Features

Zinedine Zidane, a Kabyle from La Castellane

Zinedine Zidane may be the best soccer player ever to play for the French national team, and his record in professional league play over 18 years is virtually unmatched. A soccer superstar for many years in Europe, where his image is well-known due to his many endorsement and sponsorship deals, Zidane achieved a different sort of notoriety globally when his startling head butt of Italian team player Marco Materazzi in the 2006 FIFA World Cup final game was broadcast and re-broadcast around the world.

Tiaret Algeria: Ancient Station, Modern Town

Tiaret is a town of about 150,000 people located about 100 miles inland from the Mediterranean seacoast. Known variously as Tiaret, Tahert or Tihert, it is the main city in the province of Tiaret, an upland agricultural region in the Tell Atlas area of Algeria. The word "Tihert" means "station" in the local Berber dialect, and from ancient times Tiaret has been a station, or stopping place, for travelers, traders and armies. Situated in a strategic mountain pass, Tiaret was essential to any power that sought to control the surrounding land and the lucrative trade routes that passed through it. Slaves from sub-Saharan Africa were funneled through Tiaret on their way to markets on the coast. Caravans wound their way through the pass in either direction, allowing the local rulers to charge a tax on each visit. When the Romans controlled the area before the coming of Islam in the 7th century, they called the place "Tingurtia", meaning - you guessed it - "station".

The Game that Changed the World Cup - Algeria

Football, known more popularly as Soccer in the United States, has a long history in Algeria. The nation’s former long-time colonial masters, the French, introduced the so-called “beautiful game” to Algeria nearly a century ago. Football was quickly embraced as a game most anyone could play, no matter what their level of income or social status. With the goal of national independence achieved in 1962, Algeria set its sights on another goal: bringing their hardscrabble style of football to the world stage. The Fédération Algérienne de Football was established and an infrastructure created to nurture promising players and provide support to the sport of football in Algeria as a whole.

Algeria - Sands of the Sahara

Algeria is a land of contrasts, and that is reflected in the geography of the country itself. Most of Algeria's population lives on the Mediterranean coast or within a few miles of it. This fertile, temperate region is actually at more northerly latitude than the southernmost point of Spain. To the south, across the dry plateaus and low mountains of the Saharan Atlas, is the great expanse of the Sahara desert.

Algeria: The War for Independence

Many historians believe that modern day terrorism started with the initial conflict that would become Algeria's War of Independence. On November 1, 1954, the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) launched a series of attacks on French military outposts, police stations, warehouses, communications, and public utilities. These strikes were aimed at the French colonists, but many civilians were killed in the uprising.