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The military of Algeria is the direct successor of the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), the armed wing of the nationalist National Liberation Front, which fought French colonial rule during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). It was converted and expanded into a regular army starting immediately after independence, and reached approximately its present size in the mid-1970s. The Algerian military élite has played a dominating role in Algerian politics ever since independence in 1962, when the army emerged as the only effective powerbroker in a shattered political landscape dominated by weak and competing political factions. Many high-ranking officers have held public office, and it is generally recognized that the army has been, and still is, consistently involved in national policy from behind the scenes. Under Col. Houari Boumédiène (1965-1978) state and army leadership was joined under his dominant and highly authoritarian presidency, but after his death, factionalization and rivalries within the military and political élites has been a major factor in Algerian politics. After being structured as a politicized "people's army" in the Boumédiène era, and retaining its allegiance to the FLN during the single-party years of Algerian history, the military forces were formally depoliticized in 1988, as a multi-party system was introduced. This, however, did not end military influence over Algerian politics. In 1992, fearing the installation of Sharia Law, which would result in Algeria becoming an Islamic State, the Algerian Army stopped free elections that were likely to bring an Islamist party to power. This triggered the Algerian Civil War, a conflict which is believed to have claimed 100-200,000 lives during the 1990s. Both the armed forces and Islamist insurgents have been severely criticized by outside observers for their conduct of the war on humanitarian and human rights grounds. The state and army Islamist resistance in the late 1990s, but local and sporadic fighting persists in 2009, along with occasional bomb attacks against government targets in major cities. The most active insurgent group is al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as GSPC. Since major fighting subsided in about 1997, the army has been engaged in refitting itself for the tasks of a conventional army, after more than a decade of anti-guerrilla action. The major part of Algeria's armed forces are directed towards the country's western border with Morocco and Western Sahara, where Algeria backed a guerrilla war (1975-1991) against Moroccan control by the POLISARIO Front, a politico-military organization of Sahrawi Bedouin based in Algeria's Tindouf province. Algeria has had longstanding border disagreements with Morocco, which, although now basically resolved, continue to linger as a factor in the consistently troubled but generally non-violent relations between the two neighbouring nations. The Algerian-Moroccan land border has been closed since 1994. Both countries's armed forces have engaged in costly equipment upgrades in recent years, clearly viewing each other as the principal threat to their sovereignty, and equally reluctant to let the other nation gain the upper hand militarily. By contrast, Algeria's post-independence border disagreements with Tunisia and Libya, which were at times a cause for poor relations, both appear to have been peacefully resolved (to its advantage). The Algerian army has also, especially in later years, been highly active along the country's border with northern Mali, where various insurgent movements are based. Algeria has fought only one brief war after independence (the Sand War, a border conflict with Morocco in 1963), but the country is also, like most Arab nations, formally at war with the state of Israel since 1948.
[edit] Composition
The army is under the control of the president (since 1999, Abdelaziz Bouteflika), who also is minister of National Defense. The US CIA estimates that military expenditures accounted for some 3.3% of GDP in 2006.[3] One and a half years of national military service is compulsory for males. The Armed forces of Algeria comprise:
Military forces are supplemented by a 150,000-member gendarmerie and 200,000-member Sûreté nationale or Metropolitan police force under the Ministry of the Interior[citation needed]. Military intelligence, recognized to have played a major political role, was long called Sécurité militaire (Military Security, SM) but reorganized in the late 1980s and early 1990s into today's Département du renseignement et de la sécurité (Department of Intelligence and Security, DRS). The DRS and its counter-espionage branch, DCE, assumed a leading role in the fight against the Islamist insurgency of the 1990s through a number of its own special forces units, as well as by establishing joint task force commands which assumed control over specialized military and police units. [edit] Sources of equipment and supportAlgeria's primary military supplier has been the former Soviet Union, which has sold various types of sophisticated equipment under military trade agreements, and the People's Republic of China[citation needed]. Some equipment has been purchased from Austria, Steyr AUG assault rifle the main weapon of Algerias military have been bought there. Algeria has attempted, in recent years, to diversify its sources of military material, but remains reliant on Russian supplies. Since independence in the 1960s, no foreign bases are known to have been allowed in Algeria, although in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly, large numbers of Soviet military advisors were stationed in the country. Since 2001, security cooperation with the United States has increased, and US forces have taken part in training missions in the country's Saharan south. In 2006, multi-billion purchases of Russian military equipment were made in order to upgrade the country's conventional arsenal. This included a deal by the Algerian Air Force to purchase 28 Su-30MKA and 36 MiG-29SMT for up to $3,5 Billion. However, those MiG-29s were returned to Russia in February 2008 because of poor quality of their airframe, after technical evaluations in Algeria.[4] In May 2008 the two governments agreed a new deal to replace those 36 MiG-29SMT by a new batch of 16 Su-30MKA which meet all requirements of Algerian Air Force, but the issue does not appear to be completely resolved in 2009. As of October 2009 it was reported that Algeria cancels weapons deal over Israeli parts[5]. [edit] Notes
[edit] References
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