Algerian Ambassador Falsely Claims that His Country Signed the First US Treaty Algerian Ambassador Falsely Claims that His Country Signed the First US Treaty

Rabat – In a recent statement by Algeria’s Ambassador to Washington, Sabri Boukadoum, made a major diplomatic and historical mistake after he claimed in an interview with an the Stimson that Algeria was the first African, Arab, and Muslim country to sign a “Friendship and Cooperation Treaty” with the US in 1783.

Hafed Al-Ghwell, journalist and director of the North Africa Program at the Stimson Center, quickly corrected him, reminding him that Morocco was the first country to sign such a treaty and the first nation in the world to recognize the independence of the United States.

“I insist that we’re the first that have signed a treaty with the Americans in 1795. People tend to forget that,” the Algerian ambassador said before Al-Ghwell responded, saying: “North Africa is significant. Morocco is the first country to recognize them officially.”

This false claim, which damages the credibility of a senior diplomat, also reflects a pattern in Algeria’s approach to Morocco, which is marked by distorting or ignoring well-established historical facts.

This is not a small factual error, as Morocco’s engagement with the new American republic is well documented. On December 20, 1777, Sultan Sidi Mohammed (Mohammed III) declared that American ships flying the new US flag could enter Moroccan ports and enjoy safe passage, an early, public recognition of American independence.

That December 1777 move led to negotiations and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship (signed in 1786), a document that the US government and historians call the oldest unbroken treaty relationship in US history.

When President Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in December 2020, he explicitly referenced Morocco’s early recognition of the United States, reminding audiences that Morocco had treated the new republic as a sovereign partner as early as 1777.

Trump said that Morocco was the first country to recognize the US and used that historical tie as part of the rationale for his administration’s policy shift on Western Sahara.

“Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

In addition, no modern state called “Algeria” existed then. The territory that is now Algeria was governed as the Regency of Algiers, an Ottoman-era polity (a semi-autonomous regency on the Barbary Coast) until the French invasion of 1830 and long before Algerian independence in 1962.

The political entity known today as the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria was therefore not an international actor in the late 18th century in the way modern nation-states like Morocco were. Saying “Algeria signed a 1783 treaty” confuses later national identities with the political map of the 18th century.