The Algerian Foreign Minister declared at a press conference on Tuesday, August 24, 2021, that Morocco was ready to “hostile acts” against its country. Algiers announces that diplomatic relations with Rabat will be suspended immediately.
“Algeria has decided to sever diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Morocco from this day,” Ramtane Lamamra, the head of Algerian diplomacy, told a news conference on Tuesday.
The Algerian Foreign Minister justified the election of his government by saying that “history has shown that the Kingdom of Morocco has never ceased to carry out hostile acts against Algeria” (see box below). Article).
According to him, the leaders of the Moroccan empire, which borders the Algerian republic, bear “the responsibility for repeated crises, which have worsened” and caused, he says, “conflict instead of integration” throughout the Maghreb.
→ Also read: Algeria and Morocco with daggers drawn on many subjects
If the tensions between these two countries are old, the pressure would have increased a bit on Wednesday, when the High Security Council, led by Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, decided to reflect on its future relations with Rabat.
Algeria accused its neighbor last week of being linked to the deadly fires that ravaged its territory. In a statement, Algiers condemned “the incessant hostilities that Morocco has committed against Algeria”.
In Algiers’ eyes, these devastating fires are criminal, a fact of groups that qualify as terrorists. The Algerian authorities are pointing the finger at the self-determination movement of Kabylia, an organization considered a terrorist in Algeria, which, according to the Algerian presidency, would receive support from Morocco.
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The head of Algerian diplomacy also accuses Morocco of spying on Algerian officials and failing in its bilateral obligations, including in Western Sahara, where Algeria supports the Polisario Front.
And to promise an “intensification of security controls at the western borders”, which has been closed since 1994. Relations between Morocco and Algeria have been strained for decades, mainly due to the situation in Western Sahara.
The break-up of diplomatic relations immediately became a reality. But consulates in both countries will remain open, Lamamra said.
Algeria-Morocco: Neighborhood relations far from good
Decades of tension have animated the relationship between the two heavyweights in North Africa. In question: Western Sahara, which opposes Morocco against the separatists from the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, since the departure of the Spanish colonists in the 1970s. Rabat controls about 80% of this disputed territory and proposes an independence plan for the region, but under its sovereignty, which Algeria does not want.
If the difficulties began in the early 1960s, the Moroccans were the first to break off relations. It was March 7, 1976. Rabat intended to protest against Algiers’ recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic of the Polisario Front. In 1994, Algerian President Liamine Zeroual stirred up the wound, declaring that Africa remained “an illegally occupied country”.
It was at this time that Morocco introduced an entry visa for Algeria, following the attack on a hotel in Marrakech that caused the deaths of two Spanish tourists, killed by French-Maghreb Islamists. Rabat then accuses the Algerian services of being behind the attack and Algeria closes the border. It was not until Hassan II’s death in 1999, to see the beginning of relaxation: the Algerian head of state came to the funeral.
Shortly afterwards, however, a massacre left 29 dead in Algeria. End of rapprochement: Abdelaziz Bouteflika accuses Morocco of facilitating infiltration of armed Islamists. The temple will remain in the cards until 2005. Then a series of meetings will take place. But by the end of 2020, following US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, Algeria condemns “foreign maneuvers”.
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