Algeria was able to extend its influence over its southern neighbors. The U.S. was able to “piggyback” on Algeria’s concerns, real and imagined, to create a security network extending from Algeria to Nigeria.
Algeria’s leaders fear that if Gaddafi falls, their hold on power will be that much more fragile.
Protesters in Martyr’s Square chanted “yesterday Egypt, today Algeria” during demonstrations in the Algerian capital Algiers on February 12. The Algerian government’s response to the protesters was reminiscent of Egypt’s ex-President Hosni Mubarak during the last five days of the 18-day protest in Cairo. Armed riot police and pro-government thugs attacked pro-democracy protesters to provoke violent clashes. The same aggressive approach to the protesters was seen again on February 19 when military-style armored police vehicles deployed throughout Algiers to prevent the protests from even forming.
The demonstrators in Algeria have been modest in number, but they are the first signs of deep unrest in a major oil- and natural gas-producing country in the region.
Aside from those who attempt to illegally emigrate, Algeria’s youth is paralyzed.
The campaign against dictatorship in the Arab world has brought together some strange bedfellows. The Bush administration’s neoconservatives darkly dreamed of democracy promotion in the Middle East before the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires became the stuff of nightmares. Sharing the same bed, but dreaming different dreams, have been the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists who have long railed against the injustices of authoritarian regimes in locales such as Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf States. And now, of course, the predominantly young protestors of Tunisia have turned dream into reality by ousting their dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years at the helm.
Morocco’s ongoing refusal to allow for the long-planned UN-sponsored referendum on the fate of Western Sahara to move forward, combined with a growing nonviolent resistance campaign in the occupied territory against Moroccan occupation authorities, has led Morocco to propose granting the former Spanish colony special autonomous status within the kingdom.
It started in 2002 with a few hesitant probes that were low on intelligence, high on imagination, and short a couple of helicopters reportedly lost in the desert wastelands of northern Mali. Then, in 2003, the U.S. launch of a second front in its Âwar on terror moved into top gear. In collaboration with its regional ally Algeria, the Bush administration identified a banana-shaped swath of territory across the Sahelian regions of the southern Sahara that presumably harbored Islamic militants and bin Laden sympathizers on the run from Afghanistan.