Influence of Islamism to Algeria – United states relations at the turn of XX-XXI centuries

Abstract

The paper analyses US-Algeria relations through the prism of the Islamist movement which extensively operated in Algeria in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. In the late 20th century, Algeria passed through a decade-long period of civil strife, in which Islamist armed groups played a major role. In the 1990s, the Algerian government tried to attract attention of Western countries and especially the American one to dangerous increase of fundamentalist movements in hope to get their support. In the early 1990s, the US administration was occupied by the Middle East crisis, but since 1994 it turned to the Maghreb region with its own interests. First of all, there were interests of American oil companies that got a possibility to exploitation of gas and oil deposits in Algeria. The American companies accounted for 50% of all international investments to Algeria, and cooperation at oil and gas production industry was continued and reinforced in the 21st century. The author analyses the main tendencies and the change of priorities in interrelations between the two countries that got a powerful intensive in the new millennium. The election of Bouteflika to the post of President of Algeria in 1999 changed the country’s international policy to a more open and pragmatic dimension. New challenges of the century, such as world terrorism, opened an opportunity to strengthen contacts with the US at military field. Since 2001, Algeria strived to become one of the first and the most active fighters against extremism due to its experience of the war with the Islamists in the 1990s. Therefore military cooperation and fight against terrorism were extended within the NATO framework and became the second axe of bilateral relations. To the end of the 2010s, both countries were proud of their strategic interrelations, as they reached not only economical, but also political rapprochement in such important fields of cooperation as fight against terrorism and oil production industry.