For diplomat or chef Algeria is giant prison

NAWAL (27) sat on my right in the dining room of the El Djazair Hotel. Mukhtar, a former army officer in his 60s, sat beside her. "If my father were alive he'd be sorry that he fought for this," the young woman said.

By "this" she meant the violently impoverished, that Algeria has become.

"No, he wouldn't," Mukhtar snapped back, his leathery fingers twitching on the filterless cigarettes he's been smoking since he fought in the 1954-1962 war of independence. "You wouldn't be free if he hadn't fought."

"I'm not free," Nawal said sharply. Mukhtar bristled. In the old days, no Algerian would have dared talk back to a former moudjahid. No Algerian would have dared question "the glorious revolution".

The argument, between two people who had just met, was a poignant reminder that Algeria's war is as much a conflict between generations as it is between versions of Islam, between French and Arabic speakers, between clans and regions.

Nawal and Mukhtar agreed on only one thing: Algeria's educational system is a catastrophe. A recent study by the opposition politician Said Sadi found that of 217 high-ranking Algerian officials surveyed, not one sent his children to public institutions.

The quality of education was poor, Mukhtar admitted, but if the revolution hadn't happened, Nawal would be herding goats in the mountains.

"I might be happier," she said. "Maybe I wouldn't know what is happening."

The young woman and the old man argued over who had suffered more, the generation that fought the French, or today's young people: "You just want to go to nightclubs," Mukhtar said accusingly. "You don't know what it's like to be in a war. I didn't expect to live through the war. I thought I would die for independence. It's only when the battle is over that you become frightened and you find that your hands shake."

Nawal stared at him blankly. "At least you knew who your enemy was, and what you were fighting for. At least you had, hope." Mukhtar's wife interrupted: "We suffer more than you do, because we risked our lives for the revolution and now we see this."

Nawal lives in a tiny two-room apartment inhabited by seven people, caring for a quadriplegic aunt. Mukhtar drinks at home all day, hoping the fundamentalists won't kill him.

Claustrophobia, like fear, is an emotion which all Algerians share. For Islamist politicians jailed for years without trial, for Algerians who can no longer obtain visas to travel abroad, for "the protected ones (officials lodged in walled former beach resorts, even for the French pastry chef who never leaves the Hotel El Djazair) Algeria is one giant prison.

The western diplomatic corps is imprisoned in embassy compounds. But US diplomats have found a way to relieve the boredom. Every Wednesday and Thursday evening - the beginning of the Muslim weekend - attractive young Algerian women are invited to parties at the "Happy Sheikh" bar to drink and dance - and often sleep - on the embassy grounds. No other western chanceries allow parties in their compounds.

"The ambassador smokes a pipe and wears glasses," an Algerian woman who has attended the parties said. "He is well-behaved. The others are polite when he's there, but as soon as he leaves they start groping. The marines are better than the diplomats."

But not all of Algiers is fiddling while the country burns. Dalila's job has been a misery since a new bank manager was appointed over her.

"We checked his record and found out he'd been in prison for stealing money from the school where he was an accountant," she said. "He got his present job because he knows someone, or because he's with the intelligence service. That's how this country works now the thieves are taking over."

To intimidate his new employees, the bank manager threatens to send hooded men to their homes at night. Yesterday, the government announced the establishment of a new "Observatory for Corruption".

"Imagine getting paid to observe corruption!" joked an Algiers lawyer. "But at least the `observer' gets a car, a driver, a bodyguard and a new office. Who can blame him?"