A ray of hope for Algeria's crumbling Casbah?

By William Maclean

ALGIERS (Reuters) - From cutlass and canon to earthquake and flood, powerful forces have long done damage to the Algiers Casbah, fabled bastion of Barbary pirates who plied the Mediterranean for centuries in defiance of European power.

But the deadliest of the many blows suffered by Algiers' disintegrating old quarter may actually be contemporary -- neglect by successive governments of modern Algeria.

The few outsiders who visit tend to wonder why this U.N. World Heritage site with an epic past woven deeply into Mediterranean history should be at risk of collapse -- and in a north African state earning $1 billion a week from oil and gas.

The answer is a lack of political will, Algerians say. Oil wealth has meant tourism has been a low priority, despite the powerful attraction this haunting Ottoman settlement could exert on Western tourists in search of the exotic and educational.

The result is that the labyrinth of alleys, palaces and fountains clinging to a steep hill above Algiers port is now a fissure-ridden slum of mostly graying, rotting buildings. Many of the population of more than 30,000 live in squalor.

"This is our culture and our soul and we should protect it," says construction official Fatah Abdelaoui, his voice echoing in the cool interior of Hassan Pasha palace, an elegant structure of marble and mosaics currently under renovation.

"CASBAH IN DANGER"

"The Casbah is in danger, and we must save it before it is too late," historian Belkacem Babaci said, reflecting a pride found everywhere among the tottering huddle of walled houses.

"If we restore the Casbah, it would become our number one touristic product," he said, adding that of the roughly 1,200 houses in the 36-hectare (89-acre) site, 136 were in good condition but 600 needed urgent work.

The Casbah began as a Phoenician trading post in antiquity but in its current form dates to 16th-century Ottoman rule, when it emerged as a power under Aruj and Kheir ad-Din Barbarossa, pirate brothers dreaded by their European shipping prey.

Italian renaissance master Fra Filippo Lippi and Spanish poet and novelist Miguel de Cervantes were among the tens of thousands of Europeans abducted by Algiers corsairs and held for ransom in the Casbah's dungeons or enslaved by wealthy families.

The town was a centre of Algerian resistance against French forces in Algeria's 1954-1962 war of independence, a struggle portrayed in the 1966 film "The Battle of Algiers" by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who shot much of it in the Casbah.

It was also a stronghold of Islamist guerrillas in the early 1990s at the start of a revolt against the army-backed government that has now largely died down. Security is greatly improved in the Casbah, residents, officials and diplomats say.

But the idea of using its story to generate tourism, development and jobs, and shore up political stability and fight poverty, has never ranked highly with Algeria's rulers.

The town, named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992, was declared a protected site in Algerian law only in 2003.