But what underpins Algeria’s foreign policy? With whom does it engage and why?
In the Land of a Million Martyrs, the legacy of the past looms large. Everything in Algeria both foreign and domestic is framed by the prevailing interpretation of the legacy of the moudjahidin who fought for Algeria’s independence. The moudjahidin were pure and upstanding, honest and straight. Shenanigans and chicanery were unbecoming of and beneath them.
This is but one interpretation of the moudjahidin and shuhada’s legacy. They were far from uniform. There are innumerable interpretive hagiographies of the moudjahidin and multiple ways in which their comportment could inform contemporary Algerian policymaking. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the moudjahidin as steadfast and forthright prevails. It is the base upon which the five pillars of Algeria’s foreign policy are founded.
These are the pillars that support and inform policymakers’ decisions. They are not perfect, they are often only partially implemented, and they can be contradictory, but understanding them is crucial to anyone trying to understand how Algeria crafts its foreign policy.
1.Algeria does not chase trends
Algerian foreign policy is not fickle. It focuses on the longue durée. The war for independence was incessant struggle. It took years. This is the framework for Algeria’s actions. It is not about responding to the day-to-day, it is not jumping from one hot topic to the next. It is persevering, even if things are not going Algeria’s way. What if the moudjahidin had not been strong-willed? Algeria would not be the proud, independent, sovereign state that it is today. Algeria must be obstinate. It worked then. It will work now.
The respect for the legacy of the moudjahidin, however, is also a disguise for Algeria’s burdensome bureaucracy. Everyone – Algerian and non-Algerian alike – knows that the bureaucracy is the unruly offspring of job creation schemes, a perverted French administrative inheritance, and a predilection for doing nothing rather than possibly doing something wrong.
The primacy of the moudjahidin’s perseverance coupled with Algeria’s bureaucracy means that Algeria doesn’t chase the shiny object.
2.The truth will prevail
Another manifestation of the prevailing interpretation of the moudjahidin’s legacy is that Algeria wholeheartedly believes the truth will prevail. Walking the walk is more important than talking the talk. The moudjahidin faced all sorts of smears. They were derided as criminals, as terrorists, as less than human. But the truth prevailed. They were freedom fighters. The slayers of injustice. Truth was on their side. And they were vindicated. They didn’t tell stories. They fought real battles. Put up or shut up. The moudjahidin undoubtedly put up, many making the ultimate sacrifice.
But an extension of Algeria’s contemporary “talk is cheap” version of the moudjahidin means that Algeria believes that it does not need to communicate. If the truth is on its side, then the truth is on its side. خلص. But in a post-truth, disinformation, and misinformation age, Algeria’s conviction constrains policy.
Cleaving to, or maybe hiding behind, the prevailing interpretation of the moudjahidin’s legacy means that it cedes the information space, which in turn means that Algeria cedes narrative control. Other countries that do public relations, that say one thing and do another, control the narrative, which typically either defames Algeria or elides it altogether.
The notion that truth will prevail is also the reason that Algeria does not hire lobbyists. Other countries hire lobbyists to tell their stories and to get lawmakers to adopt favorable policy positions. It’s pay to play.
But Algeria believes that it does not need to pay people to carry its water, because after all, the truth will prevail: while not everyone can see the truth now, they will see it eventually and Algeria will be proven correct without sullying the moudjahidin’s legacy with slippery lobbying.
In reality, the moudjahidin were storytellers par excellence, narrative manipulators according to their audience. Their public relations, their personal charisma, their mastery of the story arc were central to the National Liberation Front’s success. Algeria fought for independence not just on the battlefield, but on the radio, on the television, in newspapers, and in the halls of the US Congress. Algeria today could do public relations and it could lobby, but that would mean rescripting who the moudjahidin were and how they did what they did.
3.Sovereignty for all
The lesson that Algeria took from its colonial degradation and the moudjahidin’s fight was that no other country should suffer the same. No country should be occupied by another. Every country should be sovereign. As sovereign states, each country should be able to determine for itself what is in its interest. It is not for any one country to dictate to another what it should do. In short, Algeria does not want anyone to interfere in its domestic policy and by extension it does not want any country interfering in another country’s affairs.
Of course, this is a difficult circle to square. How does Algeria claim to be a defender of states’ sovereignty, but not act when one sovereign state interferes in the affairs of another sovereign state? Moreover, how does Algeria explain what can be seen as its own interference in other states’ affairs? This paradoxical posture notwithstanding, sovereignty for all remains a fundamental foundation of Algeria foreign policy. In fact, it is the exceptions that prove the rule.
4.Algeria is friendly with everyone and friends with no one
An inverse extension of Algeria’s embrace of non-interference is that it is friendly with everyone. If a foreign capital invites Algeria to visit, then Algeria is likely to oblige. However, Algeria does not see any visit as entailing exclusivity. Algeria is an independent actor, and it will entertain all comers, but that does not mean it feels beholden to relationships. Ultimately, it was the moudjahidin and the moudjahidin alone who won Algeria’s independence, and it will be Algeria and Algeria alone that will safeguard its future.
Other countries, however, do not share Algeria’s take-it-or-leave-it approach to diplomatic relations. They assign more meaning to Algeria’s relations than Algeria does itself. Moreover, other countries believe that engaging with Algeria should result in commitments, in influence over Algiers’ behavior. That Algeria does not imbue diplomatic engagements with the same obligations and reciprocity as its counterparties leaves other countries flummoxed.
Take Algeria’s initiative to join the BRICS. Washington, Brussels, and London see this as an afront: Algiers is turning its back on the West by aligning itself with the BRICS. Or take President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s visit to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin which ruffled DC’s feathers.
But Algeria sees itself in a post-Newtonian multi-polar world: for every action it does not follow that there is an equal and opposite reaction. Algeria is friendly with everyone and friends with no one. Maxims like “the enemy of my enemy…” don’t translate. In the end, the moudjahidin could count on no one to have their backs, and neither can Algeria.
5.Redlines – Western Sahara & Palestine
Although Algeria is friendly with everyone, it nevertheless does have foreign policy redlines. The first is Western Sahara. The second is Palestine. Algeria argues that they have been denied the right of self-determination by their occupiers.
The moudjahidin were occupied, but they threw the colonizer’s yoke and won self-determination. To honor their sacrifice, modern Algeria is obliged to advocate for the occupied. After all, “there but for the grace of God were we.”
Algeria’s positions on Western Sahara and Palestine are non-negotiable. When the US shifted its policy on Western Sahara in 2020, Algeria said the US had “stabbed it in the back.” Similarly, when Madrid reversed its five-decade old policy of neutrality in 2021, Algeria suspended its friendship treaty with Spain. In regard to Israel, Algeria will not even say the Zionist Entity’s name and has blocked companies with assets or activities in Israel from doing business in Algeria.
The flipside of Algeria’s intransigent position on Western Sahara and Palestine is that Algeria is allied with any country that supports Western Saharan self-determination and the end of Israeli occupation. Supporting these causes earns Algeria’s enduring embrace. Much like Senator John F. Kennedy’s support for the moudjahidin’s right of self-determination in 1957. A gesture that Algeria still honors.
Policy is the product of recollections, however imperfect, of what has happened and the wish to see something happen. For Algeria, it is the real and imagined memories of the moudjahidin’s achievements and a desire to recreate that heyday today.
But memories play tricks, they distort, and they exclude. And in the case of Algeria, like a picture frame, a cadre, the recollection of who the moudjahidin were, what they did, and how they did it simultaneously shapes Algerian foreign policy and limits it.
