The information contained in this report are from open and reliable closed sources, but has not been corroborated by third parties.
ALGERIA MONTHLY SITUATION REPORT
November 30, 2012
Executive Summary
Political Trends
· The municipal and provincial elections have passed off amid the usual indifference.
· Interior Minister Ould Kablia has indicated that the process of constitutional reform should begin soon with the appointment of a commission in charge of drafting amendments.
· At least three figures previously identified as possible successors to Bouteflika – former Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and Public Works Minister Amar Ghoul – seem for various reasons to be out of the running for the 2014 presidential election.
· Ali Benflis, Bouteflika’s unlucky challenger in 2004, may now be emerging as a serious contender, possibly enjoying the support of DRS chief Tewfik.
· On the other hand, the regime’s need for stability and continuity may mean that President Bouteflika will run for a fourth term of office after all.
Foreign Relations
· Despite the ECOWAS resolution approving military action, there will be no quick solution to the crisis in northern Mali. At least six months’ preparation are thought to be necessary for an military intervention, once it has been okayed by the UNSC in mid-December.
· Algiers has been restating its opposition to military “adventures” in northern Mali, and has been engaging the Ansar Dine and MNLA rebel groups in dialogue, with at least superfical success.
· As French President François Hollande’s visit to Algeria draws near, differences between Algiers and Paris on the way forward in northern Mali are thus increasingly open.
· Algiers will not be reassured by an apparent warming of relations between France and Morocco, amid unconfirmed reports that Paris has sought the participation of Moroccan special forces in any military operation to reconquer northern Mali.
Security
· Jihadist activity has continued to decline, dropping to particularly low levels in November.
· Although there was one minor incident in Algiers, the bulk of jihadist activity has been recorded in AQMI’s heartland in Kabylia.
· There have been sporadic incidents, mostly involving suspected gun-runners on Algeria’s southern borders, notably with Libya.
· Towards the end of November, security forces rounded up over 60 suspected sympathisers of MUJAO in the Wilaya of Tamanrasset.
Political Trends
On Nov. 29, Algerians went to the polls for the second time this year, this time to elect municipal and provincial councils. As is now usual, the election was greeted with indifference and cynicism by large swathes of the population – with the added disincentives, this time round, of torrential rain in many areas and, in the Béjaïa region, two moderately sized earthquakes. Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia nonetheless announced a turnout of 44.26% – very slightly higher than the turnout in the last local elections in 2007, and very close (many would say suspiciously close) to the forecast Ould Kablia himself had made two days previously. As usual, according to the official results, the FLN came out on top, with the RND not very far behind. Also as usual, there have been claims of fraud and ballot rigging by officials, which have been dismissed by the Interior Ministry.
True to form if not to reality, official news agency APS proclaimed the local elections “another step forward in strengthening democracy”. Those interested in the path the Algerian state is really taking, however, will have been looking to other, more meaningful events on the political calendar. On the one hand, there is the process of constitutional reform – as promised in President Bouteflika’s famous televised address of April 2011, in the midst of the first wave of the “Arab spring”. Ould Kablia announced on Nov. 21 that the ball is to be set rolling in the coming weeks with the appointment of a commission to draft proposed amendments to the constitution; the commission’s recommendations will be discussed by the government, perhaps in the second quarter of 2013 according to Ould Kablia, before being submitted for approval either by parliament or by referendum. And on the other hand, there is the presidential election – now less than a year and a half away.
Over the past few months, we have watched the fortunes of a number of possible contenders for the presidency unfold – or, perhaps, unwind. FLN leader Abdelaziz Belkhadem’s ambitions, it will be recalled, were an open secret, but his chances have been badly damaged by the open revolt against his leadership which has been festering within his party for months now. At the same time, RND leader Ahmed Ouyahia, long thought to have been DRS chief Mohamed Tewfik Médiène’s favoured candidate to succeed Bouteflika, seems to have been pushed into the background, especially since he was replaced as Prime Minister at the beginning of September. More recently, there had been some speculation that Public Works Minister Amar Ghoul, who this autumn set up his new party, the TAJ, apparently with the connivance of the authorities, was perhaps being groomed as a docile successor to Bouteflika – the skeletons in his closet from the corruption-ridden episode of the East-West motorway project making him all the easier for the DRS to control[1]. In mid-November, however, French-language daily Algérie News began to bring those skeletons out into the public eye, printing revelations of bribe-taking in connection with the East-West motorway project, implicating not only Ghoul, but also Belkhadem and Industry Minister Cherif Rahmani. The daily claimed to be in possession of « confidential files » and hinted that more revelations were to come, which suggests that it may have been fed the compromising information by the DRS, or elements within it, in a deliberate move to puncture any presidential ambitions Ghoul may have been harbouring. A former DRS officer and one-time presidential advisor says that Ghoul is now « toast » and Belkhadem marginalised, and confirms that the waning of Ouyahia’s star followed a serious falling-out between him and Tewfik.
The same former DRS officer went on to claim that Tewfik is now grooming Ali Benflis, Bouteflika’s unlucky challenger in the 2004 presidential election, to succeed him in the 2014 poll, describing Benflis as the « dominant figure » now within the FLN[2]. Interestingly, some days after the source made this claim in a private conversation, leading Arabic-language daily Al-Khabar (27/11/12) published an account of a meeting Ali Benflis had purportedly convened at his family home with a number of leading members of the FLN to announce his intention of running for president in 2014, now that he had received « assurances » that Bouteflika would not be standing for a fourth term of office due to ill-health. Benflis is reported to have phoned Al-Khabar with a denial the same day, but the former FLN Secretary General is nonetheless clearly a man to watch over the coming months.
As it happens, same issue of Al-Khabar carried, on the page opposite the article on Ali Benflis’ alleged presidential bid, a full-page advertisement paid for by millionaire member of parliament for Annaba Bahaeddine Tliba[3], beseeching President Bouteflika to run for a fourth term of office in 2014. While it is conceivable that this is no more than a personal initiative of Tliba’s, it is worth remembering that pseudo-spontaneous appeals for an ostensibly reluctant head of state to reconsider his supposed plans for retirement have long been a set-piece of pre-electoral periods in autocratic republics across the Arab world. And while Bouteflika did seem to be signalling his readiness
to bow out when he gave his now famous “tab djenanena”[4] speech in Setif in May of this year, there has been mounting speculation that he may not be ready to give up the presidency yet after all. Indeed, the same ex-DRS source cited above suggests that until recently, Bouteflika was in two minds about running again in 2014, though his family had been urging him to do so, but may now be inclined to stay on for a fourth term of office because of developments in Mali and the South: in the turmoil that is afflicting the region and threatening Algeria itself, Bouteflika would, it is argued, be a symbol of the stability and continuity of the Algerian state.
Foreign Relations
If the situation in Mali and the Sahel is impinging on the calculations made at the top of the Algerian state with regard to the 2014 presidential election, it is because it is becoming increasingly clear that the crisis set in motion by the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali in the first months of 2012 will not be short-lived. On the contrary, despite the best efforts of various concerned parties – the Malian government, ECOWAS, France, the United Nations – to set deadlines and timetables for ‘solving’ the north Mali crisis, the real time scale for any kind of meaningful action keeps stretching further and further into the future. In accordance with UNSC Resolution 2071, passed in mid-October, ECOWAS duly convened on Nov. 11 to approve military intervention by its member states’ armed forces, with the support of Western powers, and France is now pushing hard for a new UNSC resolution approving this, to be voted on it is hoped in mid-December. France and other EU states, including Germany and it is thought Great Britain, are already involved in discussions of the practicalities of military intervention with ECOWAS governments. But in contrast to the bold prognoses made by French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in the early autumn, according to which a military intervention was then only “a matter of weeks” away, there is a growing realisation that it will take at least six months to equip and prepare the ECOWAS force and plan its mission properly; at the UN and in military-to-military discussions, the United States appears to be urging greater caution and an even longer time scale, on the grounds that the 3,500 men promised by ECOWAS will simply not be sufficient to take on the job. Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, reporting to the Security Council at the end of November, has expressed the view that, while military action may ultimately be necessary against the “most extremist” elements in northern Mali, any such intervention requires far more preparation if a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe is to be averted, and that in the meantime “political dialogue” must be given pride of place.
Tactically speaking, this is to the advantage of Algiers, which, while vacillating somewhat on the rights and wrongs of the principle of military intervention against the hard core AQMI and MUJAO in northern Mali, has consistently foregrounded dialogue with those rebel groups that can be engaged as the best way forward – an approach which enables the Algerians, and in particular the DRS[5], to leverage their extensive knowledge of and contacts in northern Mali. And indeed the Algerian authorities have lost no time in initiating talks with both the Tuareg separatist MNLA and the islamist Ansar Dine, both in Algiers and in Ouagadougou (under the auspices of President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, ECOWAS’ designated mediator). Superficially at least, this approach seems to have borne fruit remarkably quickly. MNLA spokesmen have made concessions on the group’s central demand of independence, claiming that a form of autonomy within a federation may be acceptable, and have engaged the hardcore islamist MUJAO in battle in the Gao region as of mid-November. Spokesmen for Ansar Dine, meanwhile, have claimed[6] that the organisation has “broken with terrorism” and enjoys “very good relations” with the MNLA, and renounced the goal of conquering the whole of Mali to establish sharia law across the entire country; furthermore, the group has on at least one occasion intercepted cigarette smugglers in the Malian desert who are believed to have been raising funds on behalf of AQMI and/or MUJAO. Gratifyingly for the Algerian authorities, Cheikh Awisa, one of Ansar Dine’s political and military leaders, has recently stated that the organisation insists that any “decisive solution” must be “found and signed in Algiers.”
In this context, as forecast in our last report, the differences between the French and Algerian positions are again becoming increasingly visible, even as French President François Hollande’s visit to Algiers approaches. Questioned by reporters in Paris on Nov. 20, Hollande continued to foreground the military solution and categorically ruled out any talks with “groups linked with terrorism” (which, by French definitions, ought to encompass Ansar Dine); speaking at the same time on Algerian radio, Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia laid out a diametrically opposite position, insisting that “trying to reconstitute Mali’s territorial unity by force would be an adventure that will never succeed.”
Hollande is due to visit Algiers in mid-December, around the time the Security Council meets to approve the ECOWAS intervention plan. This in itself does not bode well for efforts to build a new entente between France and Algeria – all the more so given that the slight advantage Algiers may have felt it had acquired vis à vis Morocco, France’s traditional partner in the Maghreb, appears to be evaporating. After six months of silence on the question following the election of the new centre-left government, Paris has reaffirmed its support for the Moroccan autonomy plan in for Western Sahara, while Rabat has finally appointed a new ambassador to Paris in the person of Chakib Benmoussa (former Interior Minister and one-time chief negotiator at the Manhasset talks), putting an end to rumours of a “silent crisis” in Franco-Moroccan relations. A visit to Rabat by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accompanied by several members of his government has been scheduled for December 12-13, just before Hollande’s trip to Algiers, as if to reassure the Moroccans of the continuity of their ‘special relationship’ with Paris. And in the meantime, rumours have begun to crop up in the Moroccan press to the effect that the contribution of Moroccan special forces has been solicited for the forthcoming northern Mali operation (according to one version, by Hollande himself, during the summit of French-speaking nations in Kinshasa in October, with the offer of debt forgiveness as an incentive). While these reports remain for the time being unconfirmed, they can scarcely be reassuring for Algiers, for whom recognising that Morocco has a legitimate interest in the Sahara-Sahel region would in effect amount to recognising Rabat’s claim to Western Sahara.
Security
The level of jihadist activity continued to decline in October, and slumped heavily in November. Only three AQMI operations were reported in November, down from ten in October and 13 in September, making it the quietest month Algeria has seen in several years in terms of jihadist activity. The reason for the abrupt fall in AQMI activity in November is most likely the inclement weather that hit northern Algeria in the middle of the month, but the clear downward trend we have observed over the past few months still holds. AQMI operations remain small-scale – roadside bombs and isolated shootings – and mostly concentrated in Kabylia: eight out of ten in October and all three of the attacks in November took place in the Kabyle wilayas to the east of Algiers. The level of army activity, meanwhile, has remained steady throughout the period from August to November, at around 10 operations per month, although the municipal and provincial elections on Nov.
29 did see a special mobilisation of the security forces (notably the police, with 76,000 men detailed to protecting the 27,000 polling stations across the country).
In ALGIERS the security forces on November 9 detained “two armed men, suspected of being terrorists” at a checkpoint between Zeralda and Ben Aknoun, to the west of the capital. The two men reportedly “tried to resist” and “an ambulance was called to the location” though “no shots were heard,” said El-Khabar (10/11).
The oil producing areas of the south were largely quiet, as were the southern borders, which saw no incidents after the three reported early October (see previous report). The Algerian press has persistently been reporting heightened security along the country’s southern borders, especially with Mali, with Al-Khabar (05/11) indicating that the Algerian army “has begun deploying a 50km-long electrified fence along the borders with Mali around the town of Bordj Baji Mokhtar” to block access for “terrorists and smugglers” (although this would still leave about 1,100km of unguarded border between Algeria and Mali). On Nov. 4, according to Al-Khabar (04/11) security forces “arrested a terrorist from Niger carrying a suicide belt near the Libyan border, Daraj sector, inside Algerian territory”. The man admitted he was a member of MUJAO and was planning a suicide attack against Algerian security targets in the southern wilayas. The Algerian press later reported that as many as 61 people (29 Malians, 18 Algerians and 14 people from other countries including Nigeria and Burkina Faso) were arrested in Tamanrasset on Nov. 23-24 on suspicion of contacts with terrorist groups in Mali, notably MUJAO; only four were reportedly charged with supporting terrorism, however.
The Libyan border, meanwhile, saw some incidents. The security forces around October 21 intercepted a Libyan armed group that had crossed into Algerian territory near In Amenas (wilaya of Illizi). The group, believed to be composed of a Libyan rebel commander and his armed escort, is thought to have been in Algeria to meet with weapons smugglers in the desert and close a deal. The Algerian security forces tracked the commander and arrested him some 200km south of Debdeb. On October 31 the army intercepted six smugglers near the Libyan border in the Djanet area (also in the wilaya of Illizi) and seized two offroaders and a quantity of weapons and ammunition believed to have been on the way to deliver to jihadists in northern Mali. On Oct. 28 Al-Khabar published a somewhat confused account of uncertain credibility of an AQMI emir arrested near the Libyan border while trying to racketeer a shepherd and who told the security forces during interrogation about stocks MANPADS smuggled from Libya and hidden somewhere on Algerian territory.
END
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[1] See AMSR #118
[2] Benflis served as Prime Minister for three years during Bouteflika’s first term, becoming General Secretary of the FLN in 2003. Having fallen out with Bouteflika he stood as the FLN candidate in the 2004 presidential election, and for a time appeared well set to beat him with the Army’s tacit approval, but appears to have been robbed of his victory by a last minute deal between Bouteflika and Tewfik, which led to the lasting political marginalisation of the Army chiefs and, in its wake, a coup against him within the FLN – led by Abdelaziz Belkhadem.
[3] Tliba, who also owns Annaba football club, was elected to parliament in May on the Front National Démocratique ticket, after which he promptly defected to the FLN, becoming deputy chairman of the FLN parliamentary caucus.
[4] “Our orchard has ripened”, i.e. the younger generation is ready to take over from the generation that fought in the war of independence. See AMSR#114.
[5] A former DRS officer points out, however, that DRS chief Tewfik is 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.
[6] Ansar Dine may not have actually broken with AQMI and MUJAO on the ground in northern Mali itself, however. Ansar Dine’s core objective appears to be less the establishment of sharia law than establishing and perpetuating Iyad Ag Ghaly’s dominance over the Tuareg Iforas clan and the Kidal region, and it is increasingly clear that it is quite flexible – not to say opportunistic – in pursuing that goal.
