Since the deadly fires of the summer of 2021, the Algerian president has announced that he has ordered that his country “immediately” equip itself with water bomber planes. But these were only empty words from a boastful president, whose vain words are partly responsible for several dozen victims, burned alive in forest fires.
The Algerian regime is today panicked after the deadly day of Wednesday August 17 when, according to various sources, between 37 and 60 people would have died in less than 24 hours in the forest fires which are currently ravaging the far north. – east of the country. This, not to mention hundreds of more or less serious injuries and significant material and environmental damage.
This panic of the regime is explained by the black anger of the Algerians in the face of the lies of the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who had multiplied, from August 12, 2021 to June 13, 2022, declarations and promises, never kept, on the imminent acquisition by Algeria of water bomber planes to fight against the fires which ravage the local forests each year and carry death and desolation.
Thus, in a televised speech, broadcast on August 12, 2021, President Tebboune, who then took stock of the fires that mourned the country last summer, particularly the Kabyle region of Tizi Ouzou, had claimed to have given his instructions to the command of the Algerian army with a view to acquiring water bomber planes. “I gave my instructions to the National People’s Army to contact companies that market water bomber planes.”
What follow-up was given by the Algerian army to the instructions of Tebboune, who is at the same time the president of the country, the supreme commander of the armed forces and the Minister of Defence? None. Either the Algerian army does not recognize any authority in Tebboune’s instructions, or the latter speaks to speak as he is used to doing, ferociously degrading both the speech and the presidential function.
Instead of acquiring water bombers, the Algerian army rented an old Be-200 for only three months last June, which broke down as soon as it was used. This rental substituted for acquisitions confirms that the orders of the President of the Republic were trampled on by General Said Chengriha, Chief of Staff of the Algerian army. It makes you wonder who controls who in this country?
Indeed, new words from the Algerian president will confirm the failure of his order to the chief of the military staff to order water bomber planes from Russia. On June 13, 2022, during the Algiers Fair, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, visiting the American pavilion, asked the United States Ambassador in Algiers to make him an emergency proposal on fire extinguisher planes, specifying that the payment will be immediate.
This impulsive request obviously went unanswered, because such an untimely presidential exit was in reality aimed at saving face for the regime and making people believe that it had not given up on providing the country with water bomber planes. In reality, this pseudo-order, verbal, for North American planes (Canadair or Hercules C-130) had no chance of succeeding. That’s not how you buy an airplane. And it is not by affirming that the payment would be immediate that we will be delivered, while the manufacturers respect the order books and the deadlines provided to their customers. This epidermal request has at least the merit of providing us with proof of a mode of governance, marked by improvisation and impulsive decisions that go unanswered.
Worse, following the falling out with Spain in the wake of its support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara, the Algerian regime canceled a contract for the acquisition of small water bomber planes, signed in 2021 with the Spanish company Plysa. The latter had participated, with two Trush 710P type aircraft, derived from agricultural spreading aircraft, in the extinction of the 2021 forest fires in Algeria.
According to the website Algerian party, this contract cancellation “is a scandal that will go down in history as one of the most abject demonstrations of the irresponsibility of Algerian political leaders. This scandal concerns the cancellation of a contract for the purchase of seven water bombers from a Spanish company, following a falling out with Madrid after its reversal in favor of the Moroccan position on the Western Sahara file. The cancellation of this contract, which occurred on July 18, deprived Algeria of several aircraft essential for the aerial fight against forest fires. This unconscious decision has further weakened our country in the face of the very high threat of forest fires”.
The only contract, probably serious, is the one signed with the Spanish company. But the morbid hatred of Morocco led the pundits of the regime to terminate it, thus assuming full responsibility for leaving the Algerians helpless in the face of the fires. The consequence of the vain words of the Algerian president, we know it. At least 50 dead burned alive. Fires that have reached villages and towns. The anger of Algerians is rising on social networks. Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane has promised to compensate those affected by the forest fires “as of next week”. Not sure that this lever to buy social peace can appease all the anger.
As for the Algerian president, we will see what other story he will pull out of his hat to explain how his instructions given to the Algerian army to acquire water bombers did not succeed.