US Report: “Algerian Army, the Only One Able To Smother Terrorism in North Africa Region”

North Africa is expected to become a key defense market, led by regional military heavyweight Algeria, increasingly the linchpin of the battle against Al-Qaida in Africa, amid major upgrades for military and security forces, a new US study says.

Algeria will remain the continent’s leading defense market because of its procurement program for boosting its counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capabilities, the Strategic Defense Intelligence (SDI) market research group reports.

The study, “The Future of the Algerian Defense Industry”, envisages North Africa – primarily Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya – becoming a major defense market by 2017.

Despite its political and economic constraints, “Algeria remains one of Africa’s attractive defense markets, with a defense spending capability that is expected to increase in the forecast period, primarily owing to increased energy exports and an arms race in the North African region”, noted SDI, which is based in Maryland, USA.

It estimated the Algerian defense market will maintain a steady growth rate of 6.2 percent a year until 2017, largely because of a force modernization program amid a growing terrorist insurgency across the region.

“Another factor driving Algeria’s defense procurement is the neglect the industry has faced for many year”, the report observed.

During the Cold War, Algeria, although officially in the non-aligned camp, obtained the vast majority of its military equipment from the Soviet Union.

Since the Soviet collapse, it has continued doing business with Moscow, which is likely to be the recipient of any major arms purchases made by the Algerian government.

Even so, SDI saw “the opening up of Algeria’s market to suppliers other than those in Russia”, and said that “is expected to make it an exciting proposition for foreign companies looking to enter the market”.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London observed in the 2012 edition of its annual Military Balance that lists global military expenditures that among Middle Eastern energy exporters Algeria’s defense spending increased by 44 percent in 2011.

Algeria has suffered from terrorism more than most regional states. It was engulfed by a costly war against armed Islamist radicals throughout the 1990s.

The extremist Islamists’ insurgency was crushed by the Algerian Army and security forces but it spawned Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the terror group that’s central to the current radical Islamist threat that now stretches from Morocco to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and is moving southward into Nigeria and East Africa.

The Algerians currently head a joint counter-terrorism program with other regional states.

The Algerian military has given no indication of what its procurement program entails. But Arab military analysts say it focuses primarily on counterterrorism, such as helicopters, drones and rapid deployment ground systems.

Overall, defense industry analysts estimate that North African defense spending will exceed $20 billion over the next decade.