This article is from our Algeria Politics & Security publication.
According to Army Chief of Staff and and deputy defence minister, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, the answer to this question is an unequivocal ‘yes’. Addressing army officers in Oran on 15 August, Gaïd Salah said: “The devastating terrorist project in Algeria has been defeated.”
Such statements tempt fate. They also have to be put into context which, in Gaïd Salah’s case, is that he is trying to boost his presidential credentials and the standing of the army. He is also prone to exaggeration and adept at propaganda. Also, since the demise of the DRS in 2013, Gaïd Salah has been trying to regenerate the iconic standing of the army which tended to play second fiddle to the DRS during General Mohamed Mediène’s long reign as Algeria’s strongman.
However, although militancy, or terrorism as the authorities insist on calling it, is not entirely eradicated in Algeria, and could quickly escalate again if social unrest became organised, four facts can be state with increasing certainty.
One is that militancy, as measured by statistical trends, is clearly on a downward trajectory.
The second is that the border situation, especially to the east, although presented by the authorities as a major security threat, is clearly less so than some months ago when the so-called Islamic State (IS), or Daech, was more entrenched in Libya. As far as the southern borders are concerned, the security situation in Mali has deteriorated badly in the past two month — especially in the Kidal region — but the likelihood of this spilling over into Algeria is low. Moreover, the border with Mali’s Kidal region is almost 2,000km from Algiers.
The third fact, which we have been proposing, albeit cautiously, over the past few months, in both Algeria Focus and its sister publication Algeria Politics & Society, is that much of the terrorism in Algeria over the past two decades has been orchestrated by the DRS as essentially ‘false-flag’ operations. The decline in major terrorism incidents over the past two years is unquestionably related to the demise of the DRS.
The fourth is that the army, and especially in the past year or so, has very publicly gone on the offensive against militants, mounting almost continuous raking operations through their traditional strongholds in the mountainous regions of Boumerdès, Tizi Ouzou, Bouïra, Ain Defla, Skikda and Jijel, adjoining wilayas and, since the early part of this year, the eastern border region of El Oued.
This gradually improving news on the security front, which has not yet reached Gaïd Salah’s level of hyperbole and, as we stress, could revert quickly, is what potential foreign investors want to hear.
