Nothing is quite what it seems in Algeria. A half hour's drive south of the capital, the road to the provincial town of Medea enters a deep gorge. The watchtow-ers, checkpoints and armoured-car patrols that punctuate every winding mile suggest that security, in this huge and rugged country whose waning civil war has cost perhaps 100,000 lives, remains tenuous. But the sight of families picnicking by roadside streams, and happily feeding the local Barbary apes, hints that things are not so bad after all. Similarly, the election that has just resoundingly won Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a second five-year term, may look like the kind of perfunctory democratic window-dressing that is sadly typical of these parts. But the incumbent's 85% landslide proves, on closer inspection, to be a pretty fair reflection of public opinion.
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