May Algerie monthly report (3/4)

Algeria has tightened security on its western border with Morocco, establishing 24 new monitoring points to combat smuggling of subsidised food products and fuel, Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia announced at a press conference on May 13. Ould Kablia slammed what he termed the “passivity” of the Moroccan authorities with regard to cross-border smuggling:

We are doubly penalized. The smugglers take fuel out of the country and bring drugs in. We are forced to import fuel oil, pending the launch of the four new refineries [that are planned]. […] I raised this issue with my Moroccan counterpart. I told him that if the Moroccan authorities do not make an effort, things will not move forward.

While the new anti-smuggling measures undoubtedly do constitute a response (albeit an inadequate one) to a very real problem, Ould Kablia’s public grumbling about the attitude of the Moroccan authorities may also be in part politically motivated. As we noted in our last report, the Bouteflika camp, of which Ould Kablia is a key member, has every interest in amplifying traditional points of discord between Algeria and Morocco in order to prevent the question of inter-Maghreb relations and normalisation with Rabat gaining any traction in the run-up the 2014 presidential election. In a telling contrast, at the same press conference Ould Kablia tended to downplay problems on the borders with Libya and Tunisia[6].

The danger to the east is, however, far greater. Indeed, Algeria’s border with Morocco is in most respects its least troublesome frontier these days, the perennial problem of smuggling notwithstanding. The French-led military intervention in northern Mali has pushed AQMI and its allies right up to the Malian-Algerian border, where incursions and clashes have been frequent. The 1,000 km long border with Libya has theoretically been closed since the war of 2011, but it remains impossible to shut the jihadists out entirely, even after security was supposedly enhanced in the wake of the In Amenas attack. And now the situation in north-west Tunisia is taking a turn for the worse, prompting the Algerian authorities to close the border with Tunisia too.

Back in December of last year, armed islamists clashed with the Tunisian gendarmerie in Djebel Chaambi, near Kasserine, close to the Algerian border, killing one gendarme and wounding three others. Eleven days later, the Tunisian Interior Minister announced that a training camp “run by three Algerians close to AQMI leader Abou Mossaâb Abdelouadoud” had been discovered in the area; some 16 armed islamists, among them three Libyans, had been arrested, and another 18 were still at large. The jihadist groups were not stamped out, however, and in late April the Tunisian military began a more concerted campaign against the armed groups in Djebel Chaambi and a smaller group further north in Djebel Salloum, also situated along the border. More than a dozen members of the Tunisian national guard and army were wounded, some of them severely, in the first half of May by landmines laid by the group to protect their encampments. 

Publicly, Tunisian officials say the Djebel Chaambi group numbers no more than 20, a good half of them Algerian. Speaking to us in private, a Tunisian government security official estimated the number of terrorists in the Djebel Chaambi area at “200 individuals of various nationalities, but mostly from northern Mali and Libya”. Tunisian officials have suggested that the armed groups want to use the heavily wooded and inaccessible borderlands as a base for attacks elsewhere, perhaps on targets in Algeria, and although there has been no official confirmation that jihadist groups in north-west Tunisia have launched cross-border raids, it is worth recalling an unusual incident in the north-eastern Algerian wilaya of Khenchela in February, in which by some accounts as many as 50 jihadists, “most of them Tunisians and Libyans”, attempted to storm an Algerian army camp. 

At the end of April, Gen. Rachid Ammar, chief of staff of the Tunisian armed forces, accompanied PM Ali Laarayedh on a visit to Algiers, during which they met with Gen. Ammar’s opposite number, Lt-Gen. Ahmed Gaïd-Saleh. Flowing from this, a direct line of communication between ground and air operations in Algeria and Tunisia was reportedly set up to facilitate the exchange of information between the security services, while the Algerians presented their plans for expanded aerial surveillance along their eastern border to prevent the infiltration of armed groups as well as weapons smuggling across Tunisia from Libya[7]. By mid-May, the Algerian army had reportedly deployed more than 6,000 troops on the Tunisian border (eight brigades of regular troops and special forces).

The Tunisian government security official quoted above argues that what the Tunisian and Algerian armies are fighting in north-west Tunisia is:

the military wing of a broader Salafist-Jihadist movement spanning Tunisian mosques, whose membership is estimated at 35,000 to 40,000. […] In addition to their base camps in the mountains, their activities include recruitment, propaganda and fundraising in mosques. We are in a situation similar to that of Algeria in the early 90s — except that Tunisia is ill prepared to deal with it. Security officials have asked their political superiors to activate the security treaty signed with Algeria in 1983 and the Algerians have replied favourably. They closed their borders and put their intelligence resources (human and technological) at Tunisia’s disposal, but that appears to be insufficient and there is a request underway for Algeria to extend the terms of the 1983 treaty to include cooperation in personnel and materiel. To put it bluntly, we want the Algerians to send us units and equipment to control the whole mountainous border area. The Tunisian army lacks the necessary equipment (anti-mine gear, night-vision, infrared sights, etc), and what it has is old and not serviceable. As soon as the Algerians take charge of the border areas, Tunisian army and security forces units will take care of Salafist-Jihadists inside the country. In addition to the shortage of equipment, Tunisian forces are hampered by a wobbly political class and the lack of a firm grip on domestic threats. It is likely the jihadists will seek revenge for the army’s operations in Djebel Chaambi by carrying out attacks in the cities. The political class and civil society organisations appear to underestimate the threat. 

If such pessimistic forecasts to the east are even partly confirmed, sections of the Algerian establishment – and notably of the military – are likely to find themselves all the more inclined to appreciate the relative stability of their western neighbour in the coming period.