Since last June, Algeria’s 81-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has been dismissing high-profile security officials at an unprecedented rate. A who’s-who of top brass from the police, the gendarmerie and most importantly the army, which has long been the backbone of the Algerian regime, have all been replaced—and all without any public explanation from Bouteflika or his inner circle.

The shake-ups, which seemed to have concluded in late September, ousted around a dozen senior generals and regional army commanders, including the director of defense personnel, the chief of the army’s powerful Central Security Directorate, the commander of the ground forces and the head of the air force. Five of those generals were then jailed in October, apparently on charges of corruption and other wrongdoing. Last week, Bouteflika reportedly released the five generals, according to Reuters.

Among the Algerian public and outside observers, speculation abounds about why Bouteflika made these moves and what they say about the nature of his relationship with the military. Considering the president’s poor health and the uncertainty over his succession, with presidential elections looming in April 2019, there are questions about whether the reshuffles indicate a renegotiation of civil-military relations in Algeria at a time of political and economic trouble, with Bouteflika possibly running for a fifth term next year.

Yet these questions overlook the power and popularity the military enjoys in Algeria, and how closely linked it still is to the presidency. Throughout his 19-year tenure, Bouteflika has garnered a reputation from some as the president who managed to keep the military and its security branch in check after the dark decade of the 1990s, when Algeria fought a brutal civil war against various Islamist militants after the military seized power and invalidated the 1991 elections won by an Islamist party. But that view of Bouteflika generally misses the mark, as the military and security apparatus have been stronger than ever under his presidency.

Bouteflika has overseen a rigorous program of professionalizing the army, but that has not translated into its de-politicization. On the contrary, it has increased the potential for the military’s continued intervention in politics, even with the recent dismissals of senior generals.

The professionalization of the army—turning it into the most advanced military in North Africa, one that is closely involved in fighting extremist groups alongside its Western partners—meant the introduction of modern equipment and technology, the upgrading of facilities and procedures for conscription, recruitment and promotion, as well as the strengthening of training and education. Individuals were dismissed or retired at several levels and replaced by more professional cadres, specialist officers and military experts. More competent and relatively younger commanding officers have been appointed and the command structures revamped.

But this process did not lead to the complete subordination of the military command to civilian officials. Overall, the role of the Algerian army within the state has changed very little. The army and its commanding officers essentially civilianized themselves, but they still hold the power.

There is consensus among Algeria’s military establishment over its other mission: being the arbiter of the civilian leadership.

Civil-military relations in Algeria are a product of the country’s post-colonial history. No matter their differences, the various factions and clans of the military establishment are bound together by a consensus over what they consider to be their historic mission: protecting the nation. In the 1950s, the army not only played a pivotal role in the war of independence against the French, it also had a strong nationalist component as it emerged from below, its ranks filled by young, often poor Algerians. During the 1960s and 1970s, the army, controlling the levers of the economy, was an agent of fundamental socioeconomic development and drove the country’s industrial growth. But its reputation sank in the late 1980s, when security forces responded to nationwide protests in 1988 with indiscriminate violence, which destabilized the one-party regime that had ruled Algeria since independence.

Paradoxically, it was the army’s intervention during the 1990s, despite numerous abuses, that gave it back its lost legitimacy in the eyes of many Algerians. The military’s capacity to neutralize the threats of terrorism and keep Islamists far from power preserved its image as national savior. Ever since, the army has retained its central role in Algeria’s political system.

In addition to this self-image, there is consensus among the military establishment over its other mission: being the arbiter of the civilian leadership. With each intervention into politics—the 1965 military coup when Houari Boumedienne deposed Ahmed Ben Bella, the 1988 riots, and 1991—the army sought to further institutionalize and guard its political prerogatives. The decision to interrupt the electoral process in December 1991, after the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, won the most parliamentary seats in the first round, and create the High Council of State in January 1992—a collective presidency set up by the military themselves—is a case in point.

From the very start, the military high command, which was staunchly secular, had a thorny relationship with the FIS. But it had little trouble dealing with the Islamists on its terms. Within three months, the judiciary banned the FIS altogether and its leaders were jailed. When violence from jihadist groups escalated all around the country, the military intervened directly. It was only a decade later at the end of the civil war, after the election of Bouteflika as president, that the military went back to its usual role as arbiter from behind the scenes.

The generals gave the impression that they went back to their barracks while the state became more civilian. But the narrative of military uniforms being replaced by civilian suits was an illusion that allowed the military to maintain the existing institutional structure while playing down the state’s military origins. To cement their power over the state and its functions, the military built an extensive economic network. The interconnectedness between civilian officials, business leaders and military officers is so strong that despite their differences, they all share a stake in maintaining the status quo.

The army has now firmly entrenched itself as an integral feature of the political system—a system in which the legitimacy of the military’s political influence is hardly questioned by Algerians. It goes beyond popular acquiescence about the generals’ role in politics. In Algeria, the military constitutes the most trusted state institution, and by a wide margin. According to a 2017 survey of a broad spectrum of Algerian society by the Arab Barometer, an overwhelming 75 percent of respondents said that the armed forces were the most trusted institution in the country. Parliament and the political parties were the least trusted, by only 14 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

For all the attention on Bouteflika’s extensive shuffling of the army ranks, they hardly reveal a shift in civil-military relations, even at a time of political uncertainty in Algeria. The one certainty is that the army is powerful, and popular, and that is likely to continue.