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Algeria
Security Interests Outside the Maghrib
Under Ahmed Ben Bella, independent Algeria's first president,
the government actively supported a host of anticolonial struggles
throughout Africa. Algeria became a leading contributor to the
African Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity
(OAU), which was designed to coordinate and aid African liberation
movements. In 1963 the government provided training to 1,000 guerrillas
from Mozambique, South Africa, and Angola. More controversially,
Ben Bella's government also sponsored efforts to overthrow independent
African governments that were considered to be reactionary or
too closely linked to former colonial powers. Notably, during
this time the Algerians supported insurgencies against the governments
of newly independent Congo (former Belgian Congo, present-day
Zaire), Niger, and Morocco. Ben Bella's activism, however, was
ineffectual in weakening the opponents at which it was aimed.
Critics charged that his stance was merely symbolic, designed
to enhance the president's prestige among the "radical" bloc of
African and Asian states and, by extension, to bolster his political
position within Algeria.
After Ben Bella's overthrow in 1965, the Boumediene government
turned its attention to domestic development issues and limited
its direct involvement in destabilizing foreign governments. As
a matter of principle, however, the new regime soon started assisting
a number of revolutionary groups and liberation movements and
allowed their representatives to operate in Algiers. These groups
included liberation movements opposed to the regimes in Portuguese
Africa, Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), South Africa,
the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Israel, and others. International
terrorists associated with Italy's Red Brigade, the Federal Republic
of Germany's (West Germany) Baader-Meinhof Gang, and the Black
Panthers, composed of radical American blacks, were granted sanctuary
and support. Aircraft hijackers were allowed to land in Algeria
and were often granted asylum until, under international pressure,
Boumediene abandoned the practice in 1978.
An important element of Algerian security policy has been the
leadership's attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinian nationalists--attitudes
that were underscored by Algeria's military contributions during
the June 1967 and October 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. Immediately
after the 1967 conflict, the Algerians sent more than fifty aircraft
to Egypt to replace some of those lost in the war. Algeria also
reportedly sent small contingents of infantry and artillery to
reinforce the Egyptians. Algeria's contribution to the October
1973 War consisted of a number of air force units that joined
Egyptian forces on the Suez front and two medical teams that were
dispatched to the Syrian front. Although the direct involvement
of Algerian forces in these conflicts was minimal, Algeria apparently
drew important lessons from Arab shortcomings against Israeli
military power. Soon after the Arab defeat in 1967, Boumediene
inaugurated conscription. Later, the Arabs' initial successes
in the 1973 war using modern Soviet-supplied antiaircraft and
antitank missiles were believed to have influenced Boumediene's
decision to upgrade his armed forces with large purchases of sophisticated
Soviet weaponry (see Foreign
Military Assistance , this ch.).
Although several liberation movements were still permitted to
maintain offices in Algeria after Benjedid came to power in 1979,
the government was no longer a major sanctuary for terrorist groups
operating abroad. It drew a distinction between terrorism, which
it condemned, and violence on the part of national liberation
movements, which it considered possibly legitimate. Algeria, however,
has refused to sign international agreements intended to counter
acts of terrorism. In addition, a representative of the Palestinian
terrorist Abu Nidal Organization was allowed to remain in Algiers
despite a number of attacks against Arab and Western targets and
against its Palestinian opponents in Algeria. Representatives
of two other terrorist groups--the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and
the Palestine Liberation Front--appeared on national television
to rally popular support for Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait in 1990.
Algeria continued to back the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), whose efforts against Israel had long been viewed by Algerians
as similar to the struggle against the French by their own revolutionaries.
Although Algeria, like other Arab countries, was unable (or unwilling)
to help the PLO resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982,
Benjedid's government allowed between 1,000 and 2,000 of the guerrillas
evacuated from Beirut to establish themselves in military camps
in Algeria. Algeria focused its main efforts on mediating among
various Palestinian factions rather than supporting a resumption
of PLO military activity.
Data as of December 1993
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