Algeria’s Borderlands: A Country Unto Themselves

By Dalia Ghanem 

In Algeria, state formation remains an evolving process, as evidenced by the situation in the country’s northeastern border regions. With Algerian officials in these areas permitting smuggling of petrol and certain other commodities over the border with Tunisia and smugglers weeding out security threats even as they go about their illicit trade, the two ostensibly adversarial parties complement each other. This unusual relationship furthers the intrusion of the state into citizens’ livelihoods even as it manipulates state authority.

Key Themes

• The interplay between law enforcement and smugglers calls into question much of the conventional wisdom regarding centralized authority in a modern unitary state. In Algeria, smuggling has emerged as an integral part of the (ongoing) process of state formation.

• State neglect and a shortage of jobs have kept most localities in Algeria’s northeastern “borderlands” poor and underdeveloped. As a result, smuggling has taken root, and for some families it is a career bequeathed from one generation to the next.

• Long tolerated by law enforcement officials, cross-border smuggling has over time created a parallel economy. Today, it accounts for most trade between Algeria and Tunisia.

Findings

• For Algerian borderland communities, smuggling contraband into and from Tunisia is a job prospect at once justifiable and lucrative. Smugglers themselves view the border not as the end of their country and the beginning of another, but as an artificially erected barrier that it is necessary to circumvent.

• From the perspective of local authorities, smuggling functions as a safety valve that relieves some of the economic pressure felt by the inhabitants of Algeria’s neglected eastern provinces. Moreover, smugglers enhance the security services’ efforts to keep the dreaded triple threat of drugs, weapons, and jihadis at bay.

• In the immediate sense, the tacit alliance forged between smugglers and local authorities blurs the distinction between legal and illegal and erases points along the border between Algeria and Tunisia. In the larger picture, it grants otherwise marginal actors, whether shadowy smugglers or lowly border officials, the ability to circumvent state policy in a manner both organized and sustained.

Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020. 23p.