Falaq Kagda - Algeria

Published in 2018 by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

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Copyright 2018 by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

Third Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kagda, Falaq, author. | Latif, Zawiah Abdul, author. | Nevins, Debbie, author.

Title: Algeria / Falaq Kagda, Zawiah Abdul Latif, Debbie Nevins.

Other titles: Cultures of the world (3rd ed.)

Description: Third edition. | New York : Cavendish Square Publishing, 2018. | Series: Cultures of the world | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016054483 (print) | LCCN 2016056866 (ebook) | ISBN 9781502627421 (library bound) | ISBN 9781502627339 (E-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Algeria--Juvenile literature.

Classification: LCC DT275 .K34 2018 (print) | LCC DT275 (ebook) | DDC 965--dc23

Writers, Falaq Kagda, Zawiah Abdul Latif; Debbie Nevins, third edition

Editorial Director, third edition: David McNamara

Editor, third edition: Debbie Nevins

Art Director, third edition: Amy Greenan

Designer, third edition: Jessica Nevins

Picture Researcher, third edition: Jessica Nevins

PICTURE CREDITS

Cover: Michele Molinari/Danita Delimont/Alamy Stock Photo

The photographs in this book are used with the permission of: p. Bigmumy/Wikimedia Commons/File:Makrout el louz amandes.jpg/CC BY-SA 4.0.

PRECEDING PAGE

The Maqam Echahid monument, built in the shape of three standing palm leaves, opened in 1982 for the twentieth anniversary of Algerias independence.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ALGERIA TODAY

A LGERIA, AFRICAS LARGEST COUNTRY, IS A LAND OF GREAT contrastsgeographical, cultural, and historical. Early Arab explorers called it Jazirat al Maghreb, or Island of the Westthe land between the Sea of Sand (the Sahara Desert) and the Mediterranean Sea. With its long Mediterranean coast, the country looks north across the sea to Europe, which Algerians view as both a land of opportunity and a source of oppression. Facing east, the sea also connects Algeria to the Levant and the Arab world that conquered it some 1,300 years ago. Facing south, Algeria encounters the mighty Sahara Desert, homeland to its indigenous people, the nomadic Berber people. To the west, it borders Morocco, an exotic country not unlike Algeria itself, but a problematic neighbor all the same.

Geographically, Algerias disparities are evidentfrom golden Mediterranean beaches and lush hills and valleys to rugged mountains and lunar-landscape plateaus, to the vast desert with its occasional palm-tree oases. The country has modern cosmopolitan cities, ancient Roman ruins, and timeless rural villages. It has stunning scenery and friendly people, but relatively few tourists, compared to, say, Morocco.

Culturally, Algeria is Arab Muslim, but vestiges of both its recent European colonial Christian era and ancient pre-Islamic Christian years can still be discerned. The people are a combination of Berber and Arab with small amounts of Andalusian Spanish and Ottoman Turk in the mix, reflecting historical empires and demographics.

Algeria today is an independent nation still climbing out from under centuries of conquest and domination by outsiders. Free since 1962, when it broke away from colonial French rule, Algeria is still trying to find its own identity and path to the future. During the Black Decade of the 1990s, the government fought a brutal civil war against a militant Islamist insurgency. The government eventually won, but not before the conflict took some two hundred thousand civilian lives. The pain and horror of that not-distant past now weighs heavily on the countrys consciousness.

The relative peace of the twenty-first century was ushered in by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (b. 1937), who took office in 1999. He issued a broad amnesty to Islamists who handed in their weapons and helped put the nation on the road to reconciliation. However, the president suffered a stroke in 2013 during his third administration and has rarely been seen since. He won a fourth term in 2014 despite a campaign from which he was almost entirely absent. Although many observers suspected he was no longer in charge of his own administration, Algerians were in no hurry to rock the boat. Bouteflika symbolized a mostly peaceful continuity, while the impending transfer of power once hes gone could prove destabilizing.