ABSTRACT
After the electoral process was interrupted in December 1991, Algeria exploded into civil war. International human rights organizations estimate that there were approximately 100,000 victims between 1992 and 1998. They emphasise the fact that the great majority of these victims were young people. The conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and the regime in recent years has resulted in the breakdown of family structures. Abandoned children are now seen on the streets of large cities, supporting themselves by means of begging, prostitution and the sale of hard drugs. Needless to say, not all young people are in this dire a situation; there are differences in degree which relate to geographic location. Nonetheless, the national media agree that such a social breakdown has occurred in a large part of the country as a result of the war and economic reform; they stress that what is at stake in post-civil war Algeria is the integration of young people who have been traumatised by violence, economic instability and the absence of a perspective of political democracy. Considered by President Houari Boumedienne (1965–79) as the future of Algeria, these young people from the lower classes are now seen by successive regimes as a burden. Those committed to Islamic fundamentalism have become the ‘new dangerous class’ of political animals, dubbed by Prime Minister Ahmed Ghozali as ‘erstwhile beggars’. Paradoxically, it is just when the talent of some of these young people with working-class origins is being seen in Raï music or international sport that they are emerging on the national level as a hindrance to modernity in Algeria.
