Algeria: is stability stable?

Thursday’s discussion at SAIS’s Center for Transatlantic Relations of Algeria After the Elections:  Now What? left the audience wondering whether the country’s apparent stability really is stable, in particular as the 2014 presidential elections draw closer.

Algeria pulled off an election no one will say was free or fair for a parliament that controls nothing, as SAIS professor Bill Zartman put it.  The junta remains firmly in power.  The election results reflect the voting population’s reluctance to rock the boat or entrust its future to Islamists, who did poorly.  Algeria had its intifada in the 1990s.  Having suffered a civil war as a result, with horrific violence both by the Islamists and the security forces, there are good reasons for those Algerians who remember it not to want a repeat performance.  It also had mini-intifadat every month or so in the 2000s and a larger one in January 2010; labor and other protests are common in Algeria, but they have little political impact.  It wouldn’t matter if President Bouteflika were removed; the junta remains.  However, the time of the presidential elections in 2014 may bring a moment when, whoever runs, the people will have had enough.

Even without revolutionary fervor, Algeria faces big problems.  Barrie Freeman of NDI noted that its youth bulge is finding little employment (youth unemployment stands at 40%).  Few young people voted.  While the government is claiming over 40% of the electorate went to the polls, the real number may be significantly lower.  Civic participation is generally low, in part due to a restrictive law on associations.  The junta has promised constitutional reform, but it is unclear what that means.  There is no reason to expect any serious moves to democratize.

Carnegie Endowment’s Marina Ottaway noted that a remarkably high 18% of voters spoiled their ballots, which likely reflects widespread dissatisfaction.  It is harder to interpret the low turnout, which might just reflect indifference.  While the Islamist parties did not see the surge evident in Tunisia and Egypt, Algeria suffers as they do from lack of secular opposition parties offering a serious alternative.  President Bouteflika represents the last of his generation.  Once he and his cohort are gone, within the next few years, the dissatisfaction many feel may emerge in political form, but there is little sign of it yet. The ruling parties have so far hung together fairly well, fearing that otherwise they will hang separately.

Pointing to southern Algeria and northern Mali, Daniele Moro of the Center for Transatlantic Relations raised the specter of terrorism, equipped in part by arms from Libya.  We need to keep our eye on this obscure part of the Sahel, which could become a free for all region where Nigerian, Somali and Algerian (Al Qaeda in the Maghreb) terrorists may create a “mini-Afghanistan.”  Algeria and Morocco, whose border is closed due to differences over Algerian support to the Western Sahara, are joining with NATO soon in a naval exercise.  This is a positive development of a sort Europe and the U.S. should continue to encourage.

No one should be under any illusions.  Reform in Algeria has not yet begun in earnest.  But the apparent stability of an aging regime may not last.