Military of Algeria - Composition

Composition

The army is under the control of the president (since 1999, Abdelaziz Bouteflika), who also is minister of National Defense. The US CIA estimates that military expenditures accounted for some 3.3% of GDP in 2006. One and a half years of national military service is compulsory for males.

The Armed forces of Algeria comprise:

• The Land Forces (ANP)
• Navy of the Republic of Algeria
• Air Force
• Territorial Air Defense Force

Military forces are supplemented by a 150,000-member gendarmerie and 200,000-member Sûreté nationale or Metropolitan police force under the Ministry of the Interior. Military intelligence, recognized to have played a major political role, was long called Sécurité militaire (Military Security, SM) but reorganized in the late 1980s and early 1990s into today's Département du renseignement et de la sécurité (Department of Intelligence and Security, DRS). The DRS and its counter-espionage branch, DCE, assumed a leading role in the fight against the Islamist insurgency of the 1990s through a number of its own special forces units, as well as by establishing joint task force commands which assumed control over specialized military and police units.

Algeria is one of four Saharan states which will create a Joint Military Staff Committee, to be based at Tamanrasset in southern Algeria. Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, and Mali will take part.