No paradigm shift in Algeria

Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 78 years old, won a comfortable victory in the Algerian elections held last September 7, in an election marked by the leave participation (only 46.1%), as well as by criticism for its opacity and by complaints from international organizations about the lack of human rights in the country. Algeria is an international player core topic : it is the largest country in Africa, has the largest military budget of the entire continent, has extensive natural gas reserves and is in a strategic position at the crossroads of different hotspots of current geopolitics: Libya, the Sahel and Western Sahara.

Following the elections, in which Abdelmadjid Tebboune obtained 84% of the votes, the country enters a legislature core topic in which it will need to keep an eye on several issues: internal conflicts, due to the frustration of the young population and the lack of civil liberties; the evolution of the relationship with its regional rival, Morocco, especially with regard to the Western Sahara conflict; the strategy in the Sahel; the Palestinian cause; and the evolution of relations with its traditional ally, Russia.

Internal Policy

The country, which became independent in 1962, has been controlled throughout its history by the National Liberation Front, training political to which all its presidents have belonged, including Tebboune, who controls the party apparatus despite presenting himself as an independent. The FLN is core topic to understand the current status in Algeria: after the Hirak movement, which emerged in 2019 as a result of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika's pretensions to run for a fifth term, the party's image was quite damaged, and the current president saw the need to try to stabilize the country through an alliance with this movement, which he came to refer to as 'blessed Hirak'.

After the Covid-19 crisis, the movement lost quite a bit of strength and Tebboune proved to be comfortable under the shadow of the FLN and the Algerian Armed Forces, the real power in the country. This last point is core topic, as one of the main claims of the Hirak in 2019 was that the military should return to the barracks and let Algeria be a democracy not only in name. However, the military issue has not only not been remedied, but has worsened in recent years with the introduction of measures such as the presidential decree of July 2024, which allows members of the Armed Forces to hold positions of importance in the management and administration of what is considered ''strategic infrastructure'', in which airports or seaports are included. 

A dangerous balance is thus formed between the country's political class , which knows that it cannot afford to lose the support of the military institution to control the country, and a population that is on the verge of reaching the limit, seeing the chances of achieving real change in the country increasingly distant, especially after the failure of the last attempts at political revolution in the country: the Arab Spring and the Hirak protests.

Hope does not seem to come either from the civil service examination, led by the Movement of Society for Peace (MPS) of Abdelaali Hassani, second in the September elections with about 10% of the votes, and which is now disunited, delegitimized and poorly organized. This party is the main Islamist current in the country, which brings back memories of the Algerian civil war, also known as the 'black decade', which took place between 1992 and 2002. At that time, the main Islamist forces of the country confronted the central government in a conflict that they ended up losing.

The war ended, but today there are still some forces fighting against the central power, mainly in the Kabylia region in the north, where there is a Moroccan-backed independence movement in response to Algerian claims for the independence of Western Sahara.

The other party of the civil service examination is the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS) led by Youcef Aouchiche, which got 6% of the votes. This party, which has been in the civil service examination for the longest time (practically since independence), has never managed to confront the FLN.

Beyond these parties, other forces of the civil service examination decided to boycott the elections and to advocate abstention, to which the population responded positively. The Independent National Authority for Elections (ANIE) itself has been severely criticized not only by the population, but also by international organizations and by all the candidates (including Tebboune), due to several irregularities in its functioning, such as declaring that the president had won with about 96% of the vote and then reducing the percentage to 84%, after adding 2 million more votes, reducing Tebboune's victory by 10 points, but silencing the two opposition parties which, by exceeding 5% of the vote, ensured that the state would pay for their campaign expenses position ; or the publication of an initial election turnout of 48% on data , which was later corrected to 46.1% when, in reality, the figure was closer to 25%.

The economic status also leads one to believe that the North African country is a potential ticking time bomb. Inflation is at 7%, compared to 2% in 2019, which has ostensibly reduced the standard of living. The unemployment rate also presents itself as a disturbing figure: with an absolute unemployment rate of 12%, Algeria has 31% youth unemployment, a figure that is even more worrying considering that 44% of the population is 25 years old or younger. Another alarming grade is that the economic growth of the third Economics of the African continent remains closely linked to the hydrocarbon industry. In 2022, this industry accounted for 31.11% of GDP, demonstrating Algeria's dependence on the price of natural gas. To reduce this dependence, Algiers has tried to diversify its Economics and invest in other sectors by seeking to industrialize the country. leave These efforts have led to a reduction in state investment in hydrocarbons in recent quarters, which has had an impact on the country's economic growth forecast, which this year is expected to fall below the 4.1% of 2023.

With the population exhausted, but at the same time tired of the current government, only a further deterioration of the economic status or a major political scandal seems likely to bring down the current government, which has contributed to bring Algeria ever closer to becoming a one-party state in which democratic freedoms are seriously oppressed.

International

This precarious internal status does not prevent Algeria from being a very active country in the international arena, which also does not mean that Algerian foreign policy is at its best, at least on some of its fronts. With regard to the Sahel, and after the series of coups that occurred in 2023, Algeria seemed to postulate itself as an actor core topic in the region. However, it has ended up clashing with a traditional ally: Russia. The group Wagner, which has come under the control of the Russian state after the attempted Prigozhin uprising in 2023, is very active in the region, especially in Mali, where it is supporting the government in its fight against different separatist and jihadist militias. This fact is seen by Algeria as an invasion of its area of influence, which has led it to express numerous complaints taking advantage of the fact thatsince 2023 it is a non-permanent member of the UN security committee . On the other hand, Libya is proving to be another point of friction between Algiers and Moscow, since Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, supported by the Kremlin, is carrying out troop movements that are suspicious to his neighbor. These disagreements with Russia have not, however, prevented Tebboune from traveling to Moscow in June 2023 to sign a document in which Russia and Algeria sealed their strategicassociation .

In Western Sahara, the Algerian position is not living its best moment either: Russia has had here a new disagreement with its Algerian ally, after abstaining in the recent vote that has extended MINURSO's mandate for another year, which has been received as a victory in Rabat and as a defeat in Algiers, since it maintains a 'status quo' that favors Morocco with the recent support it has received from different European countries. This last point is very significant, as the diplomatic crisis over the Spanish recognition of the Moroccan autonomy plan in 2022 has been joined by the renewal of French support for it through a letter that President Macron sent at the end of July 2023 to the Moroccan King, Mohammed VI. In it, Macron recognized that "autonomy is the only basis for a solution to the conflict", to which Algeria responded with the immediate withdrawal of its ambassador in Paris. This is not the only sample of French support for Rabat: this past October, Macron visited Morocco and, before the parliament of the Alawite monarchy, promised to direct French funding to the territory.

At final, two of the main European players in the Sahara conflict have reversed their position and abandoned their quest for an amicable attention with Algiers in favor of their neighbors in Rabat. These developments have dealt a severe blow to Algeria's international policy and, consequently, also to its Economics. In response, the country decided to lift the banking blockade that had been imposed on Spain since 2022 in order to start applying it to France. visit It would not be correct to interpret the lifting of this blockade as an appreciable improvement in relations between Madrid and Algiers, since the annulment of the Treaty of Friendship between the two countries in 2022 and the indefinite postponement of the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to Algiers in February of this year are still very much present in the relationship between the two countries.

On reference letter to the Palestinian cause, Algeria is sample as the great ally it has always been. The FLN has always seen similarities between its war of independence against France and the Palestinian struggle against Israel. This has crystallized into different geopolitical strategies such as, for example, the stalling in 2022, together with South Africa, of Israel's claim to be accepted as an observer state in the African Union. Tebboune has also presented himself as a mediator between the different Palestinian factions, an aspect in which, for the moment, he has not achieved any progress. This is one of the few points on which the Algerian population and the government are on the same page, supporting the Palestinian people and pushing away a possible opening of relations with Israel. The Palestinian cause thus seems to be the only source legitimacy of the current government vis-à-vis its people, after the setbacks they are suffering both in Western Sahara and in the Sahel.

It is clear that Algeria is in a complicated moment, where a small spark could unleash a new revolution that could once again put in check the political establishment that has been in place since Algeria's independence. The power wielded by the Armed Forces in the country, the precarious social status of the young population, the failures of its foreign policy, as well as a possible drop in the price of hydrocarbons, could turn Algeria into a powder keg at Europe's back door.

We must not forget the great importance of the Maghreb region, especially at reference letter on the southern flank of the European continent, which is once again seeing a resurgence of authoritarianism in countries such as Tunisia (following the latest elections) and Morocco, with the strengthening of its monarchy in power. Faced with this status with different angles, Europe should not lower its guard in order to avoid bitter surprises, especially in countries such as Spain, which continue to ignore its southern flank.