WASHINGTON, 13 July — President George W. Bush welcomed Algeria’s President Abdulaziz Bouteflika yesterday at the White House. This marked the first meeting between the two presidents, and is viewed here as an opportunity for the Bush a Administration to assess Algeria’s commitment to political and economic reforms, which the US feels is needed to stabilize the country that has been wracked with radical instability.
Algeria has spent the last ten years in a bloody struggle between the military and expremists which resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people. Algeria’s trouble began when the government canceled a general election that an Islamic party was poised to win.
Several Washington analysts believe the US handled the situation badly, and that Washington should not have been silent about Algeria’s military coup that put an end to its fledgling democratic system.
Violence by expremists has abated in the last few years, and is now generally limited to rural areas. But a new and equally serious problem in Algeria today is the growing unrest by the ethnic Berber minority, which makes up 20 to 30 percent of the population.
The Berber problem is the result of a combination of economic and social grievances, with political under-representation, which analysts feel could spell disaster if not properly managed.
The Berber demonstrations have mainly been in the Kabylia, the mountainous regions east of Algiers. But a senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified, said that in a country with housing and water shortages, banking and telecommunication systems that don’t work, and 30 percent unemployment, Bouteflika should take the Berber unrest as a warning.
William Quant, a professor of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, and author of a new book on Algeria, agrees. He says people throughout Algeria have become disillusioned with Bouteflika, even though the president has reduced the extremist violence by offering a general amnesty.
“Once you make one step forward, you no longer feel terribly grateful for the fact that people aren’t killing each other. You start thinking about the housing and education, and that there are no jobs for young people. And Bouteflika seems somewhat indifferent to these issues.”
In addition to Algeria’s domestic problems, the US and Algeria have mutual concerns about regional peace, security and economic issues. Algeria is the second leading Arab country for US investment and almost all of that is in the country’s oil and gas sectors.
