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After the diplomatic blow it received last week when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed America’s unequivocal support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, Algeria suffered on Monday yet another setback during the UN Security Council briefing on Western Sahara situation. As he presented his assessment of the lingering territorial dispute, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, shook up the commentariat community and stunned sympathizers of Polisario separatism by radically departing from a proposal he had floated previously.
Just last October, de Mistura had confidently suggested that only the partition of the disputed region between Morocco and the Algeria-backed separatists of the Polisario Front would achieve the settlement that had long eluded successive generations of UN negotiators. And a mere six months later, the UN’s point man for the Sahara was now emphatically suggesting that Morocco’s Autonomy Plan, which conclusively rebukes the partition route and instead calls for the region to be granted broad autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, remains the only viable path to a lasting and politically feasible resolution of the decades-running conflict.
The only thing left for the implementation of this practical Moroccan plan is the for the UN to request that Morocco explain exactly what its vision of broad autonomy is and how that could be achieved in a reasonable timeframe. If Secretary Rubio’s meeting with Morocco’s top diplomat last week and his subsequently unambiguous statement in support of Moroccan territorial integrity was a bombshell for those who still cling to a make-believe vision and an even more illusory future for the disputed region south of Morocco, de Mistura’s statement is perhaps the most fitting equivalent of a political thunder that sent their dialogical plane crashing down to earth, back to reality.
Ultimately, the UN envoy’s comment effectively confirms what had long been an open secret for seasoned observers of the Western Sahara saga: there is no feasible solution to this Algeria-engineered dispute outside the parameters of the Moroccan autonomy plan. Simply put, since Morocco presented its plan of a political negotiated and compromise-based settlement to the UN Security Council in 2007, the crushing majority of the international community, including various consequential UN members, have in the past decade consistently and fervently described the Moroccan proposal as the best for a pragmatic settlement of the Sahara affair. And so, despite immense pressure and unfavorable geopolitical headwinds in the early years of the Sahara dispute, Morocco’s stance now reigns supreme in the prevailing political and diplomatic imagination surrounding the present and future of the Western Sahara region.
The post-2007 era has consecrated Morocco’s stance on the Sahara
In a sense, this striking development corroborates what I have long argued: the 1975 ICJ ruling on the Sahara dispute is no longer a valid guideline on how to best get the parties to this territorial dispute to genuinely work toward a final resolution. And contrary to the biased reports and interpretations still prevailing in some leftist and militant circles, all UN resolutions in the past nearly two decades have basically consecrated Morocco’s plan by placing strong emphasis on the need for the parties to reach a mutually acceptable solution. If this does not qualify as thumping repudiation of the winner-takes-all and separatism-friendly approach championed by Algeria, I don’t know what is.
Yet rather than acknowledging these developments and taking the appropriate steps to negotiate a win-win solution with Morocco, Algeria has historically opted to move in the opposite direction. And now, as successive developments continue to relentlessly bust its “self-determination referendum” bubble, Algeria is now reaping the whirlwind of the wind it has sown for decades. These latest series of Morocco-friendly developments – most notably Secretary Rubio’s and di Mustera’s statements – would not have been possible without the first Trump administration’s landmark recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in December 2020. While some analysts and observers initially downplayed the significance and political implications of that recognition, I was among the few who confidently argued that this shift would substantially shape the international debate and align diplomatic discourse more closely with Morocco’s historical and legal claims to the Sahara.
This intuition – or expectation – was proven right after Spain, whose government had initially timidly opposed the U.S. recognition, decided to jump on the bandwagon of the increasingly irreversible Moroccan momentum by officially declaring Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the only credible basis for negotiations over the final status of the disputed territory. From a more strategic viewpoint, it is important to point out that this Spanish change of heart on the Sahara was slightly more significant than the first Trump administration’s embrace of Moroccan territorial integrity. The reason for this has to do with the context and message of the Spanish decision. Madrid significantly made its U-turn on Western Sahara diplomacy in March 2022 after enduring a year-long historic diplomatic crisis with Morocco.
Realizing that Rabat had grown more assertive on the international stage, Madrid had no choice but to reluctantly come to the conclusion that it had to soften its stance as it no longer called all the shots in its highly strategic and multidimensional relationship with Rabat. As such, the message the Spanish endorsement of the Moroccan Sahara plan sent was that Morocco’s western partners and allies, with the qualified exception of the U.S., can no longer set the tone and tune of their relationship with Rabat. Meanwhile, although Spain’s support for Morocco’s stance stopped short of formally recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, the fact that the disputed region’s former colonial power aligned itself with Morocco’s position dealt an immeasurable blow to both the Polisario and Algeria’s broader separatist ambitions.
As I explain in my latest book on the Western Sahara conflict expand upon in a forthcoming volume to be published this summer – the persistence of the dispute in the aftermath of the 1975 Green March was largely due to Spain’s complicity with Algeria. By reneging on the terms of the Madrid Accords it signed with Morocco and Mauritania on November 14, 1975, and gradually embracing the Polisario as a “legitimate representative” of the Sahrawi people, Spain enabled Algeria to expand its diplomatic influence and build international support for its separatist project in southern Morocco.
The Adolfo Suárez government in particular played a pivotal role in this dynamic. Spain’s adoption of a pro-Algerian stance under Suárez’s leadership immediately led to a sharp rise in the number of countries recognizing the self-proclaimed republic that Algeria established in the Tindouf camps in February 1976.
While the Spanish government provided political cover for Algeria’s strategy, it was the Spanish academic, intellectual, and media establishment that crafted and exported the ideological framework underpinning the separatist narrative. As a result, individuals with no historical or familial connection to the territory came to be regarded as legitimate voices of resistance against what was portrayed as a “reactionary” and “expansionist” Moroccan state.
Meanwhile, Algeria – despite its self-serving regional ambitions – was idealized as a selfless and principled champion of an anti-colonial liberation in the Sahara. This resulted in little to no scrutiny of Algeria’s geopolitical motives, while Morocco faced intense diplomatic, political, and ideological pressure as Western leftist politicians and third-worldist intellectuals misleadingly portrayed its push to recover its southern provinces as a colonial enterprise.
Algeria has run out of cover
But with Morocco now emerging as a major regional power and an indispensable player in the evolving global landscape, the veneer of legitimacy that has long shielded Algeria’s self-righteous posturing has begun to crumble. Increasingly, countries are realizing that aligning with Morocco not only serves their strategic interests, but also helps correct a historical injustice.
From this perspective, it could be argued that the convergence of U.S., Spanish, and now French positions has delivered a decisive blow to Algeria’s separatist agenda in southern Morocco. France’s change of heart has been particularly consequential. Beyond clearly expressing support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, Paris has publicly committed to rallying international support around the autonomy initiative.
In this tense, politically pregnant context, Staffan de Mistura’s recent statement that “the next three months will in my opinion be an opportunity to verify how a new impetus based on a renewed, active engagement by some members of this Council, including permanent ones, can produce a regional de-escalation and separately, a reenergized roadmap towards the resolution of the Western Sahara conflict,” suggests that France, along with the United States, played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing the UN envoy to abandon his partition proposal and recognize the autonomy plan as the only realistic path forward.
Making such developments particularly painful for the Algeria is that they are taking place while it holds a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, exposing not only its growing isolation but also its diminished influence both regionally and globally. Indeed, it is not far-fetched to argue that the recent flare-up of tensions between France and Algeria-which came just days after the two countries appeared to be on the path to reconciliation-was not triggered solely by the arrest of an Algerian consular official in France for his alleged involvement in the assassination of a dissident. Rather, it was Algeria’s realization that France had likely lobbied the UN envoy and other key Security Council members to fully endorse the Moroccan autonomy plan.
The End of Strategic Maneuvering
Algeria now finds itself in risky and uncharted territory, an increasingly untenable situation it has never encountered before. In addition to its growing isolation at the regional level – having severed ties with Morocco, and maintaining frosty relations with Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – it is also facing mounting global isolation. Major powers are now exerting consistent pressure on Algiers to abandon its obstructionist stance and play a constructive role in resolving the Western Sahara dispute in line with Morocco’s autonomy proposal.
In the past – particularly before December 2020 – Algeria had multiple cards at its disposal to undermine the momentum Morocco had generated around its autonomy plan and to prevent any meaningful progress toward resolving the conflict. Even after the U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, the fact that the Biden administration was not as empathetic and unequivocal in its support for the Moroccan position gave Algiers some breathing room. Indeed, the Biden administration’s ambivalence, which amounted to a balancing act of neither reversing the December 2020 proclamation nor completely alienating Algeria, allowed Algerian strategists and Algeria-paid lobbyists to spin Biden-Washington’s noncommittal commitment to Morocco’s autonomy plan as evidence that Moroccan momentum on the Sahara is not as deep and definitive as Rabat would like the world to believe.
Perhaps more critically, Algeria was also able to take advantage of France’s historically lukewarm support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal, which contributed to Algeria’s satisfaction in this period of lukewarm American support. It is true that before the United States offered its unambiguous recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty, France had, since 2007, repeatedly described the autonomy plan as a “basis for a just and mutually acceptable solution.” But as I noted in a previous article, because Morocco had yet to secure a major diplomatic breakthrough, France’s position remained largely symbolic and cost-free in terms of its relationship with Algeria. By portraying Morocco’s plan as “a basis” rather than “the only viable” basis for a final resolution of the Western Sahara dispute, France sought to appease both sides: offering vague support for Morocco while signaling to Algeria that it was not fully aligned with Rabat.
It took Morocco more than two years of sustained – silent yet unprecedented – diplomatic tensions with France to compel Paris to move beyond its cost-neutral position and openly recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara.
Beyond France, Russia long served as Algeria’s key strategic hedge – particularly within the UN Security Council. While Moscow has maintained cordial economic and diplomatic ties with Morocco, its deep-rooted military and commercial relationship with Algeria – still one of the world’s largest importers of Russian arms – led Russia to consistently obstruct international consensus around Morocco’s autonomy plan.
Russia’s decision to abstain from Security Council votes on Western Sahara resolutions since 2016 was meant to reassure Algeria that Moscow would not support U.S.-led initiatives for a final resolution. While Rabat never viewed this stance as explicitly hostile – especially since it did not block resolutions that reinforced Morocco’s diplomatic gains – Algiers saw it as an insurance policy against international pressure in favor of Morocco.
Algiers’s unprecedented dilemma
Today, however, Algeria finds itself in a position where it has effectively been stripped of the strategic cards it once used to deflect responsibility and manipulate the status quo from behind the scenes. The French card is gone. And the Algerian political establishment’s feverish reaction to France’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty illustrates the extent to which Algeria understands that the newfound French position, like that of the US and Spanish, is a game-changer.
France’s troubled colonial legacy in Algeria, which has made generations of French leaders willing to go to extremes to placate or appease Algeria when navigating various bilateral crises, was once the Algerian establishment’s ultimate card to bet against any unfavorable developments in the Sahara dossier. But more importantly, as the former colonial power of both Algeria and mainland Morocco, it is France that engineered the dismemberment of Morocco with Spain. As such, Algeria knows that the French colonial archives, if made public, would lend unprecedented legitimacy to Morocco’s claims to the Sahara.
To make matters worse, the Russian card may also be slipping from Algeria’s hands. As I previously wrote, in anticipation of former President Trump’s return to the White House, Algeria signed a lobbying contract with BGR Group – an American firm known for its strong ties to the pro-Israel lobby. This was undoubtedly part of an effort to gain favorable access to President Trump’s inner circle and ultimately torpedo Morocco’s plans to get the second Trump administration to finish the job the first one started in 2020 when it recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Algeria is acutely aware of Trump’s unpredictability and volatility, and it knows that several key figures in his inner circle – including his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner – have expressed clear support for Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara. Furthermore, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another key figure in the Trump political orbit, is known for being
Thus, Algeria now faces a dilemma: if it continues to lean overtly on Russia, it risks alienating both Trump and key Republican leaders. And if it tries to play the Russian card only discreetly, it may no longer prove effective. In this sense, Algiers’s recent overtures to the Trump camp – including the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Defense allowing for the future purchase of American-made arms – may have already soured its standing with Moscow.
Russia, for its part, may no longer see Algeria as a dependable strategic partner in Africa, especially in the Sahel region. The long-standing bilateral relationship has been particularly strained by divergent geopolitical agendas in the Sahel, where Russia has backed the military regimes in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, whose leaders have clashed with Algeria’s regional policies and sought to undermine its attempts to assert dominance.
Most importantly, in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine and President Putin’s growing interest in securing a diplomatic agreement that would consolidate Russian territorial gains, Algeria may soon be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical expediency. If a grand bargain with Washington is required to end the war on terms favorable to Moscow, Russia could well deprioritize its alliance with Algeria to accommodate more pressing strategic goals.
For many years, King Mohammed VI has extended an olive branch to the Algerian government, urging it to bury the hatchets of unneeded animosity between good brothers and neighbors and instead work toward a mutually beneficial resolution of the Sahara dispute. But instead of seizing the opportunity for reconciliation and taking a serious, in-depth look at the major geopolitical shifts taking place regionally and globally, Algeria chose to escalate tensions with Morocco to an unprecedented level. This has convinced a new generation of Moroccans, including myself, that the old playbook Morocco has relied on since the mid-1950s—when it helped Algeria gain its independence—has become obsolete and counterproductive.
For these Moroccans, Morocco can no longer afford to be the patient, reasonable, and accommodating sibling in its tense relationship with Algeria. And with the winds of geopolitics now blowing in Algeria’s face, taking away all the cards with which it once relentlessly tipped the game in favor of its proxy Polisario’s separatist dreams, this growing cohort of Moroccan voices is urging King Mohammed VI and the government that now is the time to forcefully retaliate against Algeria by delivering a knockout uppercut to its hegemonic ambitions in southern Morocco. And should Morocco heed these new, bold voices calling on Rabat to abandon its noble but impractical idea of pan-Maghrebism and adopt a confrontational foreign policy, the Algerian establishment would have only itself to blame.
Source: Morocco word news
