Floods in Algeria: The myth of a “regional power” swept away by the reality of crumbling infrastructure
With every official statement, the Algerian regime likes to present itself as a “regional power”, a strong, sovereign and indispensable state. Yet it takes only a few hours of rain for this carefully maintained narrative to crack, then collapse. The bad weather that has hit Algeria in recent days has brutally exposed a reality that propaganda desperately tries to conceal: dilapidated infrastructure, chronic mismanagement, and a state unable to protect its citizens.
Entire wilayas, from Relizane to Algiers, from Blida to Béjaïa, from Chlef to Mascara, were submerged. Roads turned into rivers, homes flooded, balconies and rooftops collapsing, landslides, vehicles swept away or left stranded. The images widely shared on social media spoke for themselves. They revealed a vulnerable, exposed country, left to fend for itself in the face of weather events that are far from exceptional.
In Algiers, supposed to embody the showcase of the state, a few spells of rainfall were enough to cause trees to fall, partial balcony collapses, landslides, and the flooding of schools and entire neighborhoods. Elsewhere, families had to be urgently evacuated, people were trapped in their homes or vehicles, and several lives were lost. A heavy human and material toll that stands in stark contrast to the triumphant rhetoric repeatedly promoted by the authorities.
Behind hollow slogans and martial declarations, the reality is unforgiving: lack of maintenance of drainage networks, chaotic urban development, aging buildings, endemic corruption, and public policies driven by communication rather than the public interest. The state that claims to lecture its neighbors proves incapable of managing rainwater runoff or securing whole districts against well-known risks.
These recurring disasters are not a climatic inevitability. They are the direct result of decades of poor governance, reversed priorities, and a system more concerned with political control and staging its supposed power than with real investment in the service of the population.
Propaganda can multiply slogans, but it can do nothing against the force of images or the suffering of citizens. When the rain falls, the truth rises to the surface: that of a regime that boasts abroad while letting its country sink at home. A so-called regional power that falters at the first storm, and whose foundations, like its infrastructure, appear more fragile with each passing day.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French article – le7tv
