‘Maghreb Bloc’: President Tebboune Desperate to Improve Isolated Algeria’s Image

Rabat – Amid lingering tensions between Algeria and Morocco, Algerian president Abelmadjid Tebboune is seeking to address his country’s isolation on the international and local stage.

Long viewed by observers as the most isolated country in North Africa, Algeria has been on a relentless charm offensive to forge close ties with countries such as Tunisia and Libya and emerge as the Maghreb’s regional leader at the expense of Morocco.

As part of this regional drive, the Algerian regime has increasingly signaled its renewed interest in reviving the Maghreb Union project, which has remained stagnant for decades due to constant crises between neighboring countries.

The region’s most defining such crisis is arguably the lingering rift between Algeria and Morocco, which is driven by Algeria’s decals-long support for the separatist Polisario Front in southern Morocco and has in most recent years been marked by the Algerian regime’s diversionary tendency to fuel tensions when facing domestic headaches.

In addition to funding and arming the Polisario Front in its quest to undermine Morocco’s territorial integrity, the Algerian regime has sought to label Algeria’s western neighbor as an “existential threat” in order to rally nationalist support.

At the regional level, Algeria has made an effort to portray Morocco as the sole obstacle to the realization of the Maghreb Union project. Indeed, Algiers has taken its Morocco-bashing foreign policy to new heights in recent months, as it has sought to persuade the leaders of Libya, Mauritania, and Tunisia to show hostility toward Morocco and ultimately embrace the Algerian vision of a Maghreb Union that excludes Morocco.

Last month, reports in the Algerian media indicated thatAlgerian officials had held meetings with their counterparts from Tunisia, Libya, and Morrutiania. Reporting on these meetings, the Algerian website TSA described the move as an “attempt to revive the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) without Morocco.”

As this attempt to create a regional union without a key country faced ridicule and suggestions that a similar project had failed and would fail without genuine regional consensus and without Morocco’s participation, President Tebboune attempted to calm the situation by claiming that the door was “open” to anyone wishing to help this initiative succeed.

The Algerian leader made these reassuring remarks in an interview on Saturday last week, notably telling the Algerian channel Alg24 News that the primary objective of the “Maghreb bloc” that Algeria seeks to create with other countries in the region is to revive the Maghreb action and coordinate efforts to tackle pressing regional issues.

Given the painful absence of a strong and coordinated regional response to crises in the Maghreb, claimed the Algerian president, a common Maghreb action, “it was decided to organize Maghreb meetings without excluding any party.” He added, in an apparent bid to respond to critics who have mocked the idea of excluding Morocco from a project of Maghrebi solidarity: “The door is open to everyone.”

“This space would be a beneficial initiative for the countries of the region by gathering and unifying their voices on the issues that concern them, especially since we share almost the same issues,” Tebboune said, noting that this bloc is not directed “against any other state.” The bloc’s “door is open to the countries,” he further claimed, adding that it is “unacceptable” to isolate anyone in the region.

He acknowledged that the Algerian regime had been rejected by its neighbors, who accused it of meddling, and said that his country was intervening in conflicts like Mali to bring the parties together.

On Algeria’s recent rift with the Malian junta over what the West African country described as Algeria’s role in fragilizing the Sahel region, Tebboune dismissed Malia’s accusations of subversive Algerian influence.

He instead presented his country as a promoter of dialogue and stability in the Sahel, claiming that Algeria “offers its services to its neighbors without expecting anything in return… but we cannot impose, nor blame our brothers for their choices.”

Tebboune’s remarks tailored to improving Algeria’s image

Oualid Kebir, an Algerian critic and analyst told Morocco World News this marks the first time when Tebboune used a “diplomatic language, suggesting conciliation.”

For Kebir, Tebboune made this remark to avoid embarrassment on camera and also not to reveal the true reason for Morocco’s exclusion.

“He said that the door is open to everyone, including our western neighbor, who has chosen other alliances,” citing Morocco’s bid to join ECOWAS as well as its alliance with GCC countries.

“In his speech, he aimed to obfuscate the objective of establishing a parallel or alternative bloc,” Kebir said, noting that Tebboune wanted to convey that his regime had no intention to isolate Morocco.

However, the analyst argued, the Algerian president’s sober-sounding responses are not tailored for the camera, but rather to public opinion, particularly the international community.

“These are responses tailored both for the national and international public opinion, emphasizing that the regime had no hostile intentions towards Morocco,” Kbir added.

Observers also believe that Tebboune’s remarks come as part of his attempt to appease regional and internal crises amid his election campaign.

In March, he announced an early presidential election scheduled for September 7.

Tebboune, 79, did not confirm whether he will run for a second term but said that the decision to bring the elections date on September 7 – three months before their initial date – was motivated by “pure technical reasons.”

But whether Teboune succeeded in convincing or improving Algeria’s image following his interview with Alg24 News remains a widely open question whose response will soon be manifest in how regional actors and the wider international community interpret Algeria’s standing in the Sahel and the Maghreb regions.

For its part, Morocco has for the past few years extended an olive branch to Algeria, calling on the Algerian government to engage in a direct and frank dialogue to end the lingering political stalemate between the two neighbors.

Algeria’s image is also not only influenced by individual diplomatic efforts by the country’s president but also by several other factors, including economic stability and regional politics. In recent years, several reports have urged the Algerian government to amend its policies to tackle the populations’ dissatisfaction with the country’s performances on a wide range of social and economic fronts.

For observers, this pronounced discrepancy between the Algerian regime’s confident pronouncements on the foreign policy front and its successive failures to deal with interrelated crises at home makes it difficult to consider Algeria as a regional model.