What was a science fiction scenario is becoming a political reality. The Algerian regime is in the sights of the American administration. Republican and Democratic senators are calling for the imposition of sanctions on the Algerian regime to punish it for its support for the Russian military adventure in Ukraine.
Even the recent scandal of the skulls of the Algerian mujahideen, a large part of which turned out to be Fake, handed over by France as a sign of reconciliation and unpinned by the very serious New York Times, is not to be removed from this atmosphere to be cut with a knife. between the American administration and the Algerian regime.
The American atmosphere with regard to Algeria is not to be taken lightly. In its military showdown with Vladimir Putin, Washington is counting its friends and identifying its allies.
And the Americans have just realized that there is a country in North Africa, which not only participates in military maneuvers with the Russians, but is also active in feeding their war machine by compulsively buying their armaments. . Not to mention its gas policy with regard to European allies, which could be mistaken for political blackmail intended to increase pressure from Moscow on the European neighborhood.
In the eyes of the Americans, Algiers is an arrow in the Russian arsenal. Moreover, the obscure positioning of the Algerian regime with regard to the Russian paramilitary force Wagner and its activism in Africa, says a lot about the complicity of the Algerian regime with the geostrategic agenda of Vladimir Putin.
In the current sequence, the Algerian regime is called upon to make choices that may seem painful: Either review its international alliances to the point of denying its intimacy with the Russians and normalizing its relations with its neighbors, or persist in these choices and run the risk of becoming a rogue state, an unenviable title that it will share with Iran and North Korea.
As of today, no signal has come to indicate a change of strategy on the part of the Algerian regime. Military maneuvers with the Russians are maintained, such as the visit of Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune. Equally insistent is the new political and military alliance that the Algerian regime is designing and putting into practice with Iran, the declared enemy of the free world and the Arab world.
The threats of American sanctions are particularly aimed at the Algerian generals who have been involved in major arms contracts with Russia and who today participate in feeding the Russian war machine in Ukraine.
This simple threat is likely to sow discord within the Algerian leadership. Between those who would like to side with the Americans in their war against Russia and Iran, and those who want to challenge Washington and provoke ruptures with the Mediterranean neighborhood for the benefit of Russian escalation in the region.
Algiers, which is preparing to host an Arab summit, is under the beam of great international suspicion. The Algerian regime cannot act as if this international pressure did not exist. And he cannot correct his choices without gratings within his army, without some form of acceleration of his immediate history. Hence this strange impression which currently reigns in Algiers that the worst scenarios are possible.
The recent Franco-Algerian rapprochement cannot prevent future American sanctions against the Algerian regime. In his doctrine of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron fundamentally shares the American convictions that a country like Algeria can only serve as a Russian asset in the instrumentalization of gas and in logistical aid it grants Russia’s armed wing in Africa, the Wagner group.
This paramilitary force, aided by the Algerian regime, is the one found at the forefront of the fight against the French presence in certain African countries, as Mali and Burkina Faso have recently shown.
The Algerian regime finds itself at a crossroads. His attitudes of defiance and rupture undergo an hour of truth which will not pass without consequences on the physiognomy of Algerian power and on its capacity for nuisance at the regional level. His military support for the armed militias of the Polisario, his troubled game with the terrorist organizations of the Sahel and his disposition to encourage Iranian establishment and influence in the region will thus be brought into the international spotlight.
As usual and in an atavistic manner, the supporters of this Algerian regime accused Morocco of being behind this American charge against the Algerian army. This approach has the particularity of accentuating the short-sightedness of those who manage the affairs of the country and could push them tomorrow to adopt a scorched earth policy.