Who is driving the military clash between Algeria and Morocco?

Mahbes, like Smara before it in October last year, has been the target of a rocket attack which, according to Moroccan media, hit near a tent where some authorities were watching a parade commemorating the 49th anniversary of the Green March with which the army and thousands of Moroccan citizens entered the former Spanish colony in November 1975. 

The Royal Armed Forces responded to the attack by sending in a drone that bombed several vehicles belonging to Polisario Front militias, causing several casualties, including a leader of the attacking group. 

In this episode in Mahbes, as in the previous one in Smara, the Moroccan army refrained from using ‘the right of pursuit’ and counter-attacking hostile forces in their rear barracks. 

Polisario Front militiamen often carry out patrols in what the independence movement considers ‘liberated territories’, the area of the Sahara east of the defensive walls built by Morocco that have divided the territory of the former Spanish colony in two: a part administered by Morocco covering about 85% of the area; and another ‘liberated’ by Polisario covering no more than 15%. 

The FAR has always responded to attacks carried out in Moroccan territory and has often carried out armed responses in the ‘liberated territory’ through which Polisario units circulate. But they have never attacked the rearguards of the independence movement, located in Algerian territory. 

Hassan II recounts in his memoirs that in order to avoid having to use the right of pursuit in the face of Polisario guerrilla attacks, he himself decided that the defensive walls built in the 79s and 80s of the last century would leave part of the territory of Western Sahara outside them. If the walls were built along the border line, there was a risk that the Moroccan Armed Forces (FAR) would enter Algerian territory, which would lead to the possibility of a conflict between the two countries. 

Hassan II did not want war with Algeria; neither did his son. However, both after Morocco's independence and during the reigns of Hassan II and Mohammed VI, there have been opinions in the Moroccan military establishment about the need to take drastic measures against armed attacks from abroad: by Algerian military units in Amgala 1 and Amgala 2, and by Polisario Front militias from 1976 to 1991 and resumed from 2020. 

The intense rearmament being carried out by both Algeria and Morocco has another meaning. It is not in preparation for war, but rather Morocco's quest for second-tier power in the Strait of Gibraltar (the main tier being the United States, Britain and Spain), as well as that of a dominant force on the entire Atlantic coast of North Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea; and Algeria's international recognition of its military power in the central Mediterranean as a link between Europe and Africa, as well as the need to protect its borders (6,700 kilometres of land borders and 1,000 kilometres of coastline), and the need to protect its oil and mineral deposits. Morocco needs a large army for its external projection, while Algeria needs it for its internal security. 

This does not exclude the temptation on both sides to push for a major military confrontation, but both regimes are aware that a military confrontation would not lead to any victory for one over the other, and would not have international support from their own allies, roughly speaking the United States with Morocco, and Russia with Algeria. 

The skirmishes carried out by the Polisario militias have two objectives: to defend their role as the main protagonist in the conflict before the United Nations (Algeria and the Polisario want it to be the ‘sole’ protagonist; while within the population of the territory itself, their claim to be the ‘sole party’ is contested). Secondly, to provoke Morocco into officially recognising and providing military means to Algerian autonomist or secessionist movements such as the MAK (Movement for Autonomy in Kabylia, led by Ferhat Mehenni), or to create armed cells within the vast Hirak movement, which has challenged the military regime for two years with mass demonstrations every week throughout the country. 

Despite countless attacks by Polisario Front militias against civilian populations or Moroccan security detachments, Mohammed VI never agreed to grant the Kabylia Autonomy Movement the status of a ‘national liberation movement’ that could justify its supply of arms and explosives. 

Moreover, twice in his annual solemn speeches, the Moroccan king has addressed the Algerian authorities, offering to engage in dialogue ‘without conditions’. So far, Algiers has not responded to its western neighbour's offers.