Declan Hayes: Algeria in NATO’s Cross Hairs
Although Algeria is raking in huge profits thanks to surging energy prices, not all of those profits can be put into its huge housing and infrastructure projects which are important in themselves to keep Algeria’s legions of young men in work and with money to spend. Algeria’s army, which is the second largest in north Africa, needs its fair share, as it soon might soon be called upon to defend Algeria’s interests not only at home but also in its near abroad
Although Algeria is financially sound, with a negligible debt rate and a thriving energy sector, it is the bigger picture and not its regional squabbles with neighbouring Morocco where the real danger to Algeria now lies.
These dangers centre around Algeria’s close military alliance with Russia, its application to join the BRICS alliance and its progressive stance on the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic.
Algeria currently imports most of its military hardware, including over 50 MiG-29SMTs, 6 Mig-29UBTs and two 636-type diels submarines from Russia. As Algeria is now ordering over $23 billion of further Russian equipment, ranging from more submarines, Su-57 (Sukhoi) stealth aircraft, Su-34 bombers, and Su-30 fighters (below) to new air defence systems, such as the S-400, the Viking, and the Antey-4000 NATO, with the United States predictably in the van, are not happy campers.
There are two major reasons for their grumpiness. First off, as with Turkey, the United States; Germany and France would like those contracts for themselves; as things currently stand, Russia supplies 81% of Algeria’s military needs and Germany and France supply a further 10% between them. Secondly, as these proposed contracts would make Algeria somewhat independent from the NATO alliance, there are predictable calls on Capitol Hill for sanctions against Algeria for continuing to exercise its sovereign rights to trade with their traditional partners.
Although sovereign Algeria has applied to join the BRICS network, they are doing this against a background of unprecedented bumper profits from both their fossilised and renewable energy resources and loud threats from the US Congress, led by notorious war hawk Lisa McClain.
Intense American pressure has resulted in Algeria’s cancelation of the Desert Shield joint military exercises with Russian forces near Béchar, the renegotiation and/or cancellation of several arms contracts with Russia, condemnation of the Wagner Group’s operations in the Sahel and the postponement and even the possible cancellation of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s planned visit to Moscow.
Given such NATO threats, it is essential that the Algerian military is not only well-funded but united as well, as a house divided must fall. However, there are currently 35 senior generals in prison, including such high profile figures as Major General Djamel Hadj Laaroussi, Commander of the 2nd Military Region.
Although these divisions in the Army are, like the Army’s central role in the governance of Algeria, a legacy of the War of Independence, they were a major hindrance in defeating the more recent Islamic revolt. Although the Army may be Algeria’s backbone, consideration must be given to all the nation’s other bones if Algeria is to have the flexibility it needs to continue to progress in these volatile times. If the Algerian Army is to successfully resist NATO’s hard and soft power offensives both at home and in its near abroad it must, like any other military under threat, radically reform itself to meet those threats, not all of which can be subdued by a night time raid or a bayonet with some conscripted guts behind it.
