Trouble in Algeria
The president and the police
A mysterious murder exposes a rift within the country’s ruling circle
Mar 4th 2010 | Cairo | from the print edition
LATE last month Chouaib Oultache walked into Algeria's police headquarters with a score to settle. What happened next is not entirely clear, but official reports say Mr Oultache pumped three bullets into the head of Ali Tounsi, the country's powerful police chief, before being shot and wounded himself.
A few years ago, Mr Tounsi had hired Mr Oultache, a retired air force colonel and a close friend, to head the police helicopter unit. By the official account, Mr Oultache went crazy after reading in the newspapers that he was being investigated for corruption. He may have suspected a betrayal by his old friend.
But many Algerians link the murder to a bigger drama, the increasingly bitter feud that pits President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his entourage against the military junta that has ruled the country behind the scenes for the past two decades.
In recent years many of the generals, collectively dubbed Le Pouvoir (The Power), have died or retired. A kingpin of that era, General Larbi Belkheir, died in January after a long illness that left a vacuum which Mr Bouteflika filled to puff up his own power. He put loyalists in key posts, notably at Sonatrach, the state oil monopoly that provides 98% of Algeria's hard-currency earnings. Buoyed by record oil income in 2008, Mr Bouteflika boosted infrastructure spending, reversed tentative steps to free the economy and secured constitutional amendments that, in effect, granted him the presidency for life.
Last year Mr Bouteflika restricted imports, hurting some well-connected businessmen. Foreign investors began to be scolded for not reinvesting more of their profits. Some, such as Egypt's Orascom Telecom, which owns the profitable mobile-telephone network, Djezzy, received presidential signals that they should sell up and decamp.
Now, Le Pouvoir may be fighting back against Mr Bouteflika. In January the main intelligence agency, headed by the strongest of the remaining old guard of generals, Muhammad Tewfik Mediène, opened investigations into corruption at Sonatrach. The agency put the company's boss, a Bouteflika ally, and other top directors under arrest or on probation on suspicion of doing too well out of procurement. The accusations were similar to those against Mr Oultache. At least one senior minister close to Mr Bouteflika is said to be under threat too. Tension between the presidency and those in the camp close to the intelligence service is said to be high.
On both sides of the rivalry stand the “mujahideen”, the term for men from the generation that fought in Algeria's war of independence against France. For months Mr Tounsi, a member of the intelligence service's coterie, who tripled the ranks of the police during 15 years at its head, had been waging an increasingly public dispute with the interior minister, Yazid Zerhouni, a Bouteflika loyalist. Rumours suggested that Mr Tounsi would be forced out. But before his assassination he had fought back, recently telling journalists, “A mujahid never resigns.” Perhaps that is Algeria's real problem.
from the print edition | Middle East and Africa
