Algeria’s upper house of parliament voted on Sunday to approve sending an army detachment to neighbouring Niger, a step that would end a 53-year refusal to deploy troops beyond the country’s borders.
The Council of the Nation, Algeria’s upper chamber, held a closed emergency session on Sunday after members were summoned on Thursday. A senator who spoke to the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity said 148 of the chamber’s 174 members voted in favour of the presidential decision. The troops would be tasked with securing oil facilities in Niger belonging to Algeria’s state energy company, Sonatrach, council members told local media.
The decision is not yet final. Under Article 91 of Algeria’s constitution, the president may order army units abroad only after a two-thirds majority in each house of parliament. The People’s National Assembly, the lower house, is expected to vote on the same decision on Sunday evening.
If both chambers approve, it will be the first Algerian military mission outside the country’s borders since the 1973 October War, when Algeria sent troops to fight alongside Egypt and Syria against Israel. For more than five decades since, Algiers has treated non-intervention as a pillar of its foreign policy, even as wars and insurgencies raged across its southern neighbourhood.
The vote follows a rapid warming between Algiers and Niamey. Last week, Niger’s Defence Minister, General Salifou Modi, travelled to Algeria for talks with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the army chief of staff, General Said Chanegriha. The two sides signed a military cooperation protocol, though its details were not made public.
It also follows a direct Algerian intervention in August. Tebboune confirmed earlier this month that Algeria sent fighter jets to Niger in late August to help thwart what he described as a coup attempt in the capital, Niamey. Algeria’s defence ministry said at the time that two patrols of four Sukhoi Su-30 aircraft, accompanied by an air-to-air refuelling plane, landed at Niamey airport at the request of Niger’s authorities, on what it called “a mission to support the Nigerien army in confronting an attempt to destabilise the brotherly state of Niger.”
Tebboune had already signalled that deeper involvement was coming. “We will protect Niger no matter what,” he said in a televised address on October 3. “There are countries, which I will not name, that have conspired against [Niger]. We stand by its side. Today, we have interests. We have reached agreements [with Niger] in the oil, mining and other sectors, and some are seeking to destroy all of this overnight.”
The two countries share a 960-kilometre desert border and have agreed to deepen cooperation against jihadist violence, cross-border crime and trafficking. Algeria donated four military helicopters to Niamey in recent months, and in June it inaugurated a 40-megawatt power plant built to supply electricity to Niamey and its surroundings.
The rapprochement is recent. Relations were strained for months after Algeria shot down a drone from Mali last year, prompting Niger — alongside fellow military-led neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso — to recall its ambassador from Algiers. The three countries, all now run by juntas, have since formed their own alliance, the Alliance of Sahel States, after breaking with the West African bloc ECOWAS.
Why this matters: Algeria is not a country that sends soldiers abroad lightly. Its refusal to do so has survived the Libyan civil war next door, a decade of jihadist insurgency across the Sahel, and repeated requests from allies. Breaking that taboo to guard oil installations in Niger therefore says as much about Algiers as it does about Niamey: a North African power with real economic stakes in the Sahel — oil, mining, electricity — is no longer content to watch the region’s security from behind its border. For Niger’s military government, which has faced persistent attacks by armed groups near its Algerian frontier and survived an alleged mutiny in August, Algerian boots on the ground would be the strongest outside backing it has received. And for the wider region, where France’s withdrawal has left a security vacuum that Russia, Turkey and Gulf states have all moved to fill, Algeria’s entry marks the arrival of a new, home-grown claimant — one that knows the desert, shares the border, and has now decided its interests are worth defending in person.
Neither parliament has said how many troops would deploy, where exactly they would be based, or when they would arrive. Those details, if the lower house approves on Sunday evening, will be the next test of how far Algeria’s new posture actually goes.
