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The flag of Algeria: The national flag of Algeria consists of two equal vertical stripes, green and white, and bears, in the centre, a red star and crescent. The flag came into order on July 3, 1962.
The flag's design is inspired from the standard of Emir Abdel Kadir in the 19th century which consisted of two equal vertical bands, green and white, as well as being inspired from the flag of the Algerian Regency from the 16th to the 19th century, which consisted of a white crescent and star on a red background (the same as the modern flag of Turkey; the Algerian Regency was an autonomous member state of the Ottoman Empire).
The white colour is for peace, while the green is for Islam and the red is for the blood of the martyrs of the Algerian war of independence (1954 to 1962).
The naval ensign for Algeria is identical to the national flag, with the exception of a two red crossed anchors in the canton. The Western blazon is per pale Vert and Argent; a crescent and star Gules.
Algeria, Berber, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is the largest country on the African continent after Sudan. It is bordered by Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mali and Mauritania in the southwest, and Morocco as well as a few kilometers of its annexed territory, Western Sahara, in the west. Constitutionally, it is defined as an Islamic, Arab, and Amazigh (Berber) country. The name Algeria is derived from the name of the city of Algiers (French Alger), from the Arabic word al-jaza’ir, which translates as the islands, referring to the four islands which lay off that city's coast until becoming part of the mainland in 1525; al-jaza’ir is itself short for the older name jaza’ir bani mazghanna, "the islands of (the tribe) Bani Mazghanna", used by early medieval geographers such as al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi.
Most of the coastal area is hilly, sometimes even mountainous, and there are few good harbours. The area just south of the coast, known as the Tell, is fertile. Further south is the Atlas mountain range and the Sahara desert. Algiers, Oran and Constantine are the main cities. Algeria's climate is arid and hot, although the coastal climate is mild, and the winters in the mountainous areas can be severe. Algeria is prone to sirocco, a hot dust- and sand-laden wind especially common in summer.
The current population of Algeria is 32,930,091 (July 2006 est.). About 70% of Algerians live in the northern, coastal area; the minority who inhabit the Sahara desert are mainly concentrated in oases, although some 1.5 million remain nomadic or partly nomadic. Almost 30% of Algerians are under 15. Ninety-nine percent of the population is classified ethnically as Arab/Berber and religiously as Sunni Muslim, the few non-Sunni Muslims are mainly Ibadis from the M'Zab valley. A mostly foreign Roman Catholic community of about 45,000 exists, as do very small Protestant and Jewish communities. Europeans account for less than 1% of the population. During the colonial period there was a large European (primarily French) pied-noir population, concentrated on the coast and forming a majority in certain cities. Almost all of this population left during or immediately after independence from France.
Most Algerians are Arab or Berber, by language or identity, and of mixed Berber-Arab ancestry, the origin Berber being in a majority. The Berbers inhabited Algeria before the arrival of Arab tribes during the expansion of Islam, in the 7th century. The issue of ethnicity and language is sensitive after many years of government marginalization of Berber (or Imazighen, as some prefer) culture. Today, the Arab-Berber issue is often a case of self-identification or identification through language and culture, rather than a racial or ethnic distinction. The 20% or so of the population who self-identify as Berbers, and primarily speak Berber languages (also termed Tamazight), are divided into several ethnic groups, notably Kabyle (the largest) in the mountainous north-central area, Chaoui in the eastern Atlas Mountains, Mozabites in the M'zab valley, and Tuareg in the far south. Housing and medicine continue to be pressing problems in Algeria. Failing infrastructure and the continued influx of people from rural to urban areas has overtaxed both systems. According to the UNDP, Algeria has one of the world's highest per housing unit occupancy rates for housing, and government officials have publicly stated that the country has an immediate shortfall of 1.5 million housing units.
Algeria has been inhabited by Berbers (or Imazighen) since at least 10,000 BC. From 1000 BC onwards, the Carthaginians became an influence on them, establishing settlements along the coast. Berber kingdoms began to emerge, most notably Numidia, seizing the opportunity offered by the Punic Wars to become independent of Carthage only to be taken over soon after by the Roman Republic in 200 BC. As the western Roman Empire collapsed, the Berbers became independent again in much of the area, while the Vandals took over parts of the area until later expelled by the generals of the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I. The Byzantine Empire then retained a precarious grip on the east of the country until the coming of the Arabs in the 8th century.
After some decades of fierce resistance under leaders such as Kusayla and Kahina, the Berbers adopted Islam en masse, but almost immediately expelled the Umayyad caliphate from Algeria, establishing an Ibadi state under the Rustamids. Having converted the Kutama of Kabylie to its cause, the Shia Fatimids overthrew the Rustamids, and conquered Egypt. They left Algeria and Tunisia to their Zirid vassals; when the latter rebelled and adopted Sunnism, they sent in a populous Arab tribe, the Banu Hilal, to weaken them, thus incidentally initiating the Arabization of the countryside. The Almoravids and Almohads, Berber dynasties from the west founded by religious reformers, brought a period of relative peace and development; however, with the Almohads' collapse, Algeria became a battleground for their three successor states, the Algerian Zayyanids, Tunisian Hafsids, and Moroccan Marinids. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spain started attacking and taking over many coastal cities, prompting some to seek help from the Ottoman Empire.
Algeria was brought into the Ottoman Empire by Khair ad-Din and his brother Aruj, who established Algeria's modern boundaries in the north and made its coast a base for the corsairs; their privateering peaked in Algiers in the 1600s. Piracy on American vessels in the Mediterranean resulted in the First and Second Barbary War with the United States. Those piracy acts were the occasion of a slave trade, reducing people captured on the boats to slavery or attacking coastal villages in southern Europe. On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algiers in 1830, where they found more than 10,000 slaves. The French conquest also freed the mass of Algerian Jews from the Turkish yoke. They welcomed it as a veritable deliverance—which it was—and the very day after the entrance of the French troops at Algiers, they became devoted allies of the civilizing power which made an end of Turkish rule in that country. However, intense resistance from such muslim personalities as Emir Abdelkader, Ahmed Bey and Fatma N'Soumer made for a slow conquest of Algeria, not technically completed until the early 1900s when the last Tuareg were conquered.
Meanwhile, however, the French made Algeria an integral part of France, a status that would end only with the collapse of the Fourth Republic. Tens of thousands of settlers from France, Italy, Spain, and Malta moved in to farm the Algerian coastal plain and occupy the most prized parts of Algeria's cities, benefiting from the French government's confiscation of communally held land, and the application of modern agriculture techniques that increased the amount of arable land. People of European descent in Algeria settlers (or natives like Spanish people in Oran), as well as the native Algerian Jews (typically Sephardic in origin), became full French citizens starting from the end of the 19th century (the so-called Pieds-Noirs after the independance); by contrast, the vast majority of Muslim Algerians (even veterans of the French army) received neither French citizenship nor the right to vote. Algeria's social fabric was stretched to breaking point during this period: literacy plummeted, while land confiscation uprooted much of the population. However, the population increased steadily.
Before the putsch of december 2, 1851 in France, even though the extention of colonisation was made difficult due to the maintain of intagibillity of individual property and banning transactions over tribe's territory, 131 000 Europeans including 66 000 French were installed in Algeria. This name replaces the old name "Possessions françaises dans le Nord de l'Afrique" not because of an official act, like a decree or an ordonance. Indeed, a letter from General SCHNEIDER, Ministre of War, dated from October 14, 1839 to Marechal VALEE General Governor states that the name Algérie (Algeria) shorter and most sgnificant, must be used in all acts and certificates issued by military and civil authorities.
In 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched the guerrilla Algerian War of Independence; after nearly a decade of urban and rural warfare, they succeeded in pushing France out in 1962. Most of the 1,025,000 Pieds-Noirs, as well as 91,000 Harkis (pro-French Muslim Algerians serving in the French Army), together forming about 10% of the population of Algeria in 1962, fled Algeria for France in just a few months in the middle of that year.
Algeria's first president, the FLN leader Ahmed Ben Bella, was overthrown by his former ally and defense minister, Houari Boumédiènne in 1965. Under Ben Bella the government had already become increasingly socialist and dictatorial, and this trend continued throughout Boumedienne's government; however, Boumedienne relied much more heavily on the army, and reduced the sole legal party to a merely symbolic role. Agriculture was collectivised, and a massive industrialization drive launched. Oil extraction facilities were nationalized and this increased the state's wealth, especially after the 1973 oil crisis, but the Algerian economy became increasingly dependent on oil, bringing hardship when the price collapsed in the 1980s. In foreign policy Algeria was a member and leader of the 'non-aligned' nations. A dispute with Morocco over the Western Sahara nearly led to war. Dissent was rarely tolerated, and the state's control over the media and the outlawing of political parties other than the FLN was cemented in the repressive constitution of 1976. Boumédienne died in 1978, but the rule of his successor, Chadli Bendjedid, was little more open. The state took on a strongly bureaucratic character and corruption was widespread.
The modernization drive brought considerable demographic changes to Algeria. Village traditions underwent significant change as urbanization increased, new industries emerged, agriculture was substantially reduced, and education, a rarity in colonial times, was extended nationwide, raising the literacy rate from less than 10% to over 60%. Improvements in healthcare led to a dramatic increase in the birthrate (7-8 children per mother) which had two consequences: a very youthful population, and a housing crisis. The new generation struggled to relate to the cultural obsession with the war years and two conflicting protest movements developed: left-wingers, including Berber identity movements, and Islamic 'intégristes'. Both protested against one-party rule but also clashed with each other in universities and on the streets during the 1980s. Mass protests from both camps in autumn 1988 forced Benjedid to concede the end of one-party rule, and elections were announced for 1991.
In December 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of the country's first multiparty elections. The military then canceled the second round, forced then-president Bendjedid to resign, and banned the Islamic Salvation Front. The ensuing conflict engulfed Algeria in the violent Algerian Civil War. More than 160,000 people were killed (17-Jan-1992 to June 2002), often in unprovoked massacres of civilians. The question of who was responsible for these massacres remains controversial among academic observers; many were claimed by the Armed Islamic Group. After 1998, the war waned, and by 2002 the main guerrilla groups had either been destroyed or surrendered, taking advantage of an amnesty program, though sporadic fighting continued in some areas. Elections resumed in 1995, and on 27 April 1999, after a series of short-term leaders representing the military, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the current president, was elected. The issue of Berber language and identity increased in significance, particularly after the extensive Kabyle protests of 2001 and the near-total boycott of local elections in Kabylie; the government responded with concessions including naming of Tamazight (Berber) as a national language and teaching it in schools. Much of Algeria is now recovering, developing into an emerging economy. The high prices of oil & gas are being used by the new government to improve the county's infrastructure and especially improve industry and agricultural land. Recent overseas investment in Algeria has increased.
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