Thursday, 20. August 2009, 14:45:45
Accommodation, Holiday, Blogroll, Vacation
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Together, Arabs and Berbers make up 99% of the population. Historically these two groups have intermarried, making demarcation difficult, al-though most estimates suggest that 75% of the population consider them-selves to be Arab, with a further 20% to 25% Berber. Other groups include the Tuareg and a small handful of pieds-noirs (French Algerians). Algeria’s population density stands at 13.8 people per sq kilometre, although so vast is Algeria’s largely uninhabited desert region that popu-lation density in northern regions is much higher than these figures sug-gest. Around 60% of Algerians live in cities, but this figure is rising.
Friday, 17. July 2009, 07:56:23
Books, Education, Vacation, Travel
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Algiers ‘la blanche’, the white one, is what the French called the capital of Algeria. A big, bustling, whitewashed city, with the Mediterranean out front, hills and rich farmland behind, Algiers (El-Djazaïr in Arabic) is an exciting destination and the gateway to the country’s interior.Algiers was the most successful of all the Barbary pirate bases, especially in the 16th century under the most remarkable pirate of all, Kheireddin Barbarossa. It was also the most cherished of all French colonial centres. And since independence in 1962, it has been the political, economic and cultural hub of an extremely large and culturally and geographically diverse country. The largest port in northwest Africa and the largest city too, it now spreads far to accommodate a population that has doubled in 20 years.Algiers suffered along with the rest of the country during the ‘black years’ of the 1990s. Since then, it has seen a strange split in its fortunes. You don’t have to walk far in the centre to see people hanging around with nothing to do. All capitals have their jobless and homeless, but they look out of place in a country that has just paid off its foreign debt. Thanks mainly to oil and gas revenue, there has never been so much cash in the city – the state is spending large sums and there is a sense among some individuals that money is there to be made. The number of new cars choking the main roads is a sign of growing personal prosperity. Yet, in its rush to modernise Algiers has still preserved some of its old mystique; it has a strong sense of identity and is still dazzlingly white.
Monday, 1. June 2009, 12:01:35
Accommodation, Holiday, Blogroll, Vacation
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Ahmed ben Bella, a leading figurehead of opposition to French rule, became independent Algeria’s first elected president. He pledged a ‘revolutionary Arab-Islamic state based on the principles of socialism and collective leadership at home and anti-imperialism abroad’. Despite the euphoria surrounding independence and Ben Bella’s popularity, many of the old rivalries that simmered away during the war continued to plague the country and Ben Bella’s leadership style did not foster orderly administration in a country still devastated by war. He was overthrown in 1965 by the defence minister and FLN chief of staff, Colonel Houari Boumedienne. Ben Bella spent many years in exile in Switzerland, but he would later return to lead his party, the Movement for Democracy in Algeria (MDA), in 1990.Boumedienne was a cautious pragmatist. He set about rebuilding the country’s economy, which had come unstuck at the time of independence with the departure of the majority of the country’s administrators and technical experts, all of whom were Europeans. Unemployment and underemployment remained serious problems and many Algerians were forced to work in France, despite the ill-feeling which existed there towards them.There was very little political change in Algeria under Boumedienne. The FLN was the sole political party, pursuing basically secular, socialist policies. Bad planning by the lumbering centralised bureaucracy saw agricultural production fall below levels achieved under the French. The economy was saved by the discovery of large gas and oil reserves in the Sahara, but few of the proceeds reached ordinary Algerians.
Tuesday, 26. May 2009, 11:47:26
Accommodation, Transport, Trip, Travel
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Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Sahara was covered by expansive inland seas. Tens of millions of years ago, the Sahara was a desert larger than it is today. When the Sahara again turned green tens of thousands of years ago, and Europe shivered under the Ice Age, the Sahara became home to lakes and forests and a pleasant Mediterranean climate. Per-haps drawn by this idyllic climate, two distinct races appeared in North Africa between about 15,000 and 10,000 BC: the Oranian and then the Capsian (the former named after Oran in Algeria and the latter after Qafsah – ancient Capsa – in Tunisia). Their integration with indigenous peoples resulted in the spread of Neolithic (New Stone Age) culture and the introduction of farming techniques. The earliest evidence of lasting or semipermanent settlements in Algeria dates from this time. Rock paintings and carvings in the Tassili N’Ajjer National Park and elsewhere in Algeria, and across the borders in neighbouring Libya and Niger, are the greatest source of knowledge about this time when the Sahara was one of the nicest places to live in all the world. For more information on the Sahara’s climatic periods.It is from these Neolithic peoples that the Berbers are thought to descend. Taking into consideration regional variations and the lack of hard evidence, they appear to have been predominantly nomadic pastoralists, although they continued to hunt and occasionally farm. By the time of contact with the first of the outside civilisations to arrive from the east, the Phoenicians, these local tribes were already well established.
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