Armaments in North Africa: the arms race and Algerian leadership

It is difficult to verify eact defence spending as military budgets are not disclosed. Algeria is known to have made major purcheses form Russia and.Morocco has purchased 24 Block 52 F-16s sigma class frigates from the Netherlands and has upgraded its armoured vehicles.

North Africa, especially Algeria and Morocco, excluding Libya which is in the throes of forming a new government, is a region ripe for arms dealers and has eclipsed 9% of world volume of their goods in 2011. According  to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Algeria leads the list of arms importers in Africa with
6.5 billion euros in spending last year which exceeds South Africa, the usual leader  in Africa for arms purchases however, it is still second with 3.7 billion euros.

In ten years, Algiers has increased its military budget by 1038%, and is only surpassed by Angola (+ 2059%, to EUR 2.8 billion annual expenditure in 2011). All sectors of the Algerian army were renovated. In July 2011, the German government has announced an agreement for deliveries of equipment to the tune of 10 billion over ten years, including armored personnel carriers, all-terrain vehicles or frigates. JA refers to the business daily Vedomosti Moscow, which reports that during the same period, negotiations were concluded for the delivery of 120 tanks by the Russian state company Rosoboronexport, which had already received orders for about 5.5 billion euros  for the Sukhoi fighter Su- 30MKA in 2006 and 2010.
 
In return, Russia has even cleared the Algerian debt owed to Moscow in Soviet times, or 3.6 billion euros. The conflict in Libya which removed Gaddafi undoubtedly encouraged Algeria to rearm in case Libya implodes and the security problems in the Sahel following the Tuareg capture of Northern Mali.

Algeria also heads the combined Sahel foces of Cemoc with its headquarters in Tamenrasset and is reportedly looking for helicopters to cover the vast desert regions of the Sahel.    

In Subsaharan Africa , there are lower budgets and higher risks.It is in sub-Saharan Africa that the main focus is on the spread of small arms. SIPRI estimates that "relatively small volumes of arms shipments have had a major impact on the dynamics of regional conflicts. ". Chad and Sudan, however,are under embargo,  but deliveries have continued as attested reports of arms traffic into Darfur, where serious violations of international humanitarian law were committed.

In DRC, the UN arms embargo was renewed  from 29 November 2011 until 30 November 2012. It has shown its limits and states that "all States shall take the necessary measures to prevent the supply, sale or transfer directly or indirectly" of firearms to "all persons and non-governmental entities conducting activities in the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo ".

Belgium has provided, between 2006 and 2008, nearly 230 million weapons to the regular Congolese army. However, the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (Grip) noted in 2009 that many weapons held by civilians and armed groups in eastern countries came from the arsenals of the State military forces.

Arab spring and fight against terrorism?

The effect of the Arab Spring are not negligible. While the revolutions taking place in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, Algeria was infact negotiating with Germany and Russia to equip its armour.This was one way to guard against an "internal threat" and prevent the fallout from the Libyan crisis, the crisis in Mali has accentuated this need while Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)is becoming more important in in the Sahel, JA observes.

Neighboring Morocco is no exception. Maritime cooperation between Morocco and NATO on the shores of the Mediterranean and has increased the kingdom expenditure as has the annual African Lion joint operations with US forces south of Agadir.

The global fight against terrorism launched in 2002 by the Bush administration justifies the interest of the organization for the Atlantic region, identified as an area of ​​transit and trafficking, which has become a haven for terrorist networks. As for the  Navy, Rabat hassigned contracts with the Netherlands in September 2009 for 555 million euros covering three frigates built by the Dutch company Schelde Naval Shipbuilding in Demen.

The competition between Algeria and Morocco in the field of weapons is not new.They hold an arms race against the backdrop of tensions in Western Sahara since Spain withdrew from the area and the support of Algeria  was given to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). If the Kingdom is far behind its neighbour its  budget which JA estimates at EUR 2.5 billion, represents between 3.5 and 4% of its gross domestic product (GDP), as well as in Algeria (against less than 2% in France for example).

Aviation in particular is at the forefront of this évoluion. In 2006, Algeriasigned the Algiers agreement to acquire sixty combat aircraft, the Su-famous 30MKA, with Russia. And, a year later, it was the turn of Rabat to order 24 F-16 fighters from the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin, for 1.67 billion euros. Not without having to declinethe offer of France for the Rafale,However Paris still, for 350 million euros, modernized the Kingdom's fleet of Mirage F-1s.

A military frenzy that each year keeps everyone happy: Russia, which still appears to be the Eldorado in terms of the weapons market, alongside Germany and the Czech Republic, Italy and France which have the status of preferred suppliers to Algeria. The French defence industry plays well on all fronts in the arms race in the region. For 2007 alone, it had sold in Algiers about 36 million light weapons while providing 25 million of the same type of material to Rabat. Not to mention its attempts to sell Rafale to Gaddafi's Libya, JA observes. Algeria was the largest importer of weapons in Africa in 2011and given the uncertainties it faces on its borders with Libya and the Sahel to the South this is no surprise.