The Algerian Dream

Youth and the Quest for Dignity

Andrew Farrand

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637301531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Few outsiders have had the privilege to get to know Algeria and its youth so intimately-or to observe firsthand this pivotal chapter in the nation's history. It's a story that reveals much about the relationship between citizens and leaders, about the sanctity of human dignity, and about the power of dreams and the courage to pursue them.

Nearly two-thirds of Algeria's population is under the age of 35. Growing up during or soon after the violent conflict that wracked Algeria during the 1990's, and amid the powerful influences of global online culture, this generation views the world much differently than their parents or grandparents do.

The Algerian Dream: Youth and the Quest for Dignity invites readers to discover this generation, their hopes for the future and, most significantly, the frustrations that have brought them into the streets en masse since 2019, peacefully challenging a long-established order. After seven years living and working alongside these young people across Algeria, Andrew G. Farrand shares his insights on what makes the next generation tick in North Africa's sleeping giant.

Part I
The Crossroads Years (2012–2018)

“We will defeat you, because you are the past and we are the future.”

—Larbi Ben M’hidi

Chapter 1.
Political Voice

“Fourth term! Fourth term!” the crowd chanted.

Behind the podium, Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, paused and peered stone-faced at his notes, giving no indication that the supporters’ admiration was mutual.2

It was May 8, 2012, and Bouteflika had been campaigning for weeks, crisscrossing the country to address large crowds. This would be his final speech of the campaign. Bouteflika himself wasn’t on the ballot; this was a legislative election—and a high-stakes one, coming just a year after the Arab Spring swept the region from Morocco to the Persian Gulf.

Unlike others, Algeria had not experienced major upheaval during the Arab Spring, but the country’s wily president wasn’t taking chances. If only he could stir enough patriotic fervor to encourage broad participation in the polls, it would send a clear message to the world: Algeria isn’t like its neighbors, Algeria is stable, and Algerians love their rulers. One group stood to ruin this plan: the youth, who had largely spurned recent elections, earning a reputation for political apathy.

At seventy-five, Bouteflika certainly wouldn’t have been mistaken for young that evening. He lurched stiffly in an oversized black suit that made his head and hands look too small for his body. The scraggly wisps of a comb-over topped his head, and a gray mustache—the tell-tale sign of an Algerian authority figure—shrouded his upper lip. Then in his third presidential term, Bouteflika was addressing an audience of die-hard supporters already calling for him to extend his rule.

But on this night, his message wasn’t for them. Nor was it for his own generation, the war veterans who, by then, had ruled Algeria for a half century, and whose power was approaching its natural end.

He spoke instead to Algeria’s youth, exhorting them to “fulfill their civic duty” and vote. It was no accident of scheduling that Bouteflika was delivering the speech in the eastern city of Setif that May 8, the day when Algerians commemorate an infamous massacre perpetrated there by French colonists. “The liberty, the stability, the progress, and the democracy that the country enjoys are the fruit of tremendous sacrifices,” he lectured in rigid classical Arabic.

Twenty minutes in, the crowd of devotees was ready to burst. It was the climax of the campaign and the president himself stood before them. The excitement spilled over into several minutes of obsequious chanting. “The people of Setif love you!” someone yelled, while women erupted in celebratory cries. (You-you-you-eeee!) Soon the whole crowd reverted to “Fourth term! Fourth term!”

At this, Bouteflika finally set down his notes, gazed across the crowd, and delivered an oratorical masterclass of the sort he was known for. Leaning into the microphone, he fired off three volleys in quick succession:

“God doesn’t make anyone pay beyond his means.”

“He who has really lived knows his own limits well.”

“Oh good people, sometimes the head knows the dance moves but the feet just can’t keep up.”

The first, a quote from the Quran, was delivered in classical Arabic, but the second two were in pure Algerian dialect. The sudden interjection of the language of the streets set the crowd alight once more.

Freed from his script, Bouteflika addressed the youth in their own tongue: Danger was all around, he warned, and Algeria had already seen more than its fair share of war and bloodshed. But with God on their side, everything was possible. It was time to get involved in political life, he told them, and to prepare to accept new responsibilities as the country entered a new era.

And then the president barked the fateful phrase that Algeria’s youth would never forget:

“Djili tab djnanou!” he announced. My generation’s time is up!

He chopped the air with his hand and repeated it again, more emphatically: “Tab djnanou! Tab djnanou!” Our time is up! Our time is up!

Those who fought and died for the country must be honored, he continued, “but their role in steering the nation is over.”

In a country that had spent half a century venerating its liberation heroes and deferring to their leadership, the words were shocking. On screen, even the sycophants in the audience turned to one another in surprise, realizing they were witnesses to history—or perhaps to the end of its fifty-year stranglehold on Algeria’s present.

* * *

Two months earlier, under an overcast March sky, I had flown to Algeria for the first time.

Even if Algeria’s rulers had weathered the Arab Spring on solid footing, they had concluded it was high time to renew the democratic veneer that shielded their opaque autocracy. Bouteflika and company got busy drumming up fanfare ahead of regularly scheduled parliamentary elections in May 2012.

Their plan included invitations to international election observers. Two months before election day, my then-employer, the National Democratic Institute, received an official invitation from the Algerian government. The invitation made sense; NDI regularly organized such observation teams and also had a tiny office in Algiers.

We scrambled to assemble a small team of monitors, knowing they would inevitably be too few to cover much ground in Africa’s largest country, but hoping to collect general insights and suggest measures that might improve future elections, should authorities be inclined. Supporting the team would be the organization’s lone Algerian staffer, a young woman named Karima, and an international colleague yet to be determined. At twenty-eight, I was no veteran, but I had assisted with similar delegations in the past and spoke French and Arabic. Most importantly, I was willing to leave my home in Washington to spend several months in Algeria. I told my boss I wanted the assignment.

Soon I was en route to Algiers, a new visa in my passport and my mind pinballing between unbridled excitement and apprehension. What’s scarier about a dream than the moment it finally comes within reach?

* * *

Arriving in Algeria was less shocking than I had imagined.

In my crude initial impressions, Algiers looked and felt much like Morocco but with an even more pronounced French influence, visible in everything from the buildings to the language to the food. (Ask for bread anywhere in the Arab world and a baker will hand you a small round loaf. Do the same in Algeria, I discovered, and you’ll receive a baguette.)

Soon I would reach a new conclusion: Algeria was unlike anywhere else I had ever visited, and my experiences elsewhere would be of limited use in deciphering its secrets. But at the start, I had little time to blunder around wide-eyed; the elections were fast approaching.

After dispatching the observers across the vast countryside, Karima and I set to work conducting research in the capital. This entailed visiting election officials and the political parties contesting the election. One of our most interesting meetings was with the National Liberation Front (known by its French acronym, FLN), Algeria’s historical ruling party, which had grown out of the inde...

Table of contents

• Map of Algeria
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I The Crossroads Years (2012–2018)
• Chapter 1. Political Voice
• Chapter 2. Identity and Belonging
• Chapter 3. Economic Opportunity
• Chapter 4. Knowledge and Information
• Chapter 5. Home and Environment
• Chapter 6. Security and Health
• Chapter 7. Creation and Culture
• Chapter 8. Justice and Dignity
• Part II The Movement (2019–2021)
• Chapter 9. Revolution
• Chapter 10. Counter-Revolution
• Chapter 11. Crisis Upon Crisis
• Chapter 12. The Future
• Timeline
• Glossary of Terms
• Works Cited
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author