Battle of Algiers

The current Algerian government officially promised "a renaissance of culture". And it is high time: while radical Islamists dedicate themselves to lost dreams, or lay bombs for them, and women wear the hejab more than ever, an atmosphere of intellectual chaos prevails. Anarchy, Socialism, Islamism people in people in Algiers have experienced them all and benefited from none of them.

In no other capital of the Arab world was culture destroyed in such a way as in Algiers in the "ten black years" from 1991 to 2001: painters, authors, journalists, theatre people, satirists and psychoanalysts who opposed the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Algeria, fell victim to a fundamentalist wave of murders that exceeded anything Algiers had experienced during the uprising against France. And yet, Algiers is an open city: characterised by Arab, Mediterranean, European and Berber influences, ideal as the Cultural Capital of a modern Arab world. The title of Arab Cultural Capital was awarded for the eleventh time in 2007. It went to Algiers the first time.

Now, film-makers, authors, philosophers and playwrights from the whole of the Arab world are to meet and present their works in restored buildings in the Kasbah - a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site since 1992, and subsequently a stronghold of GIA, the Armed Islamic Group. The Ministry of Culture promised "a renaissance of culture". For example, colloquia and exhibitions are being organised, 60 new films produced and 45 plays taken around the whole country in 850 performances. There are also plans for youth camps with young people from other Arab nations. According to Algerian figures, between € 60 and 70 million are available for the cultural authorities to finance the programmes of the Arab Cultural Capital.

The cultural year is to focus on book production: 1,000 new novels, volumes of poems and philosophical works are being published by the state. The government is also having non-Arabic works translated into Arabic for the cultural year. That's progress, says bookseller Abdallah Benadouda in a reportage on 3Sat TV, since there was a lack of such translations up to now. The state will buy 1,500 copies of every book selected by the Reading Commission in the framework of  "Algiers, Cultural Capital of the Arab World". With its population of three million, Algiers has roughly 15 bookshops with a fairly comprehensive range of titles. Since 1,000 copies of a novel are sold on average, the government-secured sale of 1,500 copies is encouragement for many a publisher. Says Benadouda: "But young people unfortunately weren't brought up to read in school."

Historian Daho Djerbal, who publishes "Criticism" magazine - which is internationally renowned, but to which no Algerian library subscribes - does not expect the subject of Islamism and anti-intellectual attitudes to be addressed during the year of Arab culture, since a clean break was made with the years of terror by law. "The 'Act on Reconciliation and Social Peace' was passed in parliament and forbids any discussion of the terrorism of the past or the victims of that terrorism," says Djerbal. "It's as though nothing had happened. So, there can also be no debate about the intellectuals killed, or about anyone else. That's not very cultural."

Nevertheless, Djerbal recommended 3Sat viewers to visit Algiers. "You'll see people here, who are completely unknown to the Western media, but who have great influence on the emergence of a new, contemporary kind of Arab thinking." And: "This new kind of Arab thinking will one day overtake conservative and reactionary thinking. That's definite." It was not only Djerbal's hopes that were dashed for the time being by two bomb attacks.