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Gone are the days when Algeria, supported by an armada of African countries, allegedly hardliners, had total hold on the African Union. Morocco returned to the latter in 2017 to help get the record straight and dismiss its opponents’ arguments about self-determination and related principles that are losing ground in the process.
Times have indeed changed. In the past, Morocco used to withdraw from regional and international conferences in which its geographical map was amputated from the southern provinces. This used to happen as a logical behavior following its withdrawal from the Organization of African Unity in 1984. Rabat left the OAU as a result of the legal hold-up carried out, thanks to the complicity of the Secretary General at the time, Edem Kodjo, which facilitated the admission of an artificial entity within this organization.
Today, it is Algeria that experiences the map syndrome. It has become routine to watch Algerian delegates quitting conference rooms where Morocco’s map is shown, including its southern provinces. Algeria is in big trouble after she fired all its bullets into the void. It cannot even collect empty bullets to use them usefully, due to the lack of processing industries. The Algerian decision-makers’ behavior is linked to their mindset used to navigate in swamps of stubbornness.
For many years, Algeria has not only promoted the idea that she was not interested in the Sahara territory, but she has also played on Moroccans’ patience by being the standard-bearer of the so-called Saharawi cause. Indeed, the Algerian diplomatic apparatus has been trained to the two-face game to the limit of the most blatant cynicism.
I recall an Algerian diplomat whose relatives live in Morocco, as well as those of his wife of Moroccan origin. He was used to tease me by saying, “Your Saharawi buddy is due tomorrow on an official visit.” We knew this, of course, and the authorities of this African country were warned that such a set of provocations was on the verge of jeopardizing relations with Morocco.
One day, as we are at the airport, my Algerian colleague is over the moon. At the moment when “the famous Saharawi” (Mohamed Abdelaziz) was showing off while leading to the VIP lounge, Danielle Mitterrand, president of the France Liberty Association, was preparing to leave this African country. At the time, Danielle Mitterrand had a grudge against Morocco and blackmailed it under the pretext of defending human rights. My Algerian colleague tried hard to make me buy his story that a meeting was planned between Abdelaziz and Danielle. This was not true, and the authorities of this African country summoned Algerian diplomats to stop winding such childish and false diplomatic news.
Algeria was used to pull the strings to the point that former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika reportedly told a senior Moroccan official visiting Algeria the day after he came to power in 1999 that he, even in his capacity as a head of state, wasn’t really in charge of the Sahara file. He even added that if this issue was resolved, Algerian decision-makers would have nothing to offer to their people to eventually “stay in power.”
This discourse no longer holds. Algeria, which was screaming like a wolf at bay, came out of its lair following the jerky of the reconnaissance of the sovereign of Morocco over its southern provinces. And as a result, the assets Algeria has theoretically enjoyed over years no longer hold.
Erosion of tangible renewable assets
About four decades ago, Stanley Hoffmann spoke of tangible non-renewable assets as determinants of the power state actors hold for the sake of bargaining on the geopolitical chessboard. These assets are important in configurations in which the hierarchy of actors is hard to determine. Hydrocarbons are one of these vital assets.
The idea commonly shared among scholars is that raw materials, which help strengthen the power of state actors in periods of tight bargaining, allow them to score points or even win the game. But being non-renewable, as is the case with hydrocarbons, they can turn into weak factors when they are not mostly needed.
This argument comforts the idea that hydrocarbons might be a curse for certain developing countries. Algeria is one of them. The way whereby she used the gas card to blackmail European countries, mainly Spain, could not be more eloquent.
Spain took the right decision to correct its geopolitical myopia by recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern provinces and highlighting the Autonomy Plan as the only realistic option to resolve the regional conflict over the Sahara. Spain went even further by limiting its dependence on Algerian gas. The maneuvers Algerian decision-makers used to influence the outcome of Spanish general elections, which took place in July 2023, did not achieve the expected objective.
Fooled by the existence of an aura on the French political chessboard, Algerian decision-makers tried the same trick in France during the June-July 2024 general elections. In this respect, the phrase Algerian officials often repeat, according to which it is Algeria that monitors French elections from distance, keeps political observers speechless. Algerian decision-makers put forward two cards: the impact of the binational Algerian diaspora and the 1968 agreement on the privileges granted to Algerians coming to and living in France.
Algeria is good at blackmailing its partners, be they states or regional organizations. Let us take a look at the last set of blackmails. This includes the memory rent, the criminalization of colonization, and the threat to seek compensation for the damage caused by nuclear tests (1962-1966). Algeria aims at forcing France to reconsider its last bold decision recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara. Yet, this move has proved that it is, as usual, a wasted effort. The giant with feet of clay—or the turkey in the farce—can, at best, only go round in circles.
The giant with feet of clay is vulnerable. He is not aware that the strength (and height) of which he prides himself remains at the mercy of the vagaries of nature and geopolitical time. Algeria has two political and diplomatic deficits that she needs to explain to the Algerians.
On the one hand, the real significance of the Evian Accords signed on 18 March 1962. Algeria cannot erase with a wave of the hand the speech of General Charles de Gaulle in 1961, on the eve of the three phases of the referendum on self-determination. The French head of state said: “But what interests us is that these agreements, if they are to happen, come out of these agreements an association that safeguards our interests. If neither preservation nor association is possible, on the Algerian side (…) we will have to (…) do something special for as long as and insofar as, for us, the disadvantage will not be greater than the advantage.”
For several months—and thanks to social networks and Algerian speakers, including serious researchers—Algerian decision-makers have not been able to explain why the Evian Accords are surrounded by a halo of hermetism and mystery.
On the other hand, the scope and limits of the 1968 agreement on the privileges granted to Algerians. They feel the emptiness around them at the idea that, sooner or later, the 1968 agreement will be seriously called into question. This will happen in the context of debates taking place in France with respect to the real nature of Franco-Algerian relations.
Obviously, the scope of the conditional independence can be verified in many former colonies, but in the Algerian case it is associated with the term lasting ‘cooperation’ with France. A kind of unilateral interdependence in which the hierarchy of actors is stamped with the seal of asymmetry and muted dependence.
Suffice it to say that Algerian decision-makers’ mindset is built on the fear of losing everything in the process of bargaining their political survival. They are living with the phobia of seeing their role as “geopolitical broker” given up.
The myth of origins, an alibi a few historians used during the 1980s and 1990s to find a fingerprint in the history of Africa in general, can no longer fool strategists and observers dealing with North African affairs. This might include the refrain about the myth of the martyrs. For the sake of respecting the martyrs, I refrain from questioning the number of victims. However, time has come to give up using this argument to make Algeria case as the only heir of true struggle for independence in the region.
Algerian decision-makers are at bay. They have lost one of the most important assets that had made them famous for three decades: security subcontracting.
The end of security outsourcing
A few months ago, Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune spoke for the umpteenth time about his country’s major role as an exclusive manager of security in Africa. He referred indirectly to the paradigm of the “pivotal state” that some American political scientists used in 1996 to name Algeria, Nigeria, and South Africa (and a few other countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America) as potential security subcontractors in Africa.
Unconsciously, the Algerian head of state was referring to the axis that the three countries had tried to revive (all together with Ethiopia) in 2023 without much success, as part of the haggling around accession to the BRICS. However, a pivotal player or a safe subcontractor needs space to move in and out and revolve. Algeria can no longer play such a virtual role.
Indeed, for many years, Algerian decision-makers enjoyed narratives on the theory of encirclement. They have even managed to interest researchers such as John P. Entelis, who visited and wrote an interesting book in 1986 entitled “Algeria, The Revolution Institutionalized. ‘’ The book is worth reading as Entelis is one of the prominent scholars who have written balanced essays on the Middle East and North Africa.
Today, Algeria finds itself in the situation of the sprinkler. She experiences the real meaning of “encirclement” by being practically isolated in her vicinity. With the exception of Tunisia, which is experiencing a dire straight, with which it has more or less normal relations, Algeria has problems with the Sahel countries, Libya, not to mention Morocco, which she depicts as an eternal enemy.
Algeria has to meet another challenge, which is the obsolescence of the notion of strategic retreat. This notion has often been associated with that of the balance of power in a configuration where the conflicting actors sought alliances in the neighboring spaces to increase their bargaining capacity. Algeria’s strategic retreat was sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel-Saharan strip.
The strategic retreat was combined with the ascendancy to outsource French influence in the region and to use the weapon of hydrocarbons vis-Ã -vis Europe to score points in her geopolitical fight against Morocco and Libya.
Today, Algeria has to make unavoidable choices on the domestic and international political chessboard. Some would say she is doomed to make existential choices. The headlong rush is one option that Algeria is good at. It has demonstrated its limits over the past ten years. Realism is another option. Internally, the time has come to get rid of the Algerian-style taqîa, i.e., the end of the masquerade of a two-headed power. There is only one state, and it is called Algeria. The instruments for manipulating public opinion, eager for sensationalism, can no longer strike deals.
Moreover, Algeria is called upon to reconcile itself with her past. The political transition is possible provided that the Algerians, fooled by far-fetched historical facts, emerge from the halo of wishful thinking. This imperatively includes putting an end—or at least relativizing—the truth about a historical past riddled with failures. This also includes questioning an ideology built on the basis of lies and manipulations that no longer make sense in the era of the information technology revolution.
At the international level, Algeria would be more inspired to reject the idea, now established, that it gives the image of a partner whose credibility in recent years lacks potential. For some time now, Algerian diplomacy, once described as “militant,” has become reactive and nervous, using “diplomatically incorrect” language and even sinking into heresy.
Seasoned observers recall the long indictment that former Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra delivered to justify the severance of diplomatic relations with Morocco on August 24, 2021. They also recall the witch hunt, of which Algeria became famous, taxing all the countries that supported Morocco in the Sahara affair of plotters against (or even enemies of) the Algerian revolution.
Some are surprised Algerian diplomatic rhetoric praising oratorical political vindictiveness. The hidden script of the whole process is to pave the way for non-respecting of the commitments made. These pretexts demonstrate a growing powerlessness to meet the new challenges and to comply with the imperatives of adaptation.
Algeria is lost in an ideological labyrinth that her decision-makers can no longer control. She continues to provide shelter for opposition movements whose influence has vanished. She invents others, as she did with an alleged Riffian opposition movement, or brings individuals as petitioners before the United Nations C24 with the aim of denigrating Morocco and its political institutions. She manipulates the touareg movement in the Sahel region, etc. Besides, rumors say that she keeps giving shelter to Irish, Basque, Catalan, Palestinian, and Omani opposition branches.
On the pan-Arab level, Algeria keeps parsing her membership among the Arab hardliners countries. This wouldn’t have raised an issue hadn’t this axis proved to be an ideological front used to switch allegiance depending on the context and pushing its members to choose separate individual foreign policy.
One party, single thought, a tombstone in the cemetery of lost causes
In short, Algeria remains faithful to the ideology of the single party, despite a façade of a multiparty system controlled by the military institution itself, in disarray, no longer knowing where to turn.
The history of self-respecting nations tells us that when interstate crises reach a level where deadly mistakes are on the horizon, wise men take over and initiate diplomatic gestures. How about Algeria, now that one might assume she has succeeded in recording a saccade of failures?
Let us be a little optimistic and assume that in the foreseeable future, Morocco and Algeria will make the decision to open a series of negotiations to resolve pending issues. In this case, negotiations should be conceived in what is called “one single undertaking.” This means putting everything on the table to avoid later misperceptions and false-reading of agreements reached accordingly.
For the time being, only political dreamers believe that such a scenario might be played real soon. But if that were to happen, there would be things to consider in the spirit of “one single undertaking.”
Such an undertaking can be implemented on several levels. The first level would be to tell the truth about the root causes of the 1963 War of the Sands. Morocco had nothing to do with the outbreak of this war. The responsibility lies with members of the Algerian National Liberation Front (NLF), who had overthrown the Algerian provisional government to get Algeria to renounce its commitments regarding Eastern Sahara.
The second level would be to recognize the political responsibility of Algeria in the expulsion of 45,000 Moroccans on December 18, 1975. This would put an end to Algeria’s ridiculous game of drawing parallels with the question of the Moroccanization of the Moroccan economy in 1973. Morocco has expropriated and compensated French nationals, regardless of their race or ethnic origin. And at the time, those whom Algeria claims to defend bore French nationality.
The third level would be to rethink the Border Convention signed on 15 June 1972 and to review and clarify its clauses. This seems logical insofar as if Algeria threatens to adopt a law criminalizing colonization, she will also have to criminalize everything that colonization has done in its colonies, including the amputation of territories from neighboring countries and their attachment to Algeria.
The fourth level, in the same logic of criminalization, would be to invite Algeria to compensate all neighboring countries. On the one hand, for having blackmailed them by giving refuge to opposition movements. On the other hand, for having funded and provided these movements with weapons with a crystal clear goal of regime change in their respective countries.
The fifth level would be to recognize Algeria’s responsibility for having nipped in the bud the Maghreb and pan-African dreams and for having played the role of elevator state without reaping anything in exchange.
Sixthly, Algeria should think about what it should do with the populations it has brought from neighboring countries to swell the number of people dwelling in the Tindouf camps. The autonomy plan Morocco proposed in 2007 is intended for populations originating from its southern provinces.
Seventhly, Algeria should admit that the time of proxies used for diplomatic and geopolitical purposes is over. The international system, which is undergoing a period of laborious transition in terms of components and structure, can no longer accommodate itself to creative disorder. The Polisario has had its day. Sooner or later, it will turn against Algeria.
Eighth, at the Ministerial Preparatory Conference for the African Development Summit (TICAD) in Tokyo on August 23, 2024, delegated watched speechless the scene of a Polisario member breaking in the conference room before he was invited to leave. What happened leaves no doubt about the Algerian political planner’s psychological state of mind. Defying the decision taken on July 23, 2024, at the last Accra summit on relations between the African Union and its international partners, closing the door to any non-member entity of the United Nations, is a tangible proof of the bankruptcy of a diplomacy, an ideology, a system.
Ninthly, since her dream of having access to the Atlantic has evaporated, Algeria must face the fact that it is with Morocco that serious matters must be dealt with, starting with the in-depth rereading of the 1972 Convention on Borders.
Tenth, ironically, the exploitation of raw materials in the Eastern Sahara is organically linked to this convention. This is the reason why foreign corporates interested in investing in Garat Jbilat iron deposits gave up going ahead with their plans. They do not commit themselves because they come to be aware of the clear provisions contained in the Convention on the borders between Morocco and Algeria. If we assess the status quo so far, we cannot help but admit that Morocco comes out on top every time a comparison is made for the sake of clarifying the matter.
Eleventh, Algeria must be in peace with her past by reopening the question of borders, not for a handover but for the prospect of creating a zone of common prosperity. The present confusing situation on the borders between Algeria and Libya results from the fact that the latter does not recognize the delineation of the borders. Despite the complicity between Houari Boumediene and Muammar Gaddafi in the early 1970s-1980s on the balkanization of the Maghreb, the latter has never recognized the fait accompli inherited from colonization.
Twelfth, Algeria must resolve an important existential dilemma. The birth of Algeria dates back to 1962 following a referendum on self-determination negotiated in three stages (Evian-national referendum-referendum in the Algerian administrative department). An independence conditioned by cooperation (and association) with France. The referendum was designed in the context of the perception of this principle in the framework of French domestic public law. This consultation targeted populations who were French citizens to find out about their willingness to have more or less rights within the community. The abovementioned statement General Charles de Gaulle emphasized at the time leaves no room of doubt about this very bare truth. .
In short, Algeria must meditate on the geopolitical postulate that the manipulation of paradigms is not a stylistic clause to impress people driven in their idleness. There is bare evidence scholars share regardless of their cultural background stating that paradigms and concepts apply, adapt, or disappear if they don’t fit anymore.
In this respect, it would be interesting to meditate on how Algerian decision-makers have worked hard to promote the concept of “encirclement” with the aim to change everything in the neighborhood, including overthrowing existing regimes prior to her every existence. The godfathers of this concept—Lark’s mirror—have forgotten that times are changing and that geopolitics is not rocket science.
Today, Algeria is participating in its own encirclement by being in conflict with all its neighbors. The borders with the latter are closed or designed as military zones.
Algeria needs to breathe. This is the reason why she operates on two levels. On the one hand, she is trying to put her hold on Tunisia in a subtle way (using security pretext to be heavily present), and on the other, she works hard to bring about new areas of permanent instability for the sake of managing them from a distance. Two areas are selected in the current state of affairs: the borders of Mali and Libya; the latter keep questioning for the time being.
Algeria is now convinced that the Polisario is a history of the past. Furthermore, Algerian policy planners are now convinced that the extremist and terrorist movements in the creation of which their intelligence services participated are slipping through their hands and looking for other sponsors.
In two months, the United Nations Security Council will adopt a new resolution on the Western Moroccan Sahara. The Secretary General and the UNSC will take into account the series of recognitions of Moroccan sovereignty over the territory by more than 209 countries, praising the Autonomy Plan Morocco proposed in 2007. Algeria, which was trapped by being elected a non-permanent member, will have to swallow the bitter pill and hopefully move on.
Algeria is short of options. She has to be either realistic or pragmatic or be on a headlong rush that jeopardizes her own interests. Algeria has played the definition of the parties to the conflict over Sahara to her advantage because the international community was interested in trying to solve other more challenging interstate disputes.
Nice try, but this scheme didn’t last as Algeria hoped for. Since 1999, when Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president, observers have come to understand that Algeria was the main party to this regional artificial conflict. This explains why the UNSC, through its last resolutions, mainly since Morocco returned to the African Union in 2017, has been urging Algeria to resume her participation in the roundtable discussions. Algeria will be called, once again, to authorize the UNCHR to undertake a census in the Tindouf camps to get the record straight about who’s who living there.
Knowing the diplomatic stubbornness shown so far by the Algerian decision-makers and the lack of options on the intra-national political chessboard, they will choose, unless a miracle happens, to oppose any prospect for a realistic and lasting solution for the regional artificial conflict over the Sahara dispute. One thing is certain: Algeria inherits a problem that will be, as some people think and do not wish, the cause of the collapse of a system that has been built since 1962: wishful thinking and unrealistic dreams of building a nation-state from scratch.
However, the present geopolitical time no longer allows such a kind of game. Indeed, the orphans of the Cold War are henceforth called upon to mourn their fate in the cemeteries of causes unjustly defended and lost eventually.
