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
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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
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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
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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...
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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

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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
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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