Where the Demonstrators Wave Black Flags: Algeria, Part 1

Still the Algerian government is nervous. 30,000 security police sent out to surround 3,000 demonstrators suggest a high degree of state paranoia. While Egypt is key to the transport of oil through a pipeline and the Suez Canal and Tunisia has very little of the 'black gold', pretty much the entire Algerian export economy is based on crude oil and gas production. This helps explain the security police overkill presence, that along with this shaky regime's nervousness. While the government's claim that the current demonstrations are 'Berber organized' is exaggerated, no doubt the Amazigh are among those calling for reforms if not sweeping political changes in Algeria. Consisting of some 7 million of the country's 35 million inhabitants, the Amazigh have long suffered from cultural and linguistic discrimination; a result of the country's pronounced 'Arabization' campaign. So Algeria has been called by some, 'a country without a future'. The regime remains entrenched; the power behind the presidency remains the military, a privileged social strata that lives off the oil profits. Other than increasing oil and gas production, and implementing World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs, virtually no vision for the country's economic development exists, or hardly so. This situation has existed since the early 1980s when Algeria's crash industrialization program was revealed as an utter failure.