Denver – General Said Chengriha, the Chief of Staff of Algeria’s People’s National Army, is reported to have recently visited France as part of a “secret mission” from the Algerian government. According to unnamed sources, the secret visit’s primary objective was the discussion of the Sahel region with French security officials.
The talks were likely motivated by France’s announcement this week that it will end Operation Barkhane, its seven-year counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism mission in the Sahel.
The mission ostensibly focused on rooting out radical Islamist groups that were operating in the Sahel region, although critics have long accused France of exacerbating chaos in the region. During its peak, the mission stretched across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Now that French President Macron has announced the removal of French troops from the increasingly fragile Sahel region, it seems Algeria may be using the situation to try and plan an international test deployment of its troops and expand its regional influence.
After a constitutional reform late last year, the Algerian parliament has now been allowed to work in conjunction with the president to send troops on international deployments. In this context, it is understood that Algeria will likely exploit the security vacuum that will be left in France’s absence as an opportunity to attempt to initiate an international mission for its troops.
As Algeria seems to look at neighboring Mali’s ongoing issues with Islamist groups as a deployment opportunity, Algerian officials maintain that “these jihadist elements have entered Algerian territory and threaten its national security.”
In addition to the situation in the Sahel, Algeria’s President Tebboune also announced that the country’s military is “ready to intervene in Libya” in a statement to the Algerian state media.
Tebboune’s statements suggest that Algeria views Libya’s instability and the situation in the greater Sahel region as a platform to showcase its influence and importance as a regional force.
In an interview with French public radio RFI, Algerian government spokesperson Ammar Belhimer stated it was “necessary to consolidate the constructions and local state entities” involved in the situation, likely to justify a unilateral take over the situation by Algerian military forces.
The Algerian army has been largely inactive in the international sphere since its brief attempts to interfere in Moroccan affairs in the Western Sahara in the 1970s. The army is mostly made of conscripts, and has been criticized by many as “corrupt.”
