Algeria and its neighbors matter a great deal to the rest of Africa. For the United States, the interrelationships are perhaps most painfully obvious in the case of Libya, where the United States’ failure to anticipate lasting diplomatic blowback from disregarding the African Union, and more importantly an insufficient grasp of the security consequences of Libyan disorder for states like Mali and Nigeria, were among the serious mistakes that informed deeply flawed policy. But the United States government has long been of two minds about how to think about northern African states. For some agencies, like the Department of Defense, states like Algeria and Libya are part of the continental whole. But for the State Department, northern Africa is part of the Middle Eastern Bureau, while the Africa Bureau is responsible for sub-Saharan states.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 03, 2019 18:11 UTC