In Amenas: the need for an international enquiry

Written by Professor Jeremy Keenan

Three people (Americans) were killed and 264 injured by the two terrorist bombs planted near the finish of the Boston marathon on 15th April, 2013. Just under three months earlier, some 80 people died in the terrorist attack on the Tigantourine gas plant near In Amenas in the Algerian Sahara. Some 39 (possibly more) ex-patriot workers at the plant were killed, including three Americans, as well as some 30 of the attackers and at least eleven (possibly more) Algerian soldiers.

It does not require a detailed analysis to appreciate that while the Boston attack has and continues to receive massive global media coverage, In Amenas quickly faded from the news, even though Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Al Qaeda franchise linked to the attack, is, according to the UN security office, the most active of the various Al Qaeda franchises.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the In Amenas attack was handled through the imposition of a complete ‘information blackout’. Neither media, local or international, nor foreign government or company representatives were allowed near the site. All information was controlled by and filtered selectively and minimalistically through the Algerian security services.

A second reason is that the case was ‘solved’, in terms of who did it and why, within a couple of days. According to the Algerian authorities, the alleged mastermind of the attack was Mokhtar ben Mokhtar (MBM) with the actual leader of the attack being Mohamed Lamine Bouchneb. Even though no firm or verifiable evidence was offered by the Algerian authorities as to how this information was obtained, it appears to have been accepted readily and unquestioningly by Western intelligence agencies and their governments and the corporate media. As for the motive, it was quickly accepted, again with little or no verifiable evidence, that the attack was in revenge for France’s military intervention in Mali and Algeria’s provision of overfly rights to France’s military aircraft.

In what might be seen as an attempt to give the incident official closure, on April 23rd an Algeria court passed the death sentence on MBM in absentia and on Bouchneb posthumously. MBM was actually reportedly killed in Northern Mali on March 2nd, although there is no confirmation of this, while Bouchneb was said by the Algerians to have been killed in the bloodbath (see below) at In Amenas. In fact, there is no firm evidence, apart from the questionable statements of the Algerian security services, that MBM was even alive at the time of the In Amenas attack. He had previously been reported killed (for the seventh time) in fighting between MNLA and Islamist forces at Gao (Mali) on June 26th 2012.

The April 23rd court hearing itself appears to have been something of a farce, at least in so far as no verifiable evidence of either MBM’s or Bouchneb’s involvement in the In Amenas attack appears to have been presented, apart from the say-so of the Algerian authorities. Nor was there any sign of any such evidence, or lack of it, being subjected to cross examination by any semblance of a defence counsel. That, or course, is not surprising as Algeria’s judicial system is now firmly under the control of the state’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS). Indeed, few outside the British government, a stalwart ally of the Algerian regime, its FCO and its Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) are now prepared to give much credibility to Algeria’s judicial system.

In my initial article on the In Amenas terrorist attack, entitled “A new phase in the war on terror?” Analysis of the terrorist attack on In Amenas (Algeria) and events in northern Mali”[1], written two weeks after the attack and published on the ISCI website on February 14th, 2013, I raised a number of questions that pointed to the strong possibility, indeed likelihood, of collusion between the terrorists and Algeria’s security services, notably the DRS.

Since that article was published, more information indicating that Algeria’s DRS may have been responsible for the attack, has come to light. There are three new pieces of evidence which I wish to highlight here. The first concerns further changes in the story that the Algerian government has put out on the route taken by the terrorists in arriving at In Amenas. The second and most important piece of new evidence is the apparent identity of Bouchneb’s DRS handler. The third is the body of evidence provided by the former Algerian army officer, Habib Souaïdia, to which I could only make brief mention in my initial article, as it was published on February 11th and therefore could not be included, beyond a brief mention and reference, in my ISCI February 14th article.

I will deal with each of these three in turn:

(1) What was the route taken by the attackers?

When my first article (February 14th) on this subject was published, the Algerian authorities had given three different versions of the route taken by the terrorists. That has now risen to five. This demonstration of ‘confusion’ merely contributes further to the impression that the Algerian authorities are involved in a ‘cover up’ designed to mask a complete failure of their security system, complicity or both.

The first statement came from the Interior Minister, Dahou Ould Kablia in the early stages of the incident. He stated that the attack did not come from Libya.

Then, on January 19th, an article in Liberté written by the newspaper’s deputy editor Mounir B (Boudjemaa), a leading mouthpiece of the DRS, confirmed that the attack had come from Libya. This then seems to have been confirmed by Ould Kablia.

On January 21st, following an official denial from the Libyan government, Ould Kablia attempted to clarify the situation by saying that the attackers had come from Aguelhok in northern Mali, crossing the Algerian-Malian border and then the Algeria-Niger frontiers (a bit of a geographical contortion) before getting to the Tigantourine gas plant via places the Minister named as ‘Abid’ and ‘Ijil’. The trip was said to have taken two months.

If the attackers had come from Mali, whether via Niger or not, they would have had to cross well over 1,000 km of Algerian territory. Security in those parts of Algeria is so tight that such a journey would have been virtually impossible without the collusion of the security services.

When the Algerian authorities realised the implausibility of this version of events, they reverted to the Libya option, which became the fourth ‘official’ version of events. The government said that it was now certain the terrorists had come through Libya as they had been able to access satellite positioning of the calls made on their phones.

However, if the attackers had crossed from Libya, as the Algerian authorities claimed, it raises a number of awkward questions. For instance, how had the attackers been able to cross a border which was not only ‘closed’, at least ‘officially’, but allegedly heavily guarded by several thousand border guards who the government claimed to have posted there to control the post-Gadaffi arms trafficking from Libya.

Then, on February 23rd, an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said: “Algiers-based antiterrorism investigators claim to have retraced part of a 1,200-mile itinerary followed by the militants from the small hamlet of Aguelhok, in Mali, along Algeria’s borders with Niger and through southern Libya, by harnessing the logbooks of the satellite phones they carried.” This fifth version of events emerged on the eve of Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal’s visit to the site of the attack on February 24th.

This story may be true. But, it suffers from a number of problems. Firstly, Aguelhok is not a likely starting point for the simple reasons that the Malian Islamists were known to have been gathering at that time in other parts of Mali. Also, since the massacre of Mali army soldiers by Islamists at Aguelhok on January 24th, 2012, Islamists, according to our informants, have tended to keep away from Aguelhok. Indeed, it is probably the last village or town in Mali from which they would have set out on such an operation!

Secondly, travelling along “Algeria’s borders with Niger” does not seem a wise route to have chosen, simply because that region is heavily secured on both sides of the border.

Thirdly, how do these satellite phone positions marry up with those claimed to have been obtained by the Algerians when they said that the terrorists came through Libya? It is unlikely that they would have converged on In Amenas from opposite sides of the Sahara!

We should also add that terrorists avoid the use of satellite phones on such operations for the simple reason that their positions can be tracked. If, however, they had been assured a safe passage, then revealing their location would not matter.

(2) Who was Bouchneb’s DRS handler?

As I described in my initial article, there is substantial evidence to show that Bouchneb was a DRS agent/operative. He acted as the agent provocateur in the attack on Djanet airport in November 2007, which the Algerian authorities falsely identified as being undertaken by AQIM;[2] he undertook the abduction of Ms Mariani on behalf of the DRS in February 2010[3] and he was a regular visitor to the DRS-managed AQIM training camp at Tamouret.[4] We also now know that he was in charge of the drug and other trafficking networks running through SE Algeria and SW Libya. He may well have undertaken other terrorist assignments on behalf of the DRS about which we are still in the dark.

If, as the Algerian authorities have stated, Bouchneb was the leader of the In Amenas attack, the key question is whether he undertook the operation on his own initiative, as a rogue operative, or on the instructions of the DRS. Given Bouchneb’s track record as a DRS operative and the Algerian government’s confused and contradictory accounts of the terrorists’ route to In Amenas, the latter would seem the more likely. If that was indeed the case, the question becomes: who was his handler in the DRS?

Former inmates of the DRS-AQIM Tamouret training camp have made frequent reference in their testimonies to “The Great One”, some sort of dignitary, perhaps a religious personage, whose ‘word’ superseded all others. Prior to the In Amenas attack, I had never managed to identify “The Great One”. Then, a few weeks after the In Amenas attack, I was able, though the assistance of a close colleague, to re-access the testimonies from Tamouret about the activities of Bouchneb at the camp. During the course of these new interviews, it was revealed that “The Great One” was a nick-name, a play on words, as is customary amongst AQIM networks, with the key word being “Ali” – as in Ali ibn Abj Talib, the Prophet Mohamed’s cousin and son-in-law.

According to this new testimony, General Rachid (‘Attafi’) Laalali, head of the DRS’s external security service, the Directorate for Documentation and External Security (DDSE), was nick-named “The Great One” because of the reference to the word ‘Ali’ in his surname.

The DRS, under the command of General Mohamed Mediène, known as “Tewfik”, contains three directorates: the Directorate for Internal security (DSI), under the command of General Athmane (‘Bachir’) Tartag; the Directorate for Documentation and External Security (DDSE), under the command of General Rachid Laalali, and the Directorate for Central Security (which oversees the security of the army) under General M’henna Djebbar.

According to the information received from former inmates of the Tamouret camp, Bouchneb was said to have had a close and “privileged relationship” with General Laalali. Indeed, the key informant is of the view that Bouchneb was too senior and important for the DRS to let him be killed at In Amenas. (That is a subject to which I return in part 3 below.)

This identification of General Laalali as Bouchneb’s likely handler ‘makes sense’ in terms of General Laalali’s external responsibilities and the fact that much of the DRS’s fabricated terrorism and related activities, such as drug smuggling and the establishment of AQIM in the Sahara-Sahel, are either outside Algeria’s borders or, as demonstrated in the DRS support for Mali’s insurgent Islamists during 2012 and the Gadaffi regime during Libya’s revolution in 2011, almost perpetually crossing them.

Perhaps the greatest corroborating evidence of General Laalali’s role in ‘managing’ operatives in these sectors was his sudden flight, as mentioned in my first article, from Berlin to Bamako on December 9th, 2010 to rescue Sultan Ould Badi, one of the Sahel’s main drug traffickers and now a leader of MUJAO, from arrest and prosecution at the hands of the Malian police authorities.[5] If General Laalali had responsibility for the DRS’ shady operations relating to fabricated terrorism and drug smuggling in Algeria’s southwest border regions, it is logical that he would have the same responsibilities for Algeria’s southeastern borderlands: Bouchneb’s sector.

This new information raises the critical question of whether Generals Tartag and Laalali were working together in planning some sort of ‘false-flag’ terrorist operation at In Amenas, similar, as has been suggested by French intelligence sources, to that at Tibhirine in 1996, or whether they were following their own individuals strategies, perhaps seeing each other as rivals in the succession to General Mediène’s overall command of the DRS.[6] Habib Souaïdia’s evidence throws some light on this.

(3) Habib Souaïdia’s evidence: internal rifts within and between the DRS and army

Habib Souaïdia was a former Algerian army officer (1989-1995) and author of La Sale Guerre (2001) who blew the whistle on the DRS’s role in Algeria’s ‘Dirty War’ of the 1990s.[7] His analysis of the In Amenas attack was published[8] too late for me to include it in my first ISCI article, apart from making a brief reference to it.

In La Sale Guerre, Souaïdia revealed how the DRS had not only infiltrated and manipulated the armed Islamic groups in Algeria but also masqueraded as Islamists, thus succeeding in portraying them as responsible for a large proportion of the estimated 200,000 killed in the ‘Dirty War’. Victory in the libel case brought against him in Paris by Algeria’s former defence minister, Khaled Nezzar, rubber-stamped Souaïdia’s book as the authoritative account of the criminality of the Algerian regime and its secret service.

Thanks to his contacts in the DRS and the Algerian army, Souaïdia, has again been to throw light on what happened amongst the Algerian security forces at Tigantourine.

In most countries, there is one special service dedicated to managing such crises as Tigantourine. However, in Algeria’s case, three units/commands were involved, totaling 450 men: a recipe for disaster. They were:

• The GIS (Groupe d’intervention spéciale), which is answerable to the DRS.
• The Gendarmerie’s SSI (Section spéciale d’intervention), an operational unit created in 1989 in the image ofFrance’s élite force.
• Three parachute commando companies, from the 5th, 12th and 18th regiments.

The commanders of all these groups were in the operational control office set up close to Tigantourine. They were:

• Major-General Athmane Tartag (aka ‘Bachir’), the DRS’s new ‘strong man’, who had come directly from Algiers with his GIS men;
• Major-General Ahmed Boustila, head of the National Gendarmerie;
• Major-General Abderrezak El-Chérif, a parachutist and commander of the 4th military region, Ouargla;
• General Hadji, also of the 4th military region, along with his HQ staff; and Colonel Abdelhafid Abdaoui, commandant of the regional gendarmerie.

Fighting broke out between these commanders almost immediately. Tartag set the ball rolling by calling Abdaoui an ‘uled el-qahba’ (son of a whore). The reason for Tartag’s loss of control, according to Souaïdia, was because Abdaoui, on the orders of his commanding officer, had begun discussions with the hostage-takers and local notables. This was followed by a clash between General El-Chérif and his officers and Tartag’s DRS Officers, who wanted to take over control of the operation. Souaïdia says that the tension between the groups was so high that one could hear the click of the safety catches on their weapons.

In short, this unseemly clash between senior DRS officers on the one hand and those of the gendarmerie and army on the other led to the entire operation spiraling out of control and to the resulting bloodbath. The Algerian prime minister’s reports of his country’s ‘united command’ of the situation could not have been further from the truth.

By 17 January, the second day of the siege, the situation had become very tense. After entering the site, the assailants searched for the expatriates. Some had already been killed the previous day in the attack on the bus heading to the airport, but 30 were being held by 11 terrorists in the living quarters. According to Souaïdia, Tartag took “the brutal decision” to bombard them from a distance. Tartag ordered three M24 helicopters to fire laser-guided missiles into the group, killing the 11 terrorists along with the 30 hostages. General El-Chérif was reportedly angered by and wholly opposed to such brutality.

The security forces then set about tracking down the remaining terrorists. On 19th January, four terrorists who were holding three Japanese and two others (possibly Americans) were encircled by a group of parachutists and members of the SSI. Information released by the Algerian authorities claimed that “the hostage-takers tried to leave the base with their hostages in their vehicles”. According to Souaïdia, this statement was untrue. Instead, Tartag, in defiance of General El-Chérif, ordered an M24 helicopter to fire three missiles into the vehicle. In addition to killing the terrorists and their hostages, nine parachutists and two gendarmes were killed, with 17 others severely wounded.[9]

Outstanding questions: the need for an international enquiry

In Souaïdia’s opinion the security forces had all the means available to prevent the terrorists leaving the base. There was no need to inflict such a massacre. Why then, did Tartag ‘lose it’? Why did he decide to kill so many people in a bloodbath that appears to have been quite unnecessary?

The Algerian authorities have said that the terrorists intended to blow up the plant. Such a statement must be regarded with much skepticism, for at least three reasons.

First, over the last two decades of terrorism in Algeria, no significant attack has been undertaken against any oil or gas installation. Indeed, many analysts believe that there has been a tacit agreement between the DRS and the terrorist groups that they have infiltrated and come to manipulate, that the country’s oil and gas industry is “off limits”. The events in Mali are not sufficient for that to have changed, especially as the Islamist insurgent groups in Mali, as I explained in my first article, have been broadly supported and provisioned by Algeria’s DRS.

Second, Souaïdia provides strong evidence to indicate that the objective of the terrorists was to take hostages, not to blow up the plant. Indeed, the explosive belts, land mines and other such equipment they carried were in keeping with a hostage-taking operation, not with blowing up the plant.

Third, if the attack on Tigantourine was led by a DRS agent, namely Bouchneb, as the evidence suggests, it is hardly likely that it would have been to destroy such a vital component of the national economy.

Rather, all the signs, especially Souaïdia’s evidence, suggest that the terrorists were bent on taking hostages, not blowing up the plant. But, if that was their intent, something very clearly went drastically wrong. That ‘something’ appears to have been the initial attack on the bus that was taking employees from the plant to the airport. Most likely, the terrorists had probably not expected to encounter such resistance from the guards on the bus who opened fire on the terrorists with considerable bravery and efficiency. Whatever it was, the terrorists soon found themselves trapped in the plant and its living quarters, with some 132 foreign nationals and over 500 Algerians, and surrounded by some 450 army, gendarmerie and DRS ‘social forces’.

This, of course, raises the question of why the terrorists wanted to take hostages. As I mentioned in my initial article, a French intelligence source, suggested to me that the In Amenas attack was a replica of the murder of the Tibhirine monks in 1996. In other words, it was a ‘false-flag’ operation, which, like the Tibhirine case, went wrong. The supposed plan was that MBM, or perhaps Bouchneb directly, would arrange for the seizure of hostages, rather in the manner in which the Tibhirine monks were taken, and that they would be ‘rescued’ by the Algerian army. If this was the plan, then it had all the makings of being a ‘win-win’ situation for the Algerians. Firstly, it would demonstrate to the international community that Algeria had been correct in warning that military intervention in Mali would trigger terrorist reprisals. Secondly, it would prove to the West that Algeria was a capable and essential partner in the war on terror and the ‘war’ being waged by France in Mali.

I believe this second point can be taken further. The West (the US, France and UK) gave the green light to the Algerian junta that seized power in 1992, not only for their coup d’état, but also their ‘Dirty War’, Habib Souaïdia’s La Sale Guerre, against the Islamists. Moreover, and as I have argued at length and in great detail in The Dying Sahara (Pluto 2013), the West has colluded with the Algerian regime since 2002, mainly through its DRS, in setting up what I have referred to as “Al Qaeda in the West for the West”. The West’s close alliance with Algeria and its DRS since 2002-3 has enabled the West, through Algeria’s long practice of “creating its own terrorists”[10], to not only raise the profile and threat of Al Qaeda as and when needed, but, and perhaps more importantly, to show, thanks to Algeria’s “creation of its own terrorists”, that terrorism is not only a real threat, but that the West, through its Algerian proxy, is prepared to fight it.

That is how In Amenas has been portrayed to the world. Algeria, the West’s ally in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the tough man alongside the US and UK in the GWOT, demonstrated that it was not even prepared to negotiate with terrorists; only to eliminate them, regardless of the price.

But that was not how In Amenas was planned. Rather, I believe the DRS’s plan to replicate Tibhirine at In Amenas was designed to be a warning to the West. For last few years, especially since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the West, as I have explained in The Dying Sahara, has been losing patience with Algeria. Algeria’s support for the Gadaffi regime in Libya against the NATO-supported rebellion, followed by Algeria’s central involvement in the destabilisation of Mali, has not gone down well in the West. I believe there was an increasing fear in the Algerian regime, probably felt most keenly by the DRS, that the West might finally loose patience with the Algerian regime and cast it adrift. To stop any such ideas gathering momentum, as was likely in 2013, I believe that the DRS felt that the West needed to be taught a lesson; to be reminded just how much it needed Algeria in its war on terror.

If such speculation is correct, In Amenas was intended to be that lesson. The DRS would orchestrate foreign nationals to be taken hostage, with their release being affected, as in May 2003, through the heroic actions of the Algerian army. But, like Tibhirine, the plan went wrong.

I believe that Tartag’s countermanding of Generals Boustila and El-Chérif from pursuing any dialogue with the terrorists, followed by his decision to inflict an unnecessary bloodbath, can be explained in the following way. His decision to kill the terrorists, irrespective of the safety of the hostages, enabled him to put an end to the unfolding debacle and, in so doing, to reaffirm, in the most definitive way possible, the strong-man image of the Algerian army and its determination to eliminate terrorists irrespective of the cost.

Tartag’s action enabled Algeria to retain and perhaps even enhance its ‘strong man’ image. However, the question remains as to whether Tartag’s refusal to engage in any dialogue with the terrorists and his murderous decision to obliterate them, with no consideration for the safety of the hostages, were driven by his determination to eradicate all possible evidence of the DRS’s role in the operation.

We are unlikely to find out, as it is most unlikely that there will ever be a full or proper enquiry into In Amenas. The matter has been put to bed by both Algeria and the West. That is partly a matter of expediency, in as much as Algeria would obviously refuse to participate in any such enquiry. And the West is also too needy of Algeria’s oil and gas. But it is also because Western governments, as a result of the close working relations of their intelligence agencies with the DRS, are too incriminated.

US, British and French intelligence services are aware of the evidence put forward here. But they have no choice but to deny it. And the corporate media can be relied upon to stay in line.

---

[1] http://statecrime.org/online_article/a-new-phase-in-the-war-on-terror-a-report-on-events-in-algeria-and-mali/

[2] For details, see Jeremy Keenan, The Dying Sahara (Pluto, 2013), pp. 85-89.

[3] For details, see The Dying Sahara, op.cit. pp. 210-13.

[4] For details, see The Dying Sahara, op.cit. pp. 184-5.

[5] For details, see  The Dying Sahara, op.cit. pp. 221-2.

[6] General Mediène, head of the DRS, has been in poor health for the last two years and is considered likely to retire shortly.

[7] In my initial article I described Habib Souaïdia as a former DRS officer. That was incorrect. He was, in fact, an army officer who had close working relations with and knowledge of DRS affairs.

[8] Habib Souaïdia, “Révélations sur le drame d’In-Amenas: trente otages étrangers tués par l’armée algérienne, au moins neuf militaires tués. ” Algeria-Watch, 11 février 2013. http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/aw/souaidia_in_amenas.htm

[9] An Irish engineer who survived is reported as having said he saw four trucks of hostages being blown up by the Algerian forces in this way. The Irish Times, 18 January, 2013. Accessed at: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/dozens-of-hostages-missing-as-desert-stand-off-goes-on-1.1071538.

[10] This has long been known to US intelligence agencies. See, for example, John R. Schindler’s ‘whistle-blowing’ article: ‘The Ugly Truth about Algeria’. The National Interest, 10 July, 2012. Accessed at: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-ugly-truth-about-algeria-7146.

Source: http://statecrime.org/online_article/in-amenas-the-need-for-an-international-enquiry/

Algeria's military goes on an arms spree

ALGIERS, Algeria, March 11 (UPI) -- Algeria's powerful armed forces, which operate Africa's largest defence budget, are seeking a 14 percent hike in defence spending as they awaits delivery of two German A200 frigates and 19 Russian T-90 tanks.

These have been dramatically heightened by the wave of pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world in which three North African dictators have been toppled since 2011.

So far, this phenomenon has passed Algeria by but the military-backed regime in Algiers remains concerned as the turmoil drags on into its third year with domestic discontent still simmering.

The political upheaval was intensified with the 2012 seizure of northern Mali by Algerian-led jihadists, raising fears they would use that remote sanctuary for transnational terrorism.

French military intervention in Mali Jan. 11, and the seizure five days later of a major natural gas complex in the southeastern desert by Islamist diehards commanded by veteran Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, deepened Algerian security concerns.

Despite the increased dangers for Algeria's oil and natural gas industry, its economic backbone, "thanks to oil and gas revenues, the Algerian state has gone from an international financial basket case in the 1990s, to one of the richest in the world, with as much as $200 billion in reserves," the Financial Times observed.

Algeria has North Africa's second largest military. Jane's information group says Algeria was arguably the biggest military spender in Africa in 2009 and is the ninth largest arms importer in the world.

After its 1954-62 independence war with France, Algeria became a major buyer of Soviet arms. Since the collapse of communism, it has remained a client of Moscow.

In 2006, it signed a $7.5 billion deal with Moscow during a visit to Algiers by Vladimir Putin in March 2006 during his first term as Russia's president.

That package included MiG-29SMT and Sukhoi Su-30 attack jets, Yakovlev Yak-130 training aircraft, AT-13 Metis-M and AT-14 anti-tank missiles, T-90 main battle tanks and Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters.

Delivery of the Su-30MKA aircraft, worth $1 billion, should have been completed at the end of 2012 by Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms exporter.

Delivery of the last of 120 T-90 tanks under a $470 million 2006 contract is still under way. Delivery of 180 T-90s under an earlier contract was completed in 2009.

Algiers is also looking for two Project 636 advanced variants of the SSK Type 877EKM Kilo class submarines. These diesel-electric boats are stealthier than the Algerian navy's four Kilos delivered in 1988 and 2010.

In 2011, Algeria signed a contract with Russia's United Shipbuilding Corp. and Rosoboronexport for two Project 20382 Tiger class corvettes, the export model of Russia's Stergushchy class ships, the latest corvette class ship in the Russian navy.

In March 2012, Algeria's Defence Ministry ordered two Meko A2000 frigates from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, along with six AgustaWestland Super Lynx anti-submarine helicopters, altogether worth $2.77 billion.

In 2011, the Algerian navy signed a contract with Italy's Orizzonte Sistemi Navali for a landing and logistical support vessel based on the San Giorgio class deployed by the Italian navy. Delivery is scheduled for 2015.

It will be able to accommodate three Landing Craft Mechanized, three small Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel and one large Landing Craft.

The San Giorgio class amphibious ship can carry a battalion of troops as well as up to 30 tanks or 36 armoured vehicles, as well as several helicopters operating from a flight deck.
The Asian Defence website says Algiers has also signed a contract with China Shipbuilding Trading Co. for three light 2,800-ton frigates that will be built either at Guangzhou or the Shanghai Huangpu Shipyards.

Rheinmetall one of Germany's leading defense companies, plans to produce 1,200 Fuchs armored personnel carriers in Algeria over the next decade.

They will be assembled from kits as part of a move to develop Algeria's nascent domestic defence industry, which produces assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades under license from Russia and China.

In 2011, Berlin authorized the delivery of 54 Fuchs APCs worth $254 million to Algeria as well as other military vehicles worth $372.8 million.

Source: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2013/03/11/Algerias-military-goes-on-an-arms-spree/UPI-89581363031700/#ixzz2NvIAu2Hi

Algerian state terrorism and atrocities in northern Mali

An interesting and detailed article, written last year  by Professor Jeremy Keenan, explaining the origins of the "Islamist" extremist groups in Mali, how such groups work to further the Algerian regime's interests, and the possible occurrences and outcomes in the Sahel region. 

JEREMY H. KEENAN 25 September 2012

The Islamist ‘terrorist’ groups that have taken over control of northern Mali are not only the creations of Algeria’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), but they are being supplied, supported and orchestrated by the DRS.

What began ostensibly in January 2012 as just another rebellion by the Sahara desert’s Tuareg tribesmen had evolved within 3-4 months into what media commentators were calling “Africa’s Afghanistan”. 

The Tuareg are Berbers, not Arabs, and are the indigenous population of much of the Central Sahara and Sahel. Their population is estimated at 2-3 millions. Their largest numbers, some 800,000, live in Mali, followed by Niger, with smaller concentrations in Algeria, Burkina Faso and Libya. In addition, a diaspora extends to Europe, North America, other parts of North and West Africa, the Sahel and beyond.

Since Independence in 1960, the Tuareg of Mali and Niger have rebelled against their central governments on several occasions. In 1962-4, a rebellion by Mali’s Tuareg was crushed ruthlessly. Major rebellions in both countries in the 1990s were forcibly repressed, with government forces specifically targeting civilians. Since then, Niger experienced a small rebellion in 2004 and a much greater one from 2007 to 2009. In Mali, a brief rebellion in May 2006 was followed by a two-year uprising from 2007 until 2009 when it dissipated into an inconclusive and transient peace. While the Niger and Mali governments have both been guilty of provoking Tuareg into taking up arms, all Tuareg rebellions have been driven by a sense of political marginalisation.

However, the rebellion that began in Mali in January 2012 was different. The Tuareg had more and better equipped fighters than in previous rebellions. This was because many had returned from Libya after Gaddafi’s overthrow, bringing with them extensive supplies of modern and even heavy armaments. For the first time in the long history of Tuareg rebellions, there was a real likelihood that the Tuareg might drive Malian government forces out of northern Mali, or Azawad, as it is known to Tuareg. 

In October 2011, the Malian Tuareg who had returned from Libya joined up with fighters belonging to Ibrahim ag Bahanga’s rebel Mouvement Touareg du Nord Mali (MTNM) to form the Mouvement National de Libération de l'Azawad(MNLA). Even though Bahanga had died under mysterious circumstances in August, his men were still intent on continuing their fight against the central government. They were also joined by several hundred Tuareg who had deserted from the Malian army.

The first shots in the new rebellion were fired on January 17 when the MNLA attacked the town of Ménaka. The following week, the MNLA attacked both Tessalit and Aguelhok. Tessalit was besieged for several weeks before falling to the MNLA in March. At Aguelhok, some 82 Malian troops, who had run out of ammunition, were massacred in cold blood on January 24. This ‘war crime’ has been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Such a humiliating demise of Mali’s poorly equipped forces led to an army mutiny on March 22 and a junta of low-ranking officers taking power in Bamako. Within a week, the three provincial capitals of Azawad - Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu - all fell to the rebels without resistance, leaving the whole of Azawad in rebel hands. On April 5 the MNLA declared Azawad an independent state. 

The declaration of Azawad’s independence received no international support, nor was it ever likely to do so. One reason for this was because of the alliance between the MNLA and the Islamist group called Ansar al-Din, a jihadist movement led by a local Tuareg notable, Iyad ag Ghaly. Ansar al-Din was in alliance with another jihadist group, Jamat Tawhid Wal Jihad Fi Garbi Afriqqiya(Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa - MUJAO), with both being supported by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). 

At the start of the rebellion in January, the MNLA claimed to number several thousand, while Ansar al-Din numbered scarcely a hundred. However, by April, and for reasons that have remained a mystery to the media, it was the Islamists rather than the MNLA who were calling the shots in Azawad. Indeed, on June 25, fighting between the Islamists and MNLA led to the latter being displaced from Gao, leaving Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu being ruled respectively by Ansar al-Din, MUJAO and AQIM.

With the MNLA marginalized, the Islamists quickly began imposing shari’a law in Azawad. In Gao, a young man died after having his hand amputated for alleged theft; in Aguelhok, a couple were stoned to death for alleged adultery; in Timbuktu, ancient Sufi tombs, UNESCO world heritage sites, were destroyed. Throughout the region, music, smoking, alcohol, TV, football, traditional forms of dress and lifestyle were all banned as Islamists dished out beatings, amputations and executions with a vengeance. By August, nearly half a million people had fled or been displaced.

In spite of concern being expressed at the apparent emergence of  ‘Africa’s Afghanistan’ in the heart of the Sahara, no one has been prepared to address the key issue behind what is really going on in northern Mali. This is that the Islamist ‘terrorist’ groups that have taken over control of the region are not only the creations of Algeria’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), but they are being supplied, supported and orchestrated by the DRS.

In my two volumes on terrorism and the global war on terror (GWOT) in the Sahara-Sahel, The Dark Sahara (Pluto, 2009) and The Dying Sahara (Pluto 2012, in press), I describe and give detailed evidence of how Algeria’s DRS has colluded with western military intelligence in fabricating ‘false-flag’ terrorism to justify the West’s GWOT in Africa. The two volumes detail how AQIM was created by the DRS; how the DRS has been behind almost all of the more than 60 kidnaps of western hostages in the region since 2003 and how it has worked with the US, UK and French intelligence services in promoting the GWOT, state terrorism and co-called counter-terrorism policies.

What we have seen unfold in Mali during 2012 is merely the latest manifestation of the way in which the DRS has used the ‘terrorists’ that it has created to further the interests of Algeria’s ‘mafiosi’ state.   

Corroboration of my long-standing analysis of the Algerian regime’s use of terrorism (‘state terrorism’) in helping to further and justify the west’s GWOT in North Africa and beyond was provided by John Schindler on July 10 (2012). In an article in The National Interest entitled ‘The Ugly truth about Algeria’, Schindler, a former high-ranking US intelligence officer and long-standing member of the US National Security Council (NSC) and currently Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, ‘blew the whistle’ on Algeria when he described how:

 “the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) [of the 1990s] was the creation of the DRS;using proven Soviet methods of penetration and provocation, the agency assembled it to discredit the extremists. Much of GIA’s leadership consisted of DRS agents, who drove the group into the dead end of mass murder, a ruthless tactic that thoroughly discredited GIA Islamists among nearly all Algerians. Most of its major operations were the handiwork of the DRS, including the 1995 wave of bombings in France. Some of the most notorious massacres of civilians were perpetrated by military special units masquerading as mujahidin, or by GIA squads under DRS control.”

The DRS’s ‘state terrorism’ of the 1990s has changed little during this millennium. In the same way as Schindler describes how the DRS assembled the GIA in the 1990s, so, in this century, the DRS, in collusion with US, British, French and other NATO intelligence agencies, as well as the EU Commission (as documented in my two volumes: The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara), has created AQIM, or what I have referred to as ‘Al Qaeda in the West for the West’.

This diabolical strategy, straight from the tradecraft manual of the KGB (who, incidentally trained Mohamed Mediène, the current DRS boss, and other top DRS Generals), was reactivated in 2003, when a DRS agent, Saifi Lamari (known as El Para), supported by DRS agent Abdelhamid Abou Zaïd, at the head of some  60 genuine members of the Groupe Salafiste pour le Predication et le Combat (GSPC), the successor to the GIA, in collusion with U.S. military intelligence, took 32 European tourists hostage in the Algerian Sahara. This operation, which received world headlines and was the subject of my book The Dark Sahara, was used by the US and other western countries to justify the launch of a new or ‘second front’ in the GWOT into the Sahara and Africa.

In September 2006, the nondescript GSPC, with the help of the DRS and US intelligence agencies, internationalised itself by adopting the Al Qaeda brand and renaming itself as AQIM. AQIM’s three emirs (leaders) in the Sahara, Abdelhamid Abou Zaïd, Yahia Djouadi and Mokhtar ben Mokhtar (they have many aliases), were and still are DRS agents. They have now been responsible for the kidnapping of over 60 western hostages (two have been killed and two have died) and most of the other acts of terrorism perpetrated in the Sahara-Sahel region over the last few years. This is known to most western intelligence agencies. 

The creation of the MNLA in October 2011 was not only a potentially serious threat to Algeria, but one which appears to have taken the Algerian regime by surprise. Algeria has always been a little fearful of the Tuareg, both in Algeria and in the neighbouring Sahel States. The distinct possibility of a militarily successful Tuareg nationalist movement in northern Mali, which Algeria has always regarded as its own backyard (the Kidal region is sometimes referred to as Algeria’s 49th wilaya), could not be countenanced. 

The DRS’s strategy to remove this threat was to use its control of AQIM to weaken and then destroy the credibility and political effectiveness of the MNLA. Although denied by the Algerian government, it sent some 200 Special Forces into Azawad on December 20, stationing them at Tessalit, Aguelhok and Kidal (and possibly elsewhere). Their purpose appears to have been to:

(1) protect AQIM which had moved from its training base(s) in southern Algeria into the Tigharghar mountains of northern Mali around 2008. Most of AQIM’s subsequent terrorism, especially hostage-taking, had been conducted from bases in northern Mali. The MNLA, however, was threatening to attack AQIM and drive its estimated 300 members out of the country;

(2) assess the strengths and intentions of the MNLA; 

(3) help establish two ‘new’ salafist-jihadist terrorist groups Ansar al-Din and MUJAO,  alleged ‘offshoots’ of AQIM, in the region. 

Ansar al-Din and MUJAO, which had not been heard of before, first appeared on local websites on December 10 and 15 respectively. The leaders of both groups were closely associated with the DRS. Iyad ag Ghaly first became acquainted with the DRS when he worked for an Algerian enterprise in Tamanrasset (Algeria) in the 1980s. He had subsequently been used and paid by the DRS to help manage their resolution of EL Para’s 2003 hostage-taking. He had been used again by the Algerians and the US in 2006 to engineer the short-lived May 23 Kidal rebellion and to then undertake two fabricated terrorist actions in northern Mali in September and October 2006. These were used to draw attention to seemingly renewed ‘terrorism’ in the Sahara and to advertise the name change of the GSPC to AQIM. After 2008, he became heavily involved, with his cousin Hamada ag Hama (alias Taleb Abdoulkrim), in AQIM’s hostage-taking operations. 

MUJAO’s leadership is less clear. Its initial leaders are believed to have included both Mohamed Ould Lamine Ould Kheirou, a Mauritanian, and Sultan Ould Badi (alias Abu Ali). Ould Badi is a Malian, said to be half Tuareg and half Arab, from north of Gao with good connections with the Polisario movement of the Western Sahara. It seems to have been through this later connection that he established himself as a major drugs (cocaine) trafficker in the region, working under the direct protection of General Rachid Laalali, head of the DRS’s external security branch. One reason for the DRS’s interest in northern Mali is that the region is the focal point on the cocaine trafficking route from South America to Europe. The UN estimates that some 60% of Europe’s cocaine, with a street value of some $11 billion, crosses through this region. It is a trade which, until the MNLA threatened to take over the region, has been controlled in large part by elements within Algeria’s DRS. 

These two Islamist groups, Ansar al-Din and MUJAO, although starting out as few in number, were immediately supported with manpower from AQIM in the form of seasoned, well-trained killers, and by the DRS with fuel, cash and other logistical necessities. This explains why the Islamists were able to expand so quickly and dominate the MNLA both politically and militarily. 

The DRS’s strategy has been brilliantly effective, at least so far, in achieving its object of completely discrediting the MNLA (and Tuareg nationalism) and minimising its threat as both a political and military force. 

The DRS’s strategy has, however, been extremely dangerous. Apart from turning the region into a human catastrophe, there has been, and still is, a major risk of military intervention and the possibility of a conflagration that could embrace much of the wider region. From the outset, various parties, notably the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed in varying degree by the African Union, France and other parties, has threatened to intervene militarily. There are also a considerable number of internal Malian forces, including a range of largely ethnic-based militia, straining on the leash to revenge themselves against both the MNLA and more especially the Islamists. 

A potential bloodbath has not yet been averted. However, having said that, the likelihood of such military intervention is progressively diminishing. One reason for this is because neither the African Union (whose Peace and Security Commission is headed by an Algerian) or the UN Security Council (UNSC) have given the green light for such intervention. The reason for the UNSC’s position is, I believe, quite simply because all five of its permanent members – the US, UK, France, Russia and China – are aware of Algeria’s strategy and therefore do not see the situation as being ‘Africa’s Afghanistan’, as described in the media and by those self-proclaimed ‘security analysts’ who are unaware of the true nature of Al Qaeda in this part of the world. 

This is not to imply that Algeria will be able to call off its dogs easily. However, signs are that Algeria and other powers in the region are trying to move towards a negotiated solution. But that will not be easy. With so many armed militias in the wings and so much anger, suffering and desire for revenge in the air, the likelihood of individual agency coming to the fore is very high. While the DRS leadership of the Islamist groups is obviously managed easily, the question of the genuine Islamists, the footsoldiers, may not be resolved so easily. Already, there are signs that Algeria is pushing towards a solution centering around the creation of some sort of shari’a based political party, amongst others, in the region. Such a party is unlikely to be endorsed wholeheartedly by the bulk of the population, and if introduced coercively is more than likely to lead to further conflict. 

Whatever sort of dispensation is found for the region, it will almost certainly be tied to Algeria’s hegemonic designs on the region and drugs trafficking, both of which are recipes for future regional instability. 

Finally, there is the matter of the ICC’s investigation. If the ICC does progress from its current preliminary investigation to a full-blown investigation of war crimes and associated atrocities in the region, it could conceivably pave the way for justice and a more stable future. However, I believe that there will be huge pressure on the ICC from western powers not to proceed with the investigation. A full ICC investigation is likely to expose the involvement of US, British and French intelligence services in their support for the DRS and therefore, it could be argued, their complicity in the atrocities that have been committed. 

http://www.opendemocracy.net/jeremy-h-keenan/algerian-state-terrorism-and-atrocities-in-northern-mali 

With Limited Freedoms, Many Algerians Vote with Their Feet

By Vivienne Walt / Algiers

An Algerian electoral worker sits beside a ballot box while waiting for people to cast their votes for the parliamentary elections at a polling station on the outskirts of Algiers on May 10, 2012

“You’re an American journalist?” says Yassin Benabdullah, a lanky 21-year-old in a baseball cap, when I introduce myself to him on a down town street. “Take me with you! I’ll go now, this minute.”

In Algiers, a city of 3.5 million people, this is not a rare encounter. Stop any young person, and invariably the conversation turns to one preoccupation: leaving. When I meet 20-year-old Mehdi Haouchine in a café, he seems like a young man with a bright future. A marketing student at a private college in the Algerian capital, he tells me he has a shelf full of trophies for karate at home. So, I ask, What are his ambitions? “I just need the opportunity to go to a foreign country,” he says. “I don’t mind where I go. There are no prospects here.”

At least on paper, this should not be the case. The biggest country in Africa, Algeria is nearly four times the size of Texas, and just like Texas, it has made fortunes in oil. It has Africa’s third biggest energy reserves (after Nigeria and Libya), pumping 1.16 million barrels of oil a day, with the U.S. as its biggest customer and foreign cash reserves exceeding $170 billion. Bread, cooking oil and gasoline are heavily subsidized for 35 million Algerians. Health care and education are free, and there’s even a $15 monthly book allowance for university students.

Yet that public wealth is part of the problem. Back in early 2011, when the Arab Spring exploded, first in next-door Tunisia and then in Egypt, many thought Algeria would be the next to blow. It seemed to have all the right ingredients: a powerful security force and an aging president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was installed with military approval in 1999 and showed no signs of retiring.

But the Arab Spring never arrived in Algeria. And in fact, Bouteflika, now 75, is expected to run for a fourth term in office, in an election scheduled for next year, since the government has scrapped presidential term limits.

Algerians seem fiercely opposed to any revolution, having lived through a brutal civil war in the 1990s, which killed up to 200,000 people. In addition, when young Algerians began street protests in early 2011, inspired by the Tunisian uprising, Bouteflika rushed to snuff out dissent, by pouring money at the problem. Minimum wages were increased by 20%, youths were offered interest-free loans worth tens of thousands of dollars, and officials promised to build 2.4 million new homes, addressing one of the most-bitter complaints by young Algerians who say they are stuck living in their parents’ cramped apartments, rather than getting married, since there is nowhere to move out to.

Two years on, those new houses have been slow in coming, although earlier this month, the state-run Algerian TV led the evening news showing blueprints for a new housing complex (delivery date: unknown). And while Algerians earn more money these days, many complain that it has barely kept pace with inflation, and that much government largesse has gone to police and military pay.

Algeria’s government is aware that they are losing its bright youths. “You’re right some people want to leave the country, while others are coming back,” says Minister of Energy and Mines Youcef Yousfi during an interview in his office when I ask him why so many young people want to leave Algeria. Nonetheless, the World Bank estimates about 200,000 more people have left Algeria than have arrived over the past five years. Yousfi says that is one reason why the government is racing to create jobs by opening new industries. Then, he says, “the feeling of wanting to go outside will progressively disappear.”

But the youths’ grievances are not all economic. Underlying all the complaints is the fact that the political system has barely changed in decades — and neither have most of the faces at the top. Bouteflika appoints a portion of parliamentary seats himself, while the military and intelligence services hold key decisionmaking powers. Mosques deliver government-written sermons. Mass protests are banned. Police officers stand watch over neighborhoods carefully, looking for signs of organized dissent. “We need a change here, but it is going to take a long time,” says Amin Ouslimani, 24, a political-science student. “I can state my opinion,” he says, “and anyway, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care what I am saying.”

Indeed, the griping among the youths is so pervasive and so loud, that it’s a shock for anyone who has traveled around this region. Algeria’s government invites few foreign journalists; and in the country, I am restricted to the capital and obliged to leave Algeria after just one week. But unlike Libya or Tunisia before the Arab Spring, where people were terrified to speak to journalists, no one is at all inhibited about what they say. Public ranting about the government seems a favorite pastime among young Algerians, who look at the old men running the country as wholly disconnected from their lives.

It seems many young Algerians have simply given up waiting for change. When I ask Haouchine, the management student–karate champion, why he doesn’t wait for the old leaders to die off rather than trying his luck abroad, he shakes his head. “The leaders will die, but then there’ll be their sons,” he says. “It’s like a heritage.”

So, as true change, with a dynamic economy and open democracy, looks remote and as a revolution is ruled out, many youths focus on the option that seems to hold most promise: getting out.

In the café where I meet Haouchine, friends swap rumors about which embassies might be open to a bribe of about $7,500 in order to obtain a visa. One says it used to be France. Another says it is now Spain. Few care where they go. “I have one friend in Boston, another in Spain,” says Ouslimani, the political-science student. “But New Zealand, Norway, Vienna — they all seem like nice places to live.”

Source: http://world.time.com/2013/02/18/with-limited-freedoms-many-algerians-vote-with-their-feet/#ixzz2YSkgUEkk

Algeria hostage crisis could weaken veteran spymaster Mediene

More cock-up than dirty trick, In Amenas raises questions about competence of Tewfik Mediene and brutal security apparatus

• 
• • Ian Black, Middle East editor
  • The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013

General Mohamed 'Tewfik' Mediene, Algeria's rarely photographer spymaster, is considered by some to be more powerful the country's president

If anyone in Algeria knows the full story of what happened at the In Amenas gas facility in the Sahara it is General Mohamed "Tewfik" Mediene. And he, characteristically, is not talking.

As the echoes of the hostage drama reverberate across north Africa, the mysterious head of the DRS intelligence agency is leading the effort to hunt down the jihadists who orchestrated the raid.

His deputy, General Bashir Tartag, commanded the assault that ended the most high-profile terrorist incident to take place on Algerian soil, threatening vital gas exports to the west. Tartag, known as "Le Bombardier", also has a reputation for brutality and ambition.

Mediene, 73 and in poor health, has stayed in the shadows. Described as "the God of Algiers", the spymaster is the most powerful man in the country after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika – and perhaps a candidate to succeed him; some say he is even more powerful.

"Algeria has long been governed, alternately more and less behind the scenes, by varying groups of men known collectively as 'le pouvoir' [the power]," US diplomats said in a 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks. "It has become increasingly clear that the "pouvoir" now consists primarily of Mediene and Bouteflika."

The 75-year-old president was absent throughout the crisis, undergoing medical treatment in Geneva. Mediene and the army, say well-placed sources, kept him out of the picture because they were angry that his agreement to let French planes fly over Algeria to attack Islamist rebels in Mali was leaked from Paris.

The Algerian regime is famously opaque. Photographs of Mediene are rare – duringat official ceremonies cameras systematically avoid his face. "Mediene meets other security chiefs. The French, the Americans, the Russians, probably the Saudis and maybe the Egyptians. But only the big boys," says a European analyst.

Born in Kabylie in 1939, Mediene served in the French colonial army and deserted after the start of the FLN revolt in 1954. Trained by the KGB, he was promoted after the 1988 riots and became head of the DRS in 1990 – which probably makes him the longest-serving head of any intelligence agency in the world.

Mediene was a tough and influential figure at a crucial moment in 1992 when the military cancelled elections that Islamists were poised to win, triggering a bloody civil war that claimed about 150,000 lives over the next few years. He was with the hardline "eradicateurs", not the "conciliateurs" who backed negotiations.

Under his command the DRS infiltrated armed groups and was accused of committing massacres to discredit its enemies – some of whom later morphed into al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Allegations of torture were rife.

"Their operating manual was straight KGB," says Jeremy Keenan, an Algeria expert at London University. "That means creating your own terrorists, setting up parallel trade unions so nobody knows what's going on, and then atomise them. It's the most stunning form of control. Mediene is absolutely ruthless."

It is a backhanded tribute to Mediene's formidable reputation that some have suggested the In Amenas attack was another DRS dirty trick designed to "prove" the danger of jihadi extremism. Details about the raid remain confused and there is concern about the way that it was handled by the Algerian authorities. But there is no evidence that it was not a genuine terrorist incident. It looks much more like a cock-up than a conspiracy.

"The DRS is a powerful agency in Algeria but it is wrong to think that it can control everything," says Francis Ghiles, a Maghreb analyst at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. "This was a major failure for Algerian security. They would not have been complicit in something like this. Mediene's whole raison d'etre is to make Algeria secure."

In Amenas may well turn out to have weakened the veteran security chief.

"Bouteflika got rid of a lot of people who opposed him but he has not been able to stop the DRS," says George Joffe, a consultant on Algeria.

"Tartag has been rather badly damaged. The system over which he and Mediene preside has been shown to be incompetent at a time that the succession to Bouteflika has not been resolved. People know there was a level of incompetence that is frightening and a level of brutality that was probably unnecessary. That raises questions about the competence of the DRS."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/25/algerian-hostage-crisis-tewfik-mediene

The Ugly Truth About Algeria

John R. Schindler | July 10, 2012

Despite not really being in the news, Algeria still appears in the Western media intermittently. As the Maghreb’s last dictatorship, the recent wave of regime change and democratization has passed this important country by, at least so far. Algeria is the key state in Northwest Africa—by virtue of its size, position, natural wealth and regional influence—yet has missed out on the trend that has overtaken so much of the Arab world for the past two years. It remains notable that Algeria’s bloody civil war, which began twenty years ago, never really ended. And now with the help of Al Qaeda, the conflict may be spreading across the Sahel region.

Events in Algeria have long been underreported in the U.S. and Western media (with the exception of France), and there is a general lack of understanding of what ails the country. Certainly the terrible fratricide there in the 1990s got little coverage in Western media, despite the fact that it probably claimed twice as many lives as the Bosnian conflict, which ran concurrently and received nonstop Western attention.

Algeria’s nightmare years of 1993–1997 were a focus of the international human-rights community, which correctly pointed out that the conduct of the government was hardly better than that of Islamist terrorists trying to take over the country. But since 9/11, the Algerian narrative has been subsumed into the West’s counterterrorism effort, to the extent it is reported at all. Enormous poverty, inequality, and the regime’s rapacious and brutal conduct get little attention from Western experts, who seem more interested in speculating about potential Al Qaeda attacks in the Maghreb.

The Real Story

The official story is straightforward. Two decades ago, the military-led junta, which had governed the country since independence from France in 1962, cancelled a democratic election that likely would have brought Islamists to power, and mujahidin took up arms against the secular regime. By 1993, the supremely violent Armed Islamic Group (GIA) emerged as the implacable foe of the regime and the local Al Qaeda affiliate. Although GIA was not the only Islamist resistance group in the country, it was unquestionably the bloodiest. It conducted brutal attacks not just in Algeria but in Europe as well, including a wave of bombings in Paris in the summer of 1995, remembered by terrorism gurus as Al Qaeda’s first attacks on the West. Failing to achieve victory, GIA fell into mass murder, slaughtering Algerian civilians by the hundreds, causing Al Qaeda to break ties with the group in early 1997. Largely killed off by the Algerian security forces, by 1998 the remnants of GIA had coalesced into the GSPC, a far smaller group which posed no serious threat to the regime and spent most of its time on kidnappings and robberies.

In 2006, after almost a decade hiatus, Al Qaeda reinitiated Algerian mujahidin into its ranks, renaming the local franchise Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). While AQIM has been more active in terrorism than the GSPC, it also seems more like an armed gang than a bona fide jihadist group. Over the last few years, AQIM’s reach has extended across the Maghreb and into the Sahel, leading some jihad-watchers to posit that it constitutes a threat to the region, a view shared by many in the U.S. government.

While this account is not entirely inaccurate, it leaves out so many important details as to be essentially false. Above all, it omits the role of the Algerian regime in counterterrorism, which has been effective at defeating the jihad even though its methods would make most Westerners shudder. The lead agency in the fight against the Algerian mujahidin has been the country’s military intelligence service, the feared DRS. With a reputation for ruthlessness and efficiency second to none in the Arab world, the DRS is arguably the world’s most effective intelligence service when it comes to fighting Al Qaeda; it is also probably the most cold-blooded. The DRS can be considered the backbone of the military-led junta. General Mohamed Mediene has headed the DRS since 1990, making him the longest-serving intelligence boss in world history—and few doubt that he is the most powerful man in the country.

Trained by the KGB and schooled in the hard fight for independence, Algerian spies have used tactics against homegrown extremists reminiscent of a sinister B-grade movie. Several high-ranking DRS officers have explained what they did to defeat the mujahidin, including violating human rights on an industrial scale, but hardly anyone outside France seems to have noticed.

Simply put, GIA was the creation of the DRS; using proven Soviet methods of penetration and provocation, the agency assembled it to discredit the extremists. Much of GIA’s leadership consisted of DRS agents, who drove the group into the dead end of mass murder, a ruthless tactic that thoroughly discredited GIA Islamists among nearly all Algerians. Most of its major operations were the handiwork of the DRS, including the 1995 wave of bombings in France. Some of the most notorious massacres of civilians were perpetrated by military special units masquerading as mujahidin, or by GIA squads under DRS control. Having driven GIA into the ground by the late 1990s, DRS has continued to infiltrate and influence Islamist groups in the country. To what extent the local Al Qaeda affiliate is secretly controlled by the military—as GIA and GSPC were—is an open question, but its recent record suggests that DRS influence over any Algerian extremist group is considerable.

U.S. Intel Failure?

These realities, understood by Algerians, are little known in the West, particularly in the United States. While French senior officials have hinted they have been wise to DRS games for many years, a similar understanding seems altogether lacking in the Pentagon or the U.S. intelligence community, which have partnered with Algeria in the fight against Al Qaeda since the 1990s. Whether they really are ignorant or simply do not want to know the sordid details is an open and important question.

To be fair to those inside the Beltway, outside “terrorism experts” are just as credulous about Algeria’s “official story,” and an entire subindustry has arisen in recent years that seeks to explain Algeria and its violent homegrown jihad without any reference to basic realities inside the country.

Yet Algeria’s neighbors, who fear the country’s outsized influence in Northwest Africa, are appropriately skeptical of the Algiers-created narrative that portrays AQIM as a major threat to regional stability. They reject the idea that extremists can be combated only by greater Algerian involvement in regional affairs that is implicitly supported by the United States. African officials are known to drop unsubtle hints that AQIM is not quite what it seems to be and ought to be viewed within the broader context of Algerian foreign policy. In one of the rare cases where such doubts were aired openly, Mali’s head of state security, who is charged with keeping Algerian mujahidin out of his country, told the press in June 2009 that “at the heart of AQIM is the DRS.” Shortly thereafter, he was shot dead at home by “unknown gunmen.”

U.S. interest in the Sahel has only grown in recent years, roughly in tandem with the alleged rise of AQIM in the region. It is no coincidence that the U.S. Army is aligning a combat brigade with U.S. Africa Command—which heretofore has had no combat units permanently assigned to it—and the Pentagon’s interest in the region is rising fast. “Terrorist elements around the world go to the areas they think has the least resistance,” explained army chief of staff General Ray Odierno, “and right now, you could argue that’s Africa.”

While Al Qaeda unquestionably has a great deal of interest in the Maghreb, and would surely like to see the Algerian junta fall and be replaced by a Salafi regime bent on rebuilding the imaginary caliphate, the chances of this outcome are virtually nil. DRS methods, plus the usual extremist tone-deafness, have successfully soured the vast majority of Algerians on the jihadist message. While most Algerians want an end to what they simply call le pouvoir (“the power”), the corrupt military elite that has run the country since France left in 1962, few pine for any sort of Islamist dictatorship.

Unsolved Mystery

Last weekend, Algeria celebrated fifty years of independence. But for most Algerians, buffeted by poverty, instability, corruption and war, there is little to celebrate. Mid-May parliamentary elections resulted in a surprising win for the junta, leading to accusations of fraud as well as despair for those hoping for change via the ballot box. It is clear that the military has no intention to bowing to any sort of peaceful regime change, but infighting among the elite may undo the system. When the junta falls, as someday it surely will, the change will rock those who have waged Algeria’s dirty war against terrorism. The effects on the junta’s foreign supporters, who have turned a blind eye to massive human-rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism, will be serious too.

It is time for the U.S. government to follow the lead of human-rights groups: Washington should start asking important questions about what Algiers has really been up to since 1992, and to what extent the junta and the DRS have been engaged in mass repression and state terrorism under the guise of fighting Al Qaeda—all possibly with U.S. assistance. The saga of Algeria over the last twenty years constitutes “one big murder mystery,” said one of the few writers in the Anglosphere to take notice. It’s time to get to the bottom of it.

John R. Schindler is professor of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College as well as chair of the Partnership for Peace’s Combating Terrorism Working Group. He is a former counterintelligence officer with the National Security Agency. The views expressed here are entirely his own.

Source: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-ugly-truth-about-algeria-7146?page=2