A country that serves its rulers, not its people

Algeria marks its independence day on July 5, 64 years since the end of French colonial rule and the birth of a nation that promised its people dignity, freedom and prosperity. 

Six decades later, the promise remains largely unfulfilled, buried under the weight of a system that has served its rulers far better than its citizens.

Since 1962, Algeria has been governed not by the people, but for the army and the FLN, the National Liberation Front that fought for independence and then never relinquished the power that victory brought.

Democratic elections, when they have occurred, have been managed, manipulated or simply ignored when their results proved inconvenient, as in 1992, when the army cancelled elections that an Islamist party was poised to win, triggering a brutal civil war that killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people.

The Hirak protest movement of 2019, which brought millions of Algerians into the streets demanding genuine democratic change, was met initially with tactical concessions, and then systematically crushed once the regime felt secure enough to act.

Journalists, activists and opposition figures continue to be imprisoned. Freedom of the press is a fiction. Freedom of assembly is permitted only when it suits those in power.

Rich Country, Poor People

Algeria sits on some of the world's most significant hydrocarbon reserves, among the top ten countries globally for natural gas and a major oil producer. The wealth generated by these resources over six decades should, by any rational measure, have produced a prosperous, educated, well-serviced population.

It has not. Corruption has consumed a staggering share of Algeria's oil and gas revenues, diverted into the pockets of a military-business elite that has treated the state as a personal enterprise. Infrastructure outside the major cities remains inadequate.

Youth unemployment is chronically high. The brain drain is relentless, with educated Algerians voting with their feet, crossing the Mediterranean in search of the opportunities their own country refuses to provide.

The Algeria of 2026 is a country that suffocates. Not for lack of resources, it has them in abundance. Not for lack of talented people, its diaspora in France, Canada and beyond demonstrates what Algerians can achieve when given genuine freedom and opportunity.

It suffocates because six decades of military control, single-party dominance and systematic corruption have produced a state that extracts from its citizens rather than serving them.

The regime spends lavishly on weapons and on suppressing dissent. It spends far less on hospitals, schools, roads and the conditions of ordinary life. It lectures neighbouring countries on sovereignty while denying sovereignty to its own people, the right to choose their leaders, to speak freely, to build businesses without paying tribute to the connected.

July 5: Celebrating What?

Independence from France was a genuine and hard-won achievement, paid for in blood by a generation that deserved better than what came after. The men and women who fought for Algeria's freedom did not die so that one set of masters could be replaced by another, so that the FLN flag could fly over a system as opaque and self-serving as any colonial administration.

Sixty-four years on, the Algerian people deserve the independence they were promised in 1962, real independence, from the generals and the party bosses and the corrupt networks that have held the country hostage for six decades.

That independence has not yet arrived.