In spring 2001, a high school student named Massinissah Guermah was killed inside a gendarmerie post in a small village in Kabylia, north-eastern Algeria. This event, which as such was not unusual in a country plagued by endemic violence, often perpetrated by the security forces themselves, led to riots that quickly spread through the region. They were the longest and most sustained in the history of independent Algeria (Roberts 2001; Salhi 2002). The immediate concerns of the rioters were familiar to anyone who had followed the news on Algeria since the 1980s. The main issue was the fight against the hogra, a term used to mean corruption, disrespect of citizens by the government, and a general ‘lack of morality’ among the ruling classes and security forces.