ALGIERS, 11 August 2004 — Algerians are flocking to the beaches this summer in numbers undreamt of only a year or two ago, but the presence of thousands of armed police shows that fears of violence remain high after a war against extremist in which 100,000 people died.
“This flood of motor traffic would have been unthinkable” in the 1990s, commented a reporter on the road to Tipaza, site of a magnificent ruined Roman city about 70 kilometers west of the capital, Algiers.
“Everyone avoided driving then for fear of attacks and roadblocks set up by guerrillas disguised as the military,” he said.
Locals seeking to escape the heat of Algiers and other cities are not the only ones heading for the beaches.
Algerian emigrants too are returning on holiday in record numbers, among them Mohamed Beldi, a 46-year-old shopkeeper who lives in the metropolis of Lille, northern France.
“You can see that everything is back to normal,” he said, lounging by a swimming pool at Fig Tree Beach, near Boumerdes, 60 kilometers east of Algiers. “In the mid-90s most emigrants did not want to come home on holiday,” he went on. “They told me people were having their throats slit, but I came anyway.”
A few kilometers inland, armed groups are said to be still active in the wooded uplands, but Ahcene Zerrari, one of about 30 security guards on duty at Fig Tree Beach, said that did not trouble the tourists.
“People feel safe with the gendarmes here,” he said. Indeed, tens of thousands of police and gendarmes, some of them very heavily armed, have been put on duty from June to September to protect the roads, beaches and other tourist spots.
They check cars at roadblocks and patrol the beaches, sometimes with dogs. Nevertheless, while the violence of the mid-90s has largely subsided, partly owing to a massive crackdown by the police and the army and partly to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s policy of national reconciliation, not a week goes by without a political murder or other terrorist act.
“For seven years, no one dared take their family to the beach,” said Tahar Ticembal, a 45-year-old civil servant as he watched his children play in the water.
“But for the past three years the security situation has improved and people feel more relaxed, even women feel freer especially about how they dress,” he added.
But he recalled that last year “no one had the heart to vacation on the beaches,” after 2,300 people were killed and more than 10,000 were injured by an earthquake which ravaged Boumerdes and nearby Zemmouri.