Algerian army prepares for future negotiations with Morocco

The appointments made within the Algerian military institution indicate that the General Staff of the People's Army (ENP) has entered the phase of political and organisational preparations prior to imposing institutional decisions of a strategic nature. 

The changes made to the military organisation chart, decided by the Chief of Staff General Said Chengriha and signed by the President of the Republic Abdelmayid Tebboune, confirm the end of the era of the duo Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Ahmed Gaid Salah, respectively President of the Republic for 20 years until 2019 and head of the army in pectore for more than two five-year periods, who died in December 2020.

General Chengriga appointed General Nouredin Makri as head of foreign espionage, replacing General Moahmed Bouzit, a military officer loyal to the Bouteflika-Gaid Salah duo. In addition, Chengriha has decided on a number of changes at the head of the six military regions, the army's territorial division. 

The novelty of the appointment of General Makri, alias Mahfoud, is that he is a military officer who spent his entire career in the espionage services in the shadow of General Mohamed Medien, whom the military justice system has exonerated of the charges of "plotting against the state and the army" brought against him by the former military attorney general, a supporter of the Bouteflika-Gaid Salah duo. 

According to analysts of the power structure that has survived in Algeria since the country's independence in 1962, the chief of staff's decision is seen as a rapprochement with General Medien, who led Algeria's espionage for a quarter of a century before being dethroned by President Bouteflika in 2015 and sent to prison. 

General Nouredin Makri was put in place by Mohamed Medien in the 1980s to monitor, supervise and control the Polisario Front at its political headquarters in Algiers and military headquarters in Tindouf. He was then known as "Mahfud the Polisario" and all the young cadres of the independence movement were truly terrified of him. According to one of the young men at the time, "Mahfud would enter all the Polisario offices without knocking, to see who was there, who they were meeting and which foreigners - journalists or diplomats - the members of the Front were receiving".  "He knows the life and miracles of all the leaders, including their sins". 

The appointments in the army have coincided in time with three striking events: firstly, with the large-scale military exercises conducted by the army in the Tindouf region all along the border with Morocco; secondly with the launching of several rockets by the Polisario Front against Moroccan military positions in the Sahara region under Rabat's control; and thirdly with the regional anti-terrorism and anti-nuclear cooperation meeting, jointly organised by the US and Morocco, attended by Libya and Tunisia, with the deliberate absence of Algeria, which refused to participate.  

The Algerian military exercises, which involved live fire, were presented by the chief of staff, General Said Chengriha, as part of manoeuvres "in defence of Algerian borders in the face of dangers from abroad". The army chief limited himself to pointing out the objectives of defending Algeria's international borders, 6,500 kilometres with seven countries, and did not speak of "the new missions" that the Constitution, which came into force at the beginning of the year, attributes to the army and which allows it to intervene directly outside the country. This means that the Algerian army would only respond to an attack against its territorial sovereignty from outside the country. 

The other circumstance is the Polisario's rocket attack on Moroccan military positions; an attack that Rabat downplays and which has not disrupted the movement of vehicles and goods through the El Guerguerat crossing between Morocco and Mauritania, nor caused casualties, according to Moroccan official sources. 

The question of the attack, however, raises another dilemma: if the rockets were fired from the Sahrawi barracks in Tindouf inside Algerian territory, it raises the problem of a possible, albeit highly unlikely, Moroccan response. If, on the other hand, the shots were fired by a Sahrawi patrol in Saharan territory outside Morocco's defensive walls, whatever Rabat's attitude, this would not affect Algeria. 

The situation is nevertheless sufficiently worrying for French President Enmanuel Macron to have spoken by telephone first with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, hospitalised in Germany, and then with King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

In this context, the appointment of General Mahfud as head of the Algerian secret services could be a preliminary step towards creating the conditions for a two-way dialogue between Algeria and Morocco on all geopolitical issues, on the one hand, and between Algeria, Morocco and the Polisario, on the other, in order to glimpse a negotiated future based on the formula currently sponsored by Washington, of autonomy with international guarantees.