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As more countries embrace the Moroccan Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara and more observers come to the realization that the Moroccan plan is indeed the best path to lasting resolution of the Sahara dispute, the Algerian regime is increasingly left to reap the storm it has sowed for more than six decades. The saying “he who sows the wind reaps the storm” perfectly applies to a system created to serve the colonial order.
And with that order now exposed and irrelevant, the system finds itself growing more and more obsolete, out of touch with watching as Morocco successfully thwarts its schemes to weaken, divide, and prevent it from reconciling with its own history. The sense of frustration and decline engulfing Algeria’s regime today, following the loss of its Sahara card and its diplomatic defeat at the hands of Morocco, stands as a striking example of divine justice.
Morocco wanted a shared future while Algeria sought regional supremacy at any cost
Following Algeria’s independence, King Hassan II made sure to be the first head of state to visit the country. As a gesture of goodwill toward independent Algeria and a sign of his sincere intention to build a shared, pan-Maghrebi future, King Hassan II postponed his planned visit to the United States, originally scheduled for March 20, 1963, and chose instead to travel to Algiers.
He thus became the first foreign leader to visit independent Algeria, outpacing Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was planning a visit for July of the same year. The King arrived in Algeria with deep affection for his neighbors and a vision of both nations leading a project of Maghreb unity — one of the key ambitions shared by him and his late father, King Mohammed V.
King Hassan II brought numerous gifts for President Ahmed Ben Bella, his ministers, and government officials. According to a New York Times report published on October 16, 1963, the King offered Ben Bella a luxury Berliet equipped with top amenities to serve as his personal vehicle for tours across Algeria. Members of the Algerian government were decorated with royal medals, and the King personally covered all expenses of his visit. He even gifted each of the 23 Algerian ministers a brand-new Mercedes, according to the late Abdelhadi Boutaleb, who accompanied the royal delegation.
Militarily, the King presented his Algerian counterpart with five French-made AMX armored cars, jeeps, mortars, and motorcycles. To avoid embarrassing his host — who was still consolidating power amid military unrest — the two sides agreed to postpone border discussions until the end of the year. They also agreed that the Algerian president would later visit Morocco.
However, while Morocco genuinely sought to build Maghreb unity, Algeria’s leadership had other intentions. Instead of visiting Morocco or engaging in promised border talks, the Algerian regime used the border tensions with Morocco to strengthen its domestic control and suppress regional rebellions, including in Kabylia. More signs of Algiers’ bad faith toward Rabat appeared just four months after King Hassan II’s visit, with Algeria sending reinforcements to disputed areas in July 1963, forcing Moroccan residents of Tindouf and Béchar to take Algerian nationality, and expelling those who refused.
In August, Algeria barred Moroccans from Figuig from accessing their palm groves in Beni Ounif, expelled Moroccan traders and agricultural workers. Yet perhaps the more critical move in this cascade of Algerian betrayal and dismissal of its own promises to Morocco came in October 1963, when Algerian troops launched surprise attacks on Moroccan posts in Hassi Beida and Hassi Tadjmout and triggered what became known as the “Sand War.”
These attacks came just ten days after a major armed revolt in Kabylia led by Colonel Mohand Oulhadj and Mohamed Aït Ahmed, making it the first instance of Algeria’s embrace of diversionary strategy and scapegoating tactics in its tensions with Morocco. In other words, faced with both furious dissent in its inner circles and a severe popular legitimacy crisis in several regions across Algeria, the Algerian leadership’s bid was to present Morocco as a treacherous neighbor and an enemy of the Algerian nation’s interests and well-being.
The Algerian regime’s hope, as it would become clear in the ensuing decades of tensions between the two neighbors, was to quell, dismiss, and discredit internal dissent by rallying patriotic sentiments around the urgent need to settle scores with Morocco, which its deceptively presented to the Algerian people as a sworn enemy and an “existential threat.”
In that sense, President Ben Bella, arguably the perfector of post-independence’s Algeria’s adoption of diversionary escalation as a way of keeping Morocco’s continental depth in check, exploited the border conflict with Morocco to rally nationalist unity and suppress opposition. “The Moroccans have oppressed us,” he said in a now infamous address to the Algerian Parliament, fueling mass mobilization as tens of thousands volunteered to join the army and help win Algeria’s existential confrontation with a “treacherous” and “expansionist” neighbor.
Rabat is reaping the rewards of strategic patience and good-faith diplomacy
In those early months of Algerian independence, it goes without saying that Morocco, which had gained its independence from France almost a decade prior, boasted a stronger national army and a more coherent political organization.
Still, despite Morocco’s military and organizational advantage, King Hassan II chose de-escalation over confrontation. Years later, the King explained the reason for this choice in his book “The Challenge.” When faced with the decision of whether to halt or continue the 1963 against the troops of the newly independent Algeria, the King wrote, “I did not hesitate for even a minute.” He added, more tellingly: “I preferred a strong, friendly neighbor to a hostile and resentful one.” Yet Algerian’s betrayal and relentless maneuvering to challenge Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern provinces would later come back to bite the Moroccan monarch, dashing his vision of unity and fraternity between Algiers and Rabat.
King Hassan II recalled that episode in a 1985 interview with the magazine Jeune Afrique, explaining that there were both pan-Maghrebi and national interest dimensions to Morocco’s decision to de-escalation despite having the upper hand on the military front. Morocco refrained from escalation for two reasons, he elaborated. First to avoid creating a lasting feud between the two nations. And second because the land over which the fight broke out, the Tindouf area, held little strategic value compared to Morocco’s greater diplomatic goal of regaining control over its southern provinces in the Sahara.
As a result, Morocco renounced its claims over Tindouf and signed the border agreement in June 1972, hoping Algeria would show goodwill and support Morocco’s efforts against Spain. Although President Houari Boumediene assured Hassan II that Algeria had no interest in the Sahara — even repeating that stance at the 1974 Arab Summit in Rabat — his actions soon revealed the opposite.
As Italian writer Attilio Gaudio documented in his 1978 book on the historical origins of the Sahara dispute,, following the 1973 Agadir trilateral summit between Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania, it became clear that Algeria was determined to block Morocco’s recovery of its southern provinces. Soon after, Algeria and Spain forged a covert alliance to promote an anti-Moroccan narrative, while Algiers created and armed the Polisario Front in 1973 to serve its expansionist goals.
Algeria went even further in 1975, signing a secret deal with Spain and the Polisario to ensure that, upon Spanish withdrawal, Polisario forces backed by the Algerian army would seize control of the Sahara and turn it into an Algerian province. This plot became evident during the Amgala clashes in 1976, when Moroccan forces captured over 100 Algerian soldiers who had entered Moroccan territory.
Despite repeated Moroccan gestures of reconciliation since then, the Algerian regime has remained hostile, pouring billions into sustaining the separatist project. More than fifty years later, however, Morocco is poised to reap the rewards of patience and diplomatic resilience, decisively defeating Algeria’s separatist ambitions and turning decades of endurance into a story of strategic triumph.
Samir Bennis is the co-founder and publisher of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
