Forget Algeria, I think.
I don't know what is going on further up-country but out here in the Sahara Desert there are a couple of government Mil-14 gunships and one or two civilian B-206Ls doing inspection flights out of Hassi Messaoud for an outfit named "Tassili" but that is it for helicopters as far as I know.
The lowest form of aviation life here is the Pilatus PC-6 Porter, which only needs 600 x 15 metres of whatever, usually crushed, watered and rolled gypsum, to operate happily in the desert. You just need a Cat, a supply of gypsum and a reasonably flat place to make your strip, put in a windsock and a tie-down area and then you are in business. The Porter only does 110 knots but so what?
Next up the food chain is the Cessna C-208 Caravan. I don't know about the strip length required but you get up to 160 knots, plus an idiot can fly one! (I went on a demo flight when the demo pilot stretched out asleep in the back before we had passed Lagos Lagoon, so that I had to wake him up just before landing at Escravos. Now, I know that I am the World's Greatest Pilot and all, but would you let some guy you never met loose at the controls of something he had never flown before if it wasn't dead easy to fly?)
I am flying the DeHavilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, when that needs 800 x 20 metres, a windsock and a tie-down area. With that you get 165 knots!
Then you have the the LET-410 and the Beech 1900. They need something like 1600 metres but you get about 180 knots plus air conditioning and wheels that go up and down with the LET and, ooh, 230 knots, that thing with the wheels, air-conditioning AND pressurisation with the Beech. (To ex-bush pilot guys this is like the Space Shuttle! I got the "What makes you think you could possibly handle this challenge?" number when I got here and rashly said that I thought I might be able to hack that level of complication. Oops!)
There is nothing like the levels of danger you find in Nigeria here but check out the advisories: it is NOT an untroubled place, as it happens, plus this desert will kill you stone dead given a chance. Too, there is nothing like the levels of pay! Forget this one, I think.
Stacy, Stacy... you would go back to a room like that, and so would I! God help us. SASless, well, he'd only go back if they made him GM, I think.