases and that functions as a court of appeal for the tribunals and for the administrative jurisdictions of the first instance. At the third and highest level is the Supreme Court, which is the final court of appeal and of appeals against the decisions of the lower courts. In 1975 the Court of State Security, composed of magistrates and high-ranking army officers, was created to handle cases involving state security. The constitution of 1996 instituted two new high courts to complement the Supreme Court. The Council of State acts as an administrative equivalent to the Supreme Court, hearing cases not ordinarily reviewed by that body; and the Tribunal of Conflicts was instituted to regulate any jurisdictional disputes that might arise between the other two high courts.

Political process

      Until 1989 all candidates for the National People's Assembly were chosen by the FLN. Following reforms, the scope of political participation widened with the birth of new independent political parties. In local and national elections in 1990 and 1991, the Islamist parties, especially the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut; FIS), made the largest gains of any new parties, while in Kabylia local Amazigh parties gained control of local assemblies. With this democratization hundreds of new cultural, environmental, charitable, and athletic associations were formed, independent of the stringent control formerly exercised by the FLN in those areas. A coup in 1992 slowed democratization but did not totally suppress the process. Corruption among government officials and violent outbreaks by Islamic extremists against democratic reforms continued in the late 1990s. Conditions had improved sufficiently by 2003 to permit the release from detention of two main FIS leaders.

Security

      Although its yearly military expenditures are well above the world average, Algeria maintains a relatively small active military. More than half of its troop strength consists of conscripts who serve for six months (with an additional year of civic service). Most conscripts serve in the army. Algeria has only a small air force and navy. The former has relatively few high-performance aircraft, and the navy consists largely of coastal patrol craft.

      Paramilitary and police forces outnumber the active-duty military by a substantial margin, and years of civil unrest have forced the government to rely on such forces—divided among several ministries and directorates—both for internal security and, often, for quelling internal dissent.

Health and welfare

      Because of the country's relatively young population and pressing medical needs, the health care system is oriented toward preventive medicine rather than treatment. Instead of building expensive hospitals, Algeria emphasizes smaller clinics and health centres and maintains a comprehensive vaccination program. Medical care, including medication, is provided by the state without charge, although those earning middle and higher incomes pay a part of their medical fees on a proportional scale. There is an increasing trend toward private health care. In an effort to extend health care to everyone, the government requires all newly qualified physicians, dentists, and pharmacists to work in public health for at least five years. Most medical personnel and facilities, however, remain concentrated in the north, especially in the large cities. Remote mountain locations and much of the Sahara are nearly devoid of modern facilities. Tuberculosis, hepatitis, measles, typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery are the principal health problems, often brought about by inadequate sanitation facilities and a lack of safe drinking water.

Housing

      Algeria's chronic housing shortage contributed to health problems throughout much of the latter half of the 20th century. Continuous rural-urban migration and unchecked population growth allowed urban shantytowns to proliferate. The government, whose spending priorities had been focused largely on heavy industry since independence, did little to relieve the housing shortage until the mid-1980s. At that time, however, development plans began emphasizing investment in social infrastructure and services. More construction of affordable government-subsidized housing units has since taken place, including a large prefabricated housing construction program to tackle the most urgent housing needs.

      The growth of more than 100,000 new households each year placed a considerable strain on existing housing conditions. A sharp drop in oil prices in 1986 and the inability to meet the mounting needs for new housing led the Algerian government to withdraw from some of its commitments and encourage local and private housing initiatives. Foreign companies—including some from the now defunct Yugoslavia—were increasingly granted large construction contracts. Algeria also benefited from soft loans throughout the 1990s from the World Bank, the European Union, and other Arab countries to promote its construction sector. State companies were privatized, and joint ventures with European and American companies finally began to address some of the country's housing needs.

Education

      Since independence Algerian authorities have worked on redesigning the national educational system. Particular attention has been given to replacing French with Arabic (Arabic language) as the language of instruction and to emphasizing scientific and technical studies. Education in Arabic is officially compulsory for all children between 6 and 15 years of age, and roughly nine-tenths of boys of that age are in school; enrollment for girls is slightly lower. Children residing in rural areas have remained underrepresented in the classroom, although much progress for both groups has been made since independence. The literacy rate is about three-fourths for men but less than half for women. The educational system has experienced extreme difficulty in trying to accommodate the increasing number of school-age children. The scarcity of qualified Arabic teachers has been ameliorated by the recruitment of teachers from other Arab countries. Arabic replaced French as the language of instruction at all institutes of higher learning in 2000. Amazigh (Berber) discontent over the policy of Arabization, however, has prompted the government to restore Amazigh language and literature studies at a number of universities. The major institutions include Islamic universities in Algiers and Constantine, several regional university centres, and a number of technical colleges. Each year a few thousand Algerian students go abroad to study, mainly in France, other European countries, or the United States.

Cultural life

Cultural milieu

      Algerian culture and society were profoundly affected by 130 years of colonial rule, by the bitter independence struggle, and by the subsequent broad mobilization policies of postindependence regimes. A transient, nearly rootless society has emerged, whose cultural continuity has been deeply undermined. Seemingly, only deep religious faith and belief in the nation's populist ideology have prevented complete social disintegration. There has been a contradiction, however, between the government's various populist policies—which have called for the radical modernization of society as well as the cultivation of the country's Arab Islamic heritage—and traditional family structure. Although Algeria's cities have become centres for this cultural confrontation, even remote areas of the countryside have seen the state take on roles traditionally filled by the extended family or clan. Algerians have thus been caught between a tradition that no longer commands their total loyalty and a modernism that is attractive yet fails to satisfy their psychological and spiritual needs. Only the more isolated Amazigh groups, such as the Saharan Mʾzabites and Tuareg, have managed to some degree to escape these conflicting pressures.

      As is true elsewhere in North Africa, Algeria has experienced a dislocating clash between traditional and mass global culture, with Hollywood films and Western popular music commanding the attention of the young at the expense of indigenous forms of artistic and cultural expression. This clash is the subject of much fiery commentary from conservative Muslim clergymen, whose influence has grown with the rise of Islamic extremism. Extremists have opposed secular values in art and culture and have targeted prominent Algerian authors, playwrights, musicians, and artists—including the director of the National Museum, who was assassinated in 1995; novelist Tahar Djaout, who was murdered in 1993; and the well-known Amazigh musician Lounès Matoub, who was assassinated in 1998. As a result, much of the country's cultural elite has left the country to work abroad, mostly in France.

Daily life and social customs

      Despite efforts to modernize Algerian society, the pull of traditional values remains strong. Whether in the city or countryside, the daily life of the average Algerian is permeated with the atmosphere of Islam, which has become identified with the concept of an autonomous Algerian people and of resistance to what many Algerians perceive as a continued Western imperialism. Practiced largely as a set of social prescriptions and ethical attitudes, Islam in Algeria has more characteristically been identified with supporting traditional values than serving a revolutionary ideology.

      In particular, the influential Muslim (Islāmic world) clergy has opposed the emancipation of women. Algerians traditionally consider the family—headed by the husband—to be the basic unit of society, and women are expected to be obedient and provide support to their husbands. As in most parts of the Arab world, men and women in Algeria generally have constituted two separate societies, each with its own attitudes and values. Daily activities and social interaction normally take place only between members of the same gender. Marriage in this milieu is generally considered a family affair rather than a matter of personal preference, and parents typically arrange marriages for their children, although this custom is declining as Algerian women take on a greater role in political and economic life. Some women continue to wear veils in public because traditionally minded Algerian Muslims consider it improper for a woman to be seen by men to whom she is not related. The practice of veiling (purdah), in fact, has increased since independence, especially in urban areas, where there is a greater chance of contact with nonrelatives.

      Algerian cuisine, like that of most North African countries, is heavily influenced by Arab, Amazigh, Turkish, and French culinary traditions. couscous, a semolina-based pasta customarily served with a meat and vegetable stew, is the traditional staple. Although Western-style dishes, such as pizza and other fast foods, are popular and Algeria imports large quantities of foodstuffs, traditional products of Algerian agriculture remain the country's best-liked. Mutton, lamb, and poultry are still the meat dishes of choice; favourite desserts rely heavily on native-grown figs, dates, and almonds and locally produced honey; and couscous and unleavened breads accompany virtually every meal. Brik (a meat pastry), merguez (beef sausage), and lamb or chicken stew are among the many local dishes served in homes and restaurants. As is the case in the Middle East, strong, sweet Turkish-style coffee is the beverage of choice at social gatherings, and mint tea is a favourite.

      Algeria observes several religious and secular holidays, including the important Islamic festivals and commemorations such as Ramadan, the two ʿīds (festivals), Īd al-Fiṭrʿ and Īd al-Aḍḥāʿ, and mawlid (the Prophet's birthday), as well as national holidays such as Independence Day (July 5).

The arts

      Various types of music are native to Algeria. One of the most popular, originating in the western part of the country, is raï (from Arabic raʾy, meaning “opinion” or “view”), which combines varying instrumentation with simple poetic lyrics. Both men and women are free to express themselves in this style. One especially popular Algerian singer of raï, Khaled, has exported this music to Europe and the United States, but he and other popular musicians such as Cheb Mami have been targets of Islamic extremists. Wahrani (the music of Oran), another style, blends raï with classical Algerian music of the Arab-Andalusian tradition.

      Algeria has produced many important writers. Some, such as the Noble Prize winner Albert Camus (Camus, Albert) and his contemporary Jean Sénac (Sénac, Jean), were French, although their work was influenced by the many years they spent in Algeria. The writing of Henri Kréa (Kréa, Henri) reflects the two worlds he inhabited as the son of a French father and an Algerian mother. ʿAbd al-Hamid Benhadugah is the father of modern Arabic literature in Algeria, while Jean Amrouche (Amrouche, Jean) is considered the foremost poet of the first generation of North African writers who wrote in French; his younger sister Marguerite Taos Amrouche (Amrouche, Marguerite Taos) was a noted singer and writer. The work of Mouloud Feraoun (Feraoun, Mouloud) reflects Amazigh life. Mohammed Dib (Dib, Mohammed), Malek Haddad (Haddad, Malek), Tahar Djaout, Mourad Bourboune (Bourboune, Mourad), Rachid Boudjedra (Boudjedra, Rachid), and Assia Djebar (Djebar, Assia) have all written about contemporary life in Algeria, with Djebar reflecting on this from a woman's perspective.

      Algeria has maintained a lively film (motion picture) industry, although filmmakers frequently have endured bouts with government pressure and, more recently, have been subjected to intimidation by Islamic extremists. The first major postcolonial production was the celebrated film La battaglia di Algeri (1965; The Battle of Algiers). Though written and directed by an Italian, Gillo Pontecorvo, the work—a stark, factual retelling of urban warfare during the revolution—was supported by the Algerian government and was cast with numerous nonactors, including many residents of Algiers who participated in the actual events. The following year Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina directed Rīḥ al-Awras (1966; The Winds of the Aures), the first work by an Algerian to win international acclaim. His Chronique des annees de braise (1975; Chronicle of the Year of Embers), another gritty tale of the revolution, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival nearly a decade later. Several films by the celebrated director Merzak Allouache, including Omar Gatlato (1976) and Bāb al-wād al-ḥawmah (1994; Bab El-Oued City), which deal with the complexity of daily life in urban Algeria, have received international recognition. More recently, director Bourlem Guerdjou examined the difficulties of the Algerian diaspora in France in his award-winning Vivre au paradis (1997; Living in Paradise).

Cultural institutions

      Algeria has a number of fine museums, most of which are located in the capital and are administered by the Office of Cultural Heritage (1901). The National Museum of Antiquities (1897) displays artifacts dating from the Roman and Islamic periods. The National Fine Arts Museum of Algiers (1930) houses statues and paintings, including some lesser works of well-known European masters, and the Bardo Museum (1930) specializes in history and ethnography. Most other cultural institutions also are found in Algiers, including the National Archives of Algeria (1971), the National Library (1835), and the Algerian Historical Society (1963).

Sports and recreation

      Algerians enjoy football (soccer), handball, volleyball, and athletics. Algerian athletes have participated in the Olympic Games since 1964. They have won medals in boxing, but their major success has been in the area of long-distance running. Noureddine Morceli won the men's 1,500-metre event at the 1996 Summer Games and has held numerous world running records. Another runner, Hassiba Boulmerka, won several world championships and a gold medal in the women's 1,500-metre run at the 1992 Barcelona Games, becoming the first African or Arab woman to win an Olympic track-and-field event.

Media and publishing

      Despite pressure from the government and threats and intimidation by Islamic militants, Algeria has one of the most vigorous presses in the Arab world. Daily newspapers are published in both Arabic and French in Algiers, Oran, and Constantine. Several weeklies and a host of magazines are also published in the country. The number and range of newspapers increased during the 1990s, despite frequent violent attacks directed against journalists by Islamic extremists. Radiodiffusion Télévision Algérienne operates as a broadcasting institution under the Ministry of Information and Culture. Its three radio channels offer programming in Arabic, Kabyle, and, on its international channel, a mixture of French, English, and Spanish. The television network—with two channels—transmits to most of the country. The number of satellite dishes has increased, and many Algerians are now able to receive European stations.

Abdel Kader Chanderli Keith Sutton

History

      This discussion focuses on Algeria from the 19th century onward. For a treatment of earlier periods and of the country in its regional context, see North Africa.

      From a geographic standpoint, Algeria has been a difficult country to rule. The Tell and Saharan Atlas mountain chains impede easy north-south communication, and the few good natural harbours provide only limited access to the hinterlands. This has meant that, before Ottoman (Ottoman Empire) rule, the western part of the country was associated more closely with Morocco while the eastern part had closer ties with Tunisia. A further impediment to unifying the country was that a significant minority of the population were native Tamazight speakers and were thus more resistant to Arabization as compared with North African countries to the east. Therefore, Ottoman Algeria, which contained few extensive, original, or long-lived Muslim dynasties, was not nearly as predisposed to developing political nationalism as was Tunisia during the first decades of the 19th century.

French Algeria

The conquest of Algeria

      Modern Algeria can be understood only by examining the period—nearly a century and a half—that the country was under French colonial rule (colonialism, Western). The customary beginning date is in April 1827, when Ḥusayn, the last Ottoman provincial ruler, or dey, of Algiers, angrily struck the French consul with a fly whisk. This incident was a manifest sign of the dey's anger toward the French consul, a culmination of what had soured Franco-Algerian relations in the preceding years: France's large and unpaid debt. That same year the French minister of war had written that the conquest of Algeria would be an effective and useful means of providing employment for veterans of the Napoleonic wars.

      The conquest of Algeria began three years later. The government of the dey proved no match for the French army that landed on July 5, 1830, near Algiers. Ḥusayn accepted the French offer of exile after a brief military encounter. After his departure, and in violation of agreements that had been made, the French seized private and religious buildings, looted possessions mainly in and around Algiers, and seized a vast portion of the country's arable land. The three-century-long period of Algerian history as an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire had ended.

      The French government thought that a quick victory abroad might create enough popularity at home to enable it to win the upcoming elections. Instead, only days after the French victory in Algeria, the July Revolution forced King Charles X from the throne in favour of Louis-Philippe (Philippe, Charles-Louis). Although those who led the July Revolution in France had cynically dismissed the campaign in Algeria as foreign adventurism to cover up oppression at home, they were reluctant to simply withdraw. Various alternatives were considered, including an early ill-fated plan to establish Tunisian princes in parts of Algeria as rulers under French patronage. The French general, Bertrand Clauzel (Clauzel, Bertrand, Comte), signed two treaties with the bey of Tunis, one of which offered him the right to keep territories conceded to him in exchange for annual payments. Because the treaty was not communicated officially to the government in Paris, however, the bey considered this proof of French duplicity and refused the offer.

      The first few years of colonial rule were characterized by numerous changes in the French command, and the military campaign began to prove extremely arduous and costly. The towns of the Mitidja Plain—just outside Algiers—and neighbouring cities fell first to the French. General Camille Trézel captured Bejaïa in the east in 1833 after a naval bombardment. The French took Mers el-Kebir in 1830 and entered Oran in 1831, but they faced stiffer opposition from the Sufi brotherhood leader, Emir Abdelkader (ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Muḥyī al-Dīn), in the west. Because towns and cities were plundered and massacres of civilian populations were widespread, the French government sent a royal commission to the colony to examine the situation.

      During their campaign against Abdelkader, the French agreed to a truce and signed two agreements with him. The treaty signed between General Louis-Alexis Desmichels and Abdelkader in 1834 included two versions, one of which made major concessions to Abdelkader again without the consent or knowledge of the French government. This miscommunication led to a breach of the agreement when the French moved through territory belonging to the emir. Abdelkader responded with a counterattack in 1839 and drove the French back to Algiers and the coast.

      France decided at that point to wage an all-out war. Led by General (later Marshal) Thomas-Robert Bugeaud (Bugeaud, Thomas-Robert, duke d'Isly, marquis de la Piconnerie), the campaign of conquest eventually brought one-third of the total French army strength (more than 100,000 troops) to Algeria. The new military campaign and the initial onslaught caused widespread devastation to the Algerians and to their crops and livestock. Abdelkader's hit-and-run tactics failed, and he was forced to surrender in 1847. He was exiled to France but later was permitted to settle with his family in Damascus, Syria, where he and his followers saved the lives of many Christians during the 1860 massacres. Respected even by his opponents as the founder of the modern Algerian state, Abdelkader became, and has remained, the personification of Algerian national resistance to foreign domination.

      Abdelkader's defeat marked the end of what might be called resistance on a national scale, but smaller French operations continued, such as the occupation of the Saharan oases (Zaatcha in 1849, Nara in 1850, and Ouargla in 1852). The eastern Kabylia region was subdued only in 1857, while the final major Kabylia uprising of Muḥammad al-Muqrānī was suppressed in 1871. The Saharan regions of Touat and Gourara, which were at that time Moroccan spheres of influence, were occupied in 1900; the Tindouf area, previously regarded as Moroccan rather than Algerian, became part of Algeria only after the French occupation of the Anti-Atlas in 1934.

Colonial rule (colonialism, Western)

      The manner in which French rule was established in Algeria during the years 1830–47 laid the groundwork for a pattern of rule that French Algeria would maintain until independence. It was characterized by a tradition of violence and mutual incomprehension between the rulers and the ruled; the French politician and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (Tocqueville, Alexis de) wrote that colonization had made Muslim society more barbaric than it was before the French arrived. There was a relative absence of well-established native mediators between the French rulers and the mass population, and an ever-growing French settler population (the colons, also known as pieds noirs) demanded the privileges of a ruling minority in the name of French democracy. When Algeria eventually became a part of France juridically, that only added to the power of the colons, who sent delegates to the French parliament. They accounted for roughly one-tenth of the total population from the late 19th century until the end of French rule.

      Settler domination of Algeria was not secured, however, until the fall of Napoleon III in 1870 and the rise of the Third Republic in France. Until then Algeria remained largely under military administration, and the governor-general of Algeria was almost invariably a military officer until the 1880s. Most Algerians—excluding the colons—were subject to rule by military officers organized into Arab Bureaus, whose members were officers with an intimate knowledge of local affairs and of the language of the people but with no direct financial interest in the colony. The officers, therefore, often sympathized with the outlook of the people they administered rather than with the demands of the European colonists. The paradox of French Algeria was that despotic and military rule offered the native Algerians a better situation than did civilian and democratic government.

      A large-scale program of confiscating cultivable land, after resistance had been crushed, made colonization possible. Settler colonization was of mixed European origin—mainly Spanish in and around Oran and French, Italian, and Maltese in the centre and east. The presence of the non-French settlers was officially regarded with alarm for quite a while, but the influence of French education, the Muslim environment, and the Algerian climate eventually created in the non-French a European-Algerian subnational sentiment. This would probably have resulted, in time, in a movement to create an independent state if Algeria had been situated farther away from Paris and if the settlers had not feared the potential strength of the Muslim majority.

      After the overthrow of Louis-Philippe's regime in 1848, the settlers succeeded in having the territory declared French; the former Turkish provinces were converted into departments on the French model, while colonization progressed with renewed energy. With the establishment of the French Second Empire in 1852, responsibility for Algeria was transferred from Algiers to a minister in Paris, but the emperor, Napoleon III, soon reversed this disposition. While expressing the hope that an increased number of settlers would forever keep Algeria French, he also declared that France's first duty was to the three million Arabs. He declared, with considerable accuracy, that Algeria was “not a French province but an Arab country, a European colony, and a French camp.” This attitude aroused certain hopes among Algerians, but they were destroyed by the emperor's downfall in 1870. After France's defeat in the Franco-German War, settlers felt they could finally gain more land. Spurred on by this and by years of droughts and famines, Algerians united in 1871 under Muḥammad al-Muqrānī in the last major Kabylia uprising. Its brutal suppression by French forces was followed by the appropriation of another large segment of territory, which provided land for European refugees from Alsace. Much land was also acquired by the French through loopholes in laws originally designed to protect tribal property. Notable among these is the sénatus-consulte of 1863, which broke up tribal lands and allowed settlers to acquire vast areas formerly secured under tribal law. Following the loss of this territory, Algerian peasants moved to marginal lands and in the vicinity of forests; their presence in these areas set in motion the widespread environmental degradation that has affected Algeria since then.

      It is difficult to gauge in human terms the losses suffered by Algerians during the early years of the French occupation. Estimates of the number of those dead from disease and starvation and as a direct result of warfare during the early years of colonization vary considerably, but the most reliable ones indicate that the native population of Algeria fell by nearly one-third in the years between the French invasion and the end of fighting in the mid-1870s.

      Gradually the European population established nearly total political, economic, and social domination over the country and its native inhabitants. At the same time, new lines of communication, hospitals and medical services, and educational facilities became more widely available to Europeans, though they were dispensed to a limited extent—and in the French language—to Algerians. Settlers owned most Western dwellings, Western-style farms, businesses, and workshops. Only primary education was available to Algerians, and only in towns and cities, and there were limited prospects for higher education. Because employment was concentrated mainly in urban settlements, underemployment and chronic unemployment disproportionately affected Muslims, who lived mostly in rural and semirural areas.

      For the Algerians service in the French army and in French factories during World War I was an eye-opening experience. Some 200,000 fought for France during the war, and more than one-third of the male Algerians between the ages of 20 and 40 resided in France during that time. When peace returned, some 70,000 Algerians (human migration) remained in France and, by living frugally, were able to support many thousands of their relatives in Algeria.

Nationalist (nationalism) movements

      Algerian nationalism developed out of the efforts of three different groups. The first consisted of Algerians who had gained access to French education and earned their living in the French sector. Often called assimilationists, they pursued gradualist, reformist tactics, shunned illegal actions, and were prepared to consider permanent union with France if the rights of Frenchmen could be extended to native Algerians. This group, originating from the period before World War I, was loosely organized under the name Young Algerians and included (in the 1920s) Khaled Ben Hachemi (“Emir Khaled”), who was the grandson of Abdelkader, and (in the 1930s) Ferhat Abbas (Abbas, Ferhat), who later became the first premier of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.

      The second group consisted of Muslim reformers who were inspired by the religious Salafī movement founded in the late 19th century in Egypt by Sheikh Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Abduh, Muḥammadʿ). The Association of Algerian Muslim ʿUlamāʾ (Algerian Muslim Ulama, Association of) (Association des Uléma Musulmans Algériens; AUMA) was organized in 1931 under the leadership of Sheikh ʿAbd al-Hamid Ben Badis. This group was not a political party, but it fostered a strong sense of Muslim Algerian nationality among the Algerian masses.

      The third group was more proletarian and radical. It was organized among Algerian workers in France in the 1920s under the leadership of Ahmed Messali Hadj (Messali Hadj, Ahmed) and later gained wide support in Algeria. Preaching a nationalism without nuance, Messali Hadj was bound to appeal to Algerians, who fully recognized their deprivation. Messali Hadj's strongly nationalistic stance, or even the more muted position of Ben Badis, could have been checked by such gradualist reformers as Ferhat Abbas if only they had been able to show that step-by-step decolonization was possible. Several efforts to liberalize the treatment of native Algerians, promoted by French reformist groups in collaboration with Algerian reformists in the first half of the 20th century, came too late to stem the radical tide.

      One such effort, the Blum-Viollette proposal (named for the French premier and the former governor-general of Algeria), was introduced during the Popular Front government in France (1936–37). It would have allowed a very small number of Algerians to obtain full French citizenship without forcing them to relinquish their right to be judged by Muslim law on matters of personal status (e.g., marriage, inheritance, divorce, and child custody). The proposal was, therefore, a potential breakthrough because this issue had been shrewdly exploited by the settler population, who understood that most Algerians did not want to abandon this right. The small number of Algerians who would have received full French citizenship—the educated, veterans of French military service, and other narrowly defined groups—could then have been gradually increased in later years. Settler opposition to the measure was so fierce, however, that the project was never even brought to a vote in the French Chamber of Deputies. Many Algerians began to feel that organized violence was the only option, since all peaceful means for resolving the problems of colonial rule for the majority of the population had been denied. The group that inherited this mission, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale; FLN), grew out of Messali Hadj's organization, later absorbing many adherents of the other two nationalist groups.

World War II and the movement for independence

      World War II brought with it the collapse of France and, in 1942, the Anglo-American occupation of North Africa. The occupation forces were to some extent automatically agents of emancipation; both Allied and Axis radio stations began to broadcast in Arabic, promising a new world for formerly subject peoples. The effect was further heightened by the June 1941 promise of emancipation for both Syria and Lebanon, given by the Free French and backed by the British authorities in the Middle East.

      Ferhat Abbas (Abbas, Ferhat) drafted an Algerian Manifesto in December 1942 for presentation to Allied as well as French authorities; it sought recognition of political autonomy for Algeria. General Charles de Gaulle (Gaulle, Charles de) declared a year later that France was under an obligation to the Muslims of North Africa because of the loyalty they had shown. French citizenship was extended to certain categories of Muslims three months later, but this did not go far enough to satisfy Algerian opinion. A display of Algerian nationalist flags at Sétif in May 1945 prompted French authorities to fire on demonstrators. An unorganized uprising ensued, in which 84 European settlers were massacred. The violence and suppression that followed resulted in the death of about 8,000 Muslims (according to French sources) or as many as 45,000 (according to Algerian sources). The main outcome of the massacres, however, went far beyond the human losses. They became the foundation for the Algerian War of Independence, which began nearly a decade later. The demonstrations were the last peaceful attempts by Algerians to seek their independence.

      The French National Assembly voted for a statute on Algeria on September 20, 1947, in which the country was defined as “a group of departments endowed with a civic personality, financial autonomy, and a special organization.” The statute created an Algerian assembly with two separate colleges of 60 members each, one representing some 1.5 million Europeans and the other Algeria's 9 million Muslims. After lengthy debates the statute was passed by a small majority. Muslims were finally considered full French citizens with the right to keep their personal Qurʾānic (Qurʾān) status and were granted the right to work in France without further formalities. Military territories in the south would be abolished, and Arabic would become the language of educational instruction at all levels.

      The law was poorly implemented, however, and the subsequent elections were widely held to have been manipulated to favour the French. Most of the reforms laid down by the statute were never enforced. In spite of this, Algeria remained quiet. The principal change had been the fact that some 350,000 Algerian workers—five times as many as in the post-World War I period—were able to establish themselves in France and remit money to Algeria.

The Algerian War of Independence

      Nationalist parties had existed for many years, but they became increasingly radical as they realized that their goals were not going to be achieved through peaceful means. Prior to World War II the Party of the Algerian People (Parti du Peuple Algérien) had been founded by Messali Hadj. The party was banned in the late 1930s and replaced in the mid-1940s by the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques; MTLD). A more radical paramilitary group, the Special Organization (Organization Spéciale; OS), was formed about the same time, but it was discovered by the colonial police in 1950, and many of its leaders were imprisoned. In 1954 a group of former OS members split from the MTLD and formed the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action (Comité Révolutionaire d'Unité et d'Action; CRUA). This organization, later to become the FLN, prepared for military action. The leading members of the CRUA became the so-called chefs historiques (“historical leaders”) of the Algerian War of Independence: Hocine Aït-Ahmed, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, Moustapha Ben Boulaid, Mohamed Boudiaf (Boudiaf, Muhammad), Mourad Didouche, Belkacem Krim, Mohamed Khider, Rabah Bitat, and Ahmed Ben Bella (Ben Bella, Ahmed). They organized and led several hundred men in the first armed confrontations.

      The war began on the night of October 31, 1954. The movement, led by the newly formed FLN, issued a leaflet stating that its aim was to restore a sovereign Algerian state. It advocated social democracy within an Islamic framework and equal citizenship for any resident in Algeria. A preamble recognized that Algeria had fallen behind other Arab states in social and national emancipation but claimed this could be remedied by a difficult and prolonged struggle. Two weapons would be used: guerrilla warfare at home and diplomatic activity abroad, particularly at the United Nations (UN).

      Though the first armed assault—which occurred in the region of Batna and the Aurès—was ineffective militarily, it led to the arrest of some 2,000 members of the MTLD who had not been supporters of the rebellion. The armed uprising soon intensified and spread, gradually affecting larger parts of the country, and some regions—notably the northeastern parts of Little Kabylia and parts of the Aurès Mountains—became guerrilla strongholds that were beyond French control. France became more involved in the conflict, drafting some two million conscripts over the course of the war. To counter the spread of the uprising, the French National Assembly declared a state of emergency, first over the affected provinces and later that year over the entire country. Jacques Soustelle (Soustelle, Jacques) arrived in Algiers as the new governor-general in February 1955, but the new plan he announced four months later once again proved to be ineffective.

      A decisive turn in the war took place in August 1955 when a widespread armed outbreak in Skikda, north of the Constantine region, led to the killing of nearly 100 Europeans and Muslim officials. Countermeasures by both the French army and settlers claimed the lives of somewhere between 1,200 (according to French sources) and 12,000 (according to Algerian sources) Algerians.

      The electoral victory in January 1956 of the Republican Front in France and the premiership of Guy Mollet (Mollet, Guy) led to the appointment of the moderate and experienced General Georges Catroux (Catroux, Georges) as governor-general. When Mollet personally visited Algiers to prepare the way for the new governor-general, Europeans bombarded him with tomatoes. Yielding to this pressure, he allowed Catroux to withdraw and named in his place the pugnacious socialist Robert Lacoste as resident minister. Lacoste's policy was to rule Algeria through decree, and he gave the military exceptional powers. At the same time, he wanted to give the country a decentralized administrative structure that allowed some autonomy.

      A French army of 500,000 troops was sent to Algeria to counter the rebel strongholds in the more distant portions of the country, while the rebels collected money for their cause and took reprisals against fellow Muslims who would not cooperate with them. By the spring of 1956 a majority of previously noncommitted political leaders, such as Ferhat Abbas and Tawfiq al-Madani of the AUMA, had joined FLN leaders in Cairo, where the group had its headquarters.

      The first FLN congress took place in August–September 1956 in the Soummam valley between Great and Little Kabylia and brought together the FLN leadership in an appraisal of the war and its objectives. Algeria was divided into six autonomous zones (wilāyāt), each led by guerrilla commanders who later played key roles in the affairs of the country. The congress also produced a written platform on the aims and objectives of the war and set up the National Council for the Algerian Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne) and the Committee of Coordination and Enforcement (Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution), the latter acting as the executive branch of the FLN.

      Externally, the major event of 1956 was the French decision to grant full independence to Morocco and Tunisia and to concentrate on retaining “French Algeria.” The Moroccan sultan and Premier Habib Bourguiba (Bourguiba, Habib) of Tunisia, hoping to find an acceptable solution to the Algerian problem, prepared to hold a meeting in Tunis with some important Algerian leaders (including Ben Bella, Boudiaf, Khider, and Aït-Ahmed) who had been guests of the sultan in Rabat. French intelligence officers, however, forced the plane that had been chartered by the Moroccan government to land in Oran instead of Tunis. The Algerian leaders were then arrested and confined in prison in France for the rest of the war. This act hardened the resolve of the rest of the Algerian leadership to keep fighting and provoked an attack on Meknès, Morocco, that cost the lives of 40 French settlers before the Moroccan government could restore order.

      Beginning in 1956 and continuing until the summer of the following year, the FLN attempted to paralyze the administration of Algiers through what has come to be known as the Battle of Algiers. Attacks by the FLN against both military and civilian European targets were countered by paratroopers led by General Jacques Massu. To stem the tide of FLN attacks, the French military resorted to the torture and summary execution of hundreds of suspects. The entire leadership of the FLN was eventually eliminated or forced to flee.

      The French also cut Algeria off from independent Tunisia and Morocco by erecting barbed-wire fences that were illuminated at night by searchlights. This separated the Algerian resistance bands within the country from some 30,000 armed Algerians who occupied positions between the fortified fences and the actual frontiers of Tunisia and Morocco, from which they drew supplies. These troops had the advantage, however, of a friendly people and sympathetic government as a base; and, though they could not penetrate into Algeria proper, they could harass the French line.

      Provoked by these assaults, in February 1958 the French air force bombed the Tunisian frontier village of Sāqiyat Sīdī Yūsuf; a number of civilians were killed, including children from the local school. This led to an Anglo-American mediation mission, which negotiated the withdrawal of French troops from various districts of Tunisia and their sequestration at a naval base in the Tunisian town of Bizerte.

      The Maghrib Unity Congress was held at Tangier in April under the auspices of the Moroccan and Tunisian nationalist parties and the Algerian FLN, and it recommended the establishment of an Algerian government-in-exile and a permanent secretariat to promote Maghrib unity. Five months later the FLN formed the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisionel de la République Algérienne; GPRA), initially headed by Ferhat Abbas.

      By then, however, conditions had been radically changed by events in May 1958; these began as a typical settler uprising—thousands of them attacked the offices of the governor-general and, with the tacit approval of the army officers, called for the integration of Algeria with France and for the return of de Gaulle (Gaulle, Charles de) to power. The following month de Gaulle, in his capacity as prime minister, visited Algiers amid scenes of great enthusiasm. He granted all Muslims the full rights of French citizenship, and on October 30, while in Constantine, he announced a plan to provide adequate schools and medical services for the Algerian population, to create employment for them, and to introduce them into the higher ranks of the public services.

      He went even farther the following September when, in anticipation of the opening of the UN General Assembly, he publicly declared that the Algerians had the right to determine their own future. The settler population responded by staging a fresh uprising in January 1960, but it collapsed after nine days from lack of military support. A year later, however, as the prospect of negotiations with the GPRA became more probable, there was another uprising, this time organized by four generals, of whom two—Raoul Salan and Maurice Challe—had previously been commanders in chief in Algeria. De Gaulle remained unshaken, and the rising, lacking support from the army, collapsed after only three days.

      Negotiations were opened in France with representatives of the GPRA in May 1961. This body had long been recognized by the Arab and communist states, from which it received aid, though it had never been able to establish itself on Algerian soil. Negotiations were broken off in July, after which Abbas was replaced as premier by the much younger Benyoussef Ben Khedda. Settler opposition was meanwhile coalesced around a body calling itself the Secret Army Organization (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète; OAS), which began to employ random acts of terror in an effort to disrupt peace negotiations.

      Negotiations resumed the following March, and an agreement was finally reached. Algeria would become independent, provided only that a referendum, to be held in Algeria by a provisional government, confirmed the desire for it. If approved, French aid would continue, and Europeans could depart, remain as foreigners, or take Algerian citizenship. This announcement produced a violent outburst of terrorism, but in May it subsided as it became obvious that such actions were futile. A referendum held in Algeria in July 1962 recorded some 6,000,000 votes in favour of independence and only 16,000 against. After three days of continuous Algerian rejoicing, the GPRA entered Algiers in triumph as many Europeans prepared to depart.

Independent Algeria

From Ben Bella (Ben Bella, Ahmed) to Boumedienne

      The human cost of the war remains unknown, particularly on the Algerian side. Some estimates put French military losses at 27,000 killed and civilian losses at 5,000 to 6,000. French sources suggest that casualties among Algerians totaled between 300,000 and 500,000, while Algerian sources claim as many as 1,500,000.

      Scores of villages were destroyed; forests were widely damaged; and some 2,000,000 inhabitants were moved to new settlements. The Europeans who left Algeria at the time of independence constituted the great majority of senior administrators and managerial and technical experts, yet many public services remained functional; only some 10,000 French teachers remained, often in isolated posts. With the loss of management on farms and in factories, however, production fell, while unemployment and underemployment reached extreme levels. The mass exodus of the French left the new government with vast abandoned lands. These and the remaining French estates (all French land had been nationalized by 1963) were turned into state farms run by worker committees, which began to produce export crops, notably wine.

      Political life was particularly contentious following independence. The leadership of Ben Khedda, the president of the GPRA, was upset by the release from French custody of five GPRA leaders, including Ben Bella. Soon the heads of the provisional government—and, more decisively, the army commanders—split. Houari Boumedienne (Boumedienne, Houari) and his powerful frontier army sided with Ben Bella, who had formed the Political Bureau to challenge the power of the GPRA. Other dominant figures sided with Ben Khedda, while the commanders of the internal guerrillas, who had led the war, opposed all external factions, both military and civilian. Mounting tension and localized military clashes threatened an all-out civil war. The spontaneous demonstrations of a population weary of nearly eight years of war with France interceded between the military factions and saved the country from sliding into more warfare. Through delicate political maneuvering, Ben Bella and the Political Bureau were able to draw up the list of candidates for the National People's Assembly, which was ratified in September 1962 by an overwhelming majority of the electorate. The new assembly asked Ben Bella to form the nation's first government.

      With the military support of Boumedienne, Ben Bella asserted his power, fighting a localized armed rebellion led by fellow rebel leader Aït-Ahmed and Colonel Mohand ou el-Hadj in Great Kabylia. Because Ben Bella's personal style of government and his reckless promises of support for revolutionary movements were not conducive to orderly administration, there were also serious divisions within the ruling group. Following vicious political infighting in April 1963, Political Bureau member and FLN secretary-general Khider left the country, taking a large amount of party funds with him. He was assassinated in Madrid several years later. Other dissident leaders were also gradually eliminated, and this left control securely in the hands of Ben Bella and the army commander Boumedienne. Ben Bella's apparent plan to remove Boumedienne and his supporters was foiled in June 1965 when Boumedienne and the army moved first. Ben Bella's erratic political style and poor administrative record made his removal acceptable to Algerians, but the Boumedienne regime began with little popular support.

      In the following years Boumedienne moved undramatically but effectively to consolidate his power, with army loyalty remaining the basic element. Efforts to reorganize the FLN met with some success. Boumedienne's cautious and deliberate approach was apparent in constitutional developments as communal elections were held in 1967 and provincial elections in 1969. Elections for the National People's Assembly, however, did not first take place until 1977.

      Socialism was pursued diligently under Boumedienne, who launched an agrarian reform in 1971 aimed at breaking up large privately owned farms and redistributing state-held lands to landless peasants organized in cooperatives. The agrarian reform also aimed at grouping peasants in “socialist villages,” where they could benefit from modern amenities. The state also exerted complete control over the economy and the country's resources. French petroleum and natural gas interests were nationalized in 1971, and the vast revenues derived from oil sales abroad, especially after the rise in prices in 1973 and thereafter, financed an ambitious industrialization program. Each branch of industry was placed under the control of a state corporation; Société Nationale de Transport et de Commercialisation des Hydrocarbures (Sonatrach), the oil corporation, was the most powerful. Boumedienne's regime hid serious weaknesses, however, notably a one-party system dominated by the FLN that tolerated no dissent.

Bendjedid's move toward democracy

      Following Boumedienne's death in December 1978, there was a short period of indecisiveness about who should succeed him. The army and the FLN both supported Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, another former guerrilla officer, who was confirmed as his replacement in a referendum in February 1979.

      Government control of the economy loosened under Bendjedid. State corporations were restructured into smaller companies, and private enterprise was promoted through a series of new regulations and financial incentives. Power was decentralized and gradually passed to elected local assemblies. The press received greater freedom, and restrictions on Algerians traveling abroad were also relaxed. The main foundations of the socialist ideology were increasingly challenged, and by the mid-1980s the state-controlled press was even being encouraged to refute the socialist line.

      Bendjedid's rule, however, was marked by serious setbacks. The revolution in Iran in 1979 triggered a continued rise in Islamic militancy, which sometimes broke out as rioting, and the war in Afghanistan spurred greater militant mobilization and direct action. In Algeria the breakdown of the socialist system contributed even further to the rise of Islamists. A sharp fall in petroleum prices in the mid-1980s seriously affected the country's financial capabilities and opened questions regarding the petroleum-based industrialization program conducted under Boumedienne. The regime found itself without the resources it had relied on to pay the wages of its labour force. Basic foods became difficult to find, and social needs—housing in particular—could no longer be fulfilled.

      Foreign debt rose tremendously in 1988, and riots continued. Unemployment rates exceeded one-fifth; unofficial figures reported much-higher numbers. Agriculture, already crippled by heavy state interference and bureaucracy, was hit by one of the worst droughts in the country's history. Water shortages were frequent and crippled urban life and industry. This was further compounded by high rates of population growth, which created more demand for social services and food. Public resentment rose, as did awareness of the corruption that existed at all levels in the government.

      Late in the year, serious riots broke out in Algiers, Annaba, and Oran. Bendjedid, taking advantage of the discontent, moved to liberalize the system and challenge the FLN (National Liberation Front) political monopoly. A new constitution, approved in February 1989, dropped all references to socialism, removed the one-party state, and initiated political plurality. The emergence of a myriad of parties mainly benefited the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut; FIS). The FIS built on the population's resentment of the incompetence and corruption of the regime and captured clear majorities in the provincial and municipal councils in 1990. Other less-radical Islamic parties never matched the popularity of the FIS.

Civil war: the Islamists (Islāmic world) versus the army

      Relations between the Islamists and the army remained strained. The first round of balloting for the National People's Assembly, held in December 1991, produced a striking victory for the FIS, which won 188 seats, just 28 short of a simple majority and 99 short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution. There seemed little doubt that the FIS would achieve a majority in the second ballot round, scheduled for January 1992. Instead Bendjedid resigned, and the next day the army intervened to cancel the elections. Mohamed Boudiaf, another former chef historique, was sworn in as president of a ruling Supreme State Council. Boudiaf, who was assassinated in June in Annaba, was succeeded by Ali Kafi. He presided over a country descending into civil war, where murder had already claimed some 1,000 lives, generally civilians but also journalists and past figures of the regime.

      Retired general Liamine Zeroual succeeded Kafi in January 1994, but few improvements occurred, and countless more civilians were slaughtered. Those initially implicated in the violence included illegal Islamic groups such as the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armé; GIA) and the Islamic Salvation Army (Armée Islamique du Salut; AIS), but subsequent evidence indicated that much of the violence had been at the hands of elements within the state's security services. Zeroual attempted to legitimize his position by holding presidential elections in November 1995. The elections were to include candidates from all legalized parties, but several of them boycotted the proceedings. Because the FIS had been banned, the results gave Zeroual more than three-fifths of the vote, followed by Mahfoud Nahnah, the moderate Islamist leader of Ḥamās (not connected with the Palestinian organization of the same name), with about one-fourth. The new prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, soon reaffirmed his government's commitment to further privatization and liberalization of the economy.

      A referendum was held in November 1996 to amend the 1989 constitution. The new document was approved by a majority of the voters, although claims of manipulation were made by the opposition parties. The main change, however, took place in early 1997 when a new government party, the National Democratic Rally (Rassemblement National et Démocratique; RND), was formed. Benefiting from unlimited government support, including the use of official buildings and funds, the RND quickly gained power. In the June elections for the National People's Assembly, the RND won 156 out of 380 seats, and it continued its success in regional and municipal elections, where it won more than half the seats. In December elections for seats in the Council of the Nation, the new upper chamber, the RND again won the majority.

      Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the former foreign minister under Boumedienne, ran for president unopposed in the elections of April 1999, as opposition candidates withdrew after hearing rumours that the elections were rigged. Bouteflika assured the international community that the elections were legitimate and vowed to work with other political parties. Violence ensued, however, and the number of killed, missing, and injured continued to rise. From the mid-1990s several discussions were held between the government and Ḥamās, the FIS, the GIA, and the AIS, among other parties, in order to clear up differences between the groups. At the outset of the 21st century, however, the situation remained unresolved. By that time the civil war, which had begun in 1992, had claimed the lives of some 100,000 civilians and numerous political figures.

Foreign relations

      Since independence Algeria's foreign policy has been revolutionary in word but pragmatic in deed. The country was a haven for Third World guerrilla and revolutionary movements in its early years, and, while some militancy persists, Bendjedid and subsequent leaders have moved away from that stance. Throughout the 1960s and '70s Algeria supported North Vietnam, and from 1975 it supported Vietnam, decolonization in Africa, and the abolition of apartheid in South Africa. The question of Palestine remained a central preoccupation, equal after 1975 with the Western Sahara issue. Yet, while Algeria continued to support the Palestine Liberation Organization, it also took a decisive role in mediating the release of U.S. hostages in Iran in 1981. Throughout the Cold War, Algeria sought to play the leading role in establishing a Third World alternative that was not aligned to the Eastern or Western bloc. The country also tried to obtain high prices for its petroleum within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which it joined in 1969, but more often found itself at odds with other members.

      Relations with neighbouring Morocco have often been strained. A short border war that broke out in the fall of 1963 (the area in dispute being rich in deposits of iron ore) was resolved through the intervention of the Organization of African Unity. A rapprochement achieved in 1969–70 broke down over Morocco's efforts to absorb Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara), as Algeria supported the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario (Polisario Front)) in resisting Morocco. The strained relations, which kept the two countries on the brink of an all-out war, were connected in part to the somewhat revolutionary leanings of Boumedienne and his antipathy for the Moroccan monarchy. Support for the Polisario continued under Bendjedid, but problems between the two countries gradually eased. Bendjedid and King Hassan II of Morocco met to discuss a possible resolution for the Western Sahara issue in May 1987, and diplomatic relations were restored the following year. Friction reemerged, however, notably in 1993 when Hassan stated that it would have been better if the FIS had been allowed to gain power in Algeria. Tensions over the Western Sahara intensified in the mid-1990s and remained an unresolved issue at the start of the 21st century.

      The Arab Maghrib Union (AMU), established in 1989, not only improved relations between the Maghrib states—Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia—but also underscored the need for concerted policies. The AMU sought to bring the countries closer together by creating projects of shared interests. Initially there was some sense of enthusiasm regarding a project that included road and railway networks between these states. Tensions between member states, however, have substantially increased, and shared interest in carrying out joint projects has faltered.

      Relations with France have frequently been contentious. Disputes developed soon after independence over the Algerian expropriation of abandoned French property (1963) and its nationalization of French petroleum interests (1971). There were also problems with the Algerian migrants (human migration) living and working in France, who consistently remained at the bottom of the economic scale and were subject to ethnic prejudice. After Algerian independence France banned the importation of Algerian wine, deeming it competitive with its own production. In response Boumedienne uprooted and removed grapevines on large stretches of land. Throughout the 1980s the renegotiation of natural gas prices constituted another source of disagreement between the two countries, although Algeria obtained some concessions. In the 1990s the volatile political situation and violence in Algeria greatly affected the French, who suffered more casualties than any other nationality in the country. This terror reached Paris in the mid-1990s when Algerians set off a number of bombs in the city. Economic ties, however, have remained basically intact and include reciprocal investment agreements. Trade between Algeria and other Western and Southeast Asian countries has grown substantially and has reduced France's importance as a trading partner.

      As the role of the European Union (EU) widens, so does the link between Algeria and the member states in that organization. The Barcelona Conference initiative in November 1995 established a Euro-Mediterranean partnership, bringing together the EU and the countries bordering the Mediterranean in North Africa (excluding Libya). The partnership sought to achieve political stability in the region, create a zone of shared prosperity through economic and financial cooperation, and establish a free-trade zone early in the 21st century. There have also been specific European financial efforts directed toward Algeria to fund industrial restructuring and privatization.

      Algeria initially was reluctant to accept the intervention of the UN in 1997 to help deal with the civilian massacres. But eventually a high-level UN delegation was sent to Algeria in July 1998 to meet with various parties in an effort to put a halt to the violence, which had declined enough by mid-2000 that Algeria's borders with Tunisia and Morocco could be reopened.

L. Carl Brown Salah Zaimeche

Additional Reading

Geography

Several comprehensive general works are available, including Harold D. Nelson (ed.), Algeria: A Country Study, 4th ed. (1985); John P. Entelis, Algeria: The Revolution Institutionalized (1986); John P. Entelis and Phillip C. Naylor (eds.), State and Society in Algeria (1992); and Rachid Tlemcani, State and Revolution in Algeria (1986). Also useful is the chapter on Algeria in The Middle East and North Africa (annual). Important French-language studies include Marc Coté, L'Algérie: espace et société (1996); Louis Blin, L'Algérie du Sahara au Sahel (1990); and George Mutin and François Durand-Dastès, Afrique du Nord, Moyen-Orient, Monde indien (1995). Population and settlement matters are covered in Keith Sutton and M. Nacer, “Population Changes in Algeria, 1977–87,” Geography, 75(4):335–347 (October 1990); Keith Sutton, “Demographic Transition in the Maghreb,” Geography, 84(2):111–118 (April 1999), and “The Influence of Military Policy on Algerian Rural Settlement,” Geographical Review, 71(4):379–394 (October 1981); and Richard I. Lawless and Gerald H. Blake, Tlemcen: Continuity and Change in an Algerian Islamic Town (1976). Ethnographic introductions include Jeremy Keenan, The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar (1977); and Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians (1962; originally published in French, 1958). Economic development is covered in Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987: Colonial Upheavals and Post-Independence Development (1988). Agricultural change is covered by Karen Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria (1985); and industrial development in M. Bennoune, “The Industrialisation of Algeria: An Overview,” in Halim Barakat (ed.), Contemporary North Africa (1985), pp. 178–213. David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (1990), considers colonial politics. Modern problems are discussed in Martin Stone, The Agony of Algeria (1997). An extensive annotated bibliography on Algeria is found in Richard I. Lawless (compiler), Algeria, rev. ed. (1995).Keith Sutton

History

Charles-Robert Ageron, Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present, trans. from French and ed. by Michael Brett (1989, reissued 1991), provides an overall treatment from before 1830 to independence. Other histories of the country include Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine (1964); and Charles André Julien, La Conquête et les débuts de la colonisation, 3rd ed. (1986), vol. 1 in the series Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, by far the best authority on the history of Algeria, extremely rich in details and unique accounts of the French invasion and the making of French Algeria. Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d'Algérie 1954–1962 (1993), and Histoire de l'Algérie depuis l'indépendence (1994), give accounts of Algerian history from a French perspective. Louis Blin, L'Algérie du Sahara au Sahel (1990), provides the most informative work on the history of the conquest of the Sahara, the successive uprisings, and the changing patterns of nomad and Saharan life. Camille Lacoste and Yves Lacoste (eds.), L'État du Maghreb (1991), offers a useful general outline on the French presence in Algeria. A good source for Algeria's history toward the end of the Turkish era and during the first 70 years of French colonization is Magali Morsy, North Africa, 1800–1900 (1984).Raphael Danziger, Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians: Resistance to the French and Internal Consolidation (1977), is an excellent work on the subject, with a thorough bibliography. David C. Gordon, The Passing of French Algeria (1966), emphasizes ideologies. Mostefa Lacheraf, L'Algérie: nation et société, 2nd ed. (1978), is a revisionist work by a leading ideologue of the FLN. Charles André Julien, L'Afrique du Nord en marche, 3rd ed. (1972), provides a good charting of the rise of militancy in North Africa that eventually led to Algerian independence. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962, rev. ed. (1987), is a perceptive, interpretive history of those years. Henri Alleg et al., La Guerre d'Algérie, 3 vol. (1981, reissued 1986), is a leftist perspective on the relations and wars between France and Algeria and is particularly informative on the real causes of the French invasion and of the conduct of the French army. Yves Courrière, La Guerre d'Algérie, 4 vol. (1968–71, reissued 4 vol. in 2, 1990), offers an excellent charting of the Algerian War of Independence, with vol. 1 in particular, “Les Fils de la Toussaint,” giving the best account on the origins and preparations of the 1954 uprising and those who conducted it. Alain-Gérard Slama, La Guerre d'Algérie (1996), provides original and unique photographic evidence of the war.Salah Zaimeche

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