UNDER THE TLEMCEN SUN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ALGIERS 001282 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/09/2018 TAGS: ECON PGOV EAGR MO CN AG SUBJECT: UNDER THE TLEMCEN SUN REF: A. ALGIERS 1267 (NOTAL) ¶B. ALGIERS 1232 (NOTAL) Classified By: DCM Thomas F. Daughton; reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: A fertile farming region that is home to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and a disproportionate number of his ministers and advisers, the western wilaya (province) of Tlemcen appears at first glance to be a step ahead of other Algerian cities in reviving its economy and education system. A closer look reveals that the shining new facilities built by Chinese workers with central government funding have failed to spark economic development and the GOA's lackluster agriculture promotion policies have failed to revitalize the agribusiness sector. The province's wali (governor) appears to spend more time reciting government talking points about the dangers of sharing a border with Morocco than on creating jobs and developing the impressive cultural sites that could attract European tourists. END SUMMARY. DONKEY COMMERCE -------------- ¶2. (U) At first glance, Tlemcen resembles a relatively prosperous, mid-size Moroccan town. The city's prominence during the 13th and 14th centuries has left it awash with Moorish architecture that, in most countries, would draw large crowds of tourists. Many of the people we met during a November 21-23 visit to Tlemcen cited active family ties across the closed border, which lies about 50 km away. Local businessmen told us that they longed to expand their customer base and trade with merchants in Morocco. Even the glitzy new conference center at the University of Tlemcen is decorated with Moorish tiles and plasterwork carved done by Moroccan craftsmen, as the art has long been lost in Algeria. ¶3. (C) Despite these cultural and familial ties, Tlemcen Wali Nourri Abdelwahab poked fun at Moroccans for their practice of bowing to their king. Abdelwahab, a career civil servant originally from the opposite end of the country near the Tunisian border, clearly sees the safeguarding of his wilaya's border with Morocco as one of his chief tasks. Other officials from the provincial government, while less eager to mouth the standard anti-Morocco rhetoric, did appear to share a real concern, voiced by many in Algiers, about the increase in drug trafficking across the border. The large and porous frontier is difficult to patrol and one official stated, "we often turn a blind eye to someone smuggling a crate of oranges." One time-tested method still used to smuggle goods is to tie the items to a riderless donkey that is then sent alone to the other side along a familiar path. In a modern twist, one local official told us, the donkeys are now often equipped with a cassette player and earphones that repeatedly blast the words "GO, GO, GO" in the donkey's ears. If caught by border police, the donkeys are simply released to return home and the smugglers escape unscathed. In contrast, highly profitable cannabis trafficking is reportedly reserved to humans in vehicles because, as the official remarked, "drugs are too valuable to be entrusted to an ass." MAY A THOUSAND FLOWERS BLOOM -------------- ¶4. (C) Perhaps the most dramatic change to Tlemcen in recent years has been the burgeoning of large-scale, Bouteflika-inspired infrastructure projects, now in various stages of completion. One official told us that the wali is overseeing the expenditure of USD 10 billion in infrastructure projects in the wilaya. Tlemcen's one-room airport is being replaced by a modern facility better able to handle the domestic traffic and direct flights from Paris. The picturesque nature preserve that dominates a bluff above the city has been overtaken by a Chinese-designed theme park complete with flashing neon lights, an artificial lake, and a cable car to ferry people up the hill from the town center. More visible still was the site of the University of Tlemcen's entirely new campus, where a large sign in Mandarin announces the project and red hammer and sickle flags dot the facility. During a tour of the site, the university's rector showed us the shantytown of cinderblock huts where the ALGIERS 00001282 002 OF 003 project's 300 Chinese laborers live. At least for the university project the work is a joint venture, with Chinese laborers doing the basic construction while Algerian masons do the finishing tilework to give the campus a peculiar Sino-Moorish appearance. ¶5. (C) The presence of the Chinese workers was not something our interlocutors viewed negatively, perhaps because the local population does seem to be genuinely benefiting from these new facilities, many of which are replacing dilapidated colonial-era buildings. Mohamed Barka, an economics professor at the University of Tlemcen, nonetheless noted that some of the laborers are not returning to China upon completion of their projects. He cited several cases in which a laborer converted to Islam, married a local woman and set up a small shop. Given the limited scale of settlement, this trend does not yet appear to have caused any backlash from the local community. The impact of Chinese goods on the local economy, however, is something noted by everyone from our driver and local bodyguards to academics. In the old market in the center of town, traditional clothing and local products have been almost entirely replaced by cheap Chinese manufactured goods that have successfully killed off the once thriving Tlemcen textile industry. ¶6. (C) As in the capital, Chinese activity in Tlemcen does not appear to be of the "hearts and minds" variety found in sub-Saharan Africa, but rather driven purely by prospects for economic gain by Chinese companies. The one example of cultural outreach we heard of was a scholarship program to send a handful of university students from Tlemcen to Beijing for post-graduate studies. LOCAL ECONOMY SUFFERS DESPITE GRAND PROJECTS -------------- ¶7. (C) In the shadow of these massive public projects (ref A),the socio-economic climate in Tlemcen appears stagnant and suffers from the same lack of dynamism found elsewhere in the country. Professor Barka explained that while the prominent University of Tlemcen graduates about 3000 students annually, only 500 find employment within a year of graduation. Those that do often move to larger urban areas or land a public sector job. For a region ripe for agricultural development and the creation of small and medium enterprises, Tlemcen displays a surprising lack of economic vibrancy beyond the flurry of construction. ¶8. (C) Sidi Mohamed Hamzaoui, president of the regional chamber of commerce, told us that the major problems facing small and medium enterprises are a lack of commercial financing, difficulties recruiting employees with technical and linguistic skills, and an antiquated, centralized government bureaucracy that neither assists in the creation of modern enterprises nor encourages regional specialization. Hamzaoui stated that every sizable company in Tlemcen has to have some sort of representation in Algiers to obtain necessary government approvals. He continued by saying that with its fertile agricultural lands and a modern port only 60km away, Tlemcen is well-placed to serve as a regional economic hub, with strong links to the European market. The centralized policies of the Algerian government, he complained, have prevented his organization from establishing a regional trade association that could put together the types of regional commercial diplomacy programs common in many European provinces and could even provide a basis for Maghreb economic integration (ref B). RESURRECTING THE GRAPES OF TLEMCEN... -------------- ¶9. (C) Although second to the Mascara region outside Oran, Tlemcen was a significant wine-producing region before Algeria's separation from France in 1962, but vine cultivation around Tlemcen has suffered dramatically since the late 1960s. The Algerian government has instituted a program to assist farmers in redeveloping the agricultural industry generally by providing equipment, financing and access to government-owned land. While the program has had only a marginal impact on the region's farming industry as a whole, the government's promotion of wine production has had slightly more success. The National Office for the ALGIERS 00001282 003 OF 003 Commercialization of Wine (French acronym, ONCV) is charged with both reinvigorating Algeria's wine production and spearheading its exportation to European consumers. ¶10. (U) In the wilaya of Tlemcen, there are currently 800 hectares of vine stock under cultivation, half of which have been newly planted in the past five years using technical assistance and land provided by the ONCV. These newer wineries are experimenting with chardonnay, merlot, syrah and cabernet sauvignon stock of Italian origin, with the goal of diversifying the grenache-dominated Algerian wine industry. The wineries recruit and train local farmers to work the fields and the annual harvest is an all-village affair. ¶11. (C) Once harvested, the grapes are pressed and the wine is matured and bottled at a cooperative in Tlemcen that has been operating since the mid-1930s. The model used by the ONCV has many positive aspects, including taking advantage of local expertise and labor and using organic methods and inexpensive but efficient irrigation systems. But the wineries have a long road ahead of them to regain a competitive place in the international market as the quality of wine produced varies greatly between bottles and the output per hectare remains much lower than the international norm. ONCV does not appear to have any interest in soliciting foreign investment in the wine industry, which would have a modernizing effect and raise the sophistication of the region's vinters. French actor Gerard Depardieu recently tried to create a co-op in the Tlemcen region amongst private vintners. The project, despite producing some excellent wine, failed and our ONCV interlocutors appeared pleased at its demise. ...WHILE CIVIL SOCIETY WITHERS ON THE VINE -------------- ¶12. (C) French-educated activist Khira Taleb, head of an NGO that assists women who are victims of domestic violence, explained that civil society has stagnated in Tlemcen as it has elsewhere in Algeria. She stated that the Ministry of the Interior has been no more forthcoming in granting legal status to new NGOs in Tlemcen than it has in Algiers. Taleb recalled that Tlemcen boasted a vibrant grass-roots movement after the end of terrorist violence of the 1990s. Interestingly, she claimed that the dynamism of current NGOs, both in Tlemcen and at the national level, has been largely sapped by the way the European Union has structured its small grants program. A decade ago, NGOs would solicit small grants directly from foreign donors. The EU decided in 2006, however, to funnel its assistance through the Ministry of Solidarity, thereby injecting a level of state control that limits the NGOs ability to operate independently. Taleb observed dejectedly, "the European Union has destroyed civil society in Tlemcen." ¶13. (C) When asked about social trends in Tlemcen, Taleb felt the region was following the national trend of creeping conservatism and/or Islamization. After returning from the hadj two years ago, for example, the wali had shut down the city's bars, taking advantage of a law allowing wilaya governments to control the sale of alcohol. Now there is just one store in the wine-producing region where alcohol is sold. Taleb also noted a marked increase in women wearing headscarves and said that, while she refuses to wear one, she now feels awkward in meetings where every other woman is covered. PEARCE