Algerian parliamentarians spoke out on Sunday October 25 in favor of sending military forces to Niger. According to Le Figarothis vote simply implements the constitutional provisions, introduced in 2020, allowing the head of state to decide to send units outside national borders in the event of absolute necessity.
The 2020 constitutional amendment aims to remove the ambiguity around the official doctrine of non-intervention of the Algerian army, which is in fact not applied to the letter: the Algerian military have intervened abroad on several occasions in recent decades, notably during the Israeli-Arab wars or to lend support, in 1976, to Syrian troops in Lebanon.
According to Young Africathe Niger authorities asked Algiers to dispatch forces to their territory. According to the same media, units of the Algerian army will have to occupy there Madama military base, located around a hundred kilometers from the Libyan border. This base was occupied until 2023 by French troops, who had been deployed In as part of the anti-terrorist operation Barkhane.
Sending Algerian troops would only complete a movement already started: on August 30, the day after an attempted putsch against the President of the Republic of Niger, General Abdourahamane Tiani, the Algerian army mobilized at his neighbor’s house four Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, an Ilyushin Il-78 tanker aircraft and an Ilyushin Il-76 military transport aircraft. The Algerian authorities had then justified this military operation by the need to provide a “support for the Nigerien army to face an attempt to destabilize the country ».
