Infighting at the top of the Algerian regime has once again burst into the open. Major-General Abdelaziz Nouiouet Chouiter — head of the Direction Centrale de la Sécurité de l’Armée (DCSA) which is the country’s most powerful intelligence services — was dismissed and arrested on 3 March. This came less than six months after he was appointed on 11 September 2022. There has been no official comment from either the President’s office or the Defence Ministry but we understand that Chouiter is currently being held in military detention.

There has been a never-ending turnover of the heads of the numerous domestic, external, and military intelligence services which illustrates the incessant and fierce clan rivalry that permeates not just them but also the entire regime. This latest dismissal is a strong indication that not everything is not right between President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the Army Chief of Staff, General Saïd Chengriha. As we explain below this is also the case with the experienced Foreign Affairs Minister Ramtane Lamamra. 

Neither the Ministry of National Defence nor the president’s office have made any comment about Chouiter’s sacking although we understand that Tebboune and Chengriha are currently in tense talks over a successor.

There have been rumours from well-placed sources that Tebboune and his powerful legal and judicial affairs adviser, Boualem Boualem were angered by Chengriha’s four-day visit to Paris in late January. The latter was given the red-carpet treatment, being invited to the Elysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, and meeting both the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, and the head of the French Armed Forces, General Thierry Burkhard. 

Perhaps Tebboune was unaware that this was deliberately designed to turn Chengriha’s head away from Russia. According to our sources, it was also to remind him how susceptible he might be to prosecution for both war crimes in the 1990s as well as many criminal activities related to arms and drugs trafficking as the 2004-2018 commander of the 3^rd Military Region (Algeria Politics & Security – 07.02.23). 

Despite this, it is difficult to see why it should have led to Chouiter’s sacking. According to our well-informed sources, the latter’s mistake may have been to consult the military files on his boss. If so, the question is whether he did so to satisfy his own curiosity about the veracity of Guermit Bounouira’s published revelations in January 2022 about Chengriha’s many crimes (Algeria Politics & Security – 11.01.22), or whether he was acting on behalf of a clan that is hostile to Chengriha. If it was the latter, as our sources suggest, his stay at the interrogation centre at the ANTAR military barracks will not have been very pleasant. 

These suggestions raise two additional related questions. The first is that, if Chouiter passed information on to a hostile clan, Chengriha might well fear the consequence that could unfold. Chouiter may have been responding to current rumours that the 23 December 2019 death of Chengriha’s predecessor, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, was not a heart attack as is generally supposed. He is believed to have been murdered with accusative fingers being pointed at Chengriha. The reason is that, according to Bounouira’s revelations, Gaïd Salah wanted to wait until after the 12 December 2019 presidential election before having Chengriha arrested.

We therefore doubt that we have heard the last of Chouiter’s sacking or of Chengriha’s criminal activities

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra’s failure to meet the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, during the latter’s visit to Algiers on 12-13 March has, as we explain in this issue, fuelled speculation that he may be on the verge of dismissal or resignation.