Sanhadja and
Zanata, were also divided into tribes, with each
Maghreb
region made up of several tribes.[14][15]
Several Berber dynasties emerged during the Middle Ages.[14][16]
Arrival of Islam
After the waves of Muslim Arab armies that conquered Algeria from its former
Berber rulers and the rule of the Umayyid Arab Dynasty fell, numerous dynasties
emerged thereafter. Amongst those dynasties are the
Almohads,
Almoravids, Fatimids of Egypt and Abdelwadids.
Having converted the
Kutama of
Kabylie to
its cause, the
Shia
Fatimids overthrew the
Rustamids,
and conquered Egypt, leaving Algeria and Tunisia to their Zirid vassals. When
the latter rebelled, the Shia Fatimids sent in the
Banu Hilal,
a populous Arab tribe, to weaken them.
Ottoman rule
|
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This article may be inaccurate in or
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or discuss the issue on the
talk page. (July 2009) |
In the beginning of the 16th century, after the completion of the
Reconquista, the
Spanish Empire attacked the Algerian coastal area and committed many
massacres against the civilian population (“about 4000 in Oran and 4100 in
Béjaïa). They took control of
Mers
El Kébir in 1505,
Oran in 1509,
Béjaïa in 1510, Tenes, Mostaganem, Cherchell and Dellys in 1511, and finally
Algiers in 1512.
On 15 January 1510 the King of Algiers, Samis El Phillipe, was forced into
submission to the king of Spain; the Spanish Empire turned the Algerian
population to subservients. King El Phillipe called for help from the
corsairs Barberous brothers
Hayreddin Barbarossa and
Oruç Reis
who previously helped
Andalusian
Muslims and Jews to escape from the Spanish oppression in
1492. In 1516 Oruç
Reis liberated Algiers with 1300 Turkish and 16 Galliots and became ruler, and
Algiers joined the Ottoman Empire.
After his death in 1518, his brother
Hayreddin Barbarossa succeeded him, the Sultan
Selim I sent
him 6000 soldiers and 2000 janissary with which he liberated most of the
Algerian territory taken by the Spanish, from Annaba to Mostaganem. Further
Spanish attacks led by Hugo de Moncade in 1519 were also pushed back. In 1541
Charles V
the emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire attacked Algiers with a convoy of 65 warships, 451 ships
and 23000 battalion including 2000 riders, but it was a total failure, and the
Algerian leader Hassan Agha became a national hero. Algiers then became a great
military power.
Algeria was made part of the
Ottoman Empire by
Barbaros Hayreddin Pasa and his brother Aruj in 1517. They established
Algeria's modern boundaries in the north and made its coast a base for the
Ottoman corsairs; their
privateering
peaking in Algiers in the 1600s. Piracy on
American vessels in the Mediterranean resulted in the
First (1801–1805) and
Second Barbary Wars (1815) with the United States. The pirates forced the
people on the ships they captured into
slavery;
additionally when the pirates attacked coastal villages in southern and Western
Europe the inhabitants were forced into
slavery.[17]
The Barbary pirates, also sometimes called
Ottoman corsairs or the Marine Jihad (الجهاد البحري), were Muslim pirates
and privateers that operated from North Africa, from the time of the
Crusades
until the early 19th century. Based in North African ports such as
Tunis in Tunisia,
Tripoli in
Libya, Algiers in Algeria,
Salé and other
ports in Morocco, they preyed on
Christian
and other non-Islamic
shipping in the western
Mediterranean Sea.
Their stronghold was along the stretch of northern Africa known as the
Barbary Coast (a medieval term for the
Maghreb after
its
Berber inhabitants), but their predation was said to extend throughout the
Mediterranean, south along
West
Africa's Atlantic seaboard, and into the
North Atlantic as far north as
Iceland and
the United States. They often made raids, called
Razzias, on European coastal towns to capture Christian slaves to sell
at
slave markets in places such as
Turkey,
Egypt,
Iran, Algeria and
Morocco.[18][19]
According to Robert Davis, from the 16th to 19th century, pirates captured 1
million to 1.25 million
Europeans as
slaves. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages in
Italy,
Spain and
Portugal,
and from farther places like
France or
England,
Ireland, the
Netherlands,
Germany, Poland,
Russia,
Scandinavia and even
Iceland,
India,
Southeast Asia and North America.
The impact of these
attacks was devastating – France, England, and
Spain each lost
thousands of ships, and long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy were almost
completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement
along the coast until the 19th century.
The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman
Barbarossa
("Redbeard") brothers—Hayreddin
(Hızır) and his older brother Oruç Reis—who took control of Algiers in the
early 16th century and turned it into the centre of Mediterranean piracy and
privateering for three centuries, as well as establishing the
Ottoman Empire's presence in North Africa which lasted four centuries.
Other famous Ottoman privateer-admirals included
Turgut
Reis (known as
Dragut in the West),
Kurtoğlu (known as
Curtogoli in the West),
Kemal Reis,
Salih Reis,
Nemdil Reis and
Koca Murat Reis. Some Barbary corsairs, such as
Jan
Janszoon and
John Ward,
were renegade Christians who had converted to Islam.
In 1544, Hayreddin captured the island of
Ischia, taking
4,000 prisoners, and enslaved some 9,000 inhabitants of
Lipari, almost
the entire population.[20]
In 1551,
Turgut Reis enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island
Gozo, between 5,000
and 6,000, sending them to Libya. In 1554, pirates sacked
Vieste in
southern Italy and took an estimated 7,000 slaves.[21]
In 1555, Turgut Reis sacked
Bastia,
Corsica,
taking 6000 prisoners.
In 1558, Barbary corsairs captured the town of
Ciutadella (Minorca), destroyed it, slaughtered the inhabitants and took
3,000 survivors to
Istanbul as
slaves.[22]
In 1563, Turgut Reis landed on the shores of the province of
Granada,
Spain, and captured coastal settlements in the area, such as
Almuñécar,
along with 4,000 prisoners. Barbary pirates often attacked the
Balearic Islands, and in response many coastal watchtowers and fortified
churches were erected. The threat was so severe that the island of
Formentera
became uninhabited.[23][24]
From 1609 to 1616,
England lost
466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates.[25]
In the 19th century, Barbary pirates would capture ships and enslave the crew.
Latterly American ships were attacked. During this period, the pirates forged
affiliations with Caribbean powers, paying a "license tax" in exchange for safe
harbor of their vessels.[26]
One American slave reported that the Algerians had enslaved 130 American seamen
in the Mediterranean and Atlantic from 1785 to 1793.[27]
French rule
Constantine, Algeria 1840
On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algiers in
1830.[28]
The conquest of Algeria by the French was long and particularly violent, and it
resulted in the disappearance of about a third of the Algerian population.[29]
Between 1830 and 1847 50,000 French people had emigrated to Algeria,[30]
but the conquest was slow due to intense resistance from such people as
Emir Abdelkader,
Ahmed Bey and
Fatma N'Soumer. Indeed, the conquest was not technically complete until the
early 1900s when the last
Tuareg were
conquered by General Guilain P. Denoeux.
Meanwhile, however, the French made Algeria an integral part of France, a
status that would end only with the collapse of the
Fourth Republic in 1958. Tens of thousands of settlers from France, Spain,
Italy, and
Malta moved in to
farm the Algerian coastal plain and occupied significant parts of Algeria's
cities.
These settlers benefited from the French government's confiscation of
communal land, and the application of modern agricultural techniques that
increased the amount of arable land.[31]
Algeria's social fabric suffered during the occupation: literacy plummeted,[32]
while land development uprooted much of the population.
Starting from the end of the 19th century, people of European descent in
Algeria (or natives like
Spanish people in
Oran), as well as the native Algerian
Jews (typically
Sephardic in origin), became full French citizens. After Algeria's 1962
independence, they were called
Pieds-Noirs; ("Pieds Noirs" meaning "black feet", referring to the black
shoes the Europeans wore on their feet). In contrast, the vast majority of
Muslim
Algerians (even veterans of the French army) received neither French citizenship
nor the right to vote.[33]
Post-independence
In 1954, the
National Liberation Front (FLN) launched the
Algerian War of Independence which was a
guerrilla campaign. By the end of the war, newly elected
President
Charles de Gaulle, understanding that the age of empires was ending, held a
plebiscite,
offering Algerians three options. In a famous speech (4 June 1958 in Algiers) de
Gaulle proclaimed in front of a vast crowd of Pieds-Noirs "Je vous ai compris"
(I have understood you). Most Pieds-noirs then believed that de Gaulle meant
that Algeria would remain French. The poll resulted in a landslide vote for
complete independence from France. Over one million people, 10% of the
population, then fled the country for France and in just a few months in
mid-1962. These included most of the 1,025,000 Pieds-Noirs, as well as
81,000 Harkis
(pro-French Algerians serving in the French Army). In the days preceding the
bloody conflict, a group of Algerian Rebels opened fire on a marketplace in Oran
killing numerous innocent civilians, mostly women.
Algeria's first president was the FLN leader
Ahmed Ben Bella. He was overthrown by his former ally and defence minister,
Houari Boumédienne in 1965. Under Ben Bella the government had already
become increasingly
socialist
and
authoritarian, and this trend continued throughout Boumédienne's government.
However, Boumédienne relied much more heavily on the army, and reduced the sole
legal party to a merely symbolic role.
Agriculture was
collectivised, and a massive
industrialization drive launched.
Oil extraction
facilities were nationalized. This was especially beneficial to the leadership
after the
1973 oil crisis. However, the Algerian economy became increasingly dependent
on oil which led to hardship when the price collapsed during the
1980s oil glut.
In foreign policy, while Algeria shares much of its history and cultural
heritage with neighbouring Morocco, the two countries have had somewhat hostile
relations with each other ever since Algeria's independence. Reasons for this
include Morocco's disputed claim to
portions of western Algeria (which led to the
Sand War in
1963), Algeria's support for the
Polisario Front for its right to
self-determination, and Algeria's hosting of
Sahrawi refugees within its borders in the city of
Tindouf.
Within Algeria, dissent was rarely tolerated, and the state's control over
the media
and the outlawing of political parties other than the FLN was cemented in the
repressive constitution of 1976.
Boumédienne died in 1978, but the rule of his successor,
Chadli Bendjedid, was little more open. The state took on a strongly
bureaucratic character and
corruption was widespread.
The modernization drive brought considerable
demographic
changes to Algeria. Village traditions underwent significant change as
urbanization increased. New industries emerged and agricultural employment
was substantially reduced.
Education
was extended nationwide, raising the
literacy
rate from less than 10% to over 60%. There was a dramatic increase in the
fertility rate to 7–8 children per mother.
Therefore by 1980, there was a very youthful population and a housing crisis.
The new generation struggled to relate to the cultural obsession with the war
years and two conflicting protest movements developed: communists, including
Berber identity movements; and Islamic 'intégristes'. Both groups protested
against
one-party rule but also clashed with each other in universities and on the
streets during the 1980s. Mass protests from both camps in autumn 1988 forced
Bendjedid to concede the end of one-party rule.
Algerian Civil War (1991–2002)
Elections were planned to happen in 1991. In December 1991, the
Islamic Salvation Front won the
first round of the country's first multi-party elections. The military then
intervened and cancelled the second round. It forced then-president Bendjedid to
resign and banned all political parties based on religion (including the Islamic
Salvation Front). A political conflict ensued, leading Algeria into the violent
Algerian Civil War.
More than 160,000 people were killed between 17 January 1992 and June 2002.
Most of the deaths were between militants and government troops, but a great
number of civilians were also killed. The question of who was responsible for
these deaths was controversial at the time amongst academic observers; many were
claimed by the
Armed Islamic Group. Though many of these massacres were carried out by
Islamic extremists, the Algerian regime also used the army and foreign
mercenaries to conduct attacks on men, women and children and then proceeded to
blame the attacks upon various Islamic groups within the country.[34]
Elections resumed in 1995, and after 1998, the war waned. On 27 April 1999,
after a series of short-term leaders representing the
military,
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the current president, was elected.[35]
Post war
By 2002, the main guerrilla groups had either been destroyed or surrendered,
taking advantage of an
amnesty
program, though sporadic fighting continued in some areas (See
Islamic insurgency in Algeria (2002–present)).
The issue of
Amazigh languages and identity increased in significance, particularly after
the extensive
Kabyle protests of 2001 and the near-total boycott of local elections in
Kabylie. The
government responded with concessions including naming of Tamazight (Berber) as
a national language and teaching it in schools.
Much of Algeria is now recovering and developing into an
emerging economy. The high prices of oil and
gas are being used by
the new government to improve the country's
infrastructure and especially improve
industry
and agricultural land. Recently, overseas investment in Algeria has increased.[citation
needed]
Geography
Topographic map of Algeria
Most of the coastal area is hilly, sometimes even mountainous, and there are
a few natural
harbours. The area from the coast to the
Tell Atlas
is fertile. South of the Tell Atlas is a
steppe
landscape, which ends with the
Saharan Atlas; further south, there is the
Sahara desert.
The
Ahaggar Mountains (Arabic:
جبال هقار), also known as the Hoggar, are
a highland region in central Sahara, southern Algeria. They are located about
1,500 km (932 mi) south of the capital, Algiers and just west of
Tamanghasset.
Algiers, Oran,
Constantine, and
Annaba are
Algeria's main cities.
Tropic of
Cancer in the torrid zone
In this region even in winter, midday desert temperatures can be very hot.
After sunset, however, the clear, dry air permits rapid loss of heat, and the
nights are cool to chilly. Enormous daily ranges in temperature are recorded.
The highest temperature recorded in
Tiguentour is 140.9 °F (60.5 °C) and is probably the highest reliable
temperature ever recorded in Algeria under standard conditions.[citation
needed]
Rainfall is fairly abundant along the coastal part of the Tell Atlas, ranging
from 400 to 670 mm (26 in) annually, the amount of precipitation increasing from
west to east.
Precipitation is heaviest in the northern part of eastern Algeria, where it
reaches as much as 1,000 mm (39 in) in some years.
Farther inland, the rainfall is less plentiful.
Prevailing winds that are easterly and north-easterly in summer change to
westerly and northerly in winter and carry with them a general increase in
precipitation from September through December, a decrease in the late winter and
spring months, and a near absence of rainfall during the summer months. Algeria
also has
ergs, or sand dunes between mountains, which in the summer time when winds
are heavy and gusty, temperatures can get up to 110 °F (43 °C).
Politics
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria
The head of state is the
President of Algeria, who is elected for a five-year term. The president, as
of a constitutional amendment passed by the Parliament on November 11, 2008, is
not limited to any term length.[36]
Algeria has universal
suffrage at
18 years of age.[5]
The President is the head of the Council of Ministers and of the High Security
Council. He appoints the
Prime Minister who is also the head of government. The Prime Minister
appoints the Council of Ministers.
The Algerian
parliament
is
bicameral, consisting of a lower chamber, the National People's Assembly
(APN), with 380 members; and an upper chamber, the Council Of Nation,
with 144 members. The APN is elected every five years.
Under the 1976
constitution (as modified 1979, and amended in 1988, 1989, and 1996) Algeria
is a multi-party state. The Ministry of the Interior must approve all parties.
To date, Algeria has had more than 40 legal political parties. According to the
constitution, no political association may be formed if it is "based on
differences in religion, language, race, gender or region."
Foreign relations
and military
Djebel Chenoua class corvette
El Kirch (353) built by
ECRN in
Mers-el-Kebir and operated by the Algerian National Navy
The military of Algeria consists of the
People's National Army (ANP), the
Algerian National Navy (MRA), and the
Algerian Air Force (QJJ), plus the Territorial Air Defense Force.[5]
It is the direct successor of the
Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), the armed wing of the nationalist
National Liberation Front, which fought French colonial
occupation during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). The
commander-in-chief of the military is the president, who is also Minister of
National Defense.
Total military personnel include 147,000 active, 150,000 reserve, and 187,000
paramilitary staff (2008 estimate).[37]
Service in the military is compulsory for men aged 19–30, for a total of
eighteen months (six training and twelve in civil projects).[5]
The total military expenditure in 2006 was estimated variously at 2.7% of GDP
(3,096 million),[37]
or 3.3% of GDP.[5]
Algeria is a leading military power in North Africa and has its force
oriented toward its western (Morocco) and eastern (Libya) borders. Its primary
military supplier has been the former
Soviet
Union, which has sold various types of sophisticated equipment under
military trade agreements, and the
People's Republic of China. Algeria has attempted, in recent years, to
diversify its sources of military material. Military forces are supplemented by
a 70,000-member
gendarmerie or rural police force under the control of the president and
30,000-member Sûreté nationale or metropolitan
police force
under the Ministry of the Interior.
In 2007, the Algerian Air Force signed a deal with Russia to purchase 49
MiG-29SMT and 6 MiG-29UBT at an estimated $1.5 Billion. They also agreed to
return old
aircraft purchased from the
Former USSR. Russia is also building two
636-type diesel
submarines for Algeria.[38]
Arab Maghreb Union
Tensions between Algeria and Morocco in relation to the
Western Sahara have put great obstacles in the way of tightening the
Arab Maghreb Union and the yearned Great Maghreb Sultanate, which was
nominally established in 1989 but carried little practical weight with its
coastal neighbors.[39]
Economy
Ministry of Finance of Algeria
The fossil fuels energy sector is the backbone of Algeria's economy,
accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of
GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. The country ranks fourteenth in
petroleum
reserves, containing 11.8 billion barrels (1.88×109 m3)
of proven oil reserves with estimates suggesting that the actual amount is even
more. The U.S.
Energy Information Administration reported that in 2005, Algeria had 160
trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven
natural
gas reserves (4,502 billion cubic metres),[40]
the eighth largest in the world.[41]
Algeria’s financial and economic indicators improved during the mid-1990s, in
part because of policy reforms supported by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
debt rescheduling
from the
Paris Club. Algeria’s finances in 2000 and 2001 benefited from an increase
in oil prices and the
government’s tight fiscal policy, leading to a large increase in the trade
surplus, record highs in foreign exchange reserves, and reduction in
foreign debt.
The government's continued efforts to diversify the economy by attracting
foreign and domestic
investment
outside the energy sector have had little success in reducing high
unemployment and improving living standards, however. In 2001, the
government signed an Association Treaty with the
European Union that will eventually lower tariffs and increase trade. In
March 2006, Russia agreed to erase $4.74 billion of Algeria's
Soviet-era
debt[42]
during a visit by
President
Vladimir Putin to the country, the first by a Russian leader in half a
century. In return, president
Bouteflika agreed to buy $7.5 billion worth of combat planes, air-defense
systems and other arms from Russia, according to the head of Russia's state arms
exporter
Rosoboronexport.[43][44]
Algeria also decided in 2006 to pay off its full $8bn (£4.3bn) debt to the
Paris Club
group of rich creditor nations before schedule. This will reduce the Algerian
foreign debt to less than $5bn in the end of 2006. The
Paris Club
said the move reflected Algeria's economic recovery in recent years.
Agriculture
Algeria has always been noted for the fertility of its soil. 25% of Algerians
are employed in the agricultural sector.[45]
A considerable amount of
cotton was
grown at the time of the United States'
Civil War, but the industry declined afterwards. In the early years of the
twentieth century efforts to extend the cultivation of the plant were renewed. A
small amount of
cotton is also grown in the southern oases. Large quantities of dwarf palm
are cultivated for the leaves, the fibers of which resemble
horsehair. The
olive (both for its fruit and oil) and
tobacco are
cultivated with great success.
More than 30,000 km2 (7,000,000 acres) are devoted to the
cultivation of
cereal grains. The
Tell Atlas
is the grain-growing land. During the time of French rule its productivity was
increased substantially by the sinking of
artesian wells in districts which only required water to make them fertile.
Of the crops raised,
wheat, barley
and oats are the
principal cereals. A great variety of
vegetables
and fruits,
especially citrus
products, are exported. Algeria also exports
figs,
dates,
esparto grass, and
cork. It is the largest
oat market in Africa.
Algeria is known for Bertolli's
olive oil
spread, although the spread has an Italian background.
Demographics
Demographics of Algeria, Data of
FAO, year 2005; number of inhabitants in thousands.
The population of Algeria is 35,190,000 (jan 2009 est.).[5]
About 70% of Algerians live in the northern, coastal area; the minority who
inhabit the Sahara
are mainly concentrated in
oases, although
some 1.5 million remain
nomadic or partly
nomadic. Almost 30% of Algerians are under 15. Algeria has the fourth lowest
fertility rate in the
Greater Middle East after
Cyprus,
Tunisia, and
Turkey.
99% of Algerians are classified ethnically as
Arab or
Berber by unofficial sources and according to their native language, whether
it is a predominantly Arab dialect or a predominantly Berber dialect (because
all Algerian dialects are in fact an Arabic-Berber mix, none is pure Arabic or
pure Berber), but this doesn't really reflect the real ancestry of Algerians,
which is mostly a mixed ancestry made of Berber and different European and
Middle Eastern populations that have invaded northwest Africa at different
periods of history and mixed with its inhabitants; these groups include Arabs,
Turks, Vandals, Phenicians, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians. Thus, the spoken language
bares no indication of the true ancestry of those who speak it.
Europeans account for less than 1% of the population, inhabiting almost
exclusively the largest metropolitan areas. However, during the colonial period
there was a large (15.2% in 1962) European population, consisting primarily of
French people, in addition to
Spaniards in the west of the country,
Italians
and
Maltese in the east, and other Europeans in smaller numbers. Known as
pieds-noirs, European colonists were concentrated on the coast and
formed a majority of the population of
Oran (60%) and
important proportions in other large cities like
Algiers and
Annaba. Almost
all of this population left during or immediately after the country's
independence from France.
Housing and medicine continue to be pressing problems in Algeria. Failing
infrastructure and the continued influx of people from rural to urban areas has
overtaxed both systems. According to the
UNDP, Algeria has one of the world's highest per housing unit occupancy
rates for housing, and government officials have publicly stated that the
country has an immediate shortfall of 1.5 million housing units.[citation
needed]
Women make up 70 percent of Algeria's lawyers and 60 percent of its judges.
Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women are contributing more to household
income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, according to
university researchers.[46]
It is estimated that 95,700
refugees and
asylum-seekers have sought refuge in Algeria. This includes roughly 90,000
from Morocco and 4,100 from former
Palestine.[47]
There are currently 35,000
Chinese migrant workers in Algeria.[48]
Ethnic groups
Ethnic composition of Algeria is mixed
Arab and
Berber. No official figures can be given, because Algerian law forbids
population censuses based on ethnic, religious and linguistic criteria. The
Algerian representative for Human Rights, M. Semichi mentioned in 1993 that
there were 13–14 million Berbers in Algeria, which would amount to nearly 60%
(of a population estimated at that moment as 23 million);[49]
he speaks about 7 million people in Kabylie, "8-9 million in the Aurès, in the
east of the country" and 1 million in the south. The Aurès region has around 3
million or, if defined very broadly, up to 5 million inhabitants.[50]
The Berber people, identified as speakers of a
Berber language, are divided into several groups,
Kabyle in the mountainous north-central area,
Chaoui in the
eastern
Atlas Mountains,
Mozabites in the
M'zab valley, and
Tuareg in the
far south, while the Arab Algerians make up the rest of the country.
Languages
Trilingual welcome sign in the Isser Municipality (Boumerdès),
written in
Arabic,
Amazigh (
Tifinagh),
and French, typical of Berber cities. Most of Algeria uses only
Arabic and French signs.
Arabic is spoken as a native language by more than 60 % of the population; of
these, over 65% speak
Algerian Arabic and around 11%
Hassaniya.[51]
Algerian Arabic is spoken as a second language by many Berbers. However, in the
media and on official occasions the spoken language is
Standard Arabic.
The Berbers (or
Imazighen) speak one of the various dialects of
Tamazight and add up to around 45% of the population.[51]
Arabic remains Algeria's only
official language, although Tamazight has recently been recognized as a
national language.[52]
French is the most widely studied
foreign language in the country, and the great majority of Algerians speak
it fluently, though it is usually not spoken in daily circumstances. Since
independence, the government has pursued a policy of linguistic Arabization
of education
and bureaucracy, with some success, although many
university
courses continue to be taught in French. Recently, schools have started to
incorporate French into the curriculum as early as children start to learn
Arabic. French is also used in media and commerce.
Religion
Islam is the
predominant religion, followed by more than 90 percent of the country's
population. This figure includes all these born in families considered of Muslim
descent. Officially Algerians are Muslims at nearly 100%, however atheists or
other kinds of non-believers are not counted in the statistics. Nearly all
Algerians belong to the Sunni Islam, with the exception of some 200,000 ibadis
in the M'zab Valley in the region of
Ghardaia.[53]
There are also some 150,000
Christians
in the country, among whom 10,000
Catholics and 80,000 to 130,000 evangelical
Protestants (mainly
pentecostal), according to the
Protestant Church of Algeria's leader Mustapha Krim.
[54][55]
Algeria had an important Jewish community until the 1960s, but there is no
active Jewish community today, although a very small number of
Jews continue to live
in Algiers.
[56]
Health
In 2002 Algeria had inadequate numbers of physicians (1.13 per 1,000 people),
nurses (2.23 per 1,000 people), and dentists (0.31 per 1,000 people). Access to
“improved water sources” was limited to 92 percent of the population in urban
areas and 80 percent of the population in rural areas. Some 99 percent of
Algerians living in urban areas, but only 82 percent of those living in rural
areas, had access to “improved sanitation.” According to the World Bank, Algeria
is making progress toward its goal of “reducing by half the number of people
without sustainable access to improved drinking water and basic sanitation by
2015.” Given Algeria’s young population, policy favors preventive health care
and clinics over hospitals. In keeping with this policy, the government
maintains an immunization program. However, poor sanitation and unclean water
still cause
tuberculosis,hepatitis,
measles,
typhoid fever,
cholera, and
dysentery.
The poor generally receive health care free of charge.
Education
Education is officially compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 15.
In the year 1997, there was an outstanding amount of teachers and students in
primary schools. About 30 % of the adult population of the country are
illiterate.
[57]
In Algeria there are 43 universities, 10 colleges, and 7 institutes for
higher learning. The University of Algiers (founded in 1909) has about 267,142
students.[58]
The Algerian school system is structured into Basic, General Secondary, and
Technical Secondary levels:
- Basic
- Ecole fondamentale (Fundamental School)
Length of program: 9 years
Age range: 6 to 15
Certificate/diploma awarded: Brevet d'Enseignement Moyen B.E.M.
- General Secondary
- Lycée d'Enseignement général (School of General Teaching), lycées
polyvalents (General-Purpose School)
Length of program: 3 years
Age range: 15 to 18
Certificate/diploma awarded: Baccalauréat de l'Enseignement secondaire
(Bachelor's Degree of Secondary School)
- Technical Secondary
- Lycées d'Enseignement technique (Technical School)
Length of program: 3 years
Certificate/diploma awarded: Baccalauréat technique (Technical Bachelor's
Degree)
Culture and Sports
The Monument of the Martyrs (Maqam a'chaheed) in Algiers
Modern Algerian literature, split between Arabic and French, has been
strongly influenced by the country's recent history.
Famous novelists of the twentieth century include
Mohammed Dib,
Albert
Camus, and
Kateb
Yacine, while
Assia
Djebar is widely translated. Among the important novelists of the 1980s were
Rachid Mimouni, later vice-president of Amnesty International, and
Tahar
Djaout, murdered by an
Islamist group in 1993 for his secularist views.[59]
In philosophy and the humanities,
Jacques Derrida, the father of
deconstruction, was born in
El Biar in
Algiers;
Malek
Bennabi and
Frantz
Fanon are noted for their thoughts on
decolonization;
Augustine of Hippo was born in
Tagaste (modern-day
Souk Ahras);
and Ibn
Khaldun, though born in
Tunis, wrote the
Muqaddima while staying in Algeria. Algerian culture has been strongly
influenced by
Islam, the main religion. The works of the
Sanusi family in pre-colonial times, and of Emir
Abdelkader and Sheikh
Ben Badis
in colonial times, are widely noted. The Latin author
Apuleius
was born in
Madaurus (Mdaourouch), in what later became Algeria.
In painting,
Mohammed Khadda[60]
and
M'Hamed Issiakhem have been notable in recent years.
The most popular sports in the country are
football, athletics and handball. One of the biggest events in Algerian
sports was the 1982 national football team's defeat of
West
Germany in
Gijon, Spain by a goal from
Lakhdar Belloumi. But because of conflicts, and the poor conditions in
Algeria through the 1990s and continuing in some areas of the country today many
athletes have left Algeria for countries they could earn more in, usually
France. Retired football great
Zinedine Zidane as well as young prodigies
Karim
Benzema and
Samir
Nasri are all second-generation Algerian immigrants but born in France. In
athletics, Algeria has produced several world champions including
Noureddine Morceli,
Hassiba Boulmerka,
Jabir-Said Guerni, and
Benida Berrah.
Sudan
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