Algeria and the royal vision of the "Atlantic Region”
Eminent experts and political figures from various African countries, particularly in the Sahel region, warmly welcomed and appreciated His Majesty Mohammed VI's "Atlantic Region" initiative, given that the economic integration of the countries of Africa's "Mediterranean Region", in this case the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), is clearly being blocked by the Algerian Generals.
Listening carefully to the various interventions and debates raised by African diplomatic, political and institutional leaders from Morocco, Senegal and Sahel countries such as Mali, Burkina Fasso, Niger and Chad, I realized that the country fiercely opposed to this laudable and promising royal initiative of the "Atlantic Region" is, unfortunately and sadly, our neighbor Algeria, whereas it should have benefited from it before any other African country. Why is this?
According to all political experts and geostrategic analysts, the various Algerian presidents from the late Houari Boumediene to the current Abdelmajid Tebboune (with the exception of the late Mohamed Boudiaf, who was cowardly assassinated) have unconditionally and blindly supported the Polisario Front for five decades, not for the insistent and fallacious idea of defending the Saharawi people's right to self-determination (which, by the way, they categorically deny to the Kabyle people and the Tuaregs of Azawad), but rather for their obsessive goal of carving out a passage to the Atlantic coast. It's clear that this support for the Polisario Front's separatist cause is costing Algeria dearly in terms of public finances, and is seriously hampering its socio-economic development and the social well-being of its people, to such an extent that citizens are forced to make long, interminable queues to buy basic necessities! According to Algeriepart.com, the Algerian regime wastes over a billion dollars a year on Polisario's Saharan mercenaries!
But Algerian leaders have been trying for almost fifty years to obtain an opening onto the Atlantic Ocean, and they have never succeeded! All they have to do is recognize the territorial integrity of Morocco's Saharan provinces, and align themselves with the positions of former colonial power Spain, which considers the autonomy plan proposed to the United Nations in April 2007 as "the most serious, realistic and credible basis" for resolving this dispute once and for all. Accordingly, the Kingdom of Morocco would be willing to finance the necessary infrastructure to facilitate logistics and the transfer of Algerian products and natural resources to its Atlantic ports, including the port of Dakhla!
On the other hand, if Algeria insists on waiting for Western Saharan independence, it will have to wait another fifty years or more!
Assuming that the Algerian generals and their presidential puppets don't want to recover reason, Realpolitik pragmatism and common sense.
So, coldly analyzing their chimerical scenario, that the Polisario Front would manage to realize their dream of independence, to create their own independent state, even though this scenario is not at all plausible.
My friend and fellow German journalist Uwe Topper rightly points out: "But neither side was alone. Since the 1960s, Rabat had been able to count on millions of dollars, anti-tank rockets and even fighter jets from the United States to defend itself against Algeria, in the Soviet orbit, which received an even greater volume of equipment from Moscow.
The Polisario Front was a pawn in this game; had it won, the vast but almost uninhabited Saharan republic would have become a protectorate of Algeria, and its coastline the ideal place to establish that ice-free naval base the Soviet navy sought as the holy grail of the world's seas. Or so Washington feared. Giving Rabat all the support it needed to prevent this from happening was an essential element of its foreign policy" (and continues to be so since the irreversible recognition of former President Donald Trump's December 2020 Executive Order on the United States of America's decision to recognize the Kingdom of Morocco's full sovereignty over the entire Moroccan Sahara region).
Indeed, what Algerian leaders and generals ignore, naively or through negligence, is that if the Saharawi independence fighters achieve their goals, they will never accept a new protectorate from the authorities in Algiers. Consequently, the first thing they would do would be to declare war on the Algerians, openly and immediately, using the same weapons that Algeria supplied them with, in order to assert their autonomy and so-called sovereignty, as they themselves have already done against their Moroccan brothers. Once the Algerians had gained their independence, with the weaponry that their Moroccan brothers (and certain members of my family) were sending to them in Nador, Berkane and Oujda, they declared war on the Moroccans, by unleashing the Sand War of 1963!
In a recent interview, the former French ambassador to Algeria, Mr. Xavier Driencourt, revealed that the late King Hassan II, in a conversation with President Charles De Gaulle, had admitted that although Morocco and Algeria had both been colonized by France, and Algerians were considered brothers, support for Algeria ultimately created tensions. "We are Muslims, we were both colonized by France, they are our brothers, we helped them, but I am well aware that this is now going to be a problem for us". Once the Algerian military took power, they caused problems with the country that had supported them the most!
Returning to our hypothetical scenario in the event that the Saharawi mercenaries, still at the mercy of Algerian officers, manage to establish an independent state, a SADR, the first country to come to their support against the Algerian army could only be Vladimir Putin's Russia, which is in the process of significantly strengthening its presence in Africa, through these "bloodthirsty mercenaries of Wagner", as it has done in Mali, and is in the process of doing in Niger...!
Ultimately, the Algerian leaders and generals, who are devoting their entire energies and spending immense financial resources to blocking this original royal initiative of the "Atlantic Region", by trying to put pressure, uselessly, on Mauritania and other countries like Senegal (while trying to boycott the Nigeria-Europe gas pipeline which passes through the African countries of the Atlantic coast), are left with only one choice, to join this Atlantic Region, open its borders with Morocco and align itself with the realistic position of the United States and the majority of countries in the European Union, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union regarding the resolution of the Moroccan Sahara dispute, which could prove a sure source of socio-economic prosperity for its more than 40 million citizens. What's more, as one Egyptian youtuber puts it, if Algeria and Morocco, with a population in excess of 80 million, were to join forces to form a single country and a single state, the latter would de facto establish itself as the leading economic, industrial, maritime, military and tourist power on the entire African continent!
Rachid RAHA,
President of the Amazigh World Assembly
(www.amamazigh.org)