Archive

NARCO ANALYSIS: Algeria's New(ish) Foreign Policy

2026/05/20

Back in February during a roundtable discussion in Washington, DC, Algeria’s Ambassador to the US Sabri Boukadoum said that Algeria’s foreign policy is pragmatic, a comment that elicited pushback from the roundtable’s other participants, who argued that Algeria’s foreign policy is too rigidly ideological. What Amb. Boukadoum was alluding to is a subtle evolution in Algeria’s approach to foreign policy that has begun to take shape over the last couple of months.

NARCO ANALYSIS: The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline

2026/02/17

On 16 February, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced that he had ordered Algeria’s state-owned energy company Sonatrach to begin work on the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project as soon as Ramadan ends on or around 20 March 2026. The announcement came following a meeting in Algiers with Nigerien President Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani, which itself signaled a rapprochement between Algiers and Niamey. The proposed pipeline would tie Nigerian gas infrastructure into Algerian gas distribution networks to Europe via Niger. Were it to come to fruition, it would simultaneously expand Nigerian gas export capacity, provide energy impoverished Niger with a reliable energy source, offset Algerian domestic gas consumption, and increase European gas supply. The project, which has been on the books for a quarter of a century, is neither impossible nor without challenges.

NARCO ANALYSIS: Algeria, the US, Morocco, & Western Sahara

2026/02/12

During a routine Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on February 3rd, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) asked the hearing’s witnesses if the Trump administration would apply Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) to Algeria were Algiers to order Russian fighter jets. Passed in 2017, CAATSA mandates sanctions on Iran, North Korean, and Russia, and allows secondary sanctions on foreign entities that transact with Tehran, Pyongyang, and Moscow. The response from Robert Palladino, a senior bureau official at State Department, was non-committal: Algerian purchases of Russian military equipment “may trigger” sanctions which is something that the State Department continues to “watch closely.”

NARCO ANALYSIS: Algeria 2026

2025/12/17

Algeria had a good enough 2025. No fireworks. Nothing exceptional. But nothing terrible either. Algeria is pretty impervious to international developments – sure, it’s impacted by them on the margins, but Algeria’s whole decoupled approach does insulate it from major shocks. It suffered some diplomatic setbacks. It had some domestic victories. But there was nothing that constituted a structural shift.

NARCO ANALYSIS: The Africa Atlantic Pipeline: a solution in search of a problem

2025/11/18

Geoff D. Porter

Morocco likes big. Big is good. In 1987, cooks in Agadir made the world’s biggest couscous. In 1993, it built the world’s biggest minaret and the world’s biggest concentrated solar power plant in 2016. The world’s biggest soccer stadium is currently under construction in Casablanca. And Morocco wants to build the world’s longest submarine natural gas pipeline. 

NARCO ANALYSIS: Libya's Illicit Oil Sales

2025/08/18

The fragile, implicitly understood arrangment that has kept Libya’s oil revenue flowing – and by extension, the country somewhat stitched together – is at risk of completely collapsing. Historically, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) sold oil. The proceeds of those sales were deposited in the Tripoli government’s dollar-denominated account. But that arrangement is finally starting to unravel, the result of years of backroom wheeling and dealing to undermine the NOC’s monopoly on oil exports and the Libyan Central Bank’s (CBL) control of oil revenue.

NARCO ANALYSIS: Avoiding Africa's Next Water War

2025/06/03

In 2023, General Michael E. Langley, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, warned that African countries face new destabilizing challenges, including “climate change [that] is increasing desertification.” One year earlier, Morocco, a close US ally on the northwestern edge of the Sahara Desert, had already started taking bold steps to get ahead of the negative effects of climate change. In particular, it began building a series of dams to better manage its increasingly precarious water resources. Scheduled for completion between 2026 and 2029, the dams will lessen the impact of more frequent and more violent floods, and they will allow Morocco to adapt to longer and more acute droughts. However, while the dams proactively mitigate the risks climate change poses to Morocco’s domestic stability, they are catalysts for broader regional destabilization.

NARCO ANALYSIS: How Many Heads Does the Starfish Have?

2025/05/01

In 2023, an article in the scientific journal Nature determined that starfish’s arms are not in fact arms but are extensions of their heads. Starfish don’t have bodies so much as they have multiple heads. The article described them as disembodied multiheaded creatures.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was re-elected to a second five-year term in September 2024. Part of Tebboune’s success as president during his first term and part of what contributed to his electoral success for a second term was that he recognized that the presidency is not the only power pole in the Algerian political system. It’s one head. Among other heads.

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