🇩🇿 ALGERIA STABILITY TRACKER

Algeria is a presidential republic, but real power sits with le pouvoir — the opaque military-security establishment built around the People's National Army (ANP) and the intelligence services. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune (re-elected September 2024) governs with the military's backing.

The 2019 Hirak protest movement forced out long-ruling Abdelaziz Bouteflika. A bicameral parliament (People's National Assembly + Council of the Nation) and the historic FLN remain central, but politics is tightly managed.

Algeria severed relations with Morocco in August 2021, closed the GME gas pipeline that October, and the land border has been shut since 1994.

The rivalry centers on Western Sahara: Algeria arms and hosts the Polisario Front / SADR (Tindouf refugee camps) against Moroccan control — the Maghreb's defining inter-state fault line.

Oil and gas generate the overwhelming majority of export revenue, channeled through the state energy giant Sonatrach. Algeria is a major gas supplier to Europe — its weight rose sharply as the EU diversified away from Russian gas after 2022.

That fiscal dependence on hydrocarbon prices is the country's core structural vulnerability.

Algeria's long borders with Mali, Niger, and Libya expose it to Sahel instability — jihadist spillover (AQIM has Algerian roots), arms flows, and migration. Algiers holds a firm non-interventionist doctrine and is wary of foreign militaries on its frontiers, including Russian (Wagner / Africa Corps) and former French deployments in the Sahel.

Algeria is one of Russia's largest arms customers and retains a historic non-aligned, anti-colonial posture — while simultaneously deepening energy ties with Europe. It has signaled interest in BRICS. The balancing act between Moscow and the West is a recurring tell.

Stable but rigid. Hydrocarbon dependence, youth unemployment, and housing pressure are the chronic strains; the Hirak's legacy shapes a managed political space. Tebboune's 2024 re-election consolidated the status quo.