Brahim Afrit, Tulane University
Introduction
In the 2000s, Algerian authorities set in motion a project of religious diplomacy in which local Sufism serves as a source of secular influence in the Saharan-Sahelian belt within the post-9/11 geopolitical global order. In this context, religious diplomacy refers to the strategic mobilization of religious actors, institutions, and symbols by states in pursuit of geopolitical influence and regional legitimacy.
This essay interrogates how this project, focused on the Sahel and situated at the intersection of national issues and global dynamics, has enabled Algeria’s authorities to promote a discourse that calls for the restoration of a shared ‘Islam of the ancestors.’ It examines how this approach is viewed as the remedy to two challenges: Western secular liberalism, seen as an enduring legacy of colonialism, and the perceived negative effects of globalization, as manifested through transnational religious movements, primarily Salafism, often conflated with jihadism.
By analyzing how this state project harnesses religious identity to generate soft power, rebuild political influence, and promote renewed strategic interests in the area by turning Sufi networks into diplomatic infrastructure, the essay accounts for the emergence of religion as a central commodity in international relations in the post-9/11 era.
Religious Influence in the Realpolitik Era
In the 2000s, as more than a decade of political turmoil known as the Dark Decade came to an end, Algerian authorities set in motion a project of religious diplomacy. The political violence of the 1990s was marked by a bloody confrontation between state security services and jihadist militant groups, after official authorities canceled a series of elections won by the Islamist party FIS (French acronym for the Islamic Front of Salvation).[1] This internal context dealt a severe blow to the country’s international influence, marking the end of its ‘flamboyant diplomacy’ from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, during the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Once public order was gradually restored in the immediate aftermath of the Dark Decade, the country’s security services worried that the most radical insurgent groups that spun off the GIA (Islamic Armed Group)—the FIS armed wing—which had begun relocating south of the Sahara, would turn the Saharan-Sahelian belt into a rear base, allowing them to target the country from the outside. This concern was reinforced by the fact that many armed groups born during the Dark Decade reacted to their rooting out of their native battlefield by turning global, through their affiliation with international jihadist networks like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, thereby extending their reach to the whole Saharan-Sahelian belt. One of the most illustrative instances is the case of the GSPC (Salafi Group for Predication and Combat): founded in Algeria in 1998, this Salafi-oriented organization self-rebranded in 2007 into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) after its cadres pledged allegiance to the international jihadist network.[2]
Algeria’s efforts to focus its religious diplomacy on the Saharan-Sahelian belt were a response to the growing influence of new actors in the country’s southern neighborhood. In the past two decades, the Sahel has undergone significant geopolitical upheavals in the wake of the Arab Spring and the subsequent regional security crisis that spread south of the Sahara throughout the Saharan-Sahelian belt, particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, following the onset of the Libyan civil war after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011. This unstable regional context has been marked by an intensifying competition between foreign Muslim powers through the sponsorship of various local public and private religious actors and institutions, in tandem with increased economic and military engagement.
While Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey have played a longstanding religious role in the Sahel, Morocco has also started in recent years to deploy religious influence, extending to the region its successful religious diplomacy in West Africa where it managed to challenge these established Muslim powers by leveraging long-standing religious, cultural, diplomatic, economic, and diasporic networks to advance the country’s secular interests. In West Africa, Morocco’s strategy has focused on the Tijaniyya, which counts most of its disciples there and in the Sahel.[3] In response to this regional dynamic and amid the deadlock of Maghrebi integration, bogged down by growing tensions with Morocco, Algeria also decided to turn toward the Sahel, going beyond its traditional security approach. Algerian authorities publicly promoted the region on several occasions in recent years as a natural extension of the country’s development. Sufism has attracted most of Algerian authorities’ efforts, working through transnational Sufi orders with deep historical roots in Algeria, especially the Tijaniyya, the Qadiriyya, and to a lesser extent the Sanusiyya—three of the most widely spread Sufi orders in the Sahel and West Africa—and to place their affiliated actors and organizations in the region under state patronage.[4]
Custodian of ‘Islam of the Ancestors’: Local Tradition as a Remedy to Global Modernity
The bulk of recent academic studies examining post-9/11 geopolitical developments connecting the Saharan-Sahelian belt to the broader global context have focused on the rise of jihadist-claimed armed groups that have led to a crisis of the state in the region. The Jihadi anchoring in the region has often proceeded through alliances with local ethno-linguistic minorities, such as the Fulani, the Arab, and the Tuareg communities, who have long seen themselves marginalized by the central authorities, especially in Mali. Less has been said about the predicament of Sufi communities, who have increasingly come to see themselves as double victims of this crisis.[5] Across the Sahel, local Sufi communities have been the main targets of the jihadists, particularly due to the fact that most of these armed groups operating in the region, such as AQMI, Ansar Dine, or Boko Haram tend to source their ideological references from Salafism, a reformist religious current well-known for its abhorrence of Sufism.[6]
This jihadist challenge, aside from its security dimension, has further deepened the existential crisis local Sufi communities have faced since the colonial era, seen as second-class citizens under the secular postcolonial nation-state, in which they have suffered a multifaceted economic, social, and political marginalization. Academic studies of Sufi communities in the region have pointed to the demotion of Sufi traditional institutions, particularly the madrasa, under decades of secularist centralizing policies championed by postcolonial elites in power. The traditional institution of Muslim schooling, which has historically played a central role in the social integration of local communities, has been marginalized in most Western-inspired, degree-based secular educational systems inherited from the colonial era across the area.[7]
Through its focus on local Sufism, Algerian authorities’ renewed project has sought to promote a narrative about a shared religious heritage across the Sahara, with Algeria as the custodian of a ‘homegrown’ tradition, calling for the restoration of a legacy of ‘Islam of the ancestors.’ This local Islam, which Algeria presents as authentic and moderate andas a source of stability and prosperity through its social outreach, is seen as a remedy to the current crisis of the state in the region. Algerian authorities have on multiple occasions praised local Islam for acting historically both as a rampart against religious fanaticism—which Algerian authorities portrayed as alien to the region—and an alternative to the Western liberal model, seen as morally bankrupt and unfit for the local Saharan-Sahelian context.
Such a claim equating religious authenticity with moderation is not unique in the post-9/11 geopolitical context, as it appeals to the wasatiyya, a label invoking an Islam of the Middle Path, which has been widely deployed by Muslim-majority states seeking to position themselves as credible partners for Western interlocutors concerned with religious radicalism.[8] That said, what distinguishes Algeria’s version is its anchoring in local Sufism: rather than presenting moderation as a universal principle, Algerian authorities have aligned their discourse about ‘true’ Islam with local culture, with the traditionalist Sufis as its exclusive custodians.
Bringing these religious references into dialogue with the region’s current geopolitical context has enabled Algerian authorities to appeal to various actors in the Sahel seeking to tackle the socio-economic challenges posed by the crisis of statehood beyond the security level. For these Sufi audiences, foreign state-sanctioned projects of religious sponsorship like Algeria’s have often been welcomed as an alternative opportunity to access state resources they cannot access in their own countries—from scholarships to public visibility to religious infrastructure to funding to training opportunities overseas—thereby empowering their public stance vis-à-vis both religious and nonreligious challengers in their respective local settings.
For many Sufis in the region who have found themselves pushed to the fringe of their respective postcolonial nation-states and globalization under the combined assault of Salafi-inspired jihadism and Western liberalism, Algeria’s project stands as a form of official recognition. This project of state sponsorship of local religious identity has shifted them from marginality to the center by advocating the restoration of a traditional ‘Muslim order’, consecrating discourses, practices, and references for which they have long seen themselves as the only advocates. In turn, this has enabled Algerian authorities to mobilize the requisite identity-based legitimacy that earlier bids for religious soft power had lacked, and to differentiate their religious project from rival bids competing for religious leadership in the region.[9]
Religious Discourse, Secular Interests
In recent years, Algerian state-backed religious initiatives have ranged from organizing international religious events to launching new information and communication technologies for broadcast religious content, promoting content seen as part of a shared religious tradition across the Saharan-Sahelian belt. All these endeavors aim at turning Algeria into a regional hub for Sufis in the Saharan-Sahelian belt. Most of the promoted religious repertoire, focused on local tradition, draws on religious discourses, practices, and symbols abiding by the Ashʿari creed, Maliki jurisprudence, Warsh canonical Quranic recitation, and local Sufi spirituality.[10]
In support of this strategy, an increasing number of specialized religious programs have been designed and broadcast via new state media outlets, including TV and radio channels, websites, and social media platforms, created to address Sub-Saharan audiences specifically through content that promotes local traditions. Authorities also recently opened several religious training institutes for international audiences called to serve in their respective countries and increased the number of scholarships awarded to religious clerics and leaders from West Africa and the Sahel to train in Algeria. The seat of the global Tijani caliphate in Ain Madhi—the birthplace of Ahmed Tijani (d. 1815), the founder of the eponymous order, to which authorities have increased their political, financial, and media support in recent years—was chosen as the host for one of these institutions.
Algeria’s efforts to advance its religious diplomacy have included projects implemented directly in Sahelian countries, such as several training institutes for religious personnel affiliated with Algeria’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, including the first prototype scheduled to open soon in Agadez, Niger. Other on-site initiatives also include the free distribution of religious literature via diplomatic channels, specifically a nineteenth-century tradition-compliant copy of the Quran rebranded ‘Algeria’ and a Braille copy of the Quran. Most of these religious initiatives are promoted as part of broader economic initiatives through which Algerian authorities have sought to position the country as a key economic partner in the development of the Sahel. These have included in recent years the creation in 2024 of an Algeria-led free trade zone with Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger—all Algeria’s neighboring countries, except Morocco—the trans-Saharan gas pipeline connecting Nigeria to Algeria through Niger, with the Nigerien portion to be funded by Algeria, the Tindouf-Zouerat road connecting Algeria to Mauritania, a project fully funded by Algeria as part of its efforts to access West African markets through the Sahel and to prevent military escalation with Morocco. This project followed after Morocco began targeting Algerian and Mauritanian trucks crossing the only road that has connected the two countries so far through Western Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front. The latest of these projects, a power plant in Niger funded by Algeria, was announced on the same day the Agadez religious institute was confirmed during the visit of President Tiani of Niger to Algeria in February 2026. [11]
Most of these moves, deployed as part of broader bilateral or multilateral cooperation, have involved local Sufi leaders affiliated with orders that share discipleship across Algeria and Sahelian countries. Algerian authorities have alternatively deployed national representatives affiliated with different Sufi currents, depending on the targeted audience in the Sahel. For instance, Algerian authorities have increasingly enlisted since the 2000s the services of the local Tijani establishment for several official missions in the Sahel. Shaikh Bellarabi, the current Ain Madhi-based General Caliph of the Tijaniyya—and Ahmed Tijani’s great-grandson—was sent aboard the official presidential plane to several countries in the region for special diplomatic missions, where he was honored with official receptions by top political leaders.
In February 2019, the Tijani leader was received by President Issoufou Mahamadou of Niger and the then-future—and now former—President Mohamed Bazoum, overthrown by the Tiani-led junta in 2023. The shaikh was also sent in February 2024 on a special mission to Mauritania, where he was received by President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani just days before Ghazouani joined President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Tindouf to inaugurate the border crossing post and the free zone between the two countries and to kick off the Tindouf-Zouerat roadworks. Earlier, the shaikh also actively supported Algeria’s peace initiatives in the region, including Darfur, Sudan, and Mali, by leveraging the order’s networks in those countries. He also personally helped coordinate logistics for the airlift of thousands of supporters from Algeria to Sudan for the 2009 playoff football game in Omdurman amid the 2010 World Cup qualifiers against Egypt.
This is not to say that other Sufi orders with historical roots in Algeria and an important regional presence, such as the Sanusiyya and, more importantly, the Qadiriyya, are left aside. While gradually consolidating their claim to the regional leadership of the Tijaniyya, Algerian authorities renewed their focus on the Qadiriyya, the other Sufi order that claims tens of millions of disciples in the region. In their efforts to place this order under state sponsorship, they recently began promoting the legacy of a 15th-century scholar, al-Maghili—born in Tlemcen, died in the Touat, both in present-day Algeria—often revered as the introducer of the Qadiriyya order in the Sahel and West Africa, and for his religious guidance for local Muslim rulers of the area, the most famous of whom is Askia Ahmed of Songhay, an important Muslim polity that spanned most of Sahelian and West African countries, from present-day Mali and Niger to some territories that are part of Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Gambia.
These initiatives have included the organization of an international forum in December 2022 in Algiers bringing together local Qadiris, especially from Touat, al-Maghīlī’s adoptive home and resting place, with dozens of Sahelian and West African scholars and religious dignitaries. Some of these Sufi guests, including Oumarou Ibrahim Oumarou, the honorific Sultan of the traditional Tuareg polity of Aïr—corresponding to Algeria-bordering region of Agadez—a self-claimed descendant of al-Maghili, were even received by President Tebboune. Additionally, an international research center, an annual cultural week, and an award, all dedicated to the promotion of al-Maghīlī’s legacy across the Saharan-Sahelian belt have also been created in the wake of this event.
This Sufi proxy strategy has proven particularly resilient amid the recent stiffening of Algeria’s bilateral relations with Mali, following the seizure of power by military juntas, whose leaders have, on multiple occasions, returned against Algerian authorities their rhetoric on neocolonialism, accusing the country’s authorities of interference in internal affairs, and terror sponsorship. Navigating through transnational Sufi networks has enabled Algerian authorities to alleviate bilateral tensions and sustain their religious project while partially bypassing conventional channels and, at times, even outweighing them, given the political and social leverage of influential Sufi notables within domestic power configurations and local communities. As an illustration, the recent official reconciliation between Algeria and Niger, after several months of rupture amid a diplomatic clash between the Algerian government and the Malian military regime, an ally of Niger’s military regime as part of the newly created Alliance of Sahel States (AES), was facilitated by Sultan Oumarou.
Conclusion
This essay has examined Algeria’s burgeoning religious diplomacy in the Sahel. Deployed as an instrument of soft power in the post-9/11 era in the service of secular interests, this project of state influence through religion, which emerged from the national crisis of the 1990s, has offered Algerian authorities an identity model appealing to a shared tradition for addressing recent developments intersecting the national, regional, and global politics.
Through its regional outreach, this state-sanctioned religious project, designed to carve out a niche of influence in a crowded and shifting field of geopolitical alliances and heightened regional competition, illustrates how religion has become a modality of contemporary international relations. Rather than signaling a conservative retreat into identity logics, this project of religious diplomacy is to be seen as a modern political strategy posited as an alternative to both global transnational flows and Western liberal paradigms, offering various actors pursuing distinct public agendas, especially in postcolonial Muslim-majority societies, a model of identity attuned to their local settings in a context of deep uncertainties and radical change.
The Algerian case, by showing how religion increasingly functions as a technology of statecraft in contemporary international relations, underscores how, in the post-9/11 era, religion operates not at the margins of state international relations but at its core, intersecting state governance, diplomacy, and geopolitics.
[1] For an overview of the national and international context of the Dark Decade, see Martin Evans and John Phillips, Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
[2] For the connection between Algerian militant groups and the Sahel, see Alexander Thurston, Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
[3] On Morocco’s Tijani strategy in West Africa, see Yousra Hamdaoui and Bakary Sambe, “Des Usages du Soft Power Religieux du Maroc sous le Règne de Mohammed VI,” Afrique(s) en Mouvement 1, no. 1 (2019): 19–29.
[4] The case of the Sanusiyya stands out. Even though this order was founded in Jaghbub, in present-day Libya, by a religious scholar, Muhammad al-Sanusi (d. 1859), from Mostaghanem in present-day Algeria, most of the order’s discipleship is located in countries that do not share a land border with Algeria, such as Chad, Nigeria, and Sudan, with the exception of Libya. Besides, the order has in recent years leaned, especially under the influence of its Libyan leadership, toward Salafism.
[5] For the interplay between the rise of jihadism and the weakening of the state in the Sahel, see Clionadh Raleigh, Héni Nsaibia, and Caitriona Dowd, “The Sahel Crisis since 2012,” African Affairs 120, no. 478 (2021): 123–143.
[6] See, as an illustration, the case of the destruction of the Sufi shrines of Timbuktu: Oumar Ba, “Contested Meanings: Timbuktu and the Prosecution of Destruction of Cultural Heritage as War Crimes,” African Studies Review 63, no. 4 (2020): 743–762.
[7] For case studies on Sufis and education in the contemporary Sahelian context, see Corinne Fortier, “Orality and the Transmission of Qur’anic Knowledge in Mauritania,” 61–78, and Abdoulaye Sounaye, “Walking to the Makaranta: Production, Circulation, and Transmission of Islamic Learning in Urban Niger,” 234–267, in Robert Launay (ed.), Islamic Education in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
[8] The idea of wasatiyya derives from a Qur’ānic reference to the Muslim community as the “Middle Nation,” in the sense of moderate and tolerant.
[9] For a historical background regarding the competition between Algeria and Morocco through the case of Pan-Africanist leadership, see Brahim El Guabli, “Refiguring Pan-Africanism Through Algerian–Moroccan Competitive Festivals,” Interventions 20, no. 7 (2018): 1053–1071.
[10] In contrast, most Salafis abide by their own creed (Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jamā‘a), the Hafs canonical method for Quranic recitation, and do not limit to one single legal tradition among the four canonical Sunni schools for jurisprudence. Regarding the traditionalist versus Salafi opposition in North and West Africa, see Alexander Thurston, “The Mālikiyya in the Twenty-First Century: A Traditionalist Islamic Legal School Navigating State Co-optation, Reformist Pressures, and Neotraditionalist Impulses,” The Journal of Religion 105, no. 1 (2025): 68–99.
[11] See “Déclaration conjointe Niger – Algérie : cap sur des projets structurants et un partenariat stratégique renforcé,” Niger Diaspora, February 17, 2026, https://nigerdiaspora.net/politique/declaration-conjointe-niger-algerie-cap-sur-des-projets-structurants-et-un-partenariat-strategique-renforce