The execrable relations between Algeria and Morocco experienced a new surge of fever Wednesday with the announcement of the closure of Algerian airspace to the Moroccan neighbor accused of “provocations and hostile practices”. The move comes a month after Algeria announced on August 24 that it had broken off diplomatic relations with Morocco, after months of heightened tensions between these two rival Maghreb countries. The decision was taken during a meeting of the High Security Council chaired by the Head of State Abdelmadjid Tebboune, also Minister of Defense.
Algeria’s air borders, closed since March 17 due to the Covid-19 epidemic, only partially reopened on June 1 to seven countries of which Morocco was not part. According to a source close to the national company Air Algeria, there are no more direct commercial flights between Algeria and Morocco since that date. “Flights between the two countries have not resumed and Algerians going to Morocco pass through Tunis. The decision in Algiers will affect especially in the immediate future Moroccan aircraft whose journeys fly over Algerian territory.
“Fallacious, even absurd pretexts”
After the announcement of the breakdown of relations, the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ramtane Lamamra, criticized Rabat for “having never ceased to carry out hostile actions against Algeria”. “The Moroccan security and propaganda services are waging a despicable war against Algeria, its people and its leaders,” he accused, without giving further details. Morocco regretted the Algerian decision to sever relations, qualifying it as “completely unjustified”, and rejected “the fallacious, even absurd, pretexts which underlie it”.
Traditionally difficult, relations between Algeria and its western neighbor have deteriorated mainly because of the thorny issue of Western Sahara, a vast desert territory of which nearly 80% is under Moroccan control. And the normalization of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel – in return for an American recognition of Moroccan “sovereignty” over Western Sahara – has further heightened tensions with Algeria, support for the Palestinian cause, which has denounced “Foreign maneuvers” aimed at destabilizing it.
Algiers further accused Morocco and Israel of supporting the MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia), an independentist organization, as well as the Islamo-conservative organization Rachad, two movements classified as “terrorists” by Algeria and who are based abroad. The question of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, considered as a “non-autonomous territory” by the UN in the absence of a final settlement, has for decades opposed Morocco to the separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria. .
