ALGIERS IN RAMADAN 2007: RICH BUT NOT HEALTHY

C O N F I D E N T I A L ALGIERS 001344 SIPDIS SIPDIS EB FOR PDAS DIBBLE E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/17/2027 TAGS: PGOV PINS ECON AG SUBJECT: ALGIERS IN RAMADAN 2007: RICH BUT NOT HEALTHY Classified By: Ambassador Robert S. Ford, reason 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary: Normally Ramadan is a festive time for Muslim communities but Algiers, at least, is grumpy. There is a prevailing sense that government economic policy is adrift and unable to cope even with relatively simple issues like food supplies. Bigger issues like pervasive unemployment are so serious that in this country with huge foreign exchange reserves dozens of young Algerians are taking to small boats every weekin a desperate bid to float across the Mediterranean and find low-paying jobs in Europe. This week criticism of the government ratcheted up a notch with the best-selling newspaper running a front-page story highlighting the corruption of some of President Bouteflika's immediate family and top aides (ref A). The President's brother fired back immediately in a newspaper he quietly finances, accusing critics of the President of stirring up regional grievances under cover of attacking Bouteflika's national reconciliation policies. Behind the scenes the question of presidential succession still looms even if Bouteflika appears to be somewhat healthier. Moreover, the key job of number two in the intelligence service remains unfilled and reportedly the subject of disagreement among top officials. We do not sense that the Algerian government is in meltdown or that its stability is at immediate risk. We do sense that Algeria is stagnating and if that continues it will provoke real stability problems over the long term. End Summary. -------------- RAMADAN: HARDER TO LAY OUT A BIG TABLE -------------- ¶2. (C) Ramadan is nominally a time for introspection and making amends with fellow Muslims, but we find instead that Algerian media, political and business contacts mostly are uneasy about the sense of drift in economics and governance. Newspapers highlighted that Morocco, not Algeria, won the USD 1 billion Renault car plant announced last week. Boualim M'Rakchi, the head of the Algerian Business Owners Confederation (in French, CAP) grumped to us on September 12 that Algeria was the biggest single market for Renault vehicles in Africa and the plant should have come here. The French Ambassador told us September 17 that the Algerian authorities had passed word to him about their unhappiness, but he noted, Algeria with its cumbersome regulations was never in the running. (India and Romania were Morocco's competition, he said.) ¶3. (U) Even more than the huge Renault plant, potatoes symbolize public frustration with the Algerian government. Local prices have soared; a report in el-Watan newspaper September 13 quoted a price of DA 100 per kilo (about USD 0.75 per pound) in one western Algeria city, a record. There are also public complaints about rising prices for flour, bread and milk. The prime minister has blamed speculating wholesalers for the leap in potato prices, while the agriculture and commerce ministers are blaming world markets. A cartoon in the September 17 Le Soir d'Algerie compared a carton of potatoes to a barrel of oil. A September 17 cartoon in leading Arabic daily el-Khabr showed an Algerian consumer, patches on his pants, trussed up like a sheep in front of the butcher's block while Prime Minister Belkhadem urged him to be strong. Chawki Amari, the wicked satirist in el-Watan, observed on September 15 that the government will blame everyone but itself. Food prices in Ramadan are especially sensitive since the culture calls for big meals after a long day of fasting. A small NGO leader told Poloff September 18 that potato prices were three times higher than they were only a few years ago and that the 2007 Ramadan period was financially very difficult for Algerians. He noted that many people go into debt during Ramadan in order to keep up appearances in front of family and neighbors. -------------- GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC POLICY A MESS -------------- ¶4. (C) Over dinner with Ambassador September 12, Samir Ait-Awdia (please protect),an Algerian businessman in the potato processing business, blamed the Algerian government for higher potato prices. He recalled that in 2006 the agriculture ministry changed its specifications about which potato seeds could be imported, compelling importers to shift to a seed type not previously used in Algeria. Algerian farmers found the seed produced only small harvests in the Algerian soil and so sold off even the potatoes used as seed crop for 2007. The result was a drastic drop in potato production this year and a boost in prices. The agriculture ministry didn't consult any industry or farming associations before changing the import requirements. The businessman further recounted how earlier this summer his company asked to rent a plot of land for which it would provide equipment, seeds and workers to grow potatoes. Even though the company was willing to provide all the investment and most of the annual potato harvest to the agriculture ministry, the officials rejected the project because they had never seen such an arrangement. Ait Awdia, joined at the table by former Commerce Minister Bakhti Belaid (please protect) and Ahmed Tibbaoui (again, protect),another former senior government advisor now in real estate development, exclaimed that ultimately President Bouteflika bore the responsibility because he discouraged innovation and kept docile men like the current agriculture minister in place. (Tibbaoui and Belaid recounted at length stories of how Bouteflika 6-7 years ago was sarcastic with ministers who disagreed with him and would not listen to advice on economic issues.) -------------- BOAT PEOPLE ANOTHER SIGN OF THE MESS -------------- ¶5. (C) Another very visible symptom of Algeria's economic distress are the hundreds of young people seeking to flee the country in small boats to Spain, France and Italy, where they hope to find low-paying manual jobs under refugee status. During the second week of September, Italian and Algerian ships intercepted over 100 such "harraga," according to Algerian press reports. September 17 newspapers reported that the Tunisian Coast Guard had intercepted another three dozen young Algerians trying to float to Malta or Italy. As another sign of the desperate employment situation here, the senior management officer for British Petroleum told us September 11 that the company received over 3,000 applications when it advertised for 30 engineer positions earlier this summer. Meanwhile, nearly every week there are small, localized riots and demonstrations generated spontaneously over local grievances. For example, on September 16 there were sharp riots in a town outside Tlemcen when the police shot a young man to death in an apparent accident. Haithem Rabani (protect),an experienced Algerian journalist summed it up with Ambassador September 18: a very lucky few young Algerians -- maybe five percent he claimed -- can find work at a decent company; the rest can either try to flee to Europe, they can rot on the street corners of Algeria or they can join terrorist groups. -------------- WHAT TO DO ABOUT TERRORISM ? -------------- ¶6. (C) This journalist warned that we should not discount the ability of groups like Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to recruit, and many of our contacts sense that terrorism in Algeria is far from finished. President Bouteflika meanwhile appears determined to try to build a moderate center among Algerians. Rabani listened on live radio to Bouteflika's speech in Batna after the September 9 assassination attempt against him, and noted that the president urged moderates among both the Islamist camp and the secularist camp to come together. Government-controlled media hammer this message home. Islamist hardliner and former Islamic Salvation Front vice-president Ali Benhadj, arrested after denouncing the Algerian security forces' involvement in politics in an Arabic satellite station interview, was suddenly released from jail on September 13. Press reports claimed the police released him after receiving a phone call from an unidentified senior GoA official. Business and media contacts speculate that it was either the Presidency or the interior ministry that weighed in on behalf of Benhadj's release as a gesture to the Islamist camp that many of these contacts despise. -------------- ATTACKS ON BOUTEFLIKA GET PERSONAL -------------- ¶7. (C) Bouteflika is coming under public attack on multiple fronts, however. Newspapers with an adamant secularist editorial line, such as the best-selling Arabic-language el-Khabr and the French-language el-Watan and Liberte, bitterly criticized the release of Benhadj and warn constantly of the risks of treating the Islamist threat lightly. Even more interesting and unusual was the page-one banner article in the September 15 edition of el-Khabr headlining that Bouteflika's two brothers and the daughter of former top presidency counselor Larbi Belkhair profited from the corrupt Khalifa Bank. The article, citing sources close to an ongoing French judicial investigation of Khalifa, reported testimony by former bank officials that Bouteflika's lawyer brother Abdelghani received large sums of money from the bank gratis with which he bought an apartment in Paris. Bouteflika's brother Said allegedly received a credit card with no spending limit and for which he paid no bills. Belkhair's daughter allegedly received free funds from the bank that she used for import trade in Algeria. The article also reported allegations in the French court that the President's former protocol chief, now Algeria's ambassador in Rome, also took money from Khalifa. To make the attack all the sharper, el-Khabr retrieved a photo from the archives showing Bouteflika shaking hands with bank founder Mu'amin el-Khalifa years before the bank collapsed and left thousands of depositors without any of their funds. All of our journalist contacts this week were certain that el-Khabr would not have printed such an article without at least tacit encouragement and pledges of protection from Bouteflika opponents in the intelligence service. (See ref ¶B. For good measure, el-Watan newspaper on September 18 ran a prominent story about how the son of Algeria's ambassador in Paris -- himself known to be very close to Bouteflika -- had escaped justice in another story of bank fraud.) ¶8. (C) The Bouteflika camp's reply to the damning el-Khabr article was swift. The September 16 edition of Djzair News, an Arabic-language paper financed by Said Bouteflika, headlined that el-Khabr was seeking to inflame regional grievances within Algeria. The paper targeted an editorialist in el-Khabr who had complained that the President's national reconciliation policy was encouraging terrorists. In a pious tone, Djzair News said the columnist was trying to blame the President and his immediate team, all of whom come from western Algeria, of inciting Algerians from the eastern part of Algeria against the Bouteflika team. Journalist Haithem Rabbani and another long-time Algerian journalist, Mourad Ouabbas (protect),each told the Ambassador in meetings this week that the fireworks between el-Khabr and Djzair News reflect disagreements among the senior Algerian leadership about both the utility of maintaining the national reconciliation policy and also resentment among some Algerian officials of the large number of senior officials who hail, like Bouteflika, from Tlemcen in far western Algeria. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶9. (C) Algeria has a GDP of about USD 100 billion dollars, and its foreign exchange reserves now exceed USD 90 billion -- almost three years of import coverage. It therefore speaks volumes about the government's economic policy management that the prime minister has to call a special meeting of the cabinet to discuss potatoes. President Bouteflika's lavish feting of the visiting president of Malta -- while Algerians were worrying about Ramadan food prices and the possibility of more suicide attacks such as occurred in Batna and Dellys September 6-8 -- only fed observers' sense in the capital that the government is not addressing Algeria's serious core problems. ¶10. (C) Bouteflika has had a more active schedule so far this September than he did a year ago -- perhaps a sign that he is in better (if by no means perfect) health. That said, the succession issue continues to loom in the background. The French ambassador told the Ambassador September 18 that he was hearing that senior Algerian generals were talking quietly to potential successors to gauge how comfortable these contenders would be with the military. There is another important succession issue to settle: replacing intelligence service number two Smain Lamari, who died three weeks ago. Lamari played a huge role in internal Algerian politics, often helping Bouteflika with the national reconciliation process. Here, too, we hear hints of disagreement among the top leadership about which name to choose to replace Lamari. ¶11. (C) The preponderance of either western Algeria or eastern Algeria in top leadership jobs is an old but very sensitive issue in Algiers. Ten years ago under President Zeroual, the East could claim most senior officials. Before Zeroual, Presidents Chadli and Boumedienne and their aides were largely from the West. An issue nearly invisible to foreigners unfamiliar with Algeria, regionalism gnaws at national unity itself. We do not sense that the Algerian government is on the verge of a meltdown. Rather, it is stagnating even as high energy prices and foreign exchange reserves give the government options unimaginable ten years ago. Algeria is rich, the French ambassador concluded, but it is not healthy. FORD