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Algeria
Arab and Middle East Affairs
Algeria's national commitment to pan-Arabism and Arab causes
throughout the Middle East and North Africa has resulted in an
active role in the region. It joined the League of Arab States
(Arab League) immediately following national independence in 1962.
Since that time, Algeria's historical and ideological commitment
to national revolution and self-determination has resulted in
a strong affinity for the Palestinians in Israel, one of the Arab
League's most compelling causes. Algeria has consistently supported
the Palestinians and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
and spurned the idea of diplomatic resolution with Israel. The
Algerian government has steadily backed the mainstream faction
of the PLO under the leadership of Yasir Arafat--hosting sessions
of the PLO's National Council, intervening on its behalf in diplomatic
negotiations with Syria and Lebanon, condemning internal divisions,
and working toward the reconciliation of competing factions within
the organization. Algeria supported Arafat's decision, denounced
by Palestinian hard-liners, to sign a peace treaty with Israel
in September 1993.
Algeria's energetic efforts on behalf of the PLO and the Palestinian
cause have from time to time jeopardized its relations with other
Arab nations (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt), many of which
host significant Palestinian populations of their own. Despite
Algerian indebtedness to Egypt for assistance during the revolutionary
period, the Algerian government severed all relations with Egypt
in the late 1970s over Egypt's peace treaty with Israel; relations
gradually improved only with a change of leadership in both countries.
More recently, Egypt's President Husni Mubarak and Algeria's President
Chadli Benjedid found each other's moderate policies more palatable
than those of their predecessors and jointly worked toward a resolution
of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Similarly, Algeria incurred difficulties
with Iraq over its involvement in the peace talks concluding the
eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. Persistent calls by Algeria
for an end to the conflict that it considered so damaging to the
pan-Islamic movement led to a peace proposal that Iraq viewed
as overly favorable to Iran. The proposal was alleged to have
provoked Iraqi fighters to shoot down an Algerian aircraft carrying
prominent Algerian officials involved in the peace talks, including
the country's foreign minister.
Algeria shares a cultural identity with the Arab-Islamic nations
but is separated by its distance from the rest of the Middle East.
The closed nature of the authoritarian regime that governed Algeria
for most of its independent history has precluded the development
of mass enthusiasm for, or awareness of, external causes and conflicts.
The period of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and
the subsequent retaliation by the largely Western coalition forces
was the first time a significant portion of the Algerian public
became mobilized over a foreign policy issue. Arab identification
with Iraq drew support from the masses in unprecedented numbers.
The overt support for Iraq on the part of the FIS and Ben Bella's
Movement for Democracy in Algeria (Mouvement pour la Démocratie
en Algérie) and a mass rally in support of Iraq's Saddam Husayn
resulted in a fast reversal by the government from its original
position condemning the Iraqi aggression. Changing state-society
relations--a more active civil society and a more informed public--have
meant new foreign policy directions characteristic of a government
more responsive to its public. In late 1993, Algeria's foreign
policy toward nations of the Middle East, however, had not changed
significantly. Its relations with the West, especially its former
colonizer, had changed markedly since the immediate post-independence
period.
Data as of December 1993
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