July Algeria montrhly report (Part II)

Freshly installed in the Elysée Palace, France’s new Socialist President François Hollande, on whom great hopes have been pinned in terms of breaking the deadlock in relations with Algeria, marked the historically charged 50th anniversary of Algeria’s independence with a short but polite letter to President Bouteflika. While it was by no means earth-shattering, Hollande’s missive marked a tentative step in the direction of at least recognising, if not apologising for, the crimes of colonialism:

I heard your call, on May 8, for an objective reading of history, uninfluenced by wars of remembrance or by passing differences [between France and Algeria]. Frenchmen and Algerians have a shared responsibility: to tell the truth. They owe it to their forebears, but also to their youth. France considers that there is now space for a lucid and responsible examination of its painful colonial past, as well as for a confident momentum forward.

President Bouteflika reciprocated with a letter to mark France’s national day on July 14 that showed some readiness to engage with Hollande’s overture:

Relations between Algeria and France pre-date the colonial period, which left a particularly strong mark our common history, and lasting scars on both our peoples. For Algerians, the resulting wounds are deep, but we wish, like you, to look to tomorrow and try to build a future of peace and prosperity for the youth of both our countries. To that end, it is time to exorcise the past by submitting it, together and in the appropriate frameworks, to a brave and lucid examination that will strengthen our bonds of esteem and friendship.

Whether this will be sufficient to wipe the slate clean and “reset” relations between Paris and Algiers remains to be seen, but the tone is certainly a positive one. In the new Socialist administration’s first days in office, when ministerial teams were still settling in and no clear schedules had yet been established, there was even some speculation that Hollande might visit Algiers this summer, although the tentative date for an official visit has since been pushed back several times. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is now talking about a presidential visit “at the end of the year”, during which a “new, very high-level partnership” between the two countries might be signed.

Ostensibly, it was largely to prepare for just such a trip that two high-level French delegations jetted into Algiers in July. On closer examination, however, other, more pressing matters topped the agenda. The first visit took place on the eve of Algerian independence day, when a team headed by François Hollande’s African affairs advisor Hélène Le Gall arrived for talks with top officials. The fact that it was Le Gall – a career diplomat whose main area of interest and expertise is sub-Saharan Africa[1] – who headed the delegation was in itself a pointer to the most urgent issue at stake: the intractable crisis opened up in northern Mali by the Tuareg revolt, the coup in Bamako and the hardline islamist takeover in Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. Northern Mali seems also to have been one of the most important topics raised by Fabius when he visited on July 15-16.

Extremely concerned at the prospect of AQMI and its allies Ansar Dine and MUJAO establishing an ‘Afghanistan in the Sahel’, Paris has been urging Algeria to make an active contribution to multilateral efforts to restore the authority of the central government in the north of Mali. This much has been discussed openly in the press, on both sides of the Mediterranean, and indeed François Hollande himself has been quoted as telling a council of ministers meeting on July 13 that any solution to the problem of Mali “must pass through Algiers”. Less publicly, French intelligence sources have hinted that the successive French visitors have been lobbying Algiers to give at least tacit assent to an intervention by French special forces (perhaps under the cover of an agreement with the African Union[2]).

In its public pronouncements, Algiers has so far held fast to its rejection of outside involvement in the region, as well as to its long-established doctrine of refusing to conduct military operations of its own beyond its borders. Consolidation of a jihadist entity on their southern frontiers may yet force their hand, but the Algerians certainly have powerful reasons to be wary of sending their own troops over the border. There is the danger of becoming bogged down in an unwinnable conflict that would almost certainly have a destabilising effect at home, to begin with. On top of that, in the case of a multilateral operation Algiers fears that its armed forces would effectively be used as auxiliaries by outside powers (France, of course, but perhaps also the United States, which is reported to have been exerting similar pressure), to which it would effectively be surrendering a fragment of its cherished sovereignty. 

In parallel to these contacts with Algiers, Parisian diplomatic and political circles have begun to notice a subtle shift in the French government’s attitude towards Morocco. More specifically, there is a feeling that under Hollande, Paris is no longer prepared to back Rabat unconditionally and to the hilt on the Western Sahara question. And this is seen as flowing precisely from the drive to mend fences with Algiers.

Following this logic, Paris salons perceive two imperatives at work. On the one hand, and plausibly enough, the need to secure Algiers’ acquiescence for a military intervention, in one form or another, in northern Mali. On the other hand, and rather less obviously, it is suggested that the incoming Socialist government, anticipating a further worsening of the European monetary and financial crisis that might stretch the French state’s finances to near breaking point, could be seeking to prepare the way for Algeria – whose foreign currency reserves hit $200bn earlier this year and are still growing – to contribute to a bailout in one form or another, if and when necessary.

The idea of Algeria lending directly to the French Treasury would almost certainly prove too unpalatable to public opinion on either side of the Mediterranean to be politically feasible. But it is by no means out of the question that Paris may be involved in persuading Algeria to lend more money to the International Monetary Fund, as was requested in April, in order to shore up its ability to provide emergency assistance to governments facing financial meltdown.

Levels of violence in June were below average, with 23 incidents overall including 11 jihadist operations proper (i.e. initiated by AQMI or MUJAO). Jihadist activity picked up somewhat in July, with 12 operations in the first three weeks of the month (against only four operations initiated by the security forces). The first week of July was particularly busy, with six jihadist operations reported. Past experience suggests that the coming few weeks may see intense jihadist activity programmed to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan (began on July 20), which is seen as particularly auspicious for jihad[3]. 

While Algiers and its environs remained quiet, on June 29 Algeria’s southern provinces saw their second suicide bombing since early March (see AMSR #113 of April 3). This time it was the city of Ouargla, in the centre of Algeria’s largest oil basin, that was hit: a suicide car bomber targeted the town’s Gendarmerie headquarters, killing one gendarme and wounding two others, in addition to the bomber himself. The operation, like the Tamanrasset suicide car bombing in March, was claimed by Mujao the following day. On July 10, El-Khabar said security forces reinforced their presence in the nearby oil town of Hassi Messaoud, looking for “terrorist elements” that might have “taken refuge” there.

Although the Ouargla bombing was operationally speaking relatively unsuccessful — the car could not break through the concrete barriers at the building’s entry, hence the low death toll — it remains a worrying development for Algerian authorities. MUJAO, a recently established organisation based across the border in northern Mali, has now proved capable of planning and carrying out two suicide attacks in four months in Algeria’s deep south, a region where suicide bombings were hitherto unknown and terrorist activity was limited to mostly smuggling or, at worst, kidnapping of foreign nationals. In both operations, MUJAO targeted security forces, but the possibility that it might attempt to hit oil and gas installations cannot be discounted. Since the Ouargla attack, it has been reported that the security forces in Hassi Rmel, Algeria’s main gas hub, have begun stepping up security at production sites and other facilities.

Along Algeria’s southern border itself, the situation was remarkably quiet. The only incident reported came on June 25 when the army intercepted a group of jihadists, believed to belong to MUJAO, south of Reggane (wilaya of Adrar). Two jihadists were killed, one wounded and one captured. This makes June the quietest month on Algeria’s southern borders for at least the past two years (for comparison, there were five incidents in this area in May alone). There is no clear explanation for this sudden lull, and a media blackout is not to be ruled out. In the meantime, a group of experts from the Defence and Interior Ministries is reported to have been examining the feasibility of installing advanced electronic border control systems, inspired by systems used along the US-Mexico and Saudi Arabia-Iraq borders, and is said to be due to submit its report to the two ministries and the presidency in the near future.

Beyond Algeria’s southern border, the most notable development was MUJAO’s liberation of several hostages. Three European hostages — two Spanish aid workers and one Italian — it kidnapped from Tindouf, Algeria, in October 2011 (see AMSR #108 of October 24, 2011) were freed in mid-July. A MUJAO spokesman told afp (quoted in El-Khabar, 19/7) that the organisation released them because “our conditions have been met”, amid reports that the jihadist group had received a hefty ransom and had three detainees in Mauritanian prisons set free. Two days earlier, MUJAO had released three of the seven Algerian diplomats its took hostage in Gao, northern Mali, in early April. The Algerian authorities deny having paid a ransom, but there are strong suspicions that money did change hands in exchange for the diplomats – which would represent a major dent in Algiers’ longstanding policy of opposition of ransom payments to terrorist groups.

END

Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel