RIOTING IN WESTERN ALGERIA - THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ALGIERS 000490

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/30/2018
TAGS: PINS PGOV AG
SUBJECT: RIOTING IN WESTERN ALGERIA - THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN

REF: A. ALGIERS 197


B. ALGIERS 458

Classified By: Ambassador Robert S. Ford, reason 1.4(d)


1. (U) Algerian independent newspapers reported on April
28-29 that the city of Chlef, the capital of the province in
western Algeria with the same name, suffered from two days of
major rioting on April 27-28. According to these press
reports, the trial of a community activist who had been
fighting with the Chlef provincial governor set off the
rioting. Algerian newspapers reported that crowds numbering
in the thousands destroyed the Chlef main post office, the
local office of the Algerian External Trade Bank, the local
museum and the office of Algerie Telecomm, as well as burning
some automobiles and other privately owned buildings. Press
reports varied on the number of arrests, citing numbers
ranging from sixty to several hundred. April 29 newspapers
reported that the rioting had extended to the smaller towns
of Chittia, about twenty kilometers outside Chlef. The April
30 edition of el-Watan, which has done the best reporting,
said that rioting continued in Chittia on April 29.


2. (C) An experienced journalist with the Quotidien d'Oran
newspaper who is from Chlef told the Ambassador April 28 that
the rioting resulted from community frustrations with the
slowness of housing construction to relocate persons who lost
their homes in the 1980 earthquake in Chlef. The community
activist taken to court by the governor had been urging the
governor to expedite land grants or other approvals to enable
new housing construction. The activists was very vocal in
his public criticism and the governor responded with a
defamation case. The journalist said she had spoken to the
governor last year about the drawn-out housing crisis in
Chlef, and the governor had told her that he wanted to have a
large new development built but that land acquisition was
moving only slowly. The governor rejected the idea of simply
enabling people to build concrete structures in the
shantytowns where they now are living. In addition, the
journalist commented, President Bouteflika in 2007 had
promised each family that had lost its home in the 1980
earthquake one million Algerian dinars (about USD 150,000) to
build permanent structures, plus subsidized bank loans. Late
last year, she noted, the government rescinded that financing
without explanation, escalating tensions sharply. (The
community activist on trial for defamation had been lobbying
the GoA to restore the funding for those million dinar
grants, according to press reports.)


3. (U) The Chlef governor himself told el-Watan newspaper
April 28 that the rioting was simply the work of persons
seeking to use the housing problem for their own political
ends. He promised that the GoA was working on solving the
housing problem and he even pledged to meet the community
activist whom he had taken to court to try to find a
solution. (He also noted that the community activist's NGO
had never received Ministry of Interior approval and thus
does not exist.) His interview concluded with a plea that he
was not responsible for the problems.


4. (U) Algerian newspaper commentators focused on the Chlef
rioting on April 29. One columnist in Quotidien d'Oran noted
that such rioting is almost a daily event in one part of
Algeria or another. The rioting is a warning indicator that
Algerian young people are getting ever angrier and the GoA
seems not to know how to address that. A commentator in
Liberte newspaper observed that while a GoA-sponsored forum
in Algiers talked about "Democracy and Civil Society," in
Chlef the government has no dialog with civil society and
young people understand that only violence gets the
government's attention. A wag in el-Watan observed that
Algeria should establish a Minister for Rioting who could be
called out to calm rioters down with promises of money and
attend international conferences about rioting.


5. (C) Comment: Two weeks ago another city in western
Algeria, Gdyel, suffered two days of rioting with several
public buildings destroyed. The funerals of several Gdyel
young men who drowned in failed attempts to sail to Spain
instigated those disturbances, according to press reporting.
We do not sense that the Algerian government's stability is
at risk, although we watch such isolated acts of rioting
carefully to see if they spread. (The 1988 riots that swept
in a host of government policy changes started off as an
isolated set of demonstrations that quickly spread across the

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country.) Interestingly, some press reports stated that on
the second day of the Gdyel rioting some of the rioters
parents took to the streets to support their sons verbally.
The Chlef and Gdyel riots do remind that there is a very
large segment - probably a majority - of Algerians that are
dissatisfied with the economic and social conditions in
Algeria. The rioting in southern Algeria reported ref a, and
the labor strikes reported in ref b are other indicators.
Even if that dissatisfaction doesn't yet threaten regime
stability it probably does help extremist recruitment.
Moreover, it is hard to see how that dissatisfaction will
diminish until the government implements policies that boost
the private sector and create sustainable growth in sectors
like construction.
FORD