In a country run with Soviet-style secrecy, nobody is sure
how sick Bouteflika is. But despite an official bulletin last
week saying he was recovering from a minor stroke, most believe
the 76-year-old must be seriously ill to have disappeared from
public view for so long.

France’s Le Point magazine cited medical sources as saying
some of his vital organs had been badly affected. Algerian
newspaper editor Hichem Aboud said that, according to his
sources, Bouteflika – who survived cancer in 2005 – was in a
deep coma.

French and Algerian officials declined comment but local
media have hinted that the country is preparing for a new era.

The loss of Bouteflika would deprive Algeria of the last of
the old guard who steered the country from independence in 1962
through civil war against Islamist insurgents in the 1990s to a
period of stability funded by vast oil and gas resources.

It would also lead to a bumpy transfer of power before
presidential elections due in April 2014 at a time when
Algeria’s neighbours – among them Mali, Tunisia and Libya – are
facing a revival of Islamist militancy in the region.

Algeria experienced that militancy in January when gunmen
from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) attacked a gas plant
in the south, killing 38 people, including foreign hostages.

But Bouteflika’s passing would not plunge Africa’s largest
country into crisis.

A paternalistic state apparatus which includes a secretive
military-intelligence establishment is trusted to manage the
transition by a population too scarred by the 1990s to risk a
return to conflict. Algeria also has $200 billion in foreign
exchange reserves to buy off protesters if needed.

“Algeria is not based on individuals; it is based on
institutions,” said one Algerian security expert. “Algeria will
be stable, even with Bouteflika gone.”

NO UNREST

In the capital Algiers, a Mediterranean city whose elegant
French-style apartment blocks with their white paint and blue
shutters appear frozen in time, there is little sign of unrest
despite anxieties about the president.

Nobody is even sure where Bouteflika is; some say he is
still in France’s Val-de-Grace military hospital; others that he
has gone to Switzerland. Aboud, the newspaper editor, said he
had already been brought back to Algeria.

“I don’t think there will be instability. There are no
actors who could lead such instability,” he said. “And Algerians
are also tired after 10 years of terrorism (in the 1990s).

Doctors and teachers have been striking to demand better pay
and conditions in state health and education. Their demand,
however, is not for an overthrow of the system, but for better
management than that provided by the current gerontocracy.

And in Algeria, security forces have learned the lessons
from the “Arab spring” protests which swept away dictators in
Tunisia, Egypt and Libya: never antagonise the people.

Typical of that attitude was their response at a doctors’
demonstration last week after an over-enthusiastic policeman had
clamped the wheels of some illegally parked protesters’ cars.

As irate white-coated doctors moved out in to the road,
locking traffic, the clamps were quietly removed, leaving the
100-or-so protesters facing nothing more irksome than the
unseasonable rain.

The state, say analysts, has learned from its failure to
enlist the support of the population when in 1992 it cancelled
elections Islamists were poised to win, triggering the civil war
in which 200,000 people died. “You have to win the confidence of
the population,” said Anis Rahmani, owner of Ennahar television.
“Everyone is scared of the people.”

In towns in the vast desert south, the state has dealt with
unemployment protests by hiring 6,000 policemen. That there is
no need for so many was highlighted by a cartoon in the daily El
Watan showing a gendarme on a traffic island signalling with his
hands to an empty desert.

PREPARING THE GROUND

Algeria’s ageing leaders have always conducted their affairs
in secrecy, a legacy of their fear of betrayal during the 1954
to 1962 war of independence.

But in what appeared to be an effort to prepare the ground
for a transfer of power, the Arabic-language El Khabar ran a
front-page photo of Bouteflika on Saturday alongside a headline
about the rarely mentioned Article 88 of the constitution under
which the leader of the Senate would temporarily take over in
the event of the death or incapacity of the president.

Others ran front-page photos of Prime Minister Abdelmalek
Sellal – a 65-year-old tipped as a likely candidate in the
presidential elections – promising economic development.

Born on March 2, 1937, Bouteflika was a protege of Houari
Boumedienne, an icon of the independence war who would later
become president. As foreign minister in the 1960s, Bouteflika
championed the Non-Aligned Movement, and welcomed among others
Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara to Algeria.

First elected president in 1999, Bouteflika ended the civil
war, offering an amnesty to militants who laid down their arms.
He won re-election in 2004 and 2009, wresting power from the
military through a series of behind-the-scenes battles.

But over the past few years, his age and poor health caught
up with him. In a speech in Setif, eastern Algeria, in May 2012,
a frail Bouteflika said it was time for his generation to hand
over to new leaders. “For us, it’s over,” he said.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Algeria, led by Bouteflika since 1999, has for decades drawn
its presidents from an ageing cohort of men who won their spurs
in the bitter 1954-62 independence war with France.

Bouteflika, 76, was flown to the French capital on Saturday
for treatment in a military hospital after suffering what state
media said was a minor stroke that caused no permanent damage.

Algerians have long speculated about the health of their
president, who had been widely tipped to seek a fourth term in
2014. When Bouteflika had surgery in France in 2005, they were
told it was for a stomach ulcer. U.S. embassy cables leaked last
year suggested he had in fact survived a bout of cancer.

Bouteflika eased Algeria out of the horrors of its civil
war in the 1990s when an estimated 200,000 people were killed in
a struggle between the security forces and armed Islamists.

The secular generals no longer openly call the shots, but
few know where real power resides in an opaque system where an
elected president cohabits with a shadowy security elite.

Few of Algeria’s 36 million people, over 70 percent of whom
are aged under 30, can remember the independence struggle from
which their leaders draw legitimacy and many thirst for change.

“We must pass the torch to a new generation of leaders, the
(era of) revolutionary legitimacy is over,” said Hichem Aboud, a
political writer and editor of “Mon Journal”.

“I have no doubt that Bouteflika will not go for another
term, he simply cannot do the job because he is too tired.”

AVOIDING UPHEAVAL

Algeria’s cautious power-brokers may accept that younger
faces are needed, but they are unlikely to allow any swift or
dramatic political reform that might risk their own interests or
reopen wounds in a country traumatised by its violent past.

Despite persistent social unrest, Algeria has so far avoided
the kind of revolt that has ousted Arab rulers in Tunisia, Egypt
and Libya since 2011. Syria’s bitter conflict only reinforces
the aversion of many Algerians to going down that path.

Geoff Porter, head of North Africa Risk Consulting, said
Algerians mostly wanted a smooth, transparent transition.

“Yes, they want a candidate who has the vitality and energy
to address Algeria’s difficult problems … but they also want
someone who will incrementally transform the political system
rather than entirely disrupt it,” he said.

Algerians were aware, Porter said, that only an established
insider would have the political capital, as well as the
alliances and networks, to bring about change within the system.

Yet discontent is rife in Algeria, which supplies a fifth of
Europe’s natural gas imports and is a valued U.S. ally in
countering Islamist militancy in North Africa and the Sahel
region – a threat highlighted by January’s bloody attack on the
In Amenas gas facility in the southern Algerian desert.

In 2011, Bouteflika responded to a wave of riots over jobs,
pay, housing and living conditions by opening the spending taps,
allocating $23 billion in public grants and retroactive salary
and benefit increases, which temporarily calmed the unrest.

But a second wave of protests has shaken southern provinces
in recent months with youngsters demanding housing and jobs -
youth unemployment is about 21 percent, according to the IMF.

Again Bouteflika sought to placate them with free loans, and
police offered 6,000 new jobs to young southerners.

Algeria has deep pockets, with foreign reserves exceeding
$200 billion and a large budget stabilisation fund, but
ultimately such handouts may not be sustainable. The government
needs an oil price of $120 a barrel to balance its budget, the
IMF says. Algerian crude is now trading at about $103 a barrel.

INTERNAL POWER STRUGGLE

If and when Bouteflika departs, competition for his job
could upset a delicate balance of power within the ruling elite.

Former Prime Minister Ahmed Benbitour, 67, is the only
declared candidate in the presidential election due in less than
a year. Others may throw their hats in the ring only when
Bouteflika, who took power in 1999, makes his intentions clear.

Among potential candidates is technocrat Prime Minister
Abdelmalek Sellal, 65, seen as a man of consensus, and another
former premier, Mouloud Hamrouche, 70, a reformist whose parents
were killed during the independence war. He might get the
support of Hocine Ait Ahmed, an icon of Algeria’s revolution.

Algeria, dominated for decades by the National Liberation
Front (FLN) that led the independence struggle, now has more
than 100 smaller political parties, but their leaders are seen
as too weak to stand a chance in the presidential race.

If Bouteflika proves too incapacitated to finish his term,
Senate chairman Abdelkader Bensalah will replace him until
elections are held within 60 days, under constitutional rules.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Bouteflika, who has ruled over the North African oil and gas producer for more than a decade, had a “transient ischemic attack” or mini-stroke on Saturday.

The APS news agency quoted his doctor Rachid Bougherbal as saying the attack was brief and its impact would not be permanent: “His state of health is progressing well and has suffered no irreversible damage.”

The 76-year-old is part of an older generation of leaders who have dominated politics in a former French colony that supplies a fifth of Europe’s natural gas imports and cooperates with the West in combating Islamist militancy.

He has rarely appeared in public in recent months, prompting speculation about his health.

The president was moved to Paris Val-de-Grace military hospital France on the recommendation of his doctors. France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declined to comment but wished Bouteflika, “a friend of France”, to get well soon.

Bouteflika is part of an elite that has controlled Algeria since it won independence in a 1954-62 war.

In the early 1990s, the military-backed politicians overturned an election which Islamists were poised to win and then fought a conflict with them in which about 200,000 people were killed.

They also saw off the challenge of Arab Spring protests two years ago, with Bouteflika’s government defusing unrest through pay rises and free loans for young people.

Bouteflika has served three terms as president of the OPEC member and is thought unlikely to seek a fourth at an election due in 2014.

U.S. diplomatic cables leaked in 2011 said Bouteflika had been suffering from cancer but it was in remission.

More than 70 percent of Algerians are under 30. About 21 percent of young people are unemployed, the International Monetary Fund says, and many are impatient with the older generation ruling a country where jobs, wages and housing are urgent concerns.

A transient ischemic attack is a temporary blockage in a blood vessel to the brain. It typically lasts for less than five minutes and “usually causes no permanent injury to the brain”, the American Stroke Association said on its website.

Such incidents are seen as a health warning, as a third of people who experience them go on to have a full stroke within a year, the organization added.

(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi, Additional reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Peter Graff)

Bouteflika, who has ruled over the North African oil and gas producer for more than a decade, had an “transient ischemic attack” or mini-stroke on Saturday but his condition was not serious, the APS agency said, quoting the prime minister.

The 76-year-old is part of an older generation of leaders who have dominated politics in a country that supplies a fifth of Europe’s gas imports and cooperates with the West in combating Islamist militancy.

He has rarely appeared in public in recent months, prompting speculation about his health.

“The president felt unwell and he has been hospitalised but his condition is not serious at all,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was quoted as saying by APS.

The president was then moved to France, on the recommendation of his doctors.

Bouteflika and other members of Algeria’s elite have controlled Algeria since it won independence from France in a 1954-62 war.

In the early 1990s, the military-backed politicians overturned an election which Islamists were poised to win and then fought a conflict with them in which about 200,000 people were killed.

They also saw off the challenge of Arab Spring protests two years ago, with Bouteflika’s government defusing unrest through pay rises and free loans for young people.

Bouteflika has served three terms as president of the OPEC member and is thought unlikely to seek a fourth at an election due in 2014.

U.S. diplomatic cables leaked in 2011 said Bouteflika had been suffering from cancer but it was in remission.

More than 70 percent of Algerians are under 30. About 21 percent of young people are unemployed, the International Monetary Fund says, and many are impatient with the gerontocracy ruling a country where jobs, wages and housing are urgent concerns.

A transient ischemic attack is a temporary blockage in a blood vessel to the brain. it typically lasts for less than five minutes and “usually causes no permanent injury to the brain”, the American Stroke Association said on its website.

The attacks should be seen as a warning as a third of people who experience them go on to have a full stroke within a year, the organisation added. (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

The APS agency said late on Saturday that Bouteflika, 76, was in Paris at the recommendation of his doctors.

He was hospitalized after a minor stroke, according to an earlier state press agency report that quoted the prime minister as saying his condition was “not serious.”

The health of Bouteflika is a central factor in the stability of the oil-exporting country of 37 million people that is emerging from a long conflict against Islamist insurgents.

APS said Bouteflika had an “ischemic transitory attack,” or mini-stroke, at 12:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) on Saturday.

“A few hours ago, the president felt unwell and he has been hospitalized but his condition is not serious at all,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was quoted as saying.

Elected in 1999, Bouteflika is a member of a generation of leaders who have ruled Algeria since winning independence from France in a 1954-62 war.

They also defeated Islamist insurgents in the 1990s and saw off the challenge of Arab Spring protests two years ago, with Bouteflika’s government defusing unrest through pay rises and free loans for young people.

Bouteflika has served three terms as president and is thought unlikely to seek a fourth at an election due in 2014. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables said in 2011 that Bouteflika had been suffering from cancer, but that it was in remission.

It is unknown who might take over Africa’s biggest country by land area, an OPEC oil producer that supplies a fifth of Europe’s gas imports and cooperates with the West in combating Islamist militancy.

More than 70 percent of Algerians are under 30. About 21 percent of young people are unemployed, the International Monetary Fund says, and many are impatient with the gerontocracy ruling a country where jobs, wages and housing are urgent concerns.

(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Peter Cooney)

The health of 75-year-old Bouteflika is a central factor in the stability of an oil-exporting country of 37 million people that is emerging from a long conflict against Islamist insurgents.

The APS new agency said Bouteflika had an “ischemic transitory attack”, or mini-stroke, at 12:30 p.m. (0730 EST).

“A few hours ago, the president felt unwell and he has been hospitalized but his condition is not serious at all,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was quoted as saying.

Elected in 1999, Bouteflika is a member of a generation of leaders who have ruled Algeria since winning independence from France in a 1954-62 war.

They also defeated Islamist insurgents in the 1990s and saw off the challenge of Arab Spring protests two years ago, with Bouteflika’s government defusing unrest through pay rises and free loans for young people.

Bouteflika has served three terms as president and is thought unlikely to seek a fourth at an election due in 2014. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables said in 2011 that Bouteflika had been suffering from cancer, but that it was in remission.

It is unknown who might take over Africa’s biggest country, an OPEC oil producer which supplies a fifth of Europe’s gas imports and co-operates with the West in combating Islamist militancy.

More than 70 percent of Algerians are aged under 30. About 21 percent of young people are unemployed, the International Monetary Fund says, and many are impatient with the gerontocracy ruling a country where jobs, wages and housing are urgent concerns.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Laid Benamor, chairman of the Algerian cereal committee, in
a rare interview said some regions in the east and the center
had also been affected by diseases.

“Diseases were registered in the east and central regions.
In the west the situation is acceptable … but I remain
optimistic,” Laid said.

Algeria, with a population of 35 million, is one of the
world’s biggest importers of grain at an average of 5 million
tonnes in the past five years, including a peak of 7.4 million
tonnes in 2011 and 6.9 million in 2012.

“Imports are expected to go down this year as we registered
minus 11.26 percent in the two first months in comparison with
the same period last year,” Laid said.

“Durum wheat imports in the two first months of 2013 are
down 60 percent in comparison with the same period last year,
but soft wheat imports remain important,” he said.

Observers say the Algerian grain crop needs rain during two
periods – the sowing season, when moisture is needed to create
the right soil conditions for the seed to develop and in
March-April to ensure the plants mature properly.

“Our policy, our goal is to do whatever (we can) to reduce
our dependency on grain, because the import bill is too high at
$2.85 billion in 2011 and $2.11 billion in 2012,” said Laid,
chairman of the Algerian cereal committee, a body that advises
the ministry of agriculture on the best ways to boost local
production versus imports.

“For the harvest of 2013, the grain surface is estimated at
3.4 million hectares including 1.4 million hectares for durum
wheat and 0.6 for soft wheat and the rest for barley and oat,”
he said, adding that 600,000 Algerian farmers work in the cereal
sector.

“One of our key goals is to rise the yield so we can boost
our output in the next few coming years and reduce our imports,”
Laid said.

Official figures showed average yields of 17 quintals (1,700
kg) per hectare last year.

Algeria’s best harvest of the past few years was registered
in 2009 at 6.1 million tonnes, but the average of the last five
years was around 4.5 million tonnes, which compares with
estimated annual consumption of around 7 million tonnes,
according to official figures.

Algeria has kept up grain imports in part to build stocks to
ensure there is no risk of shortages.

(editing by Jane Baird)

An Algerian security source said Okacha, 34, was very close to AQIM’s leader Abdelmalek Droukdel as both belonged to the Group of Algiers, made up of militants born in the region around the Algerian capital.

The source also said that he was confident that al Qaeda commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, whose death was reported shortly after that of Abou Zeid, was dead.

“Okacha is Droukdel’s right-hand man,” he said. Okacha’s priority would be to reorganize AQIM after it registered the losses of two heavyweight commanders.

France said last week that it had confirmed “with certainty” the death of Abou Zeid, saying that he had been killed in fighting led by French forces in the Adrar des Ifoghas region of northern Mali at the end of February.

It made no comment on Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of an attack in January at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria in which more than 60 people were killed, including foreign hostages.

Both commanders’ deaths had been reported by Chad, but many analysts remain sceptical about Belmokhtar, noting that his experience and knowledge of the desert terrain could have helped him escape after French-led military operations were launched against the Islamist militants in Mali this year.

Okacha, also known as Yahia Abu El Hamam, joined AQIM northern Mali in 2004, the security source told Reuters.

“He was present at the attack against a military barracks in Mauritania in 2005, and he was also present in the killing of an American in 2009,” the source said, referring to aid worker Christopher Leggett.

Algerian security sources had said earlier they believed Abou Zeid and Belmokhtar were together when they were killed.

“I strongly believe that Belmokhtar is dead,” the security source said.

A jihadist quoted by the SITE monitoring service on March 3 rejected reports that Belmoktar had been killed, saying he was alive and would soon release a message. No message has been released.

Belmokhtar represented an important link to al Qaeda’s roots, having trained in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.

France launched a joint military campaign with some African armies in Mali in January after Islamist rebels took control of the north of the country and began a move south towards the capital Bamako.

On Sunday, Mauritania’s news agency ANI reported that AQIM had beheaded a French hostage, Philippe Verdon, captured in northern Mali two years ago. AQIM said other French hostages were at risk because of France’s intervention in Mali.

(Writing by Myra MacDonald; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Abou Zeid was killed by Chadian soldiers in northern Mali a few weeks ago.

Okacha, also known as Yahia Abu El Hamam, joined AQIM northern Mali in 2004, a security source with knowledge of AQIM told Reuters.

“He was present at the attack against a military barracks in Mauritania in 2005, and he was also present in the killing of an American in 2009,” the source said, referring to aid worker Christopher Leggett.

Okacha, 34, is close to AQIM’s leader Abdelmalek Droukdel as they belong to the Group of Algiers, a reference to militants born in the capital region.

“Okacha is Droukdel’s right hand. They have spent 12 years together in the north, before Okacha joined the south,” the security source told Reuters.

Okacha’s priority is to reorganize AQIM after it registered the losses of two heavyweight leaders, Abu Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the source said.

France launched a joint military campaign with some African armies in Mali in January to break Islamist rebels’ hold on the region, saying the militants posed a risk to the security of West Africa and Europe.

(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Abou Zeid was among 40 militants killed three days ago in the foothills of the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains near the Algerian border, said Ennahar, which is well connected with Algeria’s security services.

French and Chadian troops have been hunting fighters there after a lightning campaign to dislodge them from northern Mali.

A spokesman for France’s Elysee presidential palace declined to comment. Algeria’s government, Malian and Chadian officials could not confirm Abou Zeid’s killing.

A U.S. official said the reports that Abou Zeid had been killed appeared to be credible and that Washington would view his death as a serious blow to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

A French army official, who would not comment on Abou Zeid, confirmed that about 40 Islamists had been killed in heavy fighting over the last week in the mountainous Tigargara region.

The official said 1,200 French troops, 800 Chadian soldiers and some elements of the Malian army were still in combat to the south of Tessalit in the Adrar mountain range.

Ten logistics sites and an explosives factory had been destroyed in the operation as well as 16 vehicles, she said.

France launched the assault on January 11 to retake Mali’s vast desert north from AQIM and other Islamist rebels after a plea from Mali’s government to halt the militants’ drive southward.

The intervention swiftly dislodged rebels from northern Mali’s main towns and drove them back into the surrounding desert and mountains, particularly the Adrar des Ifoghas.

Abou Zeid, regarded as one of AQIM’s most ruthless operators, is an Algerian former smuggler turned jihadist who is believed to be behind the kidnapping of more than 20 Westerners in the lawless Sahara over the last five years, earning AQIM tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments.

He is believed to have executed British national Edwin Dyer in 2009 and 78-year-old Frenchman, Michel Germaneau, in 2010.

FLED TIMBUKTU WITH HOSTAGES

Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, in an account of his kidnapping by another Islamist cell in the Sahara, recounted how Abou Zeid refused to give medication to two hostages suffering from dysentery, one of whom had been stung by a scorpion.

After a loose alliance of Islamist groups seized northern Mali from April last year, Abou Zeid took control of the ancient desert trading town of Timbuktu, employing a violently extreme form of sharia, including amputations and the destruction of ancient Sufi shrines.

Timbuktu elders who dealt directly with him during the Islamist occupation described a short man with a grey beard and a quiet, severe manner who was never seen without an AK-47 rifle.

Locals said that when he fled Timbuktu, before the town fell to the French-led military advance, he took several blindfolded Western hostages in his convoy.

Born in 1965 in the Debdab region of Algeria’s Illizi province, close to the Libyan border, Abou Zeid joined the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) during the 1990s civil war, which later transformed itself into AQIM.

Abou Zeid is regarded by some as one of AQIM’s radicals, unwilling to negotiate or make concessions, compared with the more diplomatic approach of his fellow Saharan commander Belmokhtar, the mastermind of the mass hostage taking at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria last month.

Fowler, the Canadian diplomat who encountered them both while held hostage, told Reuters last month that Abou Zeid in person was more genial than the austere, “all-business” Belmokhtar.

The two very different men are reported to have a strong rivalry within AQIM, which some analysts have suggested was behind Belmokhtar’s decision to found his own brigade last year.

(Additional reporting by David Lewis and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Louise Ireland and Paul Simao)