Gabriel Algerian situation report March 15, 2013

The following information is compiled from public and private sources. Its accuracy has not be verified.



ALGERIA MONTHLY SITUATION REPORT

March 15, 2013
Executive Summary
Political Trends

· Taking advantage of the attention that has been focussed on the south of the country in the wake of the In Amenas attack, trade unionists and the unemployed in Algeria’s southern wilayas have launched one of the broadest and most militant protest movements over socio-economic issues that the country has seen in years, prompting PM Sellal to issue dire warnings about “criminal gangs” seeking to split southern Algeria away from the north.

· At the same time, a number of corruption scandals involving figures formerly close to President Bouteflika, which had been thought to be closed cases, have returned with a vengeance.

· There are signs that the military – encouraged by the centre-stage role it has been given by the war in Mali and its repercussions in Algeria but irked by Bouteflika’s decision to grant the French over-flight rights and by disputes over commissions on defence procurement – is re-emerging as a political player. The resurgence of the corruption scandals may be a factor of this.

· In place of the old duumvirate made up of Bouteflika and DRS chief Tewfik, a more complex, three-way game, involving Bouteflika, Tewfik and the military, may be emerging in the run-up to the 2014 presidential election.
Foreign Relations

· With the French military battling AQMI and its allies very close to Algeria’s southern borders, a French general has praised Algiers as “our best ally in Mali”.

· President Bouteflika has nonetheless been happy to let the Russian Foreign Minister condemn, in the name of both their countries, outside intervention “in Mali and Syria”.

· Algiers’ efforts to acquire US-made armed drones have been predictably unsuccessful. The question of collaboration with the American drone capability in the Sahara remains open.
Security

· In a rare report of jihadist activity in the capital, one Algerian daily has claimed that the security forces apprehended a would-be suicide bomber in an Algiers suburb towards the end of February.

· Overall, however, AQMI in northern Algeria appears to be on the back foot at present and not well equipped to launch attacks in solidarity with its comrades in northern Mali.

· With the armed forces and the Energy Ministry still discussing how best to secure oil and gas facilities in the south of the country, a vehicle belonging to an Italian company was hijacked and stolen near Hassi Messaoud in early February.

· There have been suggestions that foreign oil companies will be prohibited from using private security firms to defend their installations in southern Algeria, with the army taking over this role.

· Sporadic reporting of mostly minor incidents on the southern and eastern borders continues, but may not be a full reflection of the real situation.

· Reports that one of AQMI’s main leaders in the Sahara, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, has been killed are judged credible by French official sources.





Political Trends



Lambasted in the press for failing to address the nation during or immediately after the In Amenas siege in January, President Bouteflika finally addressed the subject in a message to mark Algeria’s annual “martyr’s day” (commemorating those who died in the war of liberation) on Feb. 18. In his statement – which was published by the official media rather than being delivered as a speech – Bouteflika lauded

the commitment that inspired our brave soldiers in the great battle of In Amenas against the forces of evil and destruction [which] is the epitome of the legacy inherited from our martyrs [of the liberation war]. The heroes of this battle proved by their efficiency, precision, professionalism and triumph that they are the undisputed and indisputable successors of our brave martyrs and that the National People’s Army is truly a worthy successor to the National Liberation Army and the standard-bearer of victory and triumph in every battle engaged by the nation to protect its security, stability and sovereignty.

In a clear allusion to the upheavals that have shaken the region since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Bouteflika went on to call for “vigilance” and a reaffirmation of Algerian “love for the homeland and nationalism” in the face of

the deplorable events and developments occurring here and there and all around us in more than one Arab country, [which] irrespective of their outer aspects, demonstrate the seriousness of what is happening behind the scenes.



A week later, another presidential statement – again, not delivered as a speech, but this time sent as a message to UGTA leader Abdelmadjid Sidi-Saïd on the occasion of the double anniversary of the founding of Algeria’s official trade union and the nationalisation of the oil and gas sector – was published in the official media. The President renewed his praise for the role played the army and other security forces at In Amenas, before neatly seguing into other issues of the day:

Our security is jeopardized by the situation in Mali on our southern border and the sporadic outbreaks of terrorism that we are constantly fighting. What happened recently in Amenas is an instructive illustration, in that it highlighted the cruelty of the terrorist groups, but also the know-how of our army and our security services, who put an end to this attack against one of the most important facilities in our country.

I want to take this opportunity to pay a special tribute to the officers, soldiers and members of the security services and of the civil defence force, whose intervention earned our admiration and that of international public opinion.

I bow also to the memory of the Algerian and foreign workers who lost their lives in this cowardly attack and I express our admiration and gratitude to those among them who, by their cool-headedness and courageousness, made it possible to save the installations and production facilities.

In this connection, I cannot ignore the scandals that have recently been uncovered by the press concerning the management of Sonatrach. Such news can only inspire indignation and disapproval, but I have faith in our criminal justice system’s ability to unravel this tangled web, identify those responsible and mete out with thoroughness and firmness the punishments provided for under our legislation.



Their hackneyed phraseology notwithstanding, both presidential messages are in fact replete with signals not only to the population at large but also to other players in the Algerian power structure. This urgent political semaphore comes amid two political squalls that have blown up, seemingly independently of one another, over the past month: an upsurge in agitation across the vast southern wilayas where Algeria’s oil and gas resources are located on the one hand, and the surprise return to prominence in the Algerian media (and to a degree also internationally) of a number of high-level corruption scandals that had seemed to have been swept definitively under the carpet after being partially dealt with during Bouteflika’s second and third terms of office. It remains to be seen whether these squalls will blow over, or whether they augur heavier storms to come.



Since the presidential election of 2004, in which a last-minute deal with DRS chief Lt-Gen. Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Médiène enabled him to outmanoeuvre the army chiefs, it had been largely plain sailing for President Bouteflika. With the once powerful heads of the army marginalised as politi cal players, Bouteflika and Tewfik in effect ruled as a duumvirate, proving to be masters at the game of manipulating, dividing, co-opting and s uborning the political parties and able for the most part simply to ignore the many spontaneous and localised outbreaks of social unrest that flared regularly in towns and villages across the country without ever finding a political voice or, still less, coming together into a single, united movement. To be sure, the regime was rattled for a time by the protests and rioting over soaring food prices that broke out in late 2010, coinciding with the Tunisian revolution, and the following months of upheavals across the Arab world, prompting Bouteflika’s April 2011 promise of extensive political and constitutional reform, but it soon became apparent that the fires of the Arab Spring had not taken in Algeria, and the regime returned largely to business as usual (the constitutional reform process has limped on, but with less and less enthusiasm from all concerned: Prime Minister Sellal, confirming earlier this month that the draft reform would be submitted first to parliament and then to a referendum, was unable to say whether this would be during the spring or autumn session of parliament and dropped not the slightest hint as to what it might actually contain).



Beneath the surface this otherwise tediously flat sea, however, hidden currents seem to have begun to move of late. Amid prolonged uncertainty as to whether or not Bouteflika intends to stand for a fourth term of office in 2014, one potential successor after another (former Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and Ali Benflis, Transport Minister Amar Ghoul, the present PM Abdelmalek Sellal) has bobbed up to the surface only to sink again for the most part almost without trace – suggesting a state of indecision or deadlock behind the scenes. In our last report, we quoted a source at the Presidency as hinting that Tewfik (who is thought to have earlier backed first Ouyahia and then Benflis as possible regime candidates in 2014) might no longer be the pivotal figure he once was. This came on the heels of suggestions from a former DRS officer that Tewfik had been unsettled by the fact that the West’s main interlocutor with Algeria on the situation in northern Mali is not him but Chief of Staff Maj-Gen. Ahmed Gaïd-Saleh.



Since then, there have been further suggestions – from private sources (notably an astute Algerian businessman close to sections of the military) and from the special envoy of Paris-based daily Le Monde – that the army has begun to re-emerge as a political player. The catalyst has been the French intervention against AQMI and its allies in northern Mali, which has thrust the Algerian military centre-stage – not only as the preferred interlocutor of the Western powers but also as the guardian of Algeria’s borders and, as seen at In Amenas, vital infrastructures. The Algerian businessman notes that, since France launched its ‘Operation Serval’ in northern Mali, members of the rising generation of officers in the Algerian military have begun to hold informal gatherings to discuss the situation (and no doubt other matters) – a practice that had ceased several years ago. A mid-ranking Spanish defence official, meanwhile, claims that the French intervention in Mali provoked a direct confrontation between President Bouteflika and the army: although the military chiefs were extremely reluctant to grant the French over-flight rights (insisting that permission to overfly Algerian territory be limited to logistical support aircraft rather than fighter aircraft, and that it be granted on a case-by-case basis) they were in the end overruled by the President who promptly granted the French what they wanted.



At the same time, the sudden rush of media and government attention for conditions in southern Algeria following the In Amenas siege seems to have acted as a stimulus to the socio-economic agitation across the southern wilayas. Protest movements by the unemployed and others are of course nothing new in southern cities such as Ouargla and Laghouat. But the In Amenas attack, by drawing attention to the social and political context in which it took place (due notably to reports that the attackers had been able to recruit a number of disaffected locals as informants or accomplices), has provided southern Algerians with an opportunity to air their grievances. The opportunity has been seized with enthusiasm: unemployed workers attempted to march to the oil hub of Hassi Messaoud to make their voice heard on the February 24 anniversary of the nationalisation of the oil and gas sector (only to be beaten back by police and gendarmes), workers in the education sector in all the southern wilayas launched a three-day strike as of February 25 over pay and working conditions and called on other sectors to follow their lead, and the National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC) called for an all-south demonstration in Ouargla on March 14 (at least 10,000 attended the protest, which this time was allowed to pass of peacefully). Marking the anniversary of nationalisation with a visit to In Amenas on Feb. 24, Prime Minsiter Abdelmalek Sellal and his ministers were taken to task by speaker after speaker at a meeting with notables and representatives of the local population over the social and economic marginalisation of the south; Sellal’s remarks, in which he gave voice to the regime’s fears of a “criminal gang[1]” of wreckers seeking to split the south away from the rest of Algeria, seem to have served only to further fuel the indignation of the protesters[2]. The government has since responded with a reshuffle of provincial governors that has brought new heads to six out of ten southern wilayas (including, for the first time, the appointment of a local man as Wali of Illizi), a programme to encourage small businesses, job creation and local recruitment in the south, and pledges to establish Sonatrach and Algérie Télécom training academies in various southern towns to develop local talent. It remains to be seen whether this will be sufficient to quell a movement which for the time being seems to be growing in confidence.



The attention to the south, and the protest movement there, appear also to have encouraged another former Prime Minister, Ahmed Benbitour, who hails from the southern wilaya of Ghardaia, to declare his intention of standing for President in 2014. Benbitour was the first prime minister appointed by Bouteflika after he came to power in 1999 but served for less than a year before falling out with the head of state over economic policy; somewhat later, at a time of tension between the President and the military chiefs, he seems briefly to have been considered by some within the army as a potential alternative to Bouteflika in the 2004 presidential election. Whether or not Benbitour is being actively encouraged this time round by elements within the establishment, he has latched on to the other political hot potato of the moment, namely the corruption scandals surrounding the Bouteflika presidency – a theme which was extensively used by Bouteflika’s opponents within the power structure in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, when compromising details were drip-fed to the press by insiders over a period of months.



Since the second week of February, when Milan prosecutors announced that they had put ENI head Paolo Scaroni under investigation in a probe into alleged bribes paid to win contracts in Algeria for ENI subsidiary Saipem SpA, the Algerian independent media has been publishing a seemingly endless stream of articles on corruption at Sonatrach, further fuelled by later reports in the Canadian and Italian press that Swiss magistrates are investigating possible corrupt practices on the part of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin in Algeria. While the initial trigger may have been provided by these external probes, there are signs that the media chatter has been deliberately kept going by elements within the establishment: new tidbits relating to middlemen involved in corruption at Sonatrach appear to have been leaked to reliable jour nalists (notably Salima Tlemçani of El Watan, who has close ties to the military), those who do not have anything new to add have been free to indulge in speculation, and other, unrelated cases have been dragged back into the open – including lurid claims that then Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni was seen leaving national police chief Col. Ali Tounsi’s office with a mysterious bundle of documents under his arm immediately after the latter was shot dead at his desk by a colleague in 2010). Time and again, the central figures in these scandals are individuals who are or were close associates of Bouteflika’s: Zerhouni, former Foreign Minister Mohamed Bedjaoui, and above all former Energy Minister Chakib Khelil (who according to certain press reports jetted briefly back to Algiers from his self-imposed exile in the midst of all this to consult with the President’s brother, Saïd Bouteflika, and seek assurances that he would be protected from prosecution). Furthermore, it has transpired that the Algerian courts themselves opened a second investigation into corruption at Sonatrach last October[3] that in part covers the same ground as the Milanese investigation into Saipem, and that a decision was taken in January of this year to allow both the defence and the prosecution in the long-buried El Khalifa Bank case[4] to have their appeals heard in a court of cassation, as of April 2. It would seem therefore that there is an internal, Algerian dynamic going on here, and there are grounds for thinking that it may be driven by parties within the establishment with an axe to grind with the President and his erstwhile ‘clan’. In this respect, it is worth noting that the Spanish defence official quoted above also alluded to a conflict between the Algerian top brass and Saïd Bouteflika, who is said to have cornered all the commissions generated by a contract signed with Germany for the supply of frigates to the navy, leaving the military out.



Thus the signs seem to point to the emergence of a new, three-way game at the top, between Bouteflika, Tewfik and the generals, in place of the rather uneventful two-man game run by Bouteflika and Tewfik alone over the past eight years. This would seem to be the context of Bouteflika’s repeated hat-tipping to the army and the DRS in his recent messages, his warning about the continued risk of Arab Spring contagion, and his statement of “confidence in the ability of the criminal justice system” to deal appropriately with the resurgent corruption scandals. It is unclear at this stage how this game will play out, but it is certainly worth monitoring as Algeria enters the run-up to the spring 2014 presidential poll.





Foreign Relations



As France’s Operation Serval in northern Mali continues to unfold, fighting is increasingly concentrated in the Adrar des Ifoghas uplands north of Kidal to which AQMI and its allies had fallen back after their tactical retreat from the main towns in the early days of the French intervention. Consequently, French troops have taken control of the remote town of Tessalit, just 70 km from Algeria’s southern border, and are conducting operations in a mountain range that actually extends northwards into Algerian territory – uncomfortably close, from the Algerian point of view. With the jihadist groups under pressure from French air strikes and ground offensives by Chadian forces, this puts Algeria, and its armed forces in particular, in role of gatekeeper. It is in this context that French army general Henri Poncet (an Africa specialist who coincidentally was born in Oran) was quoted by French news magazine Marianne at the end of February as lauding in no uncertain terms Algeria’s “courageous” support for the French war effort. “At a time when the joint European defence effort is conspicuous by its absence, Algeria has turned out to be our best ally in our intervention in Mali,” opined the general, going on to argue that the time has come for Algeria and France “to march ahead together – History has just given us the opportunity to do so, by designating a common enemy.”



Algiers’ position is not without ambiguity, however. After receiving Sergei Lavrov on Feb. 11, for example, President Bouteflika made no comments to the press himself, leaving the talking to the Russian Foreign Minister – who naturally seized the opportunity to restate Russia’s traditional opposition to outside (and especially Western) intervention in the affairs of sovereign states and to emphasise the harmony of views between Algiers and Moscow on the need for negotiated, “political and diplomatic” solutions to conflicts in countries “such as Mali and Syria”. In Mali, grumbled Lavrov, the French now found themselves fighting “the same people they armed in Libya”. Even though in reality Algeria, by force of circumstance, now has little choice but to collaborate with the French against AQMI and its allies, there can be little doubt that Algiers shares the view that what is now happening in Mali is in large part the consequence of former French President Sarkozy’s adventurism in Libya.



The upheavals in Mali and Libya having creating immense problems for Algeria on its southern and eastern borders, the Algerian leadership has, as we indicated in our last report, expressed interest in acquiring advanced, US-made killer drones (specifically the MQ-9 Reaper) with which to patrol these vast and almost uncontrollable frontiers. However, it would appear that such efforts – be they directly with the US authorities or via the British – have led nowhere (perhaps unsurprisingly given the sensitive nature of the technology which has not even been made available as yet to the United States’ closest Arab allies in the Gulf). In the wake of this failure, the Algerian media has claimed that the first prototype Algerian-made drone, which has apparently been in development since President Bouteflika launched the idea during a visit to Ouargla in 2010, will be ready “by the end of this year”. There is no indication however that the future Algerian drone will be armed, and even if a prototype does fly before the end of 2013, mass production and deployment would still be a long way off, leaving the Algerian military dependent on other means for patrolling the vast desert badlands – and perhaps tempted to envisage closer cooperation with the US military’s newly established drone capability in neighbouring Niger.





Security



Political violence in February was markedly one-sided. The security forces kept up a steady rate of ambushes targeting small groups of jihadists in Kabylia and to a lesser extent other parts of the country[5], while AQMI remained for the most part passive. Overall, the jihadist group took the initiative in only around a third of the 22 incidents recorded in February[6].



One significant exception to AQMI’s pattern of passivity came early in the month, when a group of “several jihadists” attacked a military camp near Boudoukhan in the wilaya of Khenchela, in the east of the country, on February 5. The group, dressed in military uniforms, commandeered a vehicle used to supply the camp and tried to use it as a “Trojan horse” to infiltrate the facility, provoking a three-hour battle in which at least one jihadist was killed and an unspecified number of soldiers wounded. The army immediately launched a major search and destroy mission in the area to track the group, using helicopter gunships and even jet fighters according to press accounts, and the following day freed a hostage (believed to be the driver of the hijacked vehicle) the attackers had taken with them in their flight. Initial press reports claimed that there had been as many as 50 attackers, “most of them Tunisians and Libyans”[7]; the Algerian Defence Ministry officially denied this in a statement on Feb. 8, saying there no more than “eight criminals” involved.



There was also an unusual report of an attempted suicide-bombing in the capital, Algiers, which has not seen any incidents of po litical violence for a number of years. According to Arabic-language daily Echorouk (Feb. 28), the security forces, expecting terrorist acts against French interests in the capital following France’s military intervention in Mali, tightened their surveillance of jihadist activity and towards the end of February discovered a plot to suicide-bomb a “civil security centre” in the Bab el-Oued district; when apprehended in a mosque the would-be bomber “was already wearing his suicide belt”, but the security forces “managed to immobilise him” before he could detonate it, claimed the daily.



Although this story should be viewed with some caution (Echorouk, which has a tendency to sensationalism and cannot be considered an entirely reliable news source, was the only newspaper to carry it), the reference to the potential threat to French interests in connection with the war in Mali does nonetheless raise the serious question of whether and how AQMI in northern Algeria will take part in the “revenge” operations promised by Mokhtar Belmokhtar following the bloody denouement of the In Amenas siege, and more broadly in supporting its comrades-in-arms who are battling French and allied African forces in the Malian Sahara. Documents allegedly found in Timbuktu after it was taken back from the jihadists in late January[8] indicate that ties between AQMI’s two branches — the Kabylia-based arm which comprises the central leadership and the Saharan branch in northern Mali — are closer than seemed to be the case, with AQMI’s national emir Abdelmalek Droukdel (a.k.a. Abou Mosab Abdelwadoud) effectively laying down the line for the southern branch. And yet, two months after the beginning of France’s Operation Serval in northern Mali, AQMI in northern Algeria has largely kept quiet, or even reduced its activity. This may be due to pressure from the security forces, pre-emptively stepping up their harassment of jihadists in the north of Algeria with constant search and destroy missions and ambushes of isolated jihadists, and/or the effects of harsh winter weather on AQMI’s depleted forces. However, AQMI theoretically still has the option of suicide bombings, which are more difficult to prevent by means of classic military operations, and it cannot be entirely ruled out that the French war in Mali might provides the context for a suicide strike against French interests or symbols of the Algerian state and military in northern Algeria.



In the oil producing regions of the south, there was one minor incident on February 2, when a group of armed men “believed to be bandits” hijacked a 4WD vehicle belonging to an Italian company “working in the oil industry”. The assailants beat up the occupants of the car — none of them expats — and held them hostage for some time before letting them go and making away with the car. The fact that armed men on pick-up trucks could still roam the areas around Hassi Messaoud suggests that security of Algeria’s oil and gas sites was still not optimal more than a fortnight after the In Amenas incident. There have since been reports that the security forces have beefed up their presence beyond the perimeters of oil and gas facilities and suggestions that foreign oil companies will no longer be allowed to employ local private security firms for facilities protection, in which role they are supposedly to be permanently replaced by the army. On Feb. 20, Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi, speaking at a forum organised by government-owned daily Echaâb, indicated that the Ministry of Energy and Mining was still in discussions with the DRS and the army concerning the oil and gas industry’s security needs.



Two incidents were reported on the borders with Libya. On February 16 the security forces detected an off-roader that was trying to cross into Algeria from Libya near In Amenas, wilaya of Illizi, and launched an operation to intercept it. Two “terrorists”, one Libyan and one Egyptian, and a third unidentified individual were killed in the operation. Echorouk (17/2) said these jihadists are believed to have fled from Mali to Libya with the beginning of the French intervention there. For its part, El-Khabar (28/2) reported that security forces had on Feb. 26 arrested four men in an off-roader as they tried to cross into Algeria from Libya near Djanet, also in the wilaya of Illizi. The vehicle bore no registration plates and the men, dressed in military uniforms, carried two machine guns. They claimed to have lost their way while on a hunting trip.



Algeria’s southern border saw three incidents early February but no further clashes have been reported since Feb. 16[9]. On February 1 security forces intercepted an armed group travelling in three off-roaders as they tried to cross into Algeria from Niger near In Guezzam, in the south of the wilaya of Tamanrasset. Helicopter gunships were used in the operation. Two “terrorists” were killed and ammunition and a number of weapons and satellite phones recovered. On Feb. 8 the Algerian army “eliminated” two jihadists who were trying to cross the border with Niger in the south of the wilaya of Tamanrasset to “deliver a shipment” of weapons. They were found to be carrying machine guns and communications gear. On Feb. 11 El-Khabar said that security forces on February 9 intercepted three individuals smuggling weapons from Mali in the area between Tin Zaouatin and Bordj Baji Mokhtar. They were carrying machine guns and ammunition and “admitted working for Mujao[10]”. And on February 15, security forces, acting on intelligence, tracked and intercepted a jihadist group near Bordj Baji Mokhtar in the south of the wilaya of Adrar, on the border with Mali. After a “three-hour chase” the security forces killed four of the jihadists, believed to belong to Ansar Dine, and forced three others to flee into Mali. Five machine guns were recovered.



In northern Mali, meanwhile, French and Chadian forces continue to battle jihadists in the Adrar des Ifoghas uplands, which run right up to the Algerian border where they merge into the foothills of the Hoggar. In late February it was reported that Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, emir of AQMI’s Katiba Tarek Ibn Ziad and one of the organisation’s top three commanders in Mali, was killed in a French air raid on or around February 25. A week later, Chadian sources claimed that their forces had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, commander of AQMI’s Masked Men Brigade which carried out the In Amenas raid. French official sources say news of Abou Zeid’s death appears to be credible, pointing to posts on jihadist forums that admit he was “martyred”, but are more sceptical of reports of Belmokhtar’s death.



Meanwhile French military commanders say their forces fighting in the Adrar des Ifoghas have discovered “terrorism infrastructure on an industrial scale” in the area and weapons in very large quantities, including armoured vehicles, artillery pieces and other heavy weapons, but no manpads. According to a usually well-informed French journalist and defence analyst, French forces “have found no surface-air missiles in working condition” in the arsenal the jihadists left behind, and there have as yet been no reports of such weapons being used against French aviation in the conflict.



END





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[1] Cherdima, a particularly derogatory word in Algerian colloquial Arabic – which the Prime Minister’s spokesmen have since tried to deny he ever used.

[2] Significantly, banners reading “national unity is a red line [not to be crossed]” were raised at the Ouargla demonstration on March 14.

[3] Now being referred to as the ‘Sonatrach II case’. The first in vestigation into corruption at Sonatrach, which led to the conviction of the company’s CEO Mohamed Méziane and most of its top management, was launched in 2010.

[4] Founded by Abdelmoumen Rafik Khalifa in 1998, El Khalifa Bank, one of the first private banks in Algeria, enjoyed a meteoric rise during Bouteflika’s first term of office thanks in part to its management of the accounts of several large, government-related institutional clients, before abruptly hitting a wall and going into liquidation. Having fled to London, Abelmoumen Khalifa was tried in absentia in 2007 along with over 100 other defendants and sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption, abuse of trust, forgery and criminal association. Widespread suspicions that he had been ‘covered’ for years by the regime and that members of Bouteflika’s entourage had profited directly or indirectly from embezzlement at his bank were swept under the carpet.

[5] Seven incidents reported in AQMI’s Kabyle heartland in February; one in Algiers; five in the eastern wilayas of Batna, Tebessa and Khenchela; two in the western wilaya of Chlef; five in the south, mostly on the borders.

[6] So far in March five incidents all told, including two AQMI operations, have been registered.

[7] Following the Algerian authorities’ assertion that as many as 11 of the In Amenas attackers were Tunisians, and in light of the ongoing instablility in Libya and Tunisia, rumours of Libyan and Tunisian nationals being involved in attacks in Algeria are likely to be a recurrent theme in Algerian media reporting over the coming period. It is not yet possible to state with any certainty, however, that Tunisian and Libyan fighters are present in any significant numbers in AQMI’s ranks in northern Algeria.

[8] Radio France International and French daily Libération (25/02/13) give an account of a document entitled ‘Roadmap relating to Islamic jihad in Azawad’, signed by Abdelmalek Droukdel and dated 20 July 2012, which summarises internal discussions about the way forward for AQMI in building an Islamic state northern Mali, managing its relations with Ansar Dine and the MNLA. A fortnight earlier, Britain’s Daily Telegraph (13/02/13) published what it claims were partial minutes of a meeting of AQMI’s leadership, held under the command of Droukdel on 18 March 2012, covering similar themes.

[9] With a war on the other side of the southern border which has already leaked into Algeria through its eastern border, there is clearly a big effort by the Algerian authorities to keep the borders, especially in the south, closed and keep infiltrators out. The relative lack of reporting since Feb. 16 does not necessarily mean a lack of incidents, since information appears to be controlled and some activity is likely not to be reported in the press.

[10] The Movement for Unicity and Jihad in West Africa, a group which split off from AQMI’s southern units in mid-2011 but continues to work closely with its parent organisation.