An unfortunate ally of the United Arab Republic.The People’s National Army of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war

This paper discusses the combat potential of the People’s National Army of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria in the 1960s, with a particular focus on its operations during the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict and the consequences of that war for the further development of the Algerian armed forces. In view of the language barrier and the impossibility of conducting queries in the Algerian archives, the author relied on briefing notes prepared by the military attaché office at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland in Algiers in 1964–1967. Although the military attaché did not engage in any intelligence activities against the host country and was confined to gathering information by legal means, he was nevertheless able to obtain valuable data on the PNA. That information adds to the knowledge of the Algerian armed forces and coincides with the relevant literature in English, offering a valuable supplement to the latter. The analysis of the source material demonstrates that although the PNA presented itself asone of the three strongest armies on the African continent on paper, its combat potential was seriously undermined by the country’s backwardness and internal instability, which adversely affected the organizational structure of the armed forces and deprived them of sufficiently numerous, trained reserves. This became acutely apparent in June 1967.