In a strongly worded statement, Algeria came out on Thursday to talk about a possible shift in the French position on the Western Sahara issue, revealing that Paris informed it of the decision to support the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco to end the conflict, which Algeria considered an “unsuccessful and useless decision.”
And came Algerian statement At a time when Paris and Rabat have not issued any official statement or comment on the matter, which raises questions about the timing and background of this alleged change in the French position, which may represent a significant diplomatic shift in Paris’ relations with the two neighboring countries, if it occurs.
“Angry Statement” wallpapers
The Algerian statement indicated that the government took note, with “great regret and strong condemnation, of the unexpected, unsuccessful and useless decision taken by the French government to provide explicit and unambiguous support for the autonomy plan for the Western Sahara region within the framework of the alleged Moroccan sovereignty.”
Algeria attacked France and Morocco, considering what happened to be an understanding between “old and new colonial powers” that “know how to get along with each other, how to understand each other, and how to extend a helping hand to each other.”
Hossam Hamza, professor of international relations at the National Higher School of Political Science in Algeria, says that recent developments reveal that we are heading towards a “deep crisis between Algeria and Paris.”
Hamza added in a statement to Alhurra that Algeria will respond to the situation in an “unfriendly” manner or by “trying to make France feel the extent of the damage it has inflicted on Algeria and the Western Sahara issue.”
Morocco controls 80 percent of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, and proposes granting it autonomy under its sovereignty, but the Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish an independent state there.
The United Nations classifies Western Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory.”
Strong Algerian statement towards France after its “decision” on Western Sahara
Algeria expressed, on Thursday, its “great regret and strong condemnation” of the French government’s decision to recognize the autonomy plan for the Western Sahara region within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty, according to a statement by the French Foreign Ministry.
The French Foreign Minister’s office declined to comment to AFP on the Algerian Foreign Ministry’s statement, and no official Moroccan comment was issued on the latest statement.
In an analysis by the newspaper,Le MondeThe French said that the text of the statement “does not specify the exact content of the French decision that was communicated to it in advance, before it was officially announced at a later time,” suggesting that it was on the occasion of President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Rabat before the end of the year.
The French daily reports that it remains unclear whether a new bilateral crisis is looming upon reading the statement, but it indicates that it will enter a “period of tension,” referring to the “use of a veiled threat,” through the Algerian government’s assertion that it “will draw all the consequences resulting from this French decision, for which the French government alone bears full responsibility.”
By issuing its latest warning, the Algerian Foreign Ministry, according to Le Monde, is seeking to preempt the expected shift in Paris’ position, aiming to try to deter this change or at least reduce its scope, which may indicate that “the situation is still subject to change at this stage.”
In the same context, the director of the Sahara and Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Morocco, Abdel Fattah Al-Fathi, believes that Algeria “is trying to preempt the decision, in order to warn and alert, as it had done when a similar position was issued by Madrid, in light of which it withdrew its ambassador before returning him and threatened to sever trade relations with the Spanish side.”
Last year, Spain, the former colonial power of the Sahara, announced a change in its position on the conflict, considering the Moroccan proposal for autonomy “the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving this conflict,” a move that prompted Algeria to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid.
After a period of coldness that had dominated relations between the two countries since the fall of 2021, Paris and Algiers began the process of improving these relations with a visit by the leader of the Élysée to Algeria in August of the following year. At that time, he signed a joint declaration with Tebboune to resume bilateral cooperation, before new and successive differences surfaced in relations between the two countries, the most prominent of which is related to the ongoing debate on the file of memory and French colonial history in Algeria.
The Algerian Foreign Ministry concluded its latest statement by saying that it “will draw all the conclusions and consequences that result from this French decision and holds the French government alone fully and completely responsible for it.”
Algeria demands ‘historical property’ from colonial era from France
Algeria has submitted an open list of its “symbolic” properties preserved in various French institutions, for recovery within the mission of the Algerian-French Committee for History and Memory.
Regarding the levels and form of the Algerian response to what he described as the “shift” in the French position, Hamza says, “It will be primarily economic, through the cancellation of projects and plans that were agreed upon during the French President’s visit to Algeria.”
The new French position is expected to affect the date of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s visit to France, at the end of September or the beginning of October, after multiple postponements, according to Agence France-Presse.
But the Algerian analyst confirms that “Tebboune’s scheduled visit is now cancelled,” and that “a group of investment projects related to the automotive industry and the banking sector that were launched during Macron’s last visit will be harmed, and France will remain one of the weakest investors in the Algerian market.”
The same spokesman explained that this matter “will return relations between the two countries to square one, as they were before Macron’s visit.”
In this regard, the Moroccan analyst says that the political calculations between Algeria and France “have not matured, and perhaps this is what made Tebboune’s visit to Paris fail more than once, and with it Paris realized that it had made a big mistake during the recent years in which it tried to get closer to it.”
The secret behind the possible shift in Paris’ position
On the other hand, France and Morocco are traditional allies, but their diplomatic relations have witnessed strong tensions in recent years, coinciding with the French president’s efforts to reach rapprochement with Algeria, whose relations with Morocco have witnessed successive tensions for decades due to the Western Sahara issue.
Disagreements between the two neighboring countries have worsened over the past few years, with Algeria announcing the severing of diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021, considering that Morocco “has never stopped carrying out unfriendly acts” against it, while the Kingdom expressed its regret over the decision, rejecting the Algerian allegations.
The French-Algerian rapprochement efforts over the past two years have also cast a shadow over the relations between Paris and Rabat, which have witnessed other points of tension in recent years, most notably France’s decision in September 2021 to halve the number of visas granted to Moroccans, which was met with sharp criticism in Morocco.
On the French side, the authorities expressed their displeasure after an investigative journalistic investigation revealed that Morocco targeted the phone numbers of Macron and ministers in 2019 with the Israeli spyware “Pegasus”, accusations denied by Rabat.
The European Parliament’s condemnation in January 2023 of what it described as a deterioration in press freedom in Morocco also increased diplomatic tensions, after Moroccan officials considered France to be behind the decision.
In September, a new controversy arose after Rabat ignored France’s offer of assistance following a devastating earthquake that struck parts of Morocco.
After that, relations seemed to have reached a dead end before the French ambassador to Morocco admitted last November that the decision to restrict Moroccans from obtaining French visas was a mistake, and then a Moroccan ambassador to France was appointed after months of vacancy.
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Moroccan-French relations are witnessing signs of turning the page on the diplomatic crisis that has characterized their relations in recent years, especially after the successive visits of French officials to Rabat recently.
The French Foreign Minister’s visit to Morocco last February restored warmth to relations between Rabat and Paris, after he renewed Paris’s “clear and continuous” support for the autonomy proposal put forward by Morocco to resolve the conflict, which could put his country’s relations with Algeria to the test.
Rabat is pressuring Paris to take a position similar to that announced by the United States in late 2020 when it recognized the kingdom’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara region, in exchange for normalizing relations between Morocco and Israel.
However, Paris considers its position on this conflict to be “clear and firm” and based on finding “a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, in line with UN Security Council resolutions.”
At the same time, Paris has considered the Moroccan autonomy proposal “serious and credible” since it was announced in 2007. However, it has refrained from explicitly recognizing the “Moroccanness” of the region, which is what Morocco demands.
In a related context, she highlighted:Le Monde“Rabat places the issue of recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara at the heart of its foreign policy, and on this basis, ‘it has become necessary for France to reconsider its historical position to meet Rabat’s demands, even if it does not reach the point of complete bias,’ especially after the American and Spanish positions on the issue.”
Regarding the expected variable or transformation that has provoked Algeria, Al-Fatihi says that Morocco “has, in recent years, raised the ceiling of political support required from France in the issue of its territorial integrity, by moving from mere positions at the Security Council level to explicit and direct recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over its Sahara.”
The Moroccan political analyst explains that Rabat has been reprimanding France that “it should have been the first, politically, morally and economically, to recognize the Moroccan Sahara before the United States and the rest of the European countries, given the size and strength of their close economic, historical and political relations,” and thus it was subjected to pressure to go in this direction after that.
Al-Fathi believes that France has always been the Kingdom’s first trading partner, and understood the message sent by King Mohammed VI in his “Revolution of the King and the People” speech two years ago, in which he stressed that “the Sahara issue is the lens through which Morocco looks at the world, and that it is the clear and simple standard by which it measures the sincerity of friendships and the effectiveness of partnerships.”
Al-Fathi spoke about the “expected transformation” being the result of a long rift between Morocco and France, in which the latter used all means to subjugate Morocco, whether in the European Parliament or through promoting baseless accusations or its failed rapprochement with Algeria. It also comes after “Macron’s realization that the Sahara is a red line for Moroccans, in addition to the French political elites’ appreciation of the importance of relations with the Kingdom.”
In a related context, Le Monde recalled the statements of the French Foreign Minister, during his visit to Rabat, in which he said: “France realizes that the Western Sahara issue represents an existential issue for Morocco and all Moroccans. We have previously emphasized this, and I repeat it today with greater force. It is time to move forward, and I will take this matter personally.”
This statement was “an important turning point, as it was the first time that a high-ranking French official acknowledged the “existential” nature of the Western Sahara issue for Morocco. There is no doubt that this position raised Algeria’s concern,” according to Le Monde.
In this regard, Hamza says, “The recent French position came to represent the last bullet that France could fire in an attempt to provoke Algeria, which was unable to influence its fixed positions, because its interests in Algeria declined, after Macron believed that he could fix this in the old way.”
In relation to the reasons for the possible shift in Paris’ position, he believes that “France today is not the power it represented 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago, as its influence is heading towards decline in the Sahel region, in the Maghreb, and in the African continent in general, where it suffers from multiple and recurring crises.”
He added that its transformation is also driven by its “belief that the transformations and losses of influence it is experiencing in the Sahel region in a number of countries are due to Algeria or are happening with its approval,” noting that “there is a lot to support this because the first to call for non-interference and the expulsion of foreigners from the region was Algeria.”
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