Keeping an eye on Algeria
The US should draw Algiers closer through transparency
JOHN KERRY was in Algeria last week, an occasion that afforded Algerians a rare glimpse of their President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Despite the fact that he is running for re-election to his fourth term on April 17, Bouteflika has been seen in public infrequently over the last 12 months. Most of these instances are video snippets. One shows him in a dressing gown in a Paris hospital, where he was treated for a stroke, meeting with his prime minister and army chief of staff. Another shows him riding in his motorcade in Algiers, his rigid right arm upraised in an awkward attempt at a wave. In only half of the videos does he speak.
A largely invisible and nearly mute presidential candidate is strange enough. What makes the Algerian elections even more remarkable is that Bouteflika is widely expected to win.
The 77-year-old president is genuinely popular. Many credit him with stabilising Algeria after a decade-long insurgency during the 1990s that resulted in some 150,000 deaths and with restoring the country’s international standing. A small opposition movement has emerged, calling on him to step aside for a new generation of political leaders, and staging periodic protests where the police often far outnumber the protestors. Another group has called for a boycott of the upcoming elections, but has been largely ignored.
This was the surreal context of Secretary Kerry’s visit, which begs the question of why he went to Algiers at this time. The benign ex- planation is that the trip made up for a visit last November that was unexpectedly canceled. But there are other more compelling reasons. Foremost among them is that he probably wanted assurances about how the Algerian elections are going to proceed and who the winner will be.
Despite its low profile, Algeria is an important strategic relationship for the United States. Libya, with which it shares a long border, has descended into chaos. Mali, Algeria’s southern neighbour, nearly fell last year to rebels before French intervention saved the country. Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries with a meager military, is also struggling to counter emerging threats in the Sahara and has asked the international community for support. Even Tunisia, which has otherwise been the Arab Spring’s lone success story, is facing a new terrorist threat in the mountainous western borderlands.
Algeria, however, has the 20thlargest defence budget in the world, spending more on defence than either Pakistan or Iran, and it has a well-equipped and well-trained military to show for it. With the exception of the tragic attack on the In Amenas gas facility in January 2013, Algeria has withstood the emergence of terrorist groups throughout North Africa and the Sahara that followed the Arab Spring.
But were Algerian voters to refuse to re-elect a president that they have only rarely seen in the last year, or were they to refuse to recognise the legitimacy of his reelection, or were he to be elected and die in office, Algeria could cease to be a big, reliable bulwark of stability. Wide swaths of territory could potentially open up to terrorist groups, affording them more territory to train, more targets to at- tack, and more sources of revenue to exploit. A belt of instability could stretch from the Sinai Peninsula across the southern coast of the Mediterranean to the border with Morocco.
Given the other foreign policy challenges with which Kerry is grappling — Syria, Crimea, Iran — he cannot afford a strategic surprise lurking just over the horizon in North Africa. Unfortunately, there’s not a great amount he can do. In other contexts, he would have done well to meet with opposition groups to gauge their grievances and to emphasise the need to strengthen democratic institutions in order to create a clearer political trajectory.
But Algeria is sensitive to perceived interference in its domestic affairs. In fact, in 2008, the prime minister (who is now an adviser to Bouteflika) reprimanded the American ambassador for transgressing diplomatic norms after he met with leaders of political parties and civil society organisations. So during his two-day trip, Kerry clove to protocol, meeting with the foreign minister and then briefly with the elusive president.
When dealing with Algeria, the United States finds itself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, it would like to avoid being caught off-guard by evolving Algerian circumstances; on the other, it is constrained in shaping how those circumstances evolve.
For now, it should draw Algeria closer, through diplomacy in Algiers and in Washington. Through trust comes transparency and through transparency, strategic surprises can be sidestepped. Geoff D. Porter is an assistant professor at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point