Algeria is undoubtedly living through a very sad era: even the so-called “guardians of the military temple” are packing their bags and abandoning the sinking ship. After the pathetic episode of teenagers fleeing to Spain on a makeshift boat, now comes the turn of the regime’s own “super-spy,” General Abdelkader Haddad, better known under his sinister nickname “Nacer El-Djen.” Once the feared head of Algerian intelligence — and, above all, a leading war criminal during the bloody “Black Decade” of the 1990s — he too has bolted, seeking refuge… in Spain!
This is a glaring symbol of a regime on its last breath, where the watchword seems to have become: every man for himself! When the youth take to the sea to escape despair, and when the Generals (mere corporals in disguise, after all), supposedly embodying strength and authority, desert their own barracks, then the whole nation collapses under the weight of lies and incompetence.
For what is an “State” worth when its own leaders abandon their country amid economic and social ruin? The Algerian military regime, long accustomed to peddling imaginary victories and fictitious diplomatic triumphs, now finds itself ridiculed by the silent betrayal of one of its very own “pillars of torture.”
The people, meanwhile, don’t need an intelligence service to grasp the obvious truth: when everyone dreams of fleeing — from kids to generals — it means Algeria has truly become an open-air prison, ruled by a junta that no longer believes its own fairy tales.
And while Tebboune, the “Clown of Algiers,” fantasizes about Algeria being a member of the G20, his “corporals” dream up golden exile lives in Europe. The irony couldn’t be more biting: those who once hunted down the harragas now flee like them — and alongside them — only with diplomatic passports and well-stocked foreign bank accounts.
The final word? A regime that can no longer keep either its children or its leaders is doomed to keep no one at all. COURAGE… LET’S FLEE! Perhaps the only national policy still working in Algeria.
Abderrazzak Boussaid / Le7tv