Following the dismissal in September 2015 of General Mohamed ‘Toufik’ Mediène, the infamous director of Algeria’s intelligence service, Menas Associates’ Algeria Focus publication predicted that the DRS would be dissolved and reconstituted into a more professional intelligence service.

At the time, we said: “The dissolution of the DRS would go a long way to removing the long shadow that Mediène will continue to cast over the regime.…The creation of some sort of super-security ministry would bring the country’s security and intelligence system under the control of the presidency, for the first time since the Boumediene period.” (Algeria Focus, September 2015)

On 20 January, Menas’ sources reported that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika signed a decree (which will not be made public) to precisely this effect. The DRS has been dissolved and replaced by the “Direction des Services de Sécurité” (Security Services Department), the DSS, headed by General Athmane “Bachir” Tartag. The infamous acronym DRS is no longer.

We understand that the new DSS will consist of three branches: internal security, external security, and a technical department. It will work with the National Gendarmerie and the Police, both of which will now fall under General Tartag’s overall command as commander of the security services.

What’s more, the DSS, gendarmerie, and police will now fall under the direct authority of the presidency, and not the Defence Ministry. In other words, the Defence Ministry will lose control over the Gendarmerie while the Interior Ministry will lose control over the national police force, the DGSN. The DSS will also leave the old DRS headquarters in Ben Aknoun, and be located close to the presidential palace in the former headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The implications of this restructuring are profound. There are the theoretical advantages that will be gained by bringing all the intelligence sources together under one command. However, the new move also weakens the position of General Ahmed Gaïd Salah (the army chief of staff) and the military more generally. Since September 2013, the armed forces had increasingly gained control of almost all of the departments and units formerly entrusted to the DRS. The power of the presidency is strengthened still further, despite the current revisions of the Algerian constitution also serving to exaggerate the strength of the executive (as Algeria Focus has reported).

Prior to September 2013, it was a matter of debate whether Mediène or Abdelaziz Bouteflika was the most powerful man in the country. Our view was that from late-2009 until mid-2013, Mediène really did live up to his self-assigned title of “God of Algeria”, with Bouteflika being little more than lame duck president for much of that time.

But that power, and more, has now been transferred to the presidency. Bouteflika, as the Minister of Defence (Gaïd Salah is deputy minister), is commander of the army. He is now also in direct command, through the position of Tartag, of the DSS, gendarmerie, and police.  The Algerian presidency has ensured, just at a time when protests are beginning to break out against the government’s austerity measures, that the main institutions which will be used to maintain public order are under its control.