Foreign Policy and the Global War on Terror in the Reproduction of Algerian State Power

This article reveals how Algeria has managed its foreign policy since the "Dirty War" of the 1990s, especially through its post 9/11 alliance with the USA, to re-establish itself in the international community and to re-equip its army with modern weaponry. Its relationship with the US, founded on the two states' collusion in the fabrication of terrorism and their subsequent pursuance of the global war on terror (GWOT), is shown to be contradictory. By strengthening the Algerian mukhabarat (police state) and enabling it to become even more repressive, it has exacerbated the conditions that might lead to its own "Arab Spring".