Algeria Country Profile

Snapshot: Corruption is a serious obstacle for companies operating or intending to invest in Algeria. A culture of
patronage permeates several aspects of Algeria’s economy, strengthening the practices of nepotism and the use of
connections to “get things done.” Bribery and facilitation payments are also common practice, despite being
criminal offenses. Bribes and “grease money” are mainly employed to overcome bureaucratic hurdles. The legal
framework criminalizes a large range of corruption offenses, but enforcement remains a challenge and government
officials engage in corruption with impunity.

Judicial System: The judiciary carries a high corruption risk for companies operating in Algeria. The
courts are subject to political influence and are susceptible to corruption. Firms do not perceive the courts
as effective in settling disputes or in challenging government regulations. Algerians perceive the judiciary to
be the most corrupt public institution, with almost three-quarters of surveyed households sharing this
opinion.
Foreign judgments are not recognized by the courts despite Algeria being a signatory of the New York
Convention 1958 and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
Police: Companies face a moderate corruption risk when dealing with police. Impunity among police
officers is believed to be a problem in Algeria, and authorities rarely disclose information on actions taken
against police abuse. Businesses consider the police to be moderately reliable in enforcing the law and in
protecting business from crime. Most surveyed households believe corruption is widespread among the
police.
Public Services: Algeria’s public services sector carries a high corruption risk for companies. Local
administrations are plagued by inefficiency, corruption, and patronage. Inefficient government bureaucracy
represents a major constraint for business, and policies and regulations are inconsistently applied in
practice. Indeed, bureaucracy in the country is opaque and lacks transparent oversight, and bribes are
sometimes used as a means to bypass bureaucracy and to avoid government interference. It is more time-
consuming to start a business in Algeria than in the rest of the region, but the process is less costly; the
same applies for dealing with construction permits.
Land Administration: There is a high risk of corruption for companies dealing with Algeria’s land
authorities. Property rights are recognized and protected by law, but the effective protection of property
rights is limited by lengthy court proceedings, the unpredictability of outcomes, political influence, and
corruption. Companies complain about the difficulty of obtaining land; the government limits the ability of
foreigners to purchase land in Algeria to avoid speculation. Registering property has also proved difficult
for companies.
The construction of Algeria’s East-West Highway, which is dubbed the most expensive highway in the world
(estimated at USD 13 billion), has been plagued by corruption since its start in 2006. In mid-2015, courts
jailed 14 people connected to the case, including two former workers from the public works ministry, to two
years in prison; an ex-intelligence officer to three years; while a former director of highways, Mohamed
Khelladi, and a Chinese company advisor, Chani Mejdoub, were sentenced to ten years in jail and fined
USD 35,000 for money laundering connected to the case. Seven international companies connected to the
case were fined USD 55,000 each.
Tax Administration: Algeria’s tax administration sector carries a high corruption risk. Irregular
payments and bribes are often exchanged when meeting tax officials. Paying taxes in Algeria is more time-
consuming and more costly than the regional average, yet only a small proportion of businesses report that
tax rates and regulations represent a significant obstacle to business.
Customs Administration: There is a high risk of corruption in Algeria’s customs sector. The level of
transparency within the border authorities is low, and demands for irregular payments are frequent.
Business executives perceive customs procedures as burdensome. Algeria has eased the process of trading
across borders by upgrading the infrastructure at the port of Algiers, but the time and cost required to trade
across borders remain higher than regional averages. Furthermore, companies report they routinely face
delays of weeks and even months when clearing goods through customs.
Public Procurement: The Algerian public procurement sector carries a high corruption risk. Business
executives contend that funds are often diverted to companies and individuals due to corruption and
believe favoritism is widespread among procurement officials.
In 2015, the government launched a major corruption investigation into the state-owned company
Sonatrach. The case involves the direct award of public contracts without open tenders, inflated contract
prices and USD millions in bribes. Several persons and companies connected to the case have been
sentenced for embezzlement, money laundering, and bribery, among other offenses. The convicted include
a former Sonatrach vice-president, Belkacem Boumediene, who was sentenced to five years in prison, and a
former Sonatrach CEO, Mohamed Meziane, who received a five-year suspended sentence and a fine of USD
18,600. The latter’s two sons, Mohamed Reda Meziane and Bachir Fawzi Meziane received six and five
years in prison respectively. A former CEO of Credit Populaire d’Algerie, Meghaoui Hashemi, and his son
were sentenced to five and six years in prison respectively. Several others also received prison sentences,
and three companies (German Funkwerk Plettac, Italian Saipem Contracting Algeria and German-Algerian
Contel-Funkwerk) were each fined between USD 37,000 and USD 47,000.
Natural Resources: Algeria’s natural resources and extractive industries carry a high corruption risk, and
this is particularly true for the energy sector, in which high-levels of corruption are reported. The
government provides minimal information to the public on licensing and contracting in extractive
industries, and it discloses very little on environmental assessments and resource revenues, despite natural
resources recently accounting for 97% of total exports (Natural Resource Governance Institute).
Legislation: The government has generally not been effective in implementing anti-corruption laws. The
Algerian Penal Code and Anti-Corruption Law criminalizes passive and active bribery, facilitation
payments, illicit enrichment, abuse of power, kickbacks, and influence peddling. Punishments for the latter
offense are higher when committed by government officials than by natural persons. Official corruption is
punished by prison terms that range between two and ten years. Money Laundering is regulated by the Law
on Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing (in Arabic). Government officials are subject to disclosure
laws and have to declare their assets within a month upon taking office if they gain substantial wealth and
before leaving their positions, but the regulations are poorly enforced and very few officials have complied.
The Algerian legal framework provides for the protection of whistleblowers.
Algeria has ratified the UN Convention Against Corruption and the African Union Convention on
Preventing and Combating Corruption. Algeria is also a member of the Middle East and North Africa
Financial Action Task Force, which combats money laundering and terrorist financing.
Civil Society: Freedoms of the speech and press are protected under Algeria’s Constitution, but these
freedoms are not protected in practice. The media is severely restricted. Criminal and civil charges hinder
journalists from engaging in critical reporting on government actions, and the government sometimes
restricts foreign reporting by rejecting or severely delaying visas for foreign journalists. There is no freedom
of information law in Algeria. The government monitors the internet and retains the right to block websites
that are deemed “contrary to public order or decency”. The media environment is described as “not free”.
Algeria has strong traditions of civil society. The government has consulted with NGOs when drafting some
laws, and civil society’s role in Algeria has gained increasing importance in recent years, particularly in
regards to raising the public’s general awareness of corruption issues.
The New York Times -------
ALGIERS — High above the sea in a heavily guarded villa, Algeria’s 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz
Bouteflika, sits in a wheelchair — mute, paralyzed, barely able to move his hands. Hovered over by a flurry
of attendants and family members, he has not uttered a single word in public, much less given a speech or
interview, since a stroke in 2013.

Twenty miles away in the capital, Algiers, tens of thousands of demonstrators fill the streets every week
loudly demanding his departure, and that of the extensive, ill-defined entourage around him that Algerians
call simply the “power,” the nexus of high-ranking officials, wealthy businessmen and military officers who
actually run the country.
The demonstrations, the largest in over 30 years, have grown larger every week and seem unstoppable.
Algeria, the largest country in Africa and a rare pillar of stability in the Arab world, now faces an uncertain
future.

The protesters’ demands are unambiguous: After two decades of undivided reign, Mr. Bouteflika, his clan,
and his system must go. “We feel like we’ve been violated for 20 years,” said Haid Mohamed Islam, a 27-
year-old doctor standing outside the modernistic national library on a recent wind-swept day. “It’s time to
break the chains.”

While it remains far from clear what happens next, a sense that change is inevitable is sweeping the
country. The protest has caught on across the country and among all classes of society, from bankers to
bakers to truck drivers to teachers to waiters to students. “It is extraordinarily diverse,” said Nacer Djabi, a
sociologist.

An offer by Mr. Bouteflika that he would not run for a fifth term, which the government portrayed as a
major concession, was roundly rebuffed by the protesters because it fell short of their demand that he step
down immediately and because it appeared to leave him in office indefinitely. The episode seemed only to
energize them.

The government and the security forces, adept at swatting away the small protests that periodically erupt in
Algeria, seem stymied. Its officials say they have ruled out firing on the protesters. And as the protesters’
numbers have grown, a violent response could backfire.

Although it remains difficult to imagine the government yielding to the protesters, recently there have been
positive signs of at least a tacit acceptance.

State news media, at first barred from covering the protests, have begun reporting on them. “The Street Is
Not Backing Down” was the banner headline in the daily Liberté on Wednesday.

The ruling National Liberation Front and the army have joined the chorus of praise for the demonstrators,
with the chief of staff hailing their “unequaled sense of civic responsibility.”

“Just on its face, the dynamic is really very strong,” said Louisa Dris-Ait Hamadouche, a leading political
scientist here, her words nearly drowned out by thousands protesting around her on Friday.

For decades, Algeria was seen by allies on both sides of the Atlantic as a bulwark against the regional
Islamist threat. After the army brutally crushed an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, the military chose Mr.
Bouteflika, a wily ex-foreign minister whose political roots go back to the earliest years of Algerian
independence, to lead the country.

Algerians welcomed the end of the nearly decade-long conflict and accepted Mr. Bouteflika with it, an
arrangement made even easier as oil money began flowing freely in the early 2000s, and with it generous
social benefits.

In 2011, Algeria proudly rode out the Arab Spring, its leaders mocking the reckless, pro-democracy
demonstrators in neighboring countries even as they shut the country off from the outside world. There are
virtually no tourists here, and downtown Algiers is free of the international commercial brands seen
elsewhere.

Mr. Bouteflika also cloistered himself. According to journalists and political scientists here, he has never
given an interview in the Algerian news media in his two decades in office. Since his stroke, even his body
has disappeared: He has been replaced in public appearances by his framed portrait, known here as “the
frame.”

There were few complaints. Large public works programs and free loans to young people, financed by the
country’s oil and gas wealth, kept citizens content and quiescent.

A top member of the governing coalition, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely, said the
Bouteflika system was built on patronage and corruption. With oil fetching high prices, “money flowed like
water,” he said. “There was corruption in bidding. Easy bank loans. People got rich on public money.”
But in 2014, the prices of oil and gas, which account for 97 percent of the country’s exports, started falling.
Unemployment among the young bit deeply as the government cut social benefits.

Last month, when Mr. Bouteflika announced he would run for a fifth term, the bottom fell out. Algerians
had had enough of his system, and his physical incapacity became a metaphor for the withering country.

Ordinary Algerians, in the grimy downtown streets where great chunks of plaster are peeling from the
Haussmann-style buildings, in the shabby cafes made shabbier by five years of fluctuating oil prices, and in
the mass demonstrations, say there is no going back.

“They thought that because we were quiet, we were stupid,” said Rabah Bouberras, 32, a shopkeeper from
the suburbs who was demonstrating in Algiers on Friday. “But the people are not going to forgive them.
We’re not hungry. It’s a question of dignity.”

Corruption has become a major grievance.

“In my sector it’s flagrant,” said Abdenour Hadjici, a sales manager for a plaster company. “There are
certain people that are favored.” A builder he knows, for instance, got a cheap loan because he knows a
high-placed general, he said.

But it is the central demand of the protesters, that the whole Bouteflika system must go, that would be
hardest to satisfy, government insiders and analysts here say.

“The clan that governs this country isn’t going to just let go just like that,” said Zoubir Arous, a leading
sociologist, as he watched a stream of chanting youth, many draped in the Algerian flag, march on a
downtown street. “It’s a question of life or death for them.”

And “the system” is wider than Mr. Bouteflika and his cronies. Eliminating it would require purging a
tentacular web of corruption encompassing thousands of people and built up over years.

“Everybody’s been co-opted,” said Mr. Djabi, the sociologist. “It was, ‘Come with me, and you will have
everything.’”

Inside the gargantuan marbled government buildings constructed with oil money, there is worry and
hesitation. Officials, stunned by the size of the demonstrations, insist occult forces are guiding them.

The demonstrations have been taken over by opposition politicians, they say, or Islamists, though there is
little evidence of either at the demonstrations. The officials are bewildered at the absence of leaders among
the protesters, and at the total rejection of the government’s offers.

“They’re saying, all those who are part of the system have to go, but that’s excommunication,” exclaimed a
top official, who declined to be quoted by name. “We recognize that there are reasons for frustration. But
does that justify calling into question everything that has come before?”

There is also the question of who is really in charge and who has the authority to negotiate with the
protesters.

Mr. Bouteflika is said to be barely able to speak, though top officials and friends insist that he is lucid and
capable of dispensing directives.
“He’s in control of his faculties, 100 percent,” Lakhdar Brahimi, a former United Nations negotiator and
friend of Mr. Bouteflika’s, said in an interview here this past week. He said he had recently seen the
president, whom he has known since they were young revolutionaries together in the early 1960s.

“Still, the fact is, he’s disappeared from the scene,” Mr. Brahimi said. “And that creates a problem.”
Revolution has a cherished place in Algerian memory, and the victory over France almost 60 years ago is
enshrined in national pride. In the late 20th century, Algeria was a global archetype of third world
revolution and ground zero for revolutionaries from the Black Panthers to the African National Congress.

Now France is watching events here anxiously from across the Mediterranean. Home to an Algerian
diaspora in the millions, France is already reckoning with the boatloads of young would-be migrants who
attempt the dangerous crossing.

The protesters say rising up against oppression is a hallowed national tradition.

“Our parents made the revolution,” said Hassen Khelifati, 51, a prosperous insurance executive who has
participated in the demonstrations. “For us, at least we will be able to say, we tried. We can’t just say to our
children, we were cowards.”

He is joined on the streets by a banker, Mallem Amel, 25. “There’s been this consciousness raising,” she
said. “We can’t stay in this situation.”

And a doctor, Zaidi Hamza, 26. “The Algerian people want a radical change,” he said. “There isn’t a single
category in the population that will negotiate with them.”

They say they will fight to the end.

“We’re not afraid of a blood bath,” said Zohir Geurroumi, a 23-year-old law student. “This isn’t for us. It’s
for our descendants.”

Algeria economy: Where has all the money gone? ------ Al Jazeera News
As Algeria's oil wealth dries up and protesters demand change, people are demanding to know where the
money has gone.

Corruption, youth unemployment and inequality have been at the centre of protests against the 20 years of
rule by Algeria's president, 81-year-old Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Despite agreeing not to stand for another term, Algerians have little faith in the business elite, military and
politicians running the country.

The country's wealth has been squandered. It had currency reserves of $179bn in December 2014, but that
has shrunk to $79.8bn.

Rather than using the oil and petrol wealth to diversify the economy, more than a fifth of Algeria's budget is
used for subsidies.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Algeria's oil and petrol revenues account for 95 percent of its
export earnings and 60 percent of its budget. But oil prices have been falling and the country's oil and petrol
production has also been in decline due to a lack of investment - meaning there isn't the money to fill the
coffers.

Unemployment in Algeria is running at 11.1 percent. But youth unemployment stands at 26.4 percent for
the under 30s, who make up two-thirds of the country's 41-million population.

Taieb Hafsi, strategy and society professor of management at the HEC Montreal, talks to Counting the Cost
about the issues behind the protests and the challenges facing Algeria's oil-reliant economy.

"The problem with oil is that it has generated a rent-seeking behaviour ... and its not just the people at the
very top who are rent-seeking. Bureaucracy is rent-seeking, private firms are rent-seeking, even the
population is rent-seeking. So you have this incredibly lazy demeanour and of course that rent-seeking
leads to corruption. As a result, if you will, it [oil] is a real curse ... When you think about trying to diversify
away from oil ... then you have to realise that business is a source of power, so the government has been
trying to keep it under control," Hafsi explains.

"Algeria is one of the few countries in the world where you have to get permission to invest your money. No
market behaviour, no discipline, so the result is no development ... it's no surprise. What's happening in
Algeria goes against all the norms of economic behaviour that we know about."

However, Hafsi believes there is still a cause for optimism for Algeria's economic future.

"The Algerian economy is really paradoxical ... it's very poorly managed and seemingly doomed, but also at
the same time you see some very thriving segments," he says.

"The real economy is mostly informal. About 60 percent of the economy is informal and it is not accounted
for. How do firms actually survive in this very hostile environment? There are smaller firms all over the
country trying to remain below the radar, if you will, but ... succeeding. They are doing very well ... They
don't rely on the state, they want to be excellent and often they become competitive on the world market. So
in a sense, there is something happening bottom up that, in my opinion, is very promising."

What will Rome get from Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative?
Britain's decision to join China's challenger to the World Bank drew a quick rebuke from Washington.

The US claimed the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank would extend Beijing's soft power.

Three years on, the decision by Italy's new populist government to sign up for investment from Beijing has
raised concerns in Western capitals.

The US National Security Council warned: Endorsing the Belt and Road Initiative lends legitimacy to
China's predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people.

Those concerns are already playing out. China's largess is entrapping vulnerable nations in debt. You may
recall Sri Lanka fell behind with payments and had to hand over a vital seaport that had been built with
Chinese loans, on a 99-year lease.

Pakistan's attempts to negotiate an IMF loan have been complicated by Washington's unwillingness for the
money to be used to pay back Beijing's loans to Pakistan. And in Djibouti where the US has a military base,
China opened its first overseas base. At the same time, the country's debts have soared to 80 percent of
gross domestic product from 50 percent.

In Italy's case, it has a debt of 2.3 trillion euro ($2.6 trillion) and pays 64 billion euro ($72.5bn) every year
in interest payments. Should it get into trouble, the European bailout fund would not be able to save the
country.

China's President Xi Jinping hopes the two countries can work together on everything from ports to
telecoms and pharmaceuticals to football.

But what is at stake? And what will Rome get from the Belt and Road Initiative? Greg Swenson, founding
partner of Brigg MacAdam, talks to Counting the Cost.

"It's fine that they are reaching out. China is a great market for them ... but it's important to keep in mind,
their first relationship should be with the EU and also with the US, given the membership in NATO and in
the G7. So I think that they've gone a little overboard. Is it the end of the world? I don't think so," says
Swenson.

"The EU is the number one market for China in terms of exports and China is the number two market for
the EU, and notably, the US is the number one market for the EU, so I think Italy just has to do a better job
of being diplomatic with their allies before ... over-reaching out to China. But it is quite natural to want to
sell products."

According to Swenson "just embracing China, borrowing more money is not the answer" to Italy's economic
woes.
"We will see what happens. I hope there's a bit of a ... pullback on the part of Italy. The Investment Bank
that's announced is controversial, [but] ... I'm not that worried about it but I do think it's a moment for the
EU to embrace their strategic partners, notably the US, and really make some sort of pushback against this
expansion by China, both militarily and economically. And I think that will work out and I think that the EU
and the US will win."

For the last two weeks, tens of thousands of Algerians have been protesting against the attempt of its 82-
year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to run for a fifth term.

Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999, last addressed his people in May 2012, a year after a series of
Arab uprisings had toppled three long-term presidents in Algeria's neighbourhood. In that speech, he made
it clear that he was ready to leave the presidency once his third term was up; Algerians still remember very
well two statements he made: "My generation has passed its time" and "God bless the man who knows his
limits".

At that time, Algeria was still enjoying unprecedented revenue flow, as oil prices were consistently hovering
around $100 a barrel (having reached $140 in 2008). This had allowed the president to "buy" some social
peace and contain the fallout from the Arab Spring.

In 2013, he suffered a debilitating stroke, which confined him to a wheelchair, causing many to think this
would all-but-guarantee the long-term president's planned retirement from politics. In 2014,
however, Bouteflika made an unexpected u-turn and announced his decision to run again.

The unravelling chaos in neighbouring Libya, as well as Syria, convinced a significant number of Algerian
voters to opt for the stability offered by the incumbent president and Bouteflika managed to win a fourth
term. The president tried to ease the concerns of voters who still wanted change by promising he would
enact reforms that would result in his eventual "passing the torch to the younger generation".

Unfortunately, these reforms never materialised.

Bouteflika spent most of his fourth term in office between hospitals in Geneva, Switzerland, and Grenoble,
France. He was obviously unable to run the country efficiently because of his rapidly deteriorating health.
He offered little more than cosmetic solutions to the country's deep-rooted problems.

He failed to utilise the oil revenues to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the average Algerian. Today,
oil prices have halved, corruption levels have reached unprecedented levels, social inequalities have
increased, more than a quarter of Algerians under 30 are unemployed, and many are fed up with a
president that seems unwilling or at least unable to keep his promises to the people.

This is why after the ailing president announced his intention to run for a fifth term, Algerians from all
walks of life took to the streets. Lawyers, journalists, students and academics all voiced their opposition to a
fifth Bouteflika mandate.

The authorities clearly miscalculated the effect such a move would have on the people and assumed that
demonstrations would take place only in "suspect areas" like the Berber-dominated northern region of
Kabylie or some of the restive eastern provinces. Instead, demonstrators marched in cities and towns across
the country. Algiers, where protests were hitherto banned, saw the biggest gathering in the country.

Even the city of Tlemcen in western Algeria, where the majority of Bouteflika's ministers come from, joined
the demonstrations. The Algerian diaspora in London, Paris and Montreal also organised similar marches.

Today, many Algerians believe that the ailing president is being used by people in his entourage. They feel
that the image of their country, and indeed their long-term president, is being dragged through the mud by
people who are not concerned about anything other than enriching themselves and consolidating their grip
on the Algerian state.

They feel that some people in the president's inner circle are trying to use the respect Algerians have
for him, given that he is credited for bringing peace to the country through national reconciliation, to
pursue their own self-interests.
This is why the demonstrators' chants have evolved from "Degage!" (Get out) to "Al-shaab yureed isqat al-
nidham!" (The people want the downfall of the regime).

Demonstrations have thus far been peaceful and the security services response has been exemplary.
However, figures from both the military and the government cautioned people about what may happen if
the demonstrations continue.

Ahmed Gaid Salah, the military's chief of staff and deputy defence minister, has warned that the ongoing
protests may soon turn violent. Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, an ally of Bouteflika, also warned the
Algerian people about the future, reminding that the war in Syria also began with similar protests.

However, Ouyahia and Salah's warnings fell on deaf ears, as the demonstrators and their supporters
pointed out that the Algerians view not Syria, but Malaysia and Turkey as role models. They reminded the
authorities that the first step in Malaysia's development was getting rid of corrupt individuals and insisted
that Algerians have learned a lot from the experiences of the Arab Spring countries.

For now, the protesters appear to have the upper hand in Algeria. Bouteflika's entourage has already been
forced to make some concessions. In a letter read out on state-run TV on Sunday, they announced that if the
president is re-elected, he would set up an inclusive national conference that would set a date and prepare
for new polls which he would not contest. They also invited the opposition and representatives of the
protesters to negotiate a road map.

However, the move failed to appease Algerian protesters, who viewed the offer as yet another tactic to buy
time. They felt that the president, who never kept his promise to step down in the past, is unlikely to be true
to his world this time.

So, what is next for Algeria?

As the protests are unlikely to die down on their own, there appear to be four options.

The president may pass away. ِAccording to unconfirmed reports, President Bouteflika is in a critical
condition in a hospital in Geneva. The president of the Council for Nation, the upper house in the
parliament, would take over the presidency for a period of 60 days before presidential elections can take
place. This would give the political establishment enough time to agree on a new candidate.

The second, less likely scenario would be for the president's entourage to withdraw his candidacy because of
ill health. The implication would be the same as the first scenario.

A third scenario would be the military intervening to either cancel the president's candidacy on the grounds
of his ill health, or announce that it is no longer going to support him in the presidential race. This would
effectively mean that he would lose the election.

Finally, those who would benefit from Bouteflika winning a fifth term could try to turn the peaceful
demonstrations into violent ones. The military and security forces would likely intervene, declaring a state
of emergency, and the process of change would be aborted.

Aware of the risks of an escalation, protestors remain vigilant. They have learned valuable lessons from
their neighbours' past experiences. Nevertheless, they have claimed the moral high ground and are on
course to take their country's destiny into their own hands.

Algeria army chief demands Bouteflika be declared unfit to rule

Algeria's army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah has called for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to be declared unfit to
rule the country, following weeks of protests against the ailing head of state's decision to seek a fifth term.

Although Bouteflika later reversed his decision, the 82-year-old postponed elections set for April and said
he would remain in power until a new constitution was adopted, a move that effectively extended his
current term.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Salah, the army chief, said he considered the people's demands to be
valid and that the presidency should be vacated.

"We must adopt a solution that helps us out of this crisis … a solution that respects and adheres to the
constitution so that it's a suitable one for all sides," Salah said.

"This solution is stipulated in Article 102 of the Constitution," he said.

Under Article 102, the Constitutional Council could determine the president is too ill to fully exercise his
functions, and ask the parliament to declare him unfit. Bouteflika has rarely been seen in public since
suffering a stroke in 2013.

If a two-thirds majority of the parliament's lower and upper house ratify the council's decision, the
chairman of the upper house, Abdelkader Bensalah, would serve as caretaker president for at least 45 days.

El Bilad television said the Constitutional Council had convened a special session after Salah's move.

The army chief is among the top power brokers in Algeria and his announcement could pave the way for
Bouteflika's removal.

The move comes days after Hocine Khaldoun, spokesman for the ruling National Liberation Front
(FLN), said he will ask the party to withdraw its support for Bouteflika's proposal to hold a national
conference aimed at getting the country out of its current political deadlock.

'Turning point'
Since February 22, hundreds of thousands of Algerians have taken part in nationwide demonstrations
protesting Bouteflika's re-election bid.

An Algerian protest leader rejected the army's attempt to have Bouteflika declared unfit, saying the people
wanted a national government of consensus.

"The Algerian people don't accept that the government, or a symbol of power of this system, manages the
transition period," Mustapha Bouchachi, a lawyer and protest leader said, was quoted as saying by the
online outlet Huffpost Maghreb.

Dalia Ghanem Yazbeck, a resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Al Jazeera the military
has been sending "mixed messages" from the beginning of the demonstrations.

"At first, it was 'we will not tolerate chaos', and then, 'we are with the voice of the people', and what Gaid
Saleh said today was confirmation that the military has taken a strong stance in the political arena," she
said from Algiers, the country's capital.

"What he said today confirms that the Algerian military has been, and will remain the devoted guardians of
Algeria's power," Yazbeck said.

The army likely has a replacement in mind, she said, which it might make public in the next few days.

Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, also described Salah's announcement as a significant
development, noting Bouteflika had appointed a new government and promised political reforms.

"It's a major turning point for Algeria ... he (Bouteflika) set the stage for a new national dialogue in Algeria
to pave the way for democratisation of the country," Bishara said.

"So, what is happening today, from the looks of it, is quite the opposite of what we were promised."
Salah's announcement signalled "a major escalation" and "basically means that the army has taken over,"
added Bishara.

Said Salhi, head of Algeria’s League for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera that he does not believe that
President Bouteflika impeachment is the "ultimate solution".

"It is important that the army does not remain silent," he said. "However, I cannot be satisfied with Gaid
Salah’s decision since we are not dealing with a simple electoral crisis but with a deep political crisis."

He added: “The situation today is not conducive for conducting transparent and fair polls. First, we need to
push for a fresh political start, featuring a wide ranging far-reaching measures. This will include reforming
the law on the associations, the law on the political parties, and the law on the public media as well. This
cannot be achieved within the next three months. A transition process needs more time”.

Protesters maintain pressure

Meanwhile, earlier on Tuesday, thousands of people returned to the streets of Algiers calling on Bouteflika
to resign, keeping up popular pressure. Following Salah's announcement, some demonstrators expressed
scepticism about the army chief's plan.

Assyl Moulessehoul, a 24-year-old language student in Tlemcen, said it appeared to be a "soft military
coup." "The army should not interfere in politics and should stay away from the ongoing political crisis.
What we want is the regime to move from a military to a civilian rule," he told Al Jazeera, adding that he
would return to demonstrate again on Friday.

Samia Sad, 25, a medicine student in Setif, described Salah’s announcement as "selfish". "He is trying to
save himself by sacrificing Abdelaziz Bouteflika," she said. "We are not naive. For weeks, we have called
upon the entire ruling clique, including Ahmed Gaid Salah, to step down. We want the whole old guard to
step aside."

Algeria and the Paradox of Democracy: The 1992 Coup, its Consequences and the Contemporary
Crisis

* Background
* The Military Coup and its Impact
* Indifference and Complicity of the Algerian Army
* Military Rule Under a Facade of Democracy
* The Army’s Western-Backed War on the Algerian People
* Former Algerian PM Speaks Out
* Western Interests in Algeria

The Military Coup and its Impact

In December 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Algerian political party, had won national
democratic elections, proving to be immensely popular. However, before the parliamentary seats
could be taken after January 1992, the Algerian military violently overturned democracy. The
parliamentary elections that would have brought the FIS to power were cancelled by the Algerian
army. The army rounded up tens of thousands of Muslims who supported the winning party and
threw them into concentration camps in the midst of the Sahara, to be tortured and abused.[1]
Subsequently, the army took power, democracy was eliminated, and the popular FIS was scattered.
Summarising the coup, Lahouri Addi observes that “in February 1989, just months after the
October 1988 riots that cost nearly a thousand lives, the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN)
embarked on a series of reforms, changing the Constitution to allow multipartism and alternation
in power by means of elections. Yet the legalization of multipartism mainly benefited the Islamists
organized into the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which carried both the June 1990 local elections
and the first round of the December 1991 national legislative races. The military suspended the
process and nullified the first-round results in January 1992. Next, it forced President Chadli
Benjedid to resign. Since then, Algeria has plunged into murderous strife that already has claimed
more than 60,000 lives.”

As noted by John Entelis, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Program at
Fordham University in New York, regarding the elections, “The Arab world had never before
experienced such a genuinely populist expression of democratic aspirations… Yet when the army
overturned the whole democratic experiment in January 1992, the United States willingly accepted
the results… In short, a democratically elected Islamist government hostile to American hegemonic
aspirations in the region… was considered unacceptable in Washington.” This was primarily
because the democratically elected government was unlikely to allow the United States to use
Algeria as part of its attempts to consolidate its military-economic hegemony throughout the
region. Professor Entelis acknowledges that, in contrast, “More important was the army
government’s willingness to collaborate with American regional ambitions”, which included
“collaborating with Israel in establishing a Pax Americana in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Following this violent coup, hundreds of civilians were being mysteriously and regularly
massacred by an unknown terrorist group. The newly established military regime insisted that the
terrorists were members of an organisation called the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). This group was
alleged to consist of disenchanted members of the former FIS who were retaliating against the
newly installed regime by murdering civilians. Thus, the massacres were blamed on the GIA, a
supposedly Islamic terrorist organisation defending the interests of the scattered FIS. The seizing,
killing and imprisoning of FIS members and supporters has therefore been perpetrated by the new
regime on the pretext of eradicating Islamic terrorism. This has led to what appears to be a
veritable civil war within the country between secular government forces and armed Islamic
opposition groups. Government forces routinely arrest, detain and kill Algerian citizens who are
alleged to be members or supporters of the “Islamic terrorist” armed opposition. The opposition in
turn routinely undertakes horrendous massacres of civilians in accordance with its alleged
methodology of utilising terror to achieve political objectives. As we shall see, however, the facts
are far more complicated.

The result is that Algeria today constitutes yet another humanitarian crisis to which the West
remains overtly indifferent. Tens of thousands of children have been affected by a decade of
ongoing violence. Since the conflict within Algeria began, hundreds of babies, children and other
vulnerable civilians have been killed, often as deliberate targets, as well as indiscriminately.
Thousands of children have been seriously traumatised as a result of witnessing members of their
family be shot, cut to pieces, or burned alive, as well as witnessing bomb explosions and brutal
military operations by security forces and armed groups.[4]

Amnesty International reported in 1997 that the human rights crisis that followed the military
coup of 1992 “has already claimed tens of thousands of lives [and] has continued to worsen. In the
past year, thousands have been killed in what has been the most intense period of the conflict.
Men, women and children have been slaughtered, decapitated, mutilated and burned to death in
massacres. The large scale of the massacres of civilians of the past year have taken place against a
background of increasingly widespread human rights abuses by government security forces, state-
armed militias and armed opposition groups. Arbitrary and secret detention, unfair trial, torture
and ill-treatment, including rape, ‘disappearances’, extrajudicial executions, deliberate and
arbitrary killings of civilians, hostage-taking and death threats have become routine. As the toll of
victims continues to rise, the climate of fear has spread through all sectors of civilian society.” By
1997, up to 80,000 people, many of them civilians, were reported to have been killed, though
according to other sources, such as Algerian political parties, health workers and journalists, the
number of victims was considerably higher. By 1999 this conservative figure had risen to an
estimated 100,000.[5]

Indifference and Complicity of the Algerian Army

It is crucial to note that AI has also openly admitted that the claims of the Algerian government
that these massacres are being instigated by ‘Islamic terrorists’ are considerably problematic, given
that most of them occurred beside government military barracks and security forces, and went on
– often for hours – without any intervention. The conundrum is compounded by the sinister fact
that “the Algerian authorities have systematically failed to carry out investigations and to bring
those responsible to justice.”[6]

In November 1997, Secretary General of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane, pointed out that in
that year alone “Algerians have been slain in their thousands with unspeakable brutality”,
“decapitated, mutilated and burned alive in their homes”, with torture, ‘disappearances’ and
extrajudicial executions becoming “part of the daily reality of Algerian life”. Moreover, “many of
the massacres have been within shouting distance of army barracks, yet cries for help have gone
unanswered, the killers allowed to walk away unscathed”. In fact, the majority of these massacres
had “taken place in areas around the capital Algiers, in the most militarised region of the country.”
Often villages where such massacres occurred – sometimes for hours on end – “were close to army
barracks and security forces posts. Yet the army and security forces did not intervene, neither to
stop the massacres nor to arrest the killers – who were able to leave undisturbed on each
occasion.” Pierre Sane puts forward a crucial question: “what action has the international
community? None… This last point is as disturbing as the grizzly catalogue of abuses”.

To convey the scale and brutality of the massacres, Sane cites several examples from 1997: “on the
night of 11 July in Bou-Ismail, west of Algiers, a family of 12 were massacred”; “on the night of 28
August in Rais, south of Algiers, up to 300 people, many of them women and children, even small
babies, were killed and more than 100 injured”; “on the night of 5 September in Sidi Youssef, on
the outskirts of Algiers, more than 60 people were massacred”; “on the night of 22 September in
Bentalha, south of Algiers, more than 200 men, women and children were massacred”; “in the past
few weeks, hundreds more have been killed in a series of massacres of a dozen or more people at a
time”.

Sane adds that although there have been “recent statements by the UN Secretary General, the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF and UNHCR condemning the massacres of
civilians and other human rights abuses in Algeria” these “words are welcome, but start to sound
hollow when they are followed only by the hedging of governments and not by action.”[7] Thus,
despite the huge humanitarian catastrophe in Algeria, Western governments have studiously
ignored the escalating crisis, to the extent that they refuse to even place Algeria under viable
international pressure. Likewise, the Western mass media, complying with highly questionable
Western government policies, also largely ignore the crisis.

Thus, the Algerian crisis continues. In 1998 AI reported that thousands of civilians were killed;
some extrajudicially executed by security forces and militias armed by the state; others killed by
armed groups defining themselves as ‘Islamic’: “Thousands of people, including possible prisoners
of conscience, were detained; many were released without charge and hundreds were charged
under the ‘anti-terrorist’ law. Hundreds of people arrested in previous years were sentenced to
prison terms after unfair trials. Hundreds of people remained detained without trial. Torture and
ill-treatment by security forces remained widespread, especially during secret detention but also in
prisons. Torture, including rape, by armed groups also continued. Dozens of people ‘disappeared’
after arrest by security forces. Thousands of people who ‘disappeared’ in previous years remained
unaccounted for. Scores of people were abducted by armed groups. Hundreds of people were
sentenced to death, the vast majority in absentia. Hundreds of others remained under sentence of
death.”

According to the AI annual report of 1998, “most of the massacres took place near the capital,
Algiers, and in the Bilder and Medea regions, in the most heavily militarised part of the country.
Often, massacres were committed in villages situated close to army barracks and security forces
posts, and in some cases survivors reported that army security forces were stationed nearby.” The
report also indicates that “the killings often lasted several hours, but the army and security forces
failed to intervene to stop the massacres, and allowed the attackers to leave undisturbed.”
Moreover, despite denials by Algerian government officials of this combination of Algerian military
complicity and indifference, witness accounts abound to contradict such denials, and instead serve
to prove the military’s complicity. Further revealing is the flagrant, obviously deliberate and
systematic refusal of the Algerian authorities to protect civilians and investigate the massacres.
According to AI, “more and more people are dying in Algeria than anywhere else in the Middle
East. Time and time again, no one is brought before a court of law. There is just a statement
released to the press, that the killer of killers has been killed.”[8]

Unfortunately, the violence has continued up to and throughout the year 2000, diminishing
considerably in 1999, but later escalating back to the 1997-8 levels.[9] Reporting in December
2000, Amnesty confirmed that “Although the international community has largely tended to
ignore the continuing high level of violence in Algeria, an average of between 200 and 300 people
have been killed every month throughout this year.” In one single episode on the night of 18-19
December, “a group of men armed with knives and axes entered a coastal village near Ténès, west
of Algiers, and hacked to death 22 men, women and infant children before decapitating their
bodies. Two nights previously at least 16 schoolchildren, aged between 15 and 18, and their
supervisor were shot dead in the dormitory of their boarding school in the town of Medea, 80 kms
south of the capital. On both these occasions the perpetrators managed to escape without being
apprehended. The same is true for virtually all other such incidents.”[10] A leaked Algerian army
report confirms that 9,200 people were killed in the year 2000 alone. The massacres have
continued consistently, with 27 civilians killed at the beginning of February 2001, including eight
women and 13 children aged between six months and 14 years. The victims were slaughtered in the
shanty town of Berrouaghia 60 miles south of Algiers.[11]

Crucially, the vast majority of the victims of these massacres have not been non-Muslims,
secularists or supporters of the new Algerian regime, as one would expect if the perpetrators were
actually former members of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The victims have almost entirely
been poor villagers and shantytown dwellers – the very Muslim people who voted overwhelmingly
for the FIS. High-ranking officials or members of the pro-Algerian regime elite have rarely been
victims. For instance, no atrocities have been committed in the area of Club Des Pines, which was
recently turned into a high-class city on the outskirts of the capital. Government officials, army
chiefs and pro-government party leaders reside there.

Why would the FIS massacre its own supporters, its own popular base, rather than its real enemy
in the new Algerian elite? There have also been accounts reported on the authority of physicians
working in hospitals where the dead and wounded are received, stating that “the dead from those
who commit these horrible crimes were not circumcised.” Yet circumcision is standard for all
Muslim males in Algeria. This implies that the perpetrators were not Muslim – and therefore not
Islamist terrorists. The FIS itself, along with other opposition parties, accuses the Algerian
government’s security forces of masterminding the massacres, especially in light of the
government’s refusal to establish an independent investigation into the atrocities, which the FIS
has been demanding. These points expose the inconsistency in the notion that the GIA is a radical
Islamic offshoot of the FIS.[12]

Military Rule Under a Facade of Democracy

Apparent moves toward democracy by the junta have also been insignificant in terms of resolving
the crisis. Presidential elections were held on 16 November 1995 and of course were hailed widely
as a success in the West. However, they have been largely irrelevant for the Algerian people at
large. “Even though the principal opposition parties (most notably the FIS and the FFS) refused to
participate, the balloting raised high expectations among voters, who hoped that incumbent
president Liamine Zeroual (a retired general and the army’s designated candidate) would emerge
with strengthened legitimacy and be able to make the military accept a political solution similar to
the one outlined in the Rome Platform [when the six main ‘warring’ parties met in Rome to sign a
pact to end the crisis in January 1995 – the military rejected the pact]. On election day, three-
quarters of the country’s 16 million eligible voters turned out, and Zeroual won a 61 percent
majority. Although widely hailed as a success, this election actually has solved nothing. Zeroual has
not been able to assert control over the army, the national dialogue that he promised has broken
down, and deadly violence continues to rage. In May 1996, the president promised legislative
elections for early 1997, but the opposition parties dismissed his announcement as a maneuver to
buy time.”[13]

Meanwhile, access to Algeria throughout 1998 was refused for the UN Special Rapporteurs on
torture and on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Access was also refused for
Amnesty International and other international human rights organisations. Calls by the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Union, the G8 and others for the Special
Rapporteurs to be allowed to visit the country to investigate human rights issues were rejected by
the Algerian government, including an attempt by the UN Secretary-General to discuss the
situation.

However, the third visit to Algeria by an international body had occurred between 22 July and 4
August 1998. The body was a UN ‘panel’ headed by former Portugese President Mario Soares,
visiting the country on what was called an “information-gathering mission”; yet, it was without any
legal investigative mandate or authority. Amnesty International concluded that “like previous
political initiatives of this kind, notably visits by EU Troika and by the European Parliament at the
beginning of this year, the UN Panel’s visit was irrelevant to the human rights situation in Algeria.”

Later, by January 1999, Algeria’s democratically elected President was, “in a chilling deja vu,”
forced to relinquish his office “by the same generals who had forced the resignation of his
predecessor in 1992”. Similarly, the April 1999 election of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has
proven insignificant in terms of providing a genuine resolution to the crisis in a peaceful political
framework.

The French prime minister Lionel Jospin has attempted to explain away the clear indifference of
the Western powers to the Algerian crisis, claiming that: “We don’t really know how to explain
what is happening… it is not like Pinochet’s Chile where democrats were fighting a dictatorial
power.” He added: “There is a fanatic and violent opposition fighting a power which itself in a
certain way uses violence and the force of the State. So we are obliged to be rather prudent.”
Unfortunately for him and the Algerian junta’s other friends in the US, EU and their Arab client-
regimes, the evidence contradicts his effective political appeasement of the junta’s policies.[18]

The Army’s Western-Backed War on the Algerian People

We should therefore reflect upon the strategy adopted by the Algerian regime, which bears an
uncanny resemblance to those adopted at the insistence of the CIA by military regimes in South
America (e.g. Chile and Nicaragua). According to Ben Lombardi, who is with the Directorate of
Strategic Analysis at the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, Canada: “In 1991, the West
supported the coup in Algeria in an effort to prevent Islamic fundamentalists coming to power
through the ballot box.”

Dr. Hamoue Amirouche, a former fellow of the Institut National d’Etudes de Strategie Globale
(Algiers), noted at the beginning of 1998 that “the military regime” thus supported by the West, “is
perpetuating itself by fabricating and nourishing a mysterious monster to fight, but it is
demonstrating daily its failure to perform its most elementary duty: providing security for the
population.

In October 1997, troubling reports suggested that a faction of the army, dubbed the ‘land mafia’,
might actually be responsible for some of last summer’s massacres, which… continued even after
the Islamic Salvation Army, the armed wing of the FIS, called for a truce, in effect as of October 1,
1997.”[20] The French magazine Paris Match reported that this “land mafia”, consisting of
elements of the Algerian military regime, was cleansing premium lands of peasant occupants in
anticipation of the privatisation of all the land in 1998.[21]

The appalling record thus confirms the complicity of the Algerian authorities and the Western
governments supporting them. The Independent reported in 1997 that “GIA men – or those
claiming to be its members – have attacked Algerian villages for more than a year, cutting the
throats of women and children, burning babies alive in ovens, disembowelling pregnant women
and slaughtering old men with axes. They have even employed a mobile guillotine on the back of a
truck to execute their enemies. But evidence that the massacred villagers were themselves
Islamists, and increasing proof that the Algerian security forces remained – at best – incapable of
coming to their rescue, has cast grave doubt on the government’s role in Algeria’s dirty war.”[22] A
short report on 10 November 1997 by the UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC)
refers to the similar findings of other investigators. IHRC points out that a series of articles in the
British press on the situation in Algeria “have revealed that the Algerian secret services have been
deliberately massacring its citizens, and orchestrating bombing campaigns in France to discredit
Islamists.”

The so-called GIA is apparently part and parcel of the Algerian regime’s propaganda campaign.
Particularly, the Observer reported that an Algerian informer “claims that European MPs, and
journalists regularly received bribes from the Algerian authorities.” Investigators the IHRC refers
to include Robert Fisk in the Independent and John Sweeney in the Observer, who “have all
produced separate work on this issue, which has been well-known in human rights circles for some
time.”

The IHRC bulletin goes on to cite an Agence France Press (AFP) report which noted: “Bomb
attacks that killed eight people in Paris in 1995 were carried out by the Algerian secret service,
according to a press report on Sunday… The Observer quoted an Algerian asylum-seeker in Britain
– who claimed he was a former agent in Algeria’s secret service – as saying the Paris bombs were
part of a black propaganda war aimed at galvanising French public opinion against Islamic
militants…

The man, named only as Yussuf, told the paper that the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) – on whom
both the Paris bombs and frequent massacres in Algeria have been blamed – was ‘a pure product
of (the Algerian) secret service.’… Yussuf said Algerian intelligence agents routinely bribed
European police, journalists and members of parliament… And he claimed to have personally
delivered a suitcase containing $90,000 to a former French member of parliament ‘with strong
links to the French intelligence services.’… Yussuf added that the killings of many foreigners in
Algeria were organised by the secret police and not by Islamic extremists.”

Similarly, reports by British journalists John Sweeney and Leonard Doyle reveal the complicity of
both the Algerian state and the West in the Algerian crisis. Sweeney and Doyle report that
according to defectors from the Algerian security forces, “The relentless massacres in Algeria are
the work of secret police and army death squads. Algerian intelligence agents routinely bribe
European police, journalists and MPs” via “Algeria’s oil and gas billions”. The testimony of these
defectors supports the conclusion that “the constant terror in which civilians live is orchestrated by
two shadowy figures”; these being “the heads of the Algerian secret service, the DRS and its sub-
department, the counter intelligence agency, the DCE.”[25] According to a former Algerian
diplomat Mohammad Larbi Zitout: “The GIA has been infiltrated and manipulated by the
government. The GIA has been completely turned by the government.” Zitout also testified that the
regime is behind the massacres.[26] A former career secret service officer in Algeria’s military
security, Yussuf-Joseph, reveals: “All the intelligence services in Europe know the government [of
Algeria is responsible] for the massacres, in which tens of thousands of Algerians have been killed
[and which] have been carried out by the regime’s death squads.” Meanwhile, he confirms,
European intelligence services “are keeping quiet because they want to protect their supplies of
oil.”
The evidence of this twin Algerian and European governmental complicity in Algeria’s
humanitarian crisis only mounts. Robert Fisk, for instance, recorded the testimony of ‘Dalilah’, an
Algerian policewoman who was witness to the torture and executions carried out by the Algerian
intelligence services: “They tortured people – I saw this happening,” she stated. “I saw innocent
people tortured like wild animals… They executed people… people who had done nothing. They
had been denounced by people who didn’t get along with them. People just said ‘He’s a terrorist’
and the man would be executed…. They tied young people to a ladder with rope. They were always
shirtless, sometimes naked. They put a rag over their face. Then they forced salty water into them.
There was a tap with a pipe that they stuck in the prisoner’s throat and they ran the water until the
prisoners’ bellies had swelled right up… Sometimes while this happened, the torturers would put
broomsticks up their anuses. Some of the prisoners had beards, some didn’t. They were all poor…
Any cop would hit the prisoners with the butt of his Kalash (rifle). Some of the prisoners went
completely mad from being tortured. Everyone who was brought to the Cavignac was tortured –
around 70 per cent of the cops there saw all this. They participated. Although the torture was the
job of the judiciary police, the others joined in. The prisoners would be 20 to 30 to a cell and they
would be brought one by one to the ladder, kicked in the ribs all the time. It was inhuman. In the
cells, the prisoners got a piece of bread every two days. There was no medicine. Every prisoner,
according to the law, has the right to a doctor. But they would be returned to their cells covered in
blood.”

Fisk comments: “For more than four years released prisoners have told us of water torture and
beatings, of suffocation with rags, of how their nails were ripped out by interrogators, of how
women were gang-raped by policemen, of secret executions in police stations.” He gives several
typical examples: “A police officer who was in charge of the Algiers’ city police armoury has
described to The Independent how his colleagues killed prisoners in cold blood, how police
torturers suffocated prisoners with acid-soaked rags after tearing out their nails and raping them
with bottles. A 30-year old Algiers policewoman has told of how she watched prisoners – at the
rate of 12 a day – tied half-naked to ladders in the Cavignac police station in Algiers while,
screaming and pleading for mercy, salt water was pumped into their stomachs until they agreed,
blindfolded, to sign confessions. The same policewoman admitted to signing false death
certificates to prove that dead prisoners had been ‘found’ decomposing in the forests south of
Algiers. A 23-year old army conscript spoke of watching officers torture suspected ‘Islamist’
prisoners by boring holes in their legs – and in one case, stomach – with electric drills in a
dungeon called the ‘killing room’. And he claimed that he found a false beard amid the clothing of
soldiers who had returned from a raid on a village where 28 civilians were later found beheaded;
the soldier suspects that his comrades had dressed up as Muslim rebels to carry out the atrocity.”

A former Algerian secret service officer known as Captain ‘Haroune’ – who was authenticated by
the British Foreign Office – had also defected, left Algeria, and sought asylum in London. He
informed a British House of Commons all-party committee that his ex-colleagues carried out “dirty
jobs, including killing of journalists, officers and children”. He confessed, for instance, that the
murder of seven Italians in Jenjen in July 1994 was perpetrated by state military security death
squads, in order to blacken the name of “Islamic fundamentalists”. Arrested suspects for the
murder are merely scapegoats who were forced to sign confessions under torture.[29] The former
Algerian agent also testified in 1998 that “It’s the army which is responsible for the massacres; it’s
the army which executes the massacres; not the regular soldiers, but a special unit under the
orders of the generals. It should be remembered the lands are being privatized, and land is very
important. One has first to chase people from their land so that land can be acquired cheaply. And
then there must be a certain dose of terror in order to govern the Algerian people and remain in
power. A Chinese saying tells that a picture is worth a thousand words. I could not stand the image
of a young girl having her throat slit. I could not bear seeing what happened and not tell it. I have
children, imagine what this girl had to suffer, the last 10 seconds of her life must have been
horrible. I think it’s our duty to speak up about this. I speak today in the hope that others would do
the same, so that things change, and so that these killings cease.”[30]
Subsequent reports have only continued to provide further confirmation of all this. For example, in
November 1997, a serving officer with the Algerian military known as ‘Hakim’ contacted the
French newspaper Le Monde to express the feelings of a group of officers who were sickened by
their work. “We have become assassins, working for a caste of crooks who infest the military”,
stated Hakim. “They want everything: oil, control of imports, property”. Hakim testified that the
murder of seven monks in Algeria on 23 May 1996 – which was blamed on Islamists – had in fact
been a hit staged by the Algerian secret police.

He also told Le Monde: “I confirm that the outrages of St Michel (in which eight were killed and
more than 130 people wounded on 25 July 1995) and that of Maison Blanche (when 13 were
wounded on 6 October 1995) were committed at the instigation of the Infiltration and
Manipulation Directorate (DIM) of the Directorate of the Intelligence Service (DRS), controlled by
Mohammed Mediene, better known under the name ‘Toufik’ and General Smain Lamari.” The
objective of the operation had been to “win over public opinion in discrediting the Islamists”. He
observed that although Djamel Zitouni – leader of the GIA – was presented as “public enemy
number one”, he was in fact a creation of the regime’s military security. “He was recruited in 1991
in an internment camp in the south of Algeria, where thousands of Islamists had been
imprisoned.” According to Hakim, the junta had used Djamel to win control over the GIA in 1994.
The GIA leader “had been under our control until the Tibehrine affair. The monks were to have
been found in the village of an Islamic chief, who would be blamed. For reasons I do not know, he
did not respect the contract. So he was liquidated.” Hakim’s revelations regarding the policies of
the Algerian authorities soon led to his own liquidation. The Observer reports that “Hakim was
tracked down by the Algerian secret police shortly after he contacted Le Monde. They took away
his diplomatic passport and sent him to the south – to the Sahara. His family were placed under
close watch and were very frightened. (At no time have Hakim’s family been in touch with The
Observer.) Then they heard he had been killed in a helicopter accident.”

Indeed, according to the Sunday Times, “One of the worst atrocities occurred in the first three
weeks of 1998, when more than 1,000 villagers were massacred, many within 500 yards of an army
base that did not deploy a single soldier, despite the fact that the gunfire and screams would have
been clearly audible. Villagers said that some of the attackers wore army uniforms.”[32] In the
same year, the Observer once more cited “damning evidence contradicting the official line of the
Algerian government”. Yet further testimony, this time from Algerian policemen, “gave detailed
evidence of the state’s involvement in a whole range of human rights abuses: massacre by military
security death squads, torture of the regime’s opponents, spying, and the murder of difficult
journalists and popular entertainers to blacken the name of the Islamic activists in carefully
organized psychological warfare.”

Former Algerian PM Speaks Out

Further authoritative testimony comes from former Algerian Prime Minister (1984-1988), Dr.
Abdel Hameed Al Ibrahimi, a member of the National Liberation Front responsible for
consolidating military rule and now Director of a London-based centre for the study of North
African affairs. In an interview with Yasser Za’atreh of the London monthly Palestine Times, the
former Algerian PM has provided crucial confirmation of the reality of the current Algerian
situation: “The crisis in Algeria which was created by the military coup in January 1992 still exists
and is becoming worse and more complicated… because the present regime is still insisting on
using force and suppression to remain in power and to preserve the illegal benefits it gained at the
expense of the general interests of the Algerian people. [T]he regime does not want a true political
solution. Instead, it insists on a military solution despite the deterioration of security and
economic and social conditions in the country…

As for the Islamic armed groups, they are penetrated by the military intelligence service. It is
known that most of the mass killings and bombings are made by the government itself whether
through special forces or through the local militias (about 200,000 armed men), but the
government accuses the Islamists of the violence. All know that the victims of the mass killings are
Islamists or ordinary citizens well-known for their support of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
Bombings always occur in quarters known to be affiliated with the FIS.”

Al Ibrahimi added that: “As a member of the National Liberation Front, and according to definite
information, I am sure that the FIS is absolutely not responsible for such savage and criminal
atrocities. On the contrary, the FIS is a victim of these atrocities and has condemned them on
several occasions.” According to the former Algerian Prime Minister, the current junta’s objectives
are as follows:

· To wreak vengeance on members and supporters of the FIS until they give up their political
ambitions;

· To terrify the Algerian people who suffer from the deterioration of the security and socio-
economic conditions in the country in order to force them to accept the political and dictatorial
policy of the present regime;

· To deform, locally and abroad, the picture of the FIS and the Islamic project in general;

· To mislead international public opinion so that the regime could obtain additional financial,
political, and diplomatic support from France and other Western countries. The regime wants to
show itself as the defender of the West against fundamentalism in Algeria and as an acclaimed
partner in defending the French and Western interests in the region.[35]

These allegations have been most recently confirmed by the detailed testimony of former special
forces officer in the Algerian Army, Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia, in his book The Dirty War.
Souaidia’s book exposes the part the army has played in liquidating the opposition through
testimonies regarding the military regime.

“When I enlisted in the army in 1989, I never imagined that I would be a direct witness of the
tragedy that has befallen my country … I have seen my colleagues set fire to a boy of 15, who
burned like a living torch. I have seen soldiers slaughtering civilians and blaming ‘the terrorists.’ I
have seen senior officers murdering in cold blood simple people who were suspected of Islamic
activities. I have seen officers torturing Islamic activists to death. I have seen too many things. I
cannot remain silent. These are sufficient reasons for breaking my silence.” One example of his
direct knowledge of army atrocities against civilians is particularly pertinent.

“It happened one night in March, 1993,” he relates. “After I finished my shift I was summoned to
my commanding officer, Major Daoud. He ordered me to take my people to guard a truck on its
way to one of the villages. I went outside and I saw the truck. I peeked inside and saw the
silhouettes of dozens of commando fighters from one of the special units. They were carrying
knives and grenades. I was told that they were on their way to a ‘special mission’.

“I drove behind the truck until it stopped in the village of Dawar Azatariya where the inhabitants
were suspected of supporting the FIS movement. I was asked to remain with my men outside the
village. Two hours later the truck came back. One of the officers took a blood-stained knife that he
held near his throat, making a sweeping side to side motion. I didn’t need any additional signs to
understand what had happened in the village.

Two days later there were headlines in the Algerian press: ‘Islamic attack in Dawar Azatariya.
Dozens killed in the massacre.’ I couldn’t believe my eyes. I felt that I had been an accomplice to a
terrible crime.” Souadia reveals that several Western powers are supporting the Algerian regime –
at the top of his list of such countries who are shoring up the regime is France. “I wanted to write
about the dirty war that was directed against innocent civilians, whose only crime was that they
were well-disposed toward Islam.
This war is still going on. Thus far more than 150,000 people have been killed, and those
responsible for this crime are the generals who head the army. They are fighting to defend their
rule and the enormous amount of property they have accumulated… France has given me political
asylum, but this cannot prevent me from declaring that it has abetted the murderous generals to
protect its interests.”

An outraged group of prominent French and North African intellectuals denounced the West’s
support for the Algerian regime as “ complicity in crimes against humanity”, and commented in
the French daily Le Monde: “For too long the French government has supported Algerian policy
which, under cover of a fight against terrorism, aims at nothing less than the eradication, both
political and physical, of any opposition whatsoever.”

One can understand the West’s tacit support of the Algerian regime, given that European access to
Algerian resources such as oil would have been jeopardised by an Islamic government – simply
because a genuinely Islamic government would mobilise domestic resources for the benefit of the
population, as opposed to allowing them to be plundered by Western investors.

The evidence shows that the massacres in Algeria have been organised by the Algerian authorities
to further various self-interested political and economical designs, that Western intelligence
agencies are aware that this is the case, and have expressed their tacit approval of the regime’s
policies due to the West’s own strategic, political and economic interests in the region.

As for the massacres, it appears that they play the role of providing justification for the regime’s
elimination of the FIS and any other Islamic political parties (i.e. all viable political opposition to
the regime); to terrorise the Algerian population into withdrawing its support of these parties; and
to legitimise the militarised and dictatorial conditions of Algeria’s ‘state of emergency’ under the
guise of fighting terrorists. As Habib Souaidia observes the policy is rooted in the fact that “The
generals want to stay in power. To justify that, the war has to continue, so we can say to the
international community, ‘Look, these are the terrorists we are fighting against, look what they do.
We need help, give us money’.”

Indeed, Western support for the Algerian regime is clearly documented. For example, British
journalist Robert Fisk reported as early as 1994 that “France has been giving covert military
support to the Algerian regime for months.” “Helicopters, night sight technology for aerial
surveillance of guerrilla hide outs and other equipment” were included in this support, having
“been sent to the Algerian army, some aboard French military flights which reportedly make
regular flights into Algiers airport… According to well placed Algerian sources, the son of a French
government minister is involved. He is said to run a private security company outside Paris which
has legally sold millions of francs worth of equipment to the Algerian security police.”

Additionally, Fisk reported that “French spy agencies monitor all Algerian radio traffic round the
clock, much of it from a ship off the coast of France’s former African colony,” listening “day and
night to the reports of Algerian commanders in the Lakhdaria mountains and the ‘Bled’, the
Algerian outback”.

This work is “supplemented by radio signals picked up aboard French air force planes flying along
the Algerian coast, and by intelligence officers inside the heavily guarded French embassy in
Algiers.” Furthermore, “France has acknowledged selling nine Ecureuil helicopters to the Algerian
government” claiming “that the machines were sent to Algeria for ‘civil’ purposes – thereby
avoiding statutory investigation by the French interministerial commission for the inspection of
military exports. Military sources say helicopters have only to be equipped with rockets and night
sight equipment, also provided by France, to become front line equipment in the anti guerrilla
struggle.”

Fisk added that the initial “French hesitation over the annulment of the poll [in 1992] turned into
tacit support for the regime – especially from the French Interior Minister, Mr Charles Pasqua –
once the implications of an Islamic takeover in Algeria became apparent.” Support of the
tyrannical Algerian military regime has therefore been absurdly legitimised in the name of fighting
“international Islamic terrorism”.[40] Other Western powers have followed through with similar
policies, including Britain, which in the year 2000 sold through the government of Qatar, “almost
£5m in military equipment to the Algerian army, despite a record of atrocities committed by its
soldiers that contravenes the ethical foreign policy espoused by Robin Cook, the foreign secretary,”
as the Sunday Times reported. “The order, worth £4.6m, is destined to improve the capabilities of
the Algerian army.”

The US has followed a similar brand of policy designed to shore up the Algerian regime. US-
Algerian military ties have been steadily deepening, even as the Algeriam military escalates its
brutal repression of the population. For instance, while senior American naval officers have paid
high profile visits to the country, the American and Algerian navies have successfully conducted
joint marine rescue exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.

In September 1999 US Sixth Fleet Admiral Daniel Murphy met President Bouteflika and army
chief of staff Lieutenant-General Mohamed Lamari in Algiers. As Middle East specialist John
Entelis reports, “such visits serve to advance diplomatic ties and strengthen military links between
the two countries.” Murphy openly lauded US-Algerian military ties, particularly the possibility of
“cementing a permanent military program of Algerian and United States interaction”. Meanwhile,
US-Algeria relations are to involve establishing “conditions [which] will allow regular US Navy
port visits to Algeria and inclusion of the Algerian navy in multilateral operations and training
programs.” Professor Entelis comments that: “Such overt US demonstration of political-military
support for a regime universally accused of massive human rights violations in which security
forces, military units, and armed militias have been implicated in the deaths and disappearances of
thousands of Algerian men and women seems not to have bothered at all American foreign policy
decision-makers.”

Thus, rather than exerting significant pressures on the Algerian government to put an end to the
humanitarian catastrophe, the West has been doing the very opposite. Western powers without
objection from their allies are supplying the tyrannical regime with military aid, thereby directly
supporting its mass killing and repression of its own citizens under the false justification of
“eradicating” Islamic terrorists. As ABC News correspondent John K. Cooley reports, those
“known as advocates of ‘eradication’ of the Islamists through ruthless and total repression, have
generally enjoyed support from the US, France and other foreign countries with heavy investment
in Algeria.”

Western Interests in Algeria

Accordingly, Western governments including Britain, have been supporting the Algerian regime,
along with its repressive polices and the atrocites committed by its security forces, by supplying it
with heavy financial aid. It so happens that this financial support of Algeria only emerged after the
overturning of democracy via the military coup had transpired, and once the new military
dictatorship was in power.

For example, rather than demanding an end to the killings, the European Union decided to release
ECU 60 million (some $65 million) to the Algerian generals within the MEDA programme. The
agreement signed between the regime and the European Union on 2 December 1996 concerns a
global loan package worth ECU 125 million, conditional upon the conformity to the traditional
structural reforms in Algeria, as supervised by the IMF and World Bank, thus ripping the country
open to the privatisation which invites the desired Western investment.This financial support of
the junta is designed primarily to foster Western corporate investments in the country, while
simultaneously enriching the Algerian military elite.

The Western powers clearly have interests in ensuring that a government that is entirely open to
Western investment and fundamentally opposed to egalitarian gains remains in power, in the
name of ‘maintaining the disparity’: preventing other populations from using their own raw
materials for independent egalitarian development, by plundering their domestic resources for the
enrichment of Western elites. That the FIS would have posed a significant danger to Western
corporate interests in Algeria was revealed in fliers released after the first-round electoral victory
of January 1992: “Wealth redistribution, taking from the rich to provide for the needs of the
people.”

Most importantly in this regard, we should consider the enormous entrenchment of Western –
particularly French – multinational corporations in Algerian gas and oil. These interests would
have been jeopardised by a popular Islamic government that mobilised such domestic resources
for independent egalitarian gains: Algeria has the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world,
and is the second largest gas exporter, with 130 trillion proven natural gas reserves; it ranks
fourteenth for oil reserves, with official estimates at 9.2 billion barrels.

Approximately 90 per cent of Algeria’s crude oil exports go to Western Europe, including Italy,
Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain. Algeria’s major trading partners are Italy,
France, the United States, Germany and Spain. The United States Energy Information
Administration (USEIA) states clearly that: “Algeria is important to world energy reserve markets
because it is a significant oil and gas producer and exporter. Algeria also is a member of the OPEC
and an important energy source for Europe.”

Hugh Roberts, Senior Research Fellow of the Development Studies Institute at the London School
of Economics and Political Science (University of London) has rightly referred to France’s
particular desire to maintain Algeria’s position as a dependent client state: “The reality is that
France has an enormous strategic stake in North Africa, and wants Algeria to remain a chasse
gardee.” He goes on to remind us how France has “played both ends against the middle, giving
support to the extreme anti-Islamist hard line faction in the army…, encouraging calls for the re-
legalization of the FIS a year ago [1997]… then switching back to support the ‘eradicators’…”

Confirming the French policies that have similar counterparts being undertaken by other Western
allies, Moroccan analyst Abdelilah Balkaziz reports that “French policy, which has always striven
to present itself as a champion of democracy and human rights, is unabashedly supporting military
regimes that have broken all records in their violation of human rights, to the point of sweeping
away the legitimate legislative authority in Algeria! Curiouser still is the fact that French
politicians, both rightists and socialists, [are] backing, in the process, regimes hatched in military
barracks.” However, France is joined by the US in the Western attempt to dominate the country.
Balkaziz goes on to conclude that:

“While France is seeking a Francophone Arab Maghreb that makes it feel the extension of its
cultural and linguistic interests, the United States is seeking an Arab Maghreb market for its goods
and an Arab Maghreb military foothold for its Mediterranean strategy against an emerging united
Europe. So it doesn’t care who rules the Arab Maghreb – the bearded elites or the allied elites – as
long as its interests are protected.”[49] Evidently therefore, the current ‘protectors’ of US/Western
interests in Algeria are the secular Algerian military, state-terror et. al. The implications have been
expressed well by British journalist John Sweeney who aptly describes the 100,000 deaths in
Algeria as “Europe’s gas bill”.

The independent Muslim media has thus summarised the various interests of the Western powers
in Algeria, which appear to have motivated their support of the regime, regardless of the
decimating effects of this on the Algerian masses: “One is the uninterrupted flow of oil and gas at
throw-away prices. Both France and the US are involved in exploration there. This also extends to
other oil producing countries in the region – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates et al.

The other is the west’s pathological hatred of Islam. A FIS victory would have brought committed
Muslims to power in a country which lies only a stone’s throw away from Europe. This was
unacceptable to the west. The FIS promised such ‘dangerous’ policies as a corruption-free
government, jobs for the millions of unemployed and a society based on morality. The west would
rather have a corrupt, brutal junta in power than a clean, efficient FIS which is not subservient to
the west. When it comes to its interests, the west is quite prepared to abandon its self-proclaimed
‘principles’. It clamours for democracy in Burma, castigating the junta for not respecting the
wishes of the people, but backs the junta in Algeria.”

Indeed, the accuracy of this analysis is borne out by the simple facts of US economic policy towards
Algeria since the coup – policy which remains largely unpublicised. International journalist John
Cooley, a correspondent for ABC News who specialises in North Africa and Middle East affairs,
reports in detail:

“Though neither their companies nor the US government like to publicize their role or their
presence in war-torn Algeria, the 500 to 600 American engineers and technicians living and
working behind barbed wire in these protected gas and oil enclaves in Algeria may be one of the
main reasons why Usama bin Laden or other international manipulators of terrorism were unable,
or unwilling, to strike at this principal US interest and investment in North Africa.

This little-publicized but heavy US commercial involvement in Algeria began in earnest, not when
the French oil companies were forced by Algerian independence to withdraw from their monopoly
positions after in 1962, but rather in 1991” – i.e. at the dawn of the army’s insurgency. “In
December 1991 the Algerian state opened the energy sector on liberal terms to foreign investors
and operators. About 30 oil and gas fields have been attributed to foreign companies since then.
The main American firms involved, Arco, Exxon, Oryx, Anadarko, Mobil and Sun Oil received
exploration permits, often in association with European firms like Agip, BP, Cepsa or the Korean
group Daewoo… The majority of oil and gas exports go to nearby Europe… the main clients in the
late 1990s [being] France, Belgium, Spain and Italy.”

The exploitation of Algerian resources by the United States has continued to intensify. On 18 April
2000, US Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs Alan P. Larson
hosted a successful ministerial business symposium for the US-North Africa Economic
Partnership. The Algerian Finance Minister Abdelatif Benachenhou, and Central Bank Governor
Abdellatif Keramane, were among the leaders of North African countries “who spoke to
representatives of more than 90 US companies about opportunities for investment in North Africa
and economic developments there.”

Other US government participants included Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart E. Eizenstat,
Assistant Secretary of Commerce Pat Mulloy, and Overseas Private Investment Corporation
(OPIC) Vice President Joan Logue-Kender, and representatives of the Office of the US Trade
Representative, the US Agency for International Development and the Trade and Development
Agency.

Accordingly, the US-North Africa Economic Partnership was launched by the US in 1998 with the
aim of “encouraging private sector-led growth and regional economic integration in the Maghreb”,
with the Algerian regime playing a crucial role in the Partnership. The Partnership has “aimed at
promoting economic reform and liberalization”, primarily to provide Maghreb governments
including Algeria “with a platform from which to engage with potential US investors.” Technical
assistance and training programmes are designed to extend Western economic hegemony in the
region by improving “their business and investment climates.” As a result of this intense fostering
of foreign investment in the region, constituting a veritable Western corporate invasion, “US
government trade and investment agencies have stepped up their activities in the region.”

Western economic interference in Algerian affairs has, however, enriched Western investors at the
expense of the Algerian people, contributing significantly to the socio-economic devastation of the
country in tandem with the escalating violence. In 1997, Algerian specialist Dr. Abdel Hameed Al
Ibrahimi summarised the primary components of this downwards spiral as follows:
· The per capita income decreased from $2,500 in 1990 to $1,200 in 1995 (a reduction of 52 per
cent in six years).

· The agricultural production decreased by 25 per cent although the population increased by more
than 4 million in the last six years. This led to the increase of food imports which now form 90 per
cent of the total national food consumption amounting up to $3 billion a year.

· The country’s industries are operating (except for petroleum and gas) at only 20 per cent of their
actual capacity which means that 80 per cent of the Algerian industries, except for the petroleum
industries, are now out of work.

· Investment has been reduced to a level lower than it was before Independence. Food and
industrial consumable imports form 49 per cent of total imports. The military expenditure
increased by 45 per cent in 1994 and by 144 per cent in 1995. All of that was at the expense of the
investment in production sectors.

· The unemployment rate rose to more than 30 per cent in 1996. 83 per cent of the now 2.5 million
unemployed Algerians are youth between 16 and 29 years of age. The number of unemployed
citizens is expected to increase to 3 million after completing privatization of public establishments
during this year because more than 400,000 workers will lose their jobs to privatization.

· For the first time since Independence, the general level of prices increased by 40 per cent in 1994
while the prices of the foodstuffs increased by 80 per cent which increased poverty among people
and consumers.

· The foreign debts increased from $26 billion in 1992 to $35 billion in 1997 reaching a total of $40
billion if we add the military debts. The foreign debt is a heavy and serious burden on Algeria
which, if the present political situation continues, will lead to the deterioration of the economic
crisis in the future.

“In brief,” concludes Al Ibrahimi, “the Algerian people are now suffering from suppression and
poverty. They are languishing in a valley of blood and tears.” The Western intelligence agencies,
particularly those of France and the United States, “who control the military institution in Algeria
are responsible for this corrupt situation and for this destructive policy since 1992.”

Clearly, it was necessary to ensure that the Islamic opposition failed to come to power – despite its
massive popularity – to bypass the danger of such a resource-rich strategic region taking an
independent course from that required by Western interests and thereby furnishing an example
that other Muslim nations would be inspired to follow.

Accordingly, it was also necessary to trigger a war on the Algerian people to prevent them from
generating any further viable political opposition to the Western-backed junta. As Cooley reports,
the government-backed death squads operating under the guise of the “GIA”, “in particular
increased assaults on unveiled women, teachers and their institutions of learning, journalists,
writers, entertainers including actors and musicians – a tactic which, far more even than in Egypt,
deprived society of its means of expression, cutting off its cultural oxygen, as it were. Some 600
schools and universities were burned down.”

The result has been a considerable dis-empowerment of the Algerian masses. The Western powers
have thus confirmed the irrelevance of human rights in the formulation of policy, as opposed to the
pre-eminence of what effectively amounts to ruthless economic imperialism.

It is therefore clear that unless the West changes its current stance and imposes considerable
pressure on its Algerian clients to transform their violent policies, the crisis in Algeria is unlikely to
end shortly.