Algeria Again? Contemporary affairs

**davidbfpo** · 03-29-2014

A short, useful article on the 'dirty war' and ends with:

Grant it to the Algerian regime: they orchestrated this brilliantly. When the wave of rebellions broke on the Arab world in 2010, they hardly touched Algeria. The population was frightened of the Islamists and frightened of a return to violence; the Islamists were broken, splintered into too many factions to be any kind of force. The security services had done their work: whatever the level of discontent with their colourless rule, the population is now convinced that the only alternative is takfirism—and for the urban, the secular (a large number in Algeria), and the women and national minorities like the Berbers this is enough to hold together a strategic majority for the regime.

Link:http://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2...hat-they-seem/

**davidbfpo** · 05-17-2014

The first of three old articles by the late Mahfoud Bennoune, an Algerian academic, which will appear slowly till July and starts that the late Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka:

believed that one of the best ways to comprehend the kind of horror that is happening in Nigeria is to remember the experience of other nations in the region confronted with jihadist groups much like Boko Haram.

Then asks:

Some of the most common reactions to the mass kidnapping of school girls by the jihadist group Boko Haram in Nigeria are to ask questions like: how can this be happening? Why would anyone do something so terrible?

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ma...n-mindlessness

**davidbfpo** · 09-26-2014

An important, concise explanation of how Algeria is working, this time with the emphasis on diplomacy, although other capabilities are still around:http://africanarguments.org/2014/09/...-imad-mesdoua/

Officials in Algeria still hope they can steer the region away from simplistic military interventionism, towards political solutions and “greater responsibility”.

(Ends with) The fierce debate raging inside the Algerian regime over greater or less interventionist action will continue. For now, North Africa’s ‘reluctant policeman’ will no doubt stick to a number of its non-interventionist dogmas. However, should a cataclysmic event like In Amenas occur on Algerian soil once more, the country will have no choice but to take decisive action.

Author's bio:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/imad-mesdoua/

Now for something different, as Professor John Schindler refers to Algeria within a wider article on counter-terrorism is not always what you think you see:http://20committee.com/2014/09/25/wh...rism-is-wrong/

Scheming and ruthless come to mind.

**davidbfpo** · 02-20-2015

A good overview of Algeria, both the wider context and the byzantine details of those in power or seeking power within:http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/a...cession-crisis

Interesting to note protests against fracking as locals feared water depletion.

**davidbfpo** · 07-19-2015

An unusual article on Algerian politics and society via Carnegie:http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/06/26/s...-is-clear/ib67

It ends with:

Twenty-three years after the bloodiest chapter in contemporary Algeria, with 150,000 dead and 7,000 missing, victims of a war between the state and armed Islamist groups during which a whole society was held hostage, things do not appear to be very optimistic: here we are again in the same place caught between a patriarchal state and an Islamist revival.