Algeria’s Autism on the Western Sahara Dispute

Political autism is the term used to describe the attitude of a country that refuses to see what is changing in the outside world, and remains locked into its own logic against all odds.

This is what is currently happening to Algerian diplomacy regarding the dispute over the Western Sahara region in southern Morocco. At root here is the Algerian politico-military establishment’s refusal to see Morocco’s diplomatic achievements, continuing to act as if time has stood still.

This autism, which existed in its benign form during the Bouteflika era, has become more pronounced with the arrival of the Tebboune/Chengriha duo. What does it matter to them that the world’s leading power, the United States, has recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara?

What does it matter that influential European countries support Morocco in its political efforts to find a way out of this regional dispute? What does it matter that all Arab countries, with the exception of Syria and Mauritania, recognize the Moroccanness of the Western Sahara region?

To be sure, the Algerian regime has just suffered a triple shock that is bound to further reinforce its isolation and fading appeal on the Sahara issue. The first is the clear positioning of a neighboring country like Portugal, which is following in the footsteps of its Spanish neighbor.

Lisbon is openly aligning itself with the list of European countries supporting Morocco’s proposed Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara. Despite the Algerian president’s impromptu visit to Portugal at the last minute, with the announced aim of exercising a diplomacy of influence antagonistic to Moroccan interests, Portugal resisted, much to the disappointment of the Algerian regime.

The second setback occurred during the visit to Morocco of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who expressed his country’s support for Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara. The fact that a country like Ukraine, the object of world attention and support in the face of Russia’s military invasion, can express its support for Morocco is a very precious act, especially as Morocco has been able to maintain a positive neutrality in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

So, unlike the Algerian regime’s subservient allegiance to its Russian ally, Morocco can benefit from the support of Ukraine and the benevolent neutrality of the Russians, notably at the United Nations.

The third thunderclap for Algiers, widely known to be the exclusive sponsor of the Polisario separatists, sounded under British skies after the London Court of Appeal dismissed a case by the pro-Polisario NGO WSC against the trade agreement between Morocco and the UK. That dismissed court action was a battle that the Algerian regime had financed with British and European legal institutions to obtain joint exploitation of Western Sahara’s riches with Morocco.

While the situation of the EU-Morocco relations is currently being clarified in Morocco’s favor, the British court’s decision has definitively buried Algeria’s dreams in this area. This decision will have two immediate impacts: it will help bring the European courts’ discussions on the subject to a close, and it will hasten Britain’s official recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara, which increasingly looks to be just a matter of time.

In the face of such morale-sapping developments for the Polisario leadership and its Algerian sponsor, it is hard to dismiss the prevailing thesis of the inevitable triumph of Morocco’s more pragmatic and realistic proposal as the only way forward in the long-running Western Sahara saga.

Yer, faced with Morocco’s unmistakable and paradigm-shifting diplomatic victories on the Sahara issue and the successive defeats of Algerian diplomacy since at least 2018, the Algerian regime is clinging to fading, unreachable hopes of the creation of an independent country in southern Morocco. Finding solace in the denial of the coming triumph of Morocco’s vision of how to genuinely resolve the dispute over the Sahara, Algiers refuses to face up to the realities and locks itself into an attitude of refusal.

Given its obsession with bashing and undermining Morocco, which it has elevated to the status of a governing doctrine, the Algerian regime seems ready to consider any solution, including those that entail loss and isolation, in an attempt to counter Morocco and prevent it from regaining its territorial integrity.

This attitude is both suicidal and utilitarian, and has only one objective: to keep the whole region under tension and under threat of war, and to keep neighboring Morocco under the scarecrow of an external enemy. It reaps the following benefit for the Algerian regime: to stay in power with a predatory economy under thick opacity.

For the military in Algiers, the risk of war and regional upheaval removes the need for political and economic transparency, let alone the dream of civilian power at the head of the country, a demand made both by the Algerians themselves and by those countries that want to help Algeria break out of this permanent impasse that some call the Algerian disease.