A good guide can be valuable and make travel very interesting if you share a language and can get them to talk, but separating them from bogus dudes looking for a lift is the problem, as many of us have found across the Sahara from the Beach piste to the Gilf. This is why many independent travellers choose to rely on their own common sense and navigational resources for most of their tours. And let us not forget that a guide is not needed nor expected along Route A5 or on just about any piste in Algeria, despite the apparent 'dismay' of local authorities that the groups went unguided. The only place a guide is expected is in the eastern Tassili Park.
I know other Saharan agencies who have experimented and given up (or persevered despite unreliability) with local guides. Most know their own 'tramlines' very well but take them off them and they freak out. I heard of it recently on the Djado plateau and saw it in the Gilf.

It is very true what you say Roman that as a traveller one can never read the full picture of what really goes on in these southern Algerian towns, but if the danger was locally known (it seems plausible) why was the route not closed? The on-and-off closure of A5's northern entrance at Quatre Chemins from last October does not really explain this. While in the reverse direction there are many points where A5 could have easily been blocked by a checkpoint just a short distance west of Illizi. The guys could have gone home for dinner every night

On another note, I find it odd that now the missing are said to be "in the canyons and gullies" west of Illizi, it has taken so long to find them as this area has been searched over and over from the very start.

Still, a positive outcome looks promising so who cares!

Ch

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Morocco Overland 4 (2025) • Trans Morocco Trail