1. Algeria: Using its Resources to Define the Future
- Author:
- Henry S. Ensher
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Council of American Ambassadors
- Abstract:
- When asked about the effects of the Arab Spring on their country, Algerians tend to say that they knew the nearby revolutions would be dangerous to them, and point to extremist takeover and foreign intervention in northern Mali and the terrorist attack at In Amenas. Looking further back, they will say that Algeria had its own political spring in the late 1980s, but it led straight to the terrorist violence of the 1990s that resulted in the deaths, they say, of 200,000 Algerians, a decade of development and progress lost and psychological damage and divisions in their society. Algerians point to three troubling developments from recent events in their region: the rise of extremist forces to political power in their region, the trafficking of large numbers of weapons from Libya and the chaos of northern Mali, leading to foreign military intervention, which Algerians find deeply troubling, given their own history as a colonized people.
- Political Geography:
- Libya, Arabia, Algeria, and Northern Mali