Algeria warns against intervention

 

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's security advisor, Kalel Rezzag Bara, speaking on local national radio on 10 November, warned that military intervention in Mali was currently a useless step as it would only worsen the situation. He said that a peaceful settlement of the Malian crisis was still possible and that “It's necessary to reach an acceptable agreement to avoid the spill over of the Malian conflict into neighbouring nations."

Bara also said that the international community should distinguish between Tuareg rebels, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), who carry political claims and terror groups belonging to al-Qa'ida organisation and drug trafficking gangs. Interestingly, as part of Algeria's attempt to muddy the waters Bara included the Islamist groups Ansar al-Din alongside the MNLA when the former is in fact largely a creation of the DRS. Its leader, Iyad ag Ghaly has been a close associated of the DRS since the 1980s and is even spoken of in some quarters as “Algeria's man in Mali”.

Ansar al-Din, created in December 2011, is playing the lead role amongst the Islamists. The key question is whether Algeria still has effective control over it and whether the international community will believe its recent more conciliatory remarks. Kamel Bara is doing his bit in trying to get the international community to see Ansar al-Din as more allied to the Tuareg rebels than AQIM which has not been the case. Ansar al-Din's more conciliatory moves are part of Algeria's desperate moves to achieve a peaceful settlement and so prevent military intervention.

We should add that Ansar al-Din - along with AQIM and the DRS – heads the list in the International Criminal Court's (ICC) preliminary investigations into war crimes in northern Mali.

For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.

© 2012 Menas Associates

Algeria: DRS purchase of Beur TV

Last week, we reported that the DRS, through one of its 'front men' had bought the French satellite TV channel, Beur TV. We can now give more details of the DRS' actions in this regard.

The background is that the Algerian national TV and radio broadcast network is wholly state-owned. The state, therefore, controls all of Algeria's broadcast media except the satellite channels. Access to these is relatively limited due to the relative lack of encoder and satellite reception facilities.

One of the key and much-publicised components of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's promised reform process is that the broadcast media will be opened up. This is not because the regime necessarily wants to provide its citizens with access to more than its own very poor quality services. It is simply that the country's citizens are gradually finding ways and means of accessing external broadcast channels.

The state's soon-to-be-presented reform on opening up the broadcast media to foreign and private channels, however, is not so much a retreat in front of technologies that it cannot entirely control, as a strategy designed to 'get ahead of the game'. The DRS is planning to control the new broadcast media in three ways.

For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.

© 2011 Menas Associates