ALGIERS, Algeria, May 19 (UPI) -- Algeria's security service has stepped up its campaign to weaken President Abdelaziz Bouteflika with a crackdown on his allies in the top echelons of the state oil monopoly, Sonatrach, a pillar of Algeria's economy.
This has been billed as an anti-corruption clean-out in high places, but it's widely viewed as masking a power struggle within the nation's elite, with the military and intelligence services moving against Bouteflika and his associates.
The Department du Renseignement et de la Securite, the DRS, Algeria's intelligence service, has been waging an anti-corruption campaign against the president's political allies since December 2009.
But Bouteflika, a leading veteran of the 1954-62 independence war against France who is serving his third term as president, is seen as the real target.
Political insiders believe the generals want to clip his wings and restore the power of the military by picking off Bouteflika's closest allies and tarnishing his administration. They include his brother, Said.
DRS Director Mohammed "Tewfik" Mediene has been crossing swords with Bouteflika for years.
The 71-year-old president has sought to curb the spy chief's authority and to overhaul the security services and the national police to act as a counterweight against the military that until a few years ago held undisputed power in Algeria.
"The army has traditionally played a prominent role in Algerian politics," Algerian writer and political commentator Mahmoud Belheimer noted in a March analysis.
"Since taking power in 1999, Bouteflika has tried to build up the presidency's strength and give it broad decision-making powers."
But because Bouteflika "has avoided creating government institutions that would have created a set of checks and balances, influence has remained concentrated in the hands of the army and the president," Belheimer said.
The power struggle came into the open in January, when the DRS, claiming to be conducting a purge against corruption, placed Mohammed Meziane, chief executive of Sonatrach, under judicial investigation along with several of his top managers, all linked to Bouteflika.
These arrests seriously undermined Energy Minister Chakib Khelil, a close Bouteflika ally who appointed Meziane several years ago and had taken him under his wing.
Khelil and Transport Minister Amar Ghoul, who have been in Bouteflika's governments since he was first elected in April 1999, are widely seen as prime targets in the DRS campaign.
Meziane is the most senior Algerian official in years to have been accused of corruption. A former Sonatrach executive called the investigation into Meziane's affairs "an earthquake."
He is being held in prison along with his two sons and former Sonatrach vice-presidents Belkacem Boumeddiene and Belmar Zenasni.
Khelil's power has been further eroded by the appointment of new executives at Sonatrach, none of whom are loyal to him.
The oil company's new president, appointed May 3, is Nordine Cherouati, a former secretary-general at the Energy Ministry who was sacked from that important post by Khelil several years ago and dispatched to a ministry outpost in Milan, Italy.
The man behind Cherouati's appointment is Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, a compliant technocrat who has allied himself with the generals and is seen in some quarters as a possible successor to Bouteflika if he is pushed from power.
Other new faces in Sonatrach are also Ouyahia loyalists, part of an apparent drive to dislodge the so-called "Western clan" from the state oil giant.
The intrigue and climate of suspicion has seriously impaired the Sonatrach leadership at a time when urgent energy industry problems need to be solved and Algeria's energy infrastructure overhauled.
On Feb. 25, the national police chief, Col. Ali Tounsi, another veteran of the independence war, was shot dead in his Algiers headquarters by a retired army officer, Col. Chouieb Oultache, in what the Interior Ministry said was "a fit of madness."
But there have been suspicions the slaying was linked to Bouteflika's confrontation with the generals and the DRS. The Algerian media says the shooting occurred after Oultache, who headed the police air unit, heard he was to be investigated for embezzlement.
There is widespread speculation that the DRS will soon be intensifying its efforts to oust Khelil and Ghoul, along with Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, another member of Bouteflika's inner circle.
