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Rabat – Remarks on the self-determination of Algeria’s Kabyle people by Morocco’s UN Ambassador Omar Hilale have created an uproar among Algerian officials.
Speaking on Saturday, July 17, El-Bina Movement leader Abdelkader Bengrina described Hilale’s remarks as “declaring war on Algeria, the country and its people, and we await a firm position from the competent authorities.”
Earlier this week, on July 15, Omar Hilale, Morocco’s ambassador to the UN in New York, presented Algeria’s support for the “self-determination” of the Western Sahara region as hypocritical, in the face of Algeria denying similar rights to its Kabyle people. The remarks, which came in the conclusion of a statement, have since been dubbed by Algeria’s foreign ministry as “a particularly dangerous drift.”
Hilale confronts Algeria
Hilale’s statement at the UN came in response to remarks by Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra. Algeria’s newly appointed top diplomat had used the general debate section of the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement at the UN to raise the issue of Western Sahara.
In a statement fraught with inaccuracies and accusations, Lamamra had claimed a current “resumption of military conflict” is underway in Western Sahara.
Hilale responded to the Algerian statement by remarking that current tensions and delays in the appointment of a new UN Envoy on Western Sahra is due to “Algeria and the armed separatist group it created.” What Lamamra calls a worrying resumption of hostilities is actually a “fiction (that) exists only in the propaganda statements of the armed separatist group, Polisario, and the news articles of the Algerian press agency,” Hilale explained.
Morocco’s case
In presenting Morocco’s Western Sahara case before the UN, Hilale urged for a strong and fair UN process to realize peace in the region while holding Algeria and its Polisario militia responsible for the continued conflict in Morocco’s southern provinces.
Morocco’s UN ambassador further highlighted the diplomatic progress Rabat has made on the issue, especially pointing to the US’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty and the establishment of 22 consulates general in Laayoune and Dakhla.
Hilale described Algeria’s efforts on the Western Sahara question as “insidious,” arguing that Algeria’s responsibility for hosting and arming the Polisario militia that fuels the conflict is an open secret. He then highlighted perceived Algerian hypocrisy by reiterating calls for the self-determination of the Kabyle people.
The Kabyle people are an ancient berber ethic group which has lived in the Atlas mountains in northern Algeria.
The ethic group maintained their independence for millenia, resisting the Romans, Byzantines, Carthagians and Ottomans until they were defeated by the French in 1857. When Algeria finally won its independence in 1962, tensions between the central government and the Kabyle people lingered and many Kabyle people have since left the country.
Algerian hypocrisy
It is telling that while Algeria has long maintained that its hosting, feeding and arming of the Polisario militia does not make it a part of the Western Sahara conflict, the Algerian government furiously reacted to Morocco’s mere statement in support of the Kabyle people as a direct attack on the country.
El-Bina Movement leader Abdelkader Bengrina described Hilale’s remarks as a “miserable attempt to divide (Algeria’s) social fabric,” adding that the statement “must be considered as an attack on the nation, even a declaration of war on all Algerian men and women alike.” He additionally described the Kabyle people as a “known terrorist group” and stated Hilale’s statement constitutes a “campaign hostile to Algeria.”
But none of the Algerian officials who have since scathingly reacted to Hilale’s remarks have bothered to explain or show how the Moroccan diplomat’s statement on the Kabyle people was any worse than Algeria’s direct military support for the Polisario’s statehood aspirations. Morocco is not providing financial or military support to the Kabyle berbers, as dictated by its continued support for the principle of non-interference in countries’ internal affairs.
Country in crisis
The renewed diplomatic spat between Algeria and Morocco comes at an opportune moment for Algeria’s ruling elite. The country’s government has “its back against the wall,” as newspaper Liberte Algerie recently described the domestic situation in a headline. Algeria’s aging leadership itself has not been able to escape the domestic epidemic, with first its president and now its prime minister infected with COVID-19.
Algeria is currently facing a rapid resurgence of COVID-19 cases amid interconnected crises of water shortages, COVID-19, unemployment and even forest fires. Although Algeria’s Hirak protests have diminished because of the renewed threat of infection, deep dissatisfaction with the country’s leadership has not withered away amid an absence of mass protests.
For Algeria’s leadership, Hilale’s remarks present an opportunity to put the Algerian people on a war-footing and demand loyalty and acquiescence despite ongoing domestic crises.
Algerian journalist and political analyst Oualid Kebir told Morocco World News that “for 60 years the Algerian regime has exploited its conflict with Morocco to strengthen its home front.” He described how “in 1963 this regime manipulated Morocco’s demands concerning the border issue, and Algeria launched the Sand War against Morocco to stop a rebellion in the Kabyle region and unfortunately managed to convince the opposition to believe it.”
This strategy of “diversionary foreign policy” has dominated Algerian reporting on its western neighbor while doing little to distract angry citizens who face water rationing in the capital, a spiralling COVID-19 epidemic, and few constructive solutions from the government in Algiers.
