Algeria’s diplomacy has undoubtedly become one of the most incompetent around. In sadomasochistic fashion, successive foreign ministers have managed to make the Algerian passport worth less than toilet paper. How? by literally bending over when in the presence of foreign officials.
A police squadron in El-Biar, a borough of Algiers, became the subject of derision in February on social media when a number of officers proceeded to arrest a rooster that was allegedly “disturbing” a neighbour, initially believed to be an Italian diplomat.
, the owner of the rooster recounts how five police officers knocked at his door, told him “we have an order to arrest the rooster and take it in”, chased after the rooster and ended up arresting it. The rooster was never to be seen again, and in the video, its owner pleaded for information that could lead to reuniting the two.
Later, the Embassy of Italy denied that the plaintiff in the story was an Italian diplomat, so did the Police, although one should keep in mind that anything that comes out of the Algerian police is to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Whether true or not, this submissive behaviour isn’t anything new for the Algerian authorities. In Algeria, foreigners are pretty much allowed to break the law, from the more menial driving incivilities to the more serious offences like beating up a child or slapping a police officer and getting away with it.
In contrast, foreign authorities don’t accommodate that much the Algerian diplomatic missions, as reported by a source at the Embassy of Algeria in London: “One time the Embassy complained to the U.K authorities about the homeless people who sleep next to the embassy only to be told: here in the U.K, it isn’t like in Algeria, even the homeless have rights and there’s nothing we can do to ask them to leave”. A reality check brutally slapped on the Algerian ambassador’s face.
Back in Algiers, foreign missions are protected by taxpayer-funded police officers, even when the threat to these missions is pretty much inexistent. To humiliate the Algerian citizen further, foreign missions are allowed to enforce bans on photography outside of their premises, on the public way.
It doesn’ stop there. Algerian diplomats have also become the subject of outright subjugation by sons and daughters of members of the regime. In 2014, Adel Saadani, the son of Amar Saadani, a notoriously corrupt politician believed to have embezzled 300 million Euros, threatened a diplomat at the Consulate of Algeria in London, Lyes Amissi, of “buying Viagra, flying over and sodomising” the diplomat. The threats were in response to the diplomat asking Adel Saadani’s sister, Selma Saadani – who at the time was recruited by the Consulate as a means to renew her visa – to cut coming in two hours late every single day.
In 2018, the UK authorities ordered a salary raise for one of the embassy’s employees or have him essentially sacked. An order the embassy quickly obeyed, leading to the employee becoming homeless overnight.
Why this inferiority complex you might ask? Simply put, Algerian diplomats are instructed by senior army figures and the secret service to serve as much as they can foreign authorities, with the logic being if they don’t offend them they won’t investigate their bank accounts or the actions of their sons and daughters abroad.
This inferiority complex is the result of decades of poor leadership, from the recently army-appointed Abdelmadjid Tebboune to his predecessors.
Elsewhere, in France, staff at the embassy of Algeria described how the ambassador Salah Lebdioui requested an autograph from Emmanuel Macron when he had first met him as part of his accreditation. It is why, in the absence of a real state, the Algiers Herald will launch an initiative that will benefit Algeria’s diplomacy in the long term.
An Algiers Herald campaign to educate Algerian diplomats
Most Algerian diplomats studied at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, a school run at best like a barbershop, at worst like some sort of brothel. In light of the above, the Algiers Herald has taken the initiative to collect funds on behalf of all Algerian diplomatic missions abroad, in order to offer free courses to Algerian diplomats, courses taught by experts in the field of international relations and politics. The Algiers Herald will approach thousands of foreign embassies and companies to have them participate in this initiative, be it through funding or logistical support. More details on this campaign to follow over the next weeks. You can already start donating here (using the reference “save the Algerian passport”).