Algeria and the royal vision of the “Atlantic Region”
The Le Matin Group organized a very important African seminar, dedicating the 7th edition of its "Morocco Today Forum" to the question of "Atlantic Africa, for a continental, integrated and prosperous region", on July 5 in the Saharan city of Dakhla, with the participation of more than five hundred people.
Eminent experts and political figures from different African countries, particularly from the Sahel, have deeply welcomed and appreciated the royal initiative of His Majesty Mohamed VI of the "Atlantic Region" initiative, given that the economic integration of the countries of the "Mediterranean Region" of Africa, in this case the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), is clearly blocked by the Algerian Generals.
By listening attentively to the various interventions as well as the debates raised by African diplomatic, political and institutional leaders, from Morocco, Senegal and Sahel countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, I realized that the country that fiercely opposes this laudable and promising royal initiative of the "Atlantic Region" is, unfortunately and sadly, our neighbor Algeria, while it should have benefited from it before any other African country. Why?
According to all political experts and geostrategy analysts, the various Algerian presidents from the late Houari Boumediene to the current Abdelmajid Tebboune (with the exception of the late Mohamed Boudiaf, cowardly assassinated) have supported, unconditionally and blindly, the Polisario Front, for five decades, not for this insistent and fallacious idea of defending the Sahrawi people to their right to self-determination (which by the way, they categorically forbid to the Kabyle people and the Tuaregs of Azawad), but rather for their obsessive objective of clearing a passage to the Atlantic coast. It is clear that this support for the separatist cause of the Polisario Front is very costly to Algeria's public finances and seriously hinders its socio-economic development and in order to ensure the social well-being of its populations, to the point that citizens are forced, in order to obtain basic necessities, to queue for long periods! Thus, according to the Algeriepart.com website, the Algerian regime wastes more than a billion dollars annually in favor of the Sahrawi mercenaries of Polisario!
But now it has been almost fifty years that Algerian leaders have been trying to obtain an opening to the Atlantic Ocean and they have never succeeded! While all they need to do is simply recognize the territorial integrity of the Saharan provinces of Morocco, and align themselves with the positions of the former colonial power that is Spain, which considers the autonomy plan, proposed to the United Nations in April 2007, as "the most serious, realistic and credible basis" for the resolution of this dispute, once and for all. Consequently, the Kingdom of Morocco would be ready to finance the necessary infrastructure that will facilitate the logistics and transfer of Algerian products and its natural resources to its Atlantic ports, including the port of Dakhla! On the other hand, if Algeria persists in waiting for the independence of Western Sahara, it would have to wait another fifty years or more!
Assuming that the Algerian generals and their presidential puppets do not want to recover reason, nor the pragmatism of Realpolitik nor common sense.
Therefore, analyzing, coldly, their chimera scenario, that the Polisario Front would succeed in realizing their dream of independence, to create their own independent state, even if this scenario is not at all plausible. My friend and colleague German journalist Uwe Topper opportunely points this out: "But neither side was alone. Rabat could count since the 1960s on millions of dollars, anti-tank rockets and even fighters from the United States, intended to defend itself against Algeria, in the Soviet orbit, which received an even greater volume of material from Moscow. The Polisario Front was a pawn in this game; if it had won, the vast but almost uninhabited Sahrawi republic would have become a protectorate of Algeria and its coastline the ideal place to establish this ice-free naval base that the Soviet navy sought as the holy grail of the world's seas. At least that is what Washington feared. Giving Rabat all the support necessary to prevent this from happening was a key element of its foreign policy" (and it continues to be so since the irreversible recognition of the promulgation of the decree of December 2020 of former President Donald Trump concerning the decision of the United States of America to recognize the full sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco over the entire region of the Moroccan Sahara) .
Indeed, what the Algerian leaders and generals ignore, naively or through negligence, is that if the Sahrawi independence fighters achieve their goals, they will never accept a new protectorate from the authorities in Algiers. Consequently, the first thing they would do is to declare, immediately and openly, war on the Algerians, with the same weapons that Algeria provided them, in order to assert their autonomy and so-called sovereignty, following the example of what they themselves have already done against their Moroccan brothers. Once the Algerians obtained their independence, with the weapons that their Moroccan brothers (and some members of my family) sent them in Nador, Berkane and Oujda, they declared war on the Moroccans, triggering 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, admitted that although Morocco and Algeria were both colonized by France and Algerians were considered brothers, support for Algeria eventually 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 Sahrawi mercenaries, still at the mercy of the Algerian officers, manage to establish an independent state, a certain SADR, the first country to come to support them 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 Wagner mercenaries", as it did in Mali, and is doing in Niger...!
Ultimately, the Algerian leaders and generals, who are dedicating their entire energies and spending immense financial resources to block this original royal initiative of the "Atlantic Region", trying to put pressure, uselessly, on Mauritania and other countries such as Senegal (while trying to boycott the Nigeria-Europe gas pipeline that passes through the African countries of the Atlantic coast), have only one choice left for them, to join this Atlantic Region, to open its borders with Morocco and to align themselves with the realistic position of the United States and the majority of the countries of the European Union, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union regarding the resolution of the Moroccan Sahara dispute, and which could prove to be a sure source of socio-economic prosperity for its more than 40 million citizens. Moreover, as an Egyptian YouTuber asserts, in a wonderful way, if Algeria and Morocco, with a population exceeding 80 million people, join forces to form a single country and a single state, the latter will establish itself, de facto, as the leading economic, industrial, maritime, military and tourist power of the entire African continent!
By Rachid RAHA, President of the Amazigh World Assembly