ALGERIA MONTHLY SITUATION REPORT #130
November 29, 2013
Executive Summary
Political Trends
· Following the FLN’s endorsement of Bouteflika as its champion in next spring’s presidential election, it seems that the usual machinery is being set in motion to promote the election of Bouteflika as the regime’s candidate.
· Bouteflika’s schedule remains limited to occasional photo opportunities with members of the government and a very few visiting foreign dignitaries.
· There are signs that PM Sellal and FLN leader Amar Saïdani may be engaged in a thinly disguised battle for the position of vice-presidential candidate.
· Press reports that the DRS has been instructed to cease surveillance of political parties are likely to prove incorrect.
Foreign Relations
· A large part of Algeria’s military might remains oriented towards a perceived “Moroccan threat”, limiting the forces that are available for deployment to the far more troubled eastern and southern borders.
· Foreign Minister Lamamra has begun to speak of the “liberation” of northern Mali by French forces, reflecting Algiers’ tacit, tactical alliance with France against jihadist groups in the Sahara.
· Nonetheless, fear and suspicion of the activities of”imperialist”powers on Algeria’s borders still run deep within the Algerian establishment, as evidenced by remarks made in private by Algerian officers to the leader of Tunisia’s ruling party concerning US drones operating along the Algerian-Tunisian border.
Security
• Judging by accounts in the Algerian media, political violence may have reached a historic low in November, although a news blackout may still be in effect in certain areas such as the Tunisian border.
• There have been a number of incidents along the eastern and southern borders. Some – including the alleged arrest of an AQMI liaison officer with armed groups in Tunisia’s Djebel Chaambi – seem to offer confirmation that the Algerian security forces now operate beyond the country’s borders.
• Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s right-hand man has reportedly been killed by French forces in northern Mali, and there have been unconfirmed reports that his organisation is grooming suicide bombers for operations in Algeria and Tunisia.
• A propaganda video released by AQMI’s Saharan units at the end of October shows for the first time one of its fighters wielding a SA-7 MANPADS.
• There is circumstancial evidence to suggest that while Belmokhtar’s Al-Mourabitoun is gravitating to the east (Niger, Mali and perhaps Libya), AQMI’s Saharan units may be gravitating to the west (Mauritania).
•
Political Trends
When President Bouteflika told his government ministers, assembled at the end of September for the first Council of Ministers meeting in nine months, to take “all necessary measures and steps to enable our country to move towards the forthcoming elections in the best possible conditions”, he effectively put an end to speculation that the constitution might be rewritten specially to extend the President’s term of office and so spare him the burden of having to run for re-election next spring. Since then, FLN General Secretary Amar Saïdani has thrown himself enthusiastically into the role of cheerleader for Bouteflika’s fourth successive term. Having, as noted in our last report, proclaimed his own belief in the President in a succession of party meetings and interviews in October, in November he moved things up a notch, convening first a meeting of the party’s mouhafedhs (provincial leaders) to adopt a motion of support for a fourth term for Bouteflika and then, on Nov. 11, a meeting of the FLN’s parliamentary caucus, which unanimously declared its support for Bouteflika’s expected candidacy. Four days later the party’s central committee gathered (minus 50 or so dissidents) and unanimously approved a resolution adopting Bouteflika as the FLN’s candidate in the upcoming presidential election (upon which the assembled delegates rose for what El Watan described as a “timid standing ovation” – a symptom perhaps of the awkwardness of the situation).
With other endorsements during the month from the RND’s General Secretary Abdelkader Bensalah and its politburo, Abdelmadjid Sidi-Saïd of the UGTA[1] and the Coordinating Committee of Children of Independence War Martyrs (CNEC) – which went one step further, passing a resolution imploring Bouteflika to stand for re-election for a fourth term “or as President for life” – it would seem that the usual machinery is being set in motion for the re-election of Bouteflika as the regime’s candidate.
Bouteflika’s own level of activity, however, remains extremely modest. Absent from the official ceremonies marking the anniversary of the beginning of Algeria’s independence war on Nov. 1, the President was nonetheless pictured by official news agency APS receiving formal greetings for the occasion from the most senior government ministers and the speakers of both houses of parliament. There have been a handful of other photo opportunities throughout the month – the President with his young nephews, the President receiving veteran Algerian diplomat and UN envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, audiences with the leader of Tunisia’s ruling Ennahda party Rached Ghannouchi and, towards the end of the month, the Socialist mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë – but there have been no further meetings of the Council of Ministers or other official engagements, and the Algerian public has still not heard the President’s voice.
It is expected that the long-awaited constitutional amendments, when finally unveiled, will include the creation of a position of Vice President, who in addition to standing ready to take over the Presidency in case of the President’s death or incapacitation might be called upon to carry out many of the day-to-day tasks of the President should Bouteflika’s condition fail to improve enough for him to resume a full schedule. Furthermore, the creation of a vice-presidential slot before the 2014 poll would allow Bouteflika to designate a running mate who, as well as being his chosen successor, would be able to take care of most of the actual election campaigning. Consequently there are some signs of a tussle for the vice-presidential nomination. Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, who had seemed like a strong contender, has over the past few weeks been subject to a campaign of denigration (centring notably on his poor mastery of classical Arabic) and of heckling and harassment during his visits to the provinces, and it is suspected that the FLN may be behind this, perhaps in order to boost Saïdani’s chances. Saïdani himself has been openly disparaging of Sellal’s political skills, dismissively suggesting that the Prime Minister should concentrate on the technicalities of running the administration rather than getting involved in political campaigning to which he is not suited. Saïdani, for his part, has been attacked in the media for speaking out of turn – and even for “attacking state institutions” – in his interview to Reuters in October, in which he predicted that the constitutional amendments would redefine the roles of the DRS and the army in such a way that the security and intelligence service “will no longer get involved in politics, including in the political parties, media and justice.”
Intriguingly, reports have now begun to appear in the Algerian media[2] claiming that the Ministry of Defence – of which, as Saïdani pointed out in his Reuters interview, the DRS is formally a department – has instructed the DRS to cease all “investigations into political parties, surveillance of rallies and public meetings and surveillance of members of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia”, handing these tasks over to the Renseignements Généraux
(intelligence branch) of the police force. A source with many years experience of the operations of the DRS and the Algerian state generally argues, however, that such reports should be treated with the utmost scepticism – even suggesting that they might be a “smoke screen” deliberately generated by the DRS itself.
Foreign Relations
In an interesting, yet largely unnoticed, semantic shift, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra referred to the “liberation of northern Mali, which had been dominated by terrorist groups” in a speech in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott on October 24. This is a far more positive characterisation of the French military intervention in Mali – the very idea of which Algiers had opposed until it became a fait accompli – than had previously been heard from any Algerian official. But while Lamamra may have been the first to voice it so clearly, a substantive change of policy does indeed seem to have taken place. As report by a French parliamentary delegation that visited Algeria in May of this year notes:
Algeria used to refuse categorically to accept that any foreign power – especially Western – might intervene on its southern flank. This concerned France in particular, both because of the weight of history and because of its supposed “hidden agenda”.
[However, the Algerian authorities were swift to] adapt to the new situation created by Operation Serval [granting permission for overflight by French aircraft]. They also contributed by supplying fuel to our troops and this assistance was really very valuable when our soldiers were fighting under difficult conditions near the Algerian-Malian border.
[This] quite remarkable opening towards our country, in the form of facilitating military operations against terrorist movements in Mali [would have been] unimaginable just a few weeks previously, and was probably made possible by the warming of relations between France and Algeria. […] There are now good chances for bilateral military cooperation to get under way, and the Franco-Algerian agreement in this field, which came into force in February, if implemented with resolve, opens up promising perspectives in this important sector.
At the same time, however, the French parliamentary delegation found it “striking that the Algerian military machine, by far the largest in the region, was entirely oriented towards the Moroccan ‘threat’ and not towards the southern border”. This strategic preoccupation with Morocco – confirmed to us independently by a source close to the DRS, according to whom Algeria’s military and political leadership have thus far shied away from shifting forces away from the western borders for fear that the Moroccans might “take advantage” of their weakened vigilance – puts a serious drain on the manpower and resources of the Algerian military machine and is a potentially serious handicap as it struggles to confront the new challenges thrown up by turmoil not only in Mali but also in Tunisia and Libya.
The French parliamentarians also pick out another self-imposed weakness in Algeria’s ability to confront the challenges of its environment:
There is no doubt that Algeria is a regional power. […] This power, however, has no direct diplomatic expression because, in foreign policy, Algeria remains true to its founding principles dating back to the moment of its independence [including a refusal to intervene in other countries]. The defence of the founding principles of independent Algeria remains a reality today and seems to be preventing the country from developing an active and enterprising diplomacy.
This may now be changing, however, as Algeria is progressively sucked into the complex situations in Libya and Tunisia. As we have suggested in earlier reports, the ban on over-the-border military operations seems to have been ended (see also below – Security), and as it gets more and more deeply involved in combatting jihadists on the Algerian-Tunisian border, Algiers seems to be becoming increasingly involved in Tunisian politics, too. Having already travelled to Algiers for consultations with President Bouteflika and other officials in September, Rached Ghannouchi of Tunisia’s ruling Ennahda Movement and opposition leader Béji Caïd Essebsi were back in the Algerian capital for further conversations with Bouteflika et al in mid-November, as the Tunisian “national dialogue” process floundered.[3]
Officially, little if anything of what was discussed with the Tunisian politicians has been made public. Speaking to us after Ghannouchi’s return, however, a member of Ennahda’s Shoura Council (central committee) shed some interesting light on the exchanges, and in particular on the concerns of the Algerians:
Rached Ghannouchi went to Algeria to attend the congress of the Algerian Ennahda Party.[4] While he was there he asked to meet Algerian officials, who were also keen to meet him. The Algerians, including President Bouteflika and Prime Minister Sellal, told him that Algeria supports Tunisia’s democratic process and national dialogue. During his visit, Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi also met – at his request – with Algerian officers in charge of security on the border between the two countries, in order to reassure them that Tunisia intends to cooperate fully with them in the fight against terrorism. A number of Algerian officers told him firmly that Tunisia would be well advised to avoid calling on any foreign power to assist it in settling its internal problems, including the fight against terrorism. Tunisia, they told him, should limit itself to respecting international conventions. We in Ennahda’s leadership understood this to mean that the Algerians are not happy to see drones controlled by foreigners operating from Tunisian soil just a few kilometres from their borders.
This is clearly an allusion to the UAVs recently loaned to Tunisia by the United States for use in counter-terrorism operations, which operate out of a small airport, formerly mainly used by oil companies, at El Borma in southern Tunisia, close to the border with Algeria. Notwithstanding Algiers’ tacit, tactical alliance with France in northern Mali, it would seem that there are still powerful elements within the Algerian state apparatus who remain very wary indeed of any encroachment by ‘imperialist’ powers on the country’s borders.
Security
Jihadist activity in Algeria, as reported in open sources, fell to what may be the lowest levels ever this past month: only nine armed engagements or other incidents of violence were recorded up to November 26, only two of which were at the initiative of AQMI or other jihadist/armed groups. Even the troubled border areas appeared to be calmer, with perhaps as few as five violent incidents in November (down from nine in October). This ostensibly sharp fall could be a reflection of the cyclical nature of AQMI activity, especially with the onset of winter in northern Algeria, but it may also reflect restrictions on reporting, in particular in the border areas – it is of note, for example, that not a single incident was reported on the border with Tunisia in the Algerian media throughout the month.[5]
ALGIERS and its environs remained quiet, and just two confirmed violent incidents were recorded in AQMI’s heartland in KABYLIA. There were no reports in the Algerian media of jihadist activity in the OIL & GAS PRODUCING AREAS.[6] A number of revealing incidents were reported along the country’s southern and south-eastern borders, however.
Close to the SOUTH-EASTERN BORDER with Libya, the security forces arrested a national of Niger carrying two machine guns and several rounds of ammunition in early November near In Amenas (wilaya of Illizi). Under interrogation he said he had bought the weapons in Ghadames, Libya, for 600 Libyan dinars[7] a piece and was carrying them to Mali. Similarly, the security forces arrested
a Malian national trying to cross into Algeria on foot near Debdeb (just to the north of In Amenas) on November 15; he was also reportedly found to be carrying two machine guns. On November 11, again near Debdeb, the security forces foiled an attempt by an armed group to attack a fuel tanker: the truck had crossed into Algeria from Ghadames and was heading for Stah, in the wilaya of Tébessa, when it was attacked by a “heavily armed group of masked men”; the Algerian army intervened, killing five of the attackers and arresting a sixth, who was seriously wounded. Algerian daily Wakt el-Djazair (13/11) reported that the armed men are believed to be “Tuaregs from Sebha, Libya”.[8]
A potentially far more significant incident is reported to have occurred on Nov. 15, when Algerian Special Forces apprehended a Libyan jihadist by the name of Riyad El Toufi “on the road between the Libyan town of Daraj and the village of Tin Alkoum, near Djanet” in the far south of the wilaya of Illizi,[9] according to Algerian Arabic-language dailies Wakt Al-Djazair and Al-Mihwar, quoting “high-level security sources”. If confirmed, their partial account of Riyad El Toufi’s career provides some novel insights into interrelations between the various jihadist groups operating in northern Mali, Niger, southern Libya and western Tunisia. El Toufi, who is said to have broken away from MUJAO at the end of last year to join AQMI, is purported to be one of the founding members of the Katiba Oqba Ibn Nafi, the AQMI-linked jihadist group that has been fighting the Tunisian security forces in the Djebel Chaambi region close to the Algerian border since late 2012. El Toufi, it is claimed, had been tasked by AQMI’s southern commander Djamel Okacha, a.k.a. Yahia Abou El Hammam, with recruiting other jihadists who had broken away from MUJAO, Ansar Dine, Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group or other islamist outfits in the Sahara to fight in the ranks of Katiba Oqba Ibn Nafi, and is suspected of taking some 21 fighters to Djebel Chaambi in August. According to Al-Mihwar, El Toufi has survived at least three attempts on his life – at least one of them in Ghat, Libya – since Belmokhtar ordered one of his men to eliminate him.
There have also been a number of incidents along the SOUTHERN BORDER with Mali.[10] On November 9 security forces, reportedly acting on a tip-off, ambushed and arrested two jihadists in Bordj Baji Mokhtar, wilaya of Adrar, and a little over a week later an operation was launched to search for weapons caches in the environs; several were found according to Algerian daily El-Watan (23/11). Further to the south-east, security forces found an abandoned offroader loaded with weapons near Tin Zaouatine, wilaya of Tamanrasset, at the beginning of November. It is believed the smugglers had abandoned the vehicle and fled when they realised they were being tracked by the security forces. On November 10-11 not far from Tin Zaoutine, security forces backed up by helicopters intercepted and arrested three jihadists, none of them of Algerian nationality, wounding one seriously. The incident took place to the north of Timiaouine, wilaya of Adrar, just across the border from the northern Malian town of Tessalit.
There have also been reports (El-Khabar 29/10) that an Algerian army unit “intercepted a group of armed jihadists that had approached the Algeria-Mali border” on October 27. The jihadists, in a convoy of ten offroaders, had attacked a camp of the MNLA in northern Mali, 20 km south of the Algerian border; in the “heavy fighting” that ensued, several MNLA fighters were wounded, who were transported to Algeria for treatment. Some hours later the jihadist group “approached the Algerian border where it was intercepted by an army unit manning an advanced position not far from Timiaouine”; the clash left two jihadists dead and others wounded. This appears to be a clear admission that Algerian troops cross into Malian territory to confront the jihadists, and would therefore seem to confirm press reports in September to the effect that the Algerian army is now authorised to hunt down jihadists beyond the country’s borders, in a breach with Algeria’s official doctrine since independence.[11]
Meanwhile, AQMI’s Sahara units have released a recruitment video entitled “France and the Hunt for the Mirage”, appealing to the “Muslim youth” of the world to “join the jihad against France in northern Mali”. Posted to YouTube on October 29, the half-hour film is the first video produced by the “new Sahara branch” of Al-Andalus Organisation, AQMI’s propaganda arm, and is also remarkable in a number of ways:
• In one short, three-second scene, a fighter identified as Abou Layth Al-Maghribi (i.e. ‘the Moroccan’) is pictured carrying what appears to be a Strela-2 manpads (also known as the SA-7, a Russian made surface-air missile believed to have been stockpiled in large quantities by the Qaddafi regime in Libya), which he calls his “gift” to the French. This seems to be the first confirmation by AQMI that it has such weapons in its possession[12] (although elsewhere in the same video other fighters brag about how they “confront French helicopters armed with nothing but machine guns”).
• Sophisticated as some of the group’s weaponry may be, the video itself is distinctly amateurish, especially compared with the slick propaganda film Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group released in September. Whereas the latter was very professionally put together and showed a group of well-organised men undertaking serious preparations for major operations, the AQMI video is mainly made up of footage, which appears largely to have been shot on mobile telephone cameras, of rank-and-file jihadists larking around in the desert, with no mention of any specific operations. AQMI’s southern emir, Yahia Abou El Hammam, appears fleetingly in one sequence, but does not speak.
• In designating the organisation’s enemies, the video focuses exclusively on France. The call to attack France, French interests and French nationals, including civilians, whenever and wherever the opportunity arises, is driven home by several of the fighters who speak to the camera, with Franco-Algerian “lone wolf” Mohamed Merah[13] held up as an example by one. Consulates and schools are explicitly mentioned as possible targets. In this sense, the video is at variants with recent statements by Al-Qaeda’s international leader Ayman Zawahiri, on which we commented in earlier reports, calling on his followers not to kill non-combattants and generally to eschew the ultra-violence and sectarianism that have come to be associated with the Al-Qaeda label. While greetings are sent to Zawahiri at the end of the video, fighters also invoke the memory of “our sheikh, emir and leader Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi”, the Jordanian-born founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who championed the most brutal forms of urban terrorism.[14]
Finally it is worth noting that only one of the fighters who appear in the video is Algerian, and only two of them Malian. By contrast, there are no fewer than five Moroccans and three Mauritanians (plus a sprinking of Tunisians, Egyptians and Sudanese). The three Mauritanians explicitly recommend launching attacks on French nationals and/or interests in Mauritania, specifically in Nouakchott and in the towns of Kaedi and Seilibaby. This seems to suggest that under pressure from the French-led military campaign in northern Mali, the Saharan branch of AQMI, may be gravitating towards the west, and in particular Mauritania (its reported connections to the jihadist group fighting in Tunisia’s Djebel Chaambi notwithstanding), while Belmokhtar’s Al-Mourabitoun gravitates broadly speaking towards the east.
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[1] The main trade union federation, which was de facto a wing of the FLN under the single-party regime.
[2] Arabic-language daily Al-Hadath (24/11), subsequently picked up by Franco-Algerian news portal TSA.
[3] Prompting no little grumbling in the Tunisian media, which, noting that Ghannouchi seems always to pay a visit to the US Ambassador in Tunis before his trips to Algiers, has expressed indignation that a solution to Tunisia’s domestic political crisis seems to be being cooked up abroad.
[4] A small, moderate islamist opposition party which, although similarly named, has no organic links to Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement.
[5] On the other hand, Tunisian Arabic-language daily Al-Sarih (28/11) claimed to have been told by “Algerian security sources” that the Algerian security forces had recently arrested two members of Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s Al-Mourabitoun near the southern part of the border with Tunisia. The two men are said to have told their interrogators that the organisation was preparing some 13 volunteers for suicide operations in Tunisia and Algeria.
[6] The security forces are however reported to have arrested two jihadists on November 17 as they drove into the town of Djemaa (wilaya of El-Oued) which lies north of Touggourt (wilaya of Ouargla) on the road to Hassi Messaoud.
[7] Approximately $475.
[8] Which suggests that this might have been a case of apolitical banditry rather than an attack by committed jihadists, although the distinction is sometimes a fine one.
[9] The localisation of the arrest is somewhat ambiguous. Although Al-Mihwar and Wakt el-Djazair’s headlines place it “in Illizi”, their articles merely state that it took place “on the road between Daraj and Tin Alkoum”. Tin Alkoum actually lies right on the border with Libya (it is the southernmost of the three official border crossings with Libya), while Daraj (also rendered Derej or Dirj) is an oasis town east of Ghadames, several hundred kilometres to the north; the road between them, which passes through the Libyan city of Ghat before reaching Tin Alkoum, runs very close to the border with Algeria for most of its length. This very vague indication, together with Al-Mihwar’s claim that the operation was carried out by “elements of the Special Forces supported by two army brigades and in coordination with units of the Border Guards from the Gendarmerie’s 4th Military Region command in Ouargla”, seems to suggest that El-Toufi may have been snatched in a cross-border raid by Algerian forces.
[10] In addition to the incidents involving the Algerian security forces, it is also worth noting an operation by French special forces in the Malian desert around 200 km west of Tessalit on Nov. 14, in which several jihadists were killed, among them Hassan Ould Khalil, a.k.a. Jouleibib, reportedly the second-in-command of Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group. A Mauritanian national, Ould Khalil had been the group’s de facto spokesman and reportedly took part in the planning of the attack on the Tiguentourine gas plant in January and a French-run uranium mine at Arlit, Niger, in May. Algerian daily El Watan claims that the French had been able to track down Ould Khalil thanks to information they had extracted from four other members of Al-Mourabitoun (Belmokhtar’s new organisation) captured by the Tuareg separatist MNLA and handed over to the French military.
[11] This remains a highly sensitive issue, however. An incident on which we commented in our last report, in which the Algerian armed forces are alleged to have discovered a huge weapons cache “200 km from In Amenas” on Oct. 24, was recast by French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur (06/11) as a cross-border raid by Algerian forces against a jihadist camp inside Libyan territory. According to the French newspaper: “On October 24, hundreds of soldiers from the Algerian army’s special forces units, backed up by jet fighters, helicopters and tanks, led a raid on a jihadist base in Libya, 200 km south of the gas site at In Amenas. […] Over the previous two months, information gathered by the Algerian intelligence services had pointed to a new attack in preparation against the [In Amenas] site. […] True to its tradition of secrecy, the Algerian Defence Ministry would not say how many were killed from either side or if any jihadists were captured.” This was angrily, if rather clumsily, denied by Algerian daily L’Expression (11/11), which quoted “very well-informed security sources” as suggesting that the Nouvel Observateur story was nothing but Moroccan-inspired disinformation. L’Expression’s article goes on to reaffirm Algeria’s traditional stance – namely that Algerian troops will not intervene in neighbouring countries “under any circumstances” – apparently oblivious of the fact that L’Expression itself was one of the sources that back in September first published reports about Algiers’ change of stance on cross-border operations (although its source at the time insisted Algerian troops would intervene outside the country’s borders “only if neighbouring countries request it”).
[12] Or at any rate the launch tube, for the footage does not show the missile itself and there is no explicit confirmation that AQMI possesses or has used such missiles.
[13] In March 2012, Merah, a 23 year-old petty criminal who had drifted into radical islamism, shot dead three French soldiers and seriously wounded another in a series of attacks in south-west France before attacking a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing a rabbi and three children.
[14] Zarqawi, it is worth recalling, is said to have played an instrumental role in establishing ties between Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Struggle (GSPC) and Al-Qaeda, leading ultimately to its transformation into AQMI.
