ALGERIA
Day Sixty-Nine
I-N-GUEZZAM
I approach Algeria with a certain amount of trepidation. The second largest country in Africa, and the tenth largest in the world, has, since 1992, been sidelined to the fringes of the international community, a nation synonymous with trouble. Information is hard to find. My Lonely Planet guide apologetically devotes only ten pages to it. ‘Due to its continuing problems,’ they explain, ‘Algeria was the one African nation we were unable to visit.’
The BBC advised against operating there, and the Foreign Office insisted that if we go we should take armed bodyguards. Even the artesian well at the border, marked so hopefully in blue on my Michelin map, has the word ‘sulfureuse’ alongside it.
The country that fought a bloody civil war to win its independence from France in 1962 is currently involved in another, just as bloody, which began in 1992, when the military-dominated, socialist regime cancelled an election which they feared was going to be won by an Islamist opposition party. The opposition militarised itself as the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), and it is estimated that in less than ten years more than 100,000 people have died on both sides.
Everyone tells me, however, that the worst of the trouble is confined to the north, where 85 per cent of the population lives. Everyone, that is, but the driver who is at this very moment carrying me across a swathe of flat, gritty desert (reg as opposed to erg) towards the border town of I-n-Guezzam.
His small talk features mouth-drying accounts of the extreme lawlessness of the Sahara. Smuggling is a way of life. Mostly cigarettes, made illegally in Nigeria and brought north by the truckload. Governments have little influence in isolated areas still controlled by local warlords.
Had I not heard of Mokhtar ben Mokhtar, alias Louar, the One-Eyed One?
I shake my head, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il fait?’
My driver can’t believe his luck. ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il fait!’
He’s stockpiled thousands of illegal weapons, stolen several hundred four-wheel drives and shot down an aircraft. He has a fleet of vehicles equipped with satellite navigation, armed with AK-47s and refuelled from dumps deep in the sand. An entire Dakar Rally had once been diverted to avoid going through his territory.
‘Which is where, exactly?’
My driver gestures, a circular motion of the right hand that leaves little room for doubt. Wherever it was that Mokhtar ben Mokhtar operated, we’re in the middle of it.
‘I was told it was Islamic fundamentalists that stopped the Rally.’
He shakes his head. ‘Mokhtar works for himself. And for the freedom of the South.’
‘South?’
‘Of Algeria.’
The car slides to a halt.
‘There it is!’
My driver points to two metal posts stuck in the sand.
There always seems something faintly absurd about borders. One stone belonging to one government and the stone next to it belonging to another. In the immense void of the desert, marks of sovereignty seem gloriously irrelevant. Yet here they are, confirmed in a plinth at the base of a 6-foot-high oval steel tube.
‘F. Algero-Nigerienne 27/11/1981’
The clipped inscription has been crudely applied, picked out by a finger whilst the concrete was still wet.
Next to it is a shorter triangular steel post, which my driver tells me is an upright for the palissade, a fence which the authorities hope will one day make this a serious border and stop the likes of Mokhtar ben Mokhtar treating Algeria’s desert like his own private fiefdom. This could be the fencing contract of all time. Algeria’s Saharan border is nearly 2000 miles long.
There is one other marker at this desolate spot. It’s a small concrete trig point left behind by the French. Detailed measurements and the words ‘Nivellement General’ are inscribed in a clear, legible and ornate inscription. This was the work of people who intended to stay in Algeria for a long time.
Near by, the shells of two abandoned cars lie in the sand, as if, like marathon runners breasting the tape, the effort of getting to the line was all they could manage. Jettisoned tyres, a carburettor and an un-rusted cylinder head are scattered about.
Across the border our Algerian hosts wait to greet us. Said Chitour is a journalist from Algiers who has worked tirelessly for this day. He’s a stocky, busy man in his early forties, anxious and exuberant at the same time. With him is our security man, Eamonn O’Brien, with a broad smile and the reassuring physique of Action Man, and an assortment of uniformed attendants. Gendarmes in green, border police in black. All are armed. Said reminds us that no walkie-talkies or satellite phones are to be used while we are in Algeria. Security, he says, with a quick shrug and a smile, before turning to the drivers.
‘Come! We go!’ he shouts, a touch manically. Engines rumble into life and, accompanied by our substantial entourage, we head across the two or three miles of no-man’s-land that separates the end of Niger from the first town in Algeria.
The crescent moon and green and white verticals of the national flag flutter above the sub-prefect’s office in the main street of I-n-Guezzam. Construction is going on to turn this dirt strip into a dual carriageway, but work seems desultory. Two rake-thin guards, rifles slung over their shoulders, stand outside the office where our papers are being checked. As we wait, Said confides to me that I-n-Guezzam is considered the end of the earth, and a posting here is usually a penalty for past mistakes. I like Said. He is clearly proud of his country and impatient with it at the same time, like a father with a delinquent son.
He apologises that there are no hotels of sufficient quality in I-n-Guezzam. We have been invited instead to spend the night on the roof of the mayor’s house. This is a two-storey brick and plaster building with a small garden tucked away behind high walls. The downstairs rooms are full of people, mostly family I assume. The mayor, a tall slim Touareg, wears a yellow turban, matching gandoura (an Arab kaftan), leggings in cream and red check and a pair of thin scholarly glasses. Our presence is clearly something unprecedented in I-n-Guezzam and he is forever bringing people up to the roof to meet us. The commissar, a short stocky man in T-shirt and Umbro training pants, shakes hands all round, followed shortly by someone introduced to us as the Surgeon of Police. I think they’re all quite keen to hang around and party, but we cross-Saharan travellers are by now desperately in need of food and sleep.
Day Seventy
I-N-GUEZZAM TO TAMANRASSET
I should be used to the gripping chill of the desert nights by now, but I still find myself reaching for a sweater in the small hours. I find I’ve laid my sleeping bag beside a small drainage hole in the wall, through which a blast of gritty wind is blowing straight into my face. Stuff my towel into the hole, wrap my turban round my head and settle myself back to sleep. It doesn’t come easily. There is a constant subdued roar coming from somewhere, as if planes are warming up for take-off (I’m later told it’s the town generator). I can’t wait for the dawn.
It is a beauty. The sun rises as a pulsing red ball, glowing like a hot coal before softening into a peachy glow which fills the sky with benevolent promise. (I keep making a mental note to myself not to describe any more sunrises, but some are majestic and, jaded travellers though we are, we never ignore them. They raise the spirits like nothing else. Apart from a cold beer.)