David Cameron’s visit to Algiers last week, the first ever by a British Prime Minister, underscores Algeria’s growing importance in the war against al-Qaeda. But it is an extraordinarily complex ally in the war. The generals who run Algeria, the Arab world’s largest remaining police state, were surprised and embarrassed by the al-Qaeda attack on the Amenas gas facility in January. Their worry now is that the attack will raise questions about their one strong competency, providing stability and fighting terror. They are the West’s ally but a difficult and very suspicious partner.

Cameron and his hosts agreed to develop a strategic partnership to fight terrorism, and especially al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, now that the French have driven it out of Mali’s cities. In practice, this will mean closer ties with Algeria’s Departement du Renseignement et de la Securite, DRS, one of the world’s most feared intelligence services.

Algeria is geographically the largest country in Africa and in the Arab world. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 79, has run the country since his election in 1999.  He ended a brutal and bloody civil war that began after an army coup in 1991 that overturned free elections that had been won by an Islamist party. In the violence that followed an estimated 200,000 died. In 1994, Algerian terrorists hijacked a jet bound for Paris with the intent of smashing it into the Eiffel tower, the plot that inspired 9/11. The army reacted with brute force. Algiers in the mid 1990s was as dangerous a city as any in the world. Bouteflika offered amnesty and initiated reforms to win over an exhausted nation. Now in his third term, he was reelected in 2009 with 90% of the vote in what critics charge was massive vote fraud.  

Algeria shares all the same demographic time bombs as its neighbors to the east, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, which have had revolutions against their police states in the last two years. Seventy per cent of Algeria’s 35 million people are under the age of 30, 30% are under the age of 15 and thus have no memory of the 1990s nightmare. Unemployment among young men has been a major problem since the 1970s despite vigorous efforts to reduce it. While women can participate in the work force and are well educated by regional standards, they too are often unemployed or under-employed. University graduates often find they can not get jobs commensurate with their education skills. Groups of angry young men can be seen every day in every Algerian city.