Between the state of memory and the power of the complex: the roots of Algerian hostility towards Morocco

When these pillars weaken, confrontation becomes a tool for survival, and hostility becomes a substitute identity. From this logic, we can understand the relationship that the Algerian regime has imposed on Morocco for decades: a relationship based on denial, not cooperation; on confrontation, not construction.

The Algerian political system was not configured as the continuation of a historical state with a solid institutional memory, but as a functional structure inherited from the colonial administration. 

After independence, the flag changed, but not the method: power without strategic memory, management without a national project and political discourse based on permanent confrontation. 

This regime can only define itself through the negation of the other. Its internal failures are justified by the creation of a constant enemy. Morocco, due to its historical stability and regional weight, became that ‘necessary other’ within the official Algerian narrative. Not because Morocco has changed, but because the Algerian system cannot sustain itself without an external confrontation that hides its own shortcomings.

The paradox is evident: Morocco was one of the first countries to support the Algerian revolution, both politically and morally, even assuming strategic costs. From that period, it emerged with a state endowed with continuity, historical legitimacy and consolidated institutions. Algeria, on the other hand, built a system dominated by military logic, where force replaced democratic legitimacy and ideology replaced the national project. 

This is where the structural difference between the two models becomes apparent.

Morocco opted for a state with memory; Algeria built a power marked by historical complexes. 

Morocco invested in stability; Algeria invested in confrontation. 

Morocco chose history as its reference point; Algeria resorted to ideology as a substitute for a strategic vision. 

The official discourse of ‘brotherhood’ between the two peoples lacks real political content. Brotherhood is not measured by slogans, but by deeds. True brothers do not finance separatist movements, question the territorial integrity of their neighbours, or base their foreign policy on weakening the states in the region. When brotherhood is reduced to a slogan, it loses its political and moral value.

The problem does not lie with the Algerian people, who maintain deep historical and human ties with Morocco, but with a system that has educated public opinion in fear rather than critical thinking, in propaganda rather than analysis. When the official narrative replaces the truth, believing it ceases to be a rational choice and becomes a mechanism for psychological survival.

The Algerian regime does not defend a cause, but its own permanence. 

It does not fight for principles, but for a worn-out legitimacy. 

It does not harass Morocco because of a real threat, but because Morocco acts as a mirror reflecting its own internal weaknesses. 

Morocco, for its part, does not need to fabricate enemies to justify its existence. But neither will it renounce its territorial integrity, its history or its regional influence to satisfy a system trapped in the logic of the “external enemy”.

Ultimately, what separates the two countries today is not a war, but a vision. 

It is not a border conflict, but a clash of models: the model of the state versus the model of the barracks.

Abdelhay Korret, Moroccan journalist and writer