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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ALGIERS 001121 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/16/2018 
TAGS: PGOV SOCI EDU AG
SUBJECT: TRILINGUAL ILLITERATES: ALGERIA'S LANGUAGE CRISIS 
 
Classified By: DCM Thomas F. Daughton; reasons 1.4 (b, d). 
 
¶1. (U) SUMMARY: Decades of government-imposed Arabization 
have produced an under-40 population that, in the words of 
frustrated Algerian business leaders, "is not fluent in 
anything" and therefore handicapped in the job market and 
more vulnerable to extremist influence.  The Algerian school 
system now produces graduates who must first take the time 
and money after university to re-learn subjects like 
engineering, science and commerce in French in order to 
compete for jobs in Algeria and abroad.  The phenomenon has 
driven those Algerian students who can afford it to look 
outside the system for an education in French or English at 
private schools in Algeria or Europe.  The legacy of 
Arabization has also exposed a generational rift among those 
who passed through the public education system: the over-40s 
are generally fluent in spoken and written French and feel it 
is a strong part of their cultural identity, while the 
under-20s have been educated entirely in Arabic, with French 
as a poorly learned second language.  The 20-40 age group now 
competing for jobs speaks a confusing mixture of French, 
Arabic and Berber that one business leader called "useless," 
as they cannot make themselves fully understood by anyone but 
themselves.  We hear at all levels that this problem has led 
to a tremendous appetite for English -- a neutral, global 
language unburdened by Algerian history -- as the best way 
forward.  END SUMMARY. 
 
LANGUAGE RIFT BEGINS WITH INDEPENDENCE 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (U) Algeria's Arabization campaign began as a reaction to 
the French colonial experience and came almost immediately 
after independence in 1962.  A May 22, 1964 decree made 
Arabic the official language of government and 
administration.  Given the dearth of fluent Arabic teachers 
in Algeria at the time, Arabic-language education began in 
1962 with a mandatory seven hours per week in all schools at 
all levels.  The figure increased to ten hours per week in 
¶1964.  To fill the demand for Arabic teachers, Algeria began 
importing Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi and other instructors from 
across the Arab world, which met with some resistance from 
Algeria's teachers unions and also brought an influx of Arab 
ideology -- much of it religious and conservative -- into the 
country. 
 
¶3. (U) In 1974, the government mandated that all primary 
school education be in Arabic, and in 1976 French was dealt 
the coup de grace when it was formally relegated to 
second-language status, with instruction beginning only in 
the fourth year of primary school.  The trend continued into 
the 1980s and in 1989 the government mandated that Arabic be 
used on all signs and public communication, with penalties 
for violators.  Since 1989, classical Arabic has been the 
sole language of instruction in all Algerian primary and 
secondary schools, a reality formalized in article 15 of law 
91-05 of January 16, 1991.  University subjects are also 
taught in Arabic -- without exception since former Prime 
Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem refused to allow scientific and 
technical subjects to revert to French-language instruction. 
In one famous public statement, Belkhadem said that would be 
tantamount to "a regression" and that the solution for 
Algerians to compete in the international job market was not 
for French to be taught in Algeria, but for Arabic to spread 
to the rest of the region from Algeria's example. 
 
THE LOST GENERATION 
------------------- 
 
¶4. (C) Over an iftar dinner at the Ambassador's residence 
towards the end of Ramadan, several Algerian business 
representatives lamented what they called the "lost 
generation" of Algerian workers, who are left out largely 
because of their inability to function at a professional 
level in any single language.  Ameziane Ait Ahcene, Northrup 
Grumman's deputy director for Algeria, complained that he had 
to recruit in francophone Europe to find skilled accountants 
and engineers who were fluent in spoken and written French. 
Mohamed Hakem, marketing and communications director for the 
ETRHB Haddad group, shared the same sentiment, adding that 
the process of providing language training in French or 
English to new recruits was often prohibitively expensive and 
added too much time to the recruitment process.  Often, Hakem 
 
ALGIERS 00001121  002 OF 002 
 
 
said, "it takes one to two years" to re-educate an Algerian 
graduate in specialized vocabulary and international 
standards for technical and scientific work in particular. 
Hakem said the lack of ability for most Algerians "to 
communicate with anyone other than themselves" isolates 
Algerian youth and makes them more vulnerable to extremist 
ideology. 
 
¶5. (C) Ait Ahcene added that the current job market favored 
Algeria's wealthy elites, who can afford to send their 
children to private schools in France or Canada, for example, 
to make them competitive after graduation.  In his view, the 
vast majority of the population, 72 percent of which is under 
the age of 30, represented a "lost generation" that 
Arabization "without compromise" had created.  One contact 
recalled a late-1980s class in British civilization taught by 
the inspirational University of Algiers Professor Laceb. 
Professor Laceb, whose students supposedly represented the 
best the Algerian university system could produce at the 
time, paused and shook his head after a futile review of 
their translation efforts between French, Arabic and English. 
 "It's unbelievable," he told them, "you are trilingual 
illiterates." 
 
ENGLISH AS THE THIRD WAY 
------------------------ 
 
¶6. (C) During an October 14 introductory meeting with the 
Ambassador, National Popular Assembly (APN - lower house of 
parliament) Speaker Abdelaziz Ziari described the tremendous 
historical baggage that came with the French language in 
Algeria.  He said that in the first decades after 
independence, Algeria came to reject French completely as a 
symbol of over 130 years of colonial rule.  Over time 
attitudes softened, and the tensions and resistance 
associated with using the French language faded.  Today, 
Ziari said, Algeria's priority was to increase its 
English-language abilities, and he bemoaned the lack of 
qualified parliamentary staff who could function in fluent 
spoken and written English.  Northrup Grumman's Ait Ahcene 
put it simply, saying that English offered "freedom from the 
past" and was unburdened by memories of the French colonial 
experience on the one hand and "excessive Arabization" on the 
other.  Aicha Barki, president of the nationwide women's 
literacy organization Iqra, told us recently that the 
Arabization process had made achieving literacy in general 
more difficult, as Arabic is simply a much harder language to 
master than either French or English. 
 
COMMENT: A MARSHALL PLAN FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶7. (C) Barki sees literacy as the key to realizing the full 
potential of Algerian women and to fighting radicalization 
and extremist ideology, which, she said, feast on the 
illiterate.  Algeria's language crisis is unique in the Arab 
world, given the country's turbulent history and the 
existence of an entire generation fluent only in a linguistic 
collage known as "Algerian."  Diplomats coming to Algeria 
after serving elsewhere in the region are amazed that 
Algerians rarely finish a sentence in the same language they 
started it in.  Given that what business leaders Hakem and 
Ait Ahcene call the "lost generation" contains the vast 
majority of Algeria's population, the language issue assumes 
an even more disproportionate importance in Algeria.  At 
stake is not just the ability of anyone other than the 
wealthy elite to participate in the international economy. 
Equally important is the need to counter the opportunities 
the crisis creates for extremism to take root.  It is no 
surprise then that throughout the Ambassador's introductory 
meetings with senior Algerian officials, one theme has been 
repeated consistently: the desire for a large-scale increase 
in English-language instruction throughout the government, 
private sector and educational system.  As the director of 
cooperation at the Ministry of Higher Education recently told 
us, Algeria "needs a Marshall Plan for the English language." 
PEARCE