By Arezki Daoud – 1 October 2019: This is make-or-break moment for Algerian military chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah and the few generals left standing around him. After eliminating the visible figures of those considered as their political foes, culminating with a one-day trial of former intelligence chiefs Toufik Mediene and Tartag and Said Bouteflika, the brother of the deposed President Bouteflika, the next and most complicated step is now underway. While the clan warfare pitting the military command against the country’s intelligence services continues, Gaid Salah believes he can now close the loop and deliver an election on 12 December. But the road to December is paved with landmines. What’s ahead and for his plan to succeed require the active participation of voters. And yet, if the peaceful rallies that the world witnessed since 22 February are any indication of voter sentiment, the General has no voters and his roadmap for a military-imposed solution could collapse like a house of cards.
Until now, General Gaid Salah’s energy has been exclusively consumed on winning the clan warfare that led his political opponents to prison or to exile. Some generals even died in mysterious circumstances. The main protagonists in this multi-decade fight among generals, pitting army-men vs. intelligence officers, have been extremely powerful. The fight required General Gaid Salah’s full time attention to deal with the situation that could have halted his career in dramatic ways. Theses officers have had tremendous assets and resources, having been either military chiefs, like the now-exiled former defense minister Khaled Nezzar, or heads of intelligence, best personified by General Toufik Mediene, who is now in jail. The current chief of the Algerian military command General Gaid Salah has been primarily concerned about fighting these men first because they wanted him out so as to pave the way for a Bouteflika replacement without worrying about the bosses of the military establishment.
With the 22 February 2019 protests, when the first demonstrations erupted in Kherrata to oppose the fifth mandate sought by an ill President Bouteflika, Gaid Salah seized the opportunity to “drain the swamp” and to remove all his enemies, who happened to have been his bosses in the past. The removal of these men alone was not sufficient considering that they built dense networks of loyal supporters in the intelligence, the military, the police, and the administration, who could be activated and used against him any time. The loyalty of legions of bureaucrats and security men to the likes of Mohamed Mediene meant that even behind bars, the old guard could hurt Gaid Salah badly.
Since around March, Gaid Salah set out to purge all administrations, former and current, to cleanse them of elements loyal to his foes. Thousands of military officers have been either fired, demoted or sent to prison. Oligarchs with money and relationships with ex intelligence chiefs like Cevital CEO and one of Africa’s richest businessmen, Issad Rebrab, and countless others, have been incarcerated often on obscure charges. Former prime ministers and ministers, administrators, judges, members of parliaments, journalists, and others have been arrested on charges of corruption and abuse of power. In addition to committing crimes of corruption, most of these figures were part of the deep state that General Mediene and others have put in place and controlled over the past 20-25
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years. Therefore, waging a war against them was Gaid Salah’s first order of business.
On 25 September 2019, after only one day of bizarre behind closed-door proceedings, a military court in the town of Blida near Algiers sentenced Said Bouteflika, Generals Tartag and Mediene to 15 years in prison. A harsh critic of Gaid Salah, General Nezzar, believed to be in Spain, also got 20 years in absentia. While these men are in jail, shadowy forces within the Algerian intelligence loyal to them have launched attacks against the military command, discrediting their actions, and calling for a rebellion against the army. In this fight, the Algerian people simply do not care, considering it a natural extension of clan warfare that existed since 1962. They say “it is not our business.”
In Gaid Salah’s mind, 25 of September marks the day when stage one of the Algerian military command’s power grab officially ended, and stage two began, and that is to reconstruct the exact same state apparatus, but one which would be under the control of Gaid Salah. While most of phase one appears to have worked in favor of General Gaid Salah, phase two is going to be his biggest challenge, because it is a political battle and not one that the military knows how to manage. Phase two requires extraordinary efforts of analysis and political savvy to coordinate countless pieces and moving parts that a military chief like Gaid Salah is not accustomed to.
One of the many challenges he will be facing is to offer an election that is acceptable to the Algerian people. And that starts with the way it is organized, who organizes it, who takes part to it, is it perceived fair, and how is the environment in which the election is taking place. On all of these counts, the General so far failed miserably. The environment being promoted by the Algerian military is one of force, violence and repression. Hundreds of people have been thrown in jail for no legitimate legal reason. They are simply political prisoners who are in prison for disagreeing with the military command when they demanded that governance be handed over to a civilian caretaker government. In such reign of terror, how can one speak of fair elections?
Furthermore, the men tasked to organize and monitor the elections are all remnants of the Bouteflika regime. They include former ministers of justice who were at the top of government during the darkest era of the regime that the Algerians want to bury. Then there are the candidates. The military has hand-picked two of its men as front runners who were prime ministers and ministers during the Bouteflika era. They are Ali Benflis and Abdelmadjid Tabboune, two men that the Algerian voters assimilate to the Bouteflika regime and do not want to see anymore. To make things worse, there is the interim civilian authority, personified by Interim president Bensalah and Prime Minister Bedoui, two men who were at the top of the Bouteflika regime. And the list of missteps goes on and on.
In such an environment, we should not be surprised if the Algerian people would further harden their position. And so in the coming weeks, the arms wrestling match between the people and the generals is expected to reach its climax. As autonomous labor union adjust their views to further align their goals with those of the anti-government movement during the month of October with the launch of strikes in multiple sectors, the month of November is likely to be the hottest month in the Algerian political crisis. Both protagonists in this conflict will ratchet up their positions for as long as they can, until one of them cracks. Gaid Salah has already announced on 26 September 2019 that there will be massive security deployment across the country to counter any initiative to stop the elections. It is probably more fear than reality. The anti-vote movement, for its part, is expected to reply with massive protests every Tuesdays and Fridays and more to come. Opposition figures from inside the country and from abroad have been increasing their anti-vote speeches and tension is palpable. In the coming weeks also, autonomous labor unions could joint the movement and may call workers in strategic sectors to strike, from oil and gas to transportation and the administration. The joining of unions with political protesters could form a dangerous evolution to the generals, who appear to be playing their last card.
What’s ahead is a tough outlook to predict, a sort of 50/50 bet, which is not a good one. There are few scenarios that can happen, including one in which the military would go as far as deploying tanks as it did in October 1988. But at the end of the day, the best option is the one that the people have been calling for over seven months: deliver the government to a legitimate civilian authority with no ties to Bouteflika and the generals, and all will be fine. But knowing how Algerian generals think, this may be wishful thinking.
