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Sunday 13 March 2011

My country, Algeria: ‘An open-air prison where people don’t really live but just survive’

Lazhari LabterSpecial to the Star
I was 10 years old when Algeria became independent in 1962. I was proud and happy that we had dreamt of a better life and defeated French colonialism. Even back then, I heard our leaders holding forth on how to pass the flame of revolution on to youth.
Lazhari Labter is a journalist, poet and publisher based in Algiers.

On July 5, 2012, 50 years will have passed since Algeria won its independence. Two generations. The average age of the people who took a direct or indirect part in the national liberation struggle is 70. Now they have reached the equivalent of three generations.
And they are still in charge, totally out of touch with reality. They are still there even though Algeria and the world have changed utterly. They are still there although people have walked on the moon, the human genome has been mapped, the Berlin Wall has fallen, the Cold War is over, apartheid is dead, a black president is at the helm in the United States, and the Internet has eliminated borders. They are still there although all the policies they have implemented since independence have failed miserably.
The “better life” and “brighter tomorrows” all Algeria’s presidents promised have never become reality. For 50 years, the political system has plunged my country into a black hole. It has made Algeria an open-air prison where women and men don’t really live but just survive. They don’t enjoy life, but slowly die of boredom. Young people dream of moving elsewhere, commit suicide, take drugs or set themselves on fire because they feel they have no right to love or self-esteem, because their future has been blocked off and their hopes dashed.
Algerians must tighten their belts in a foul environment. From the morning on, as they step out of their houses (if they have them), or through the doors of the sordid buildings where they are crammed into one- or two-bedroom apartments (if they have them), or as they leave the squalid shantytown shacks they share with an average of seven people, their senses are assaulted. They are greeted by filth on the sidewalks and trash bags ripped open. As well as by dust, mud, water puddles, highways that become stream beds as soon as it rains, and open sewers. And by all manner of merchandise spread out on the sidewalks, in full sun. The germ merchants keep on selling because nobody is there to supervise them and hand out fines.
Algerian motorists lucky enough to own a vehicle face endless traffic jams, potholes, speed bumps, honking horns, insults and sometimes fist fights, people spitting through open car windows, undisciplined pedestrians who never cross at the crosswalks (what crosswalks?), roadblocks, kids squatting on public sidewalks to rent them out as private parking spaces, cantankerous police fed up with spending all day watching cars drive by while pointing a so-called explosive detector at them, never detecting anything (trained bomb-detecting dogs are more efficient). They drive listening to the “good news” on the radio (if they have one), which hasn’t varied since independence (everything is wonderful!).
In 2012, I’ll turn 60. Twice the age of my two sons, who are among the 70 per cent of Algerians under 30 and at least three times the age of the 60 per cent under 20! My country is so young but ruled by “dinosaurs” who are astonished to see youths smashing, looting, burning or setting themselves on fire and who don’t understand when they cry out louder and louder: “We don’t want to be just digestive tracts! We want to live and be free!”
Lazhari Labter is a journalist, poet and publisher based in Algiers.

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