CNN International reports:

(CNN) – The president of Algeria plans to lift a state of emergency soon that has been in effect for nearly 20 years, the Algerian Press Service reported Thursday.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said he would lift the ban in the “very close future,” the news service said.
Bouteflika’s announcement comes about two weeks after government opponents marched in the North African nation to demand that the ban be lifted. The demonstrators also called for the release of detainees and the restoration of individual and collective freedoms.
A 2001 law indefinitely banned all demonstrations in the capital, Algiers, according to the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. The measure said the government could ban any event that is “likely to disturb public order and tranquility.”

Why does Algeria matter? None of the other Middle East and Maghreb states swept up in potentially revolutionary unrest — Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Tunisia — had any significant oil deposits. Algeria does, making it the first rentier state to be affected by this tide. That ups the ante.