O

ne of Hamza Yahia-Cherif's main goals during his five year term as Algerian ambassador to Indonesia was to build more bridges - literally and figuratively.

And he is confident in saying he has done his best to achieve that goal. "When I came here in December 2004, only 200 Indonesians got visas to his North-African homeland, but in December 2008, this figure had reached more than 2,000," the outgoing ambassador told The Jakarta Post, at his office recently.

The rising number of Indonesians visiting Algeria indeed reflects increasingly dynamic relations between the two nations in various aspects. Trade volume between Indonesia and Algeria had increased from US$216 million in 2004 to $431 million in 2008, Yahia-Cherif said.

"But the most important thing," he said, "is that Indonesian enterprises discovered Algeria during my term."

An oil-rich country, Algeria had laid out $150 billion worth of infrastructure projects and invited foreign companies to carry out these projects. State-owned construction company Wijaya Karya (WIKA) has already taken part in a massive project by building 110 kilometers of a 1,050-kilometer highway that Algeria is currently developing.

"WIKA is the first, but definitely not the last," Yahia-Cherif said, adding that he wished more Indonesian construction companies would bid for the projects - including the building of one million houses, 10 ports, six airports, 3,000 kilometers of railway, and also school and health facilities.

The Algerian government was pleased with WIKA's work and had begun to pay more attention to Indonesian enterprises, Yahia-Cherif said.

"I want to see Indonesian enterprises going to Algeria not as subcontractors but working directly *for us*. All these projects are using Algerian money. We do not want people to bring their money, just their know-how."

An Indonesian trading house will also soon be established in Algeria to boost trade, Hamza said. Indonesian exports to Algeria include palm oil, coffee, plywood, vegetable oil and pharmaceutical products.

Yahia-Cherif believed Indonesian contractors would help build bridges for the future relations between the two Muslim-majority countries, which share common stories of struggle against colonial oppressors.

Indonesia is also part of Algerian history. It was one of the first nations to lend its full support to Algeria in its struggle against French colonial powers. The people-to-people contact between the two nations, Hamza said, had begun even before the official diplomatic relations had.

In 1960, in a critical moment before the November First Revolution that led to Algeria's independence on July 5, 1962, Sukarno offered a full state visit reception to Ferhat Abbas, the first provisional president of the yet-to-become-independent Algeria.

In 1955, Indonesia also invited two representatives of Algeria's National Liberation Front (NLF), an anti-colonial political party, to the Asia-Africa conference in Bandung.

This history has prompted Yahia-Cherif to initiate the building of a bridge - this time metaphorically - that will not only bring the people of Indonesia and Algeria closer, but which will also preserve the historical events that once bound the two states.

"I wanted to create a sister city between Bandung and Setif, as a symbol of the bond and the focal point when two people started to meet and fight colonialism," Yahia-Cherif said.

Yahia-Cherif has been working on this plan since 2007, but due to sluggish bureaucracy only recently has he managed to finalize the MoU and letter of intent for the program, which will hopefully be signed within the next two months.

While Bandung is known for the Bandung Sea of Fire incident during the revolution, Setif is known as the city in which thousands of Algerians were killed by the French colonialists on May 8, 1945, an event that consolidated the spirit of nationalism among Algerians and also marked the beginning of the Algerian war against the French, writes Mohammed Harbi in Le Monde Diplomatique.

"I was happy to meet *Bandung* mayor *Dede Rosyada*. We have the draft of the MoU now and are in the process of one in Algeria. By this, there will definitely be much more people-to-people contact, and it will be more enthusiastic," Yahia-Cherif said.

Yahia-Cherif , who had formerly been posted in Tokyo, New Delhi and Stockholm before coming to Jakarta, submitted his credentials on Jan. 10, 2005. He will be leaving Jakarta for Algiers on Nov. 4.

Yahia-Cherif says he was blessed to be posted in Indonesia since it became a democracy, adding that the republic had shown remarkable achievements, politically and economically, in the last five years.