الثلاثاء، 25 فبراير 2025 
By: Hana Saada
ALGIERS- Algeria’s relations with Morocco have reached the point of no return, President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, told Al Jazeera.
Speaking to the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, President Tebboune said, while he regretted the deteriorating relations between Algeria and its neighbour, he blamed Morocco for the current state of affairs.
“We have practically reached the point of no return,” said Tebboune, adding: “Our position is a response [to Morocco’s actions], we were never the ones who started [the problem].”
History of Morocco, full of treason against Algeria
Historically, it has been proven that the Moroccan kingdom has not ceased its unfriendly, low and hostile maneuvers against Algeria for a day. The propensity of the Moroccan monarchy for treason against Algeria is deeply-rooted in history. During colonialism, the defeat of Emir Abdelkader is, noteworthy, not due to the prowess of the French arms, but to the betrayal of which he was the victim on the part of the Moroccan sultan, Moulay Abderrahmane who joined the forces with the French enemy to encircle him.
This is evidenced in an article published, on February 25, 1873, by the New York Times magazine which stated: “The ultimate defeat of Emir Abdelkader was not due to the prowess of the French arms, but to his traitorous ally the Emperor of Morocco, who after inducing many of Abdelkader’ supporters to desert him, finally drove him out by force”.
In a letter addressed to the Egyptian ulemas of El Azhar, Emir Abdelkader deplored the servility and fickleness of the Moroccan monarchy, openly accusing Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane of treason.
The Moroccan regime betrayed the glorious Algerian revolution as well as the independent Algeria. The systematic, methodical and premeditated nature of this animosity is documented, beginning with the open war of aggression of 1963, a fratricidal war unleashed by the royal Moroccan armed forces against Algeria, which had just regained its national independence. This war ‘the War of Sands’, in which the Kingdom of Morocco had engaged particularly deadly armaments and heavy equipment, cost Algeria 850 valiant martyrs who gave their lives for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the homeland. Morocco, whose ultra-nationalist and expansionist party of Istiqlal had already released its famous map of Greater Morocco which extends to the Senegal River and encompasses a quarter of the Algerian Sahara to the West, thus, violated the Border Treaty of Maghnia and attacked Algeria. At the same time, it violated the protocol signed on July 6, 1961 between the government of Morocco and the GPRA.
Despite the gaping wounds left by this armed confrontation, Algeria has patiently built state-to-state relations with its Moroccan neighbor. A Treaty of brotherhood, good neighborliness and cooperation, and a Convention delimiting the borders between the two countries have been inked in Ifrane in 1969 and in Rabat in 1972, to enshrine the principle of the inviolability of the borders inherited from independence.
In 1976, Morocco abruptly broke off diplomatic relations with Algeria which, along with a few other countries, had, sovereignly, recognized the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Twelve years later, the two countries decided, in 1988, to resume their relations. The joint communiqué of May 16, 1988, which serves as the foundation and anchor for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries, is drawn up with such an ambitious and responsible perspective. It has 4 essential parameters which constitute as many interrelated commitments that the Kingdom of Morocco has accepted, namely: the promotion of peace, good neighborliness, and cooperation, reaffirmation of the full validity of the treaties, conventions, and agreements concluded between the two countries, an effective contribution to the acceleration of the construction of the Great Arab Maghreb, a contribution to the tightening of Arab ranks around the sacred cause of the Palestinian people, as well as the support for a “just and final solution to the conflict in Western Sahara through a fair referendum of self-determination and finally working in the most total sincerity and without any constraint.
In addition, Algeria is fulfilling its commitment regarding the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Morocco. For their part, the security and propaganda apparatus of the Kingdom of Morocco are waging a low-level and large-scale media war against Algeria, its people, and its leaders, not hesitating to forge fanciful scenarios, invent rumors and propagate defamatory remarks. More seriously still, a plenipotentiary of the Kingdom illustrated himself by a particularly dangerous and irresponsible drift, invoking an alleged “right to self-determination of the valiant Kabyle people.”
In fact, the list of the heinous acts is long and it ranges from the unilateral, unfair, and unjustified imposition of the visa regime on Algerian nationals in 1994 (including foreign nationals of Algerian origin) following the attack in Marrakech committed by a network of Moroccan and foreign terrorists, to the unjustifiable violation of the enclosure of the Algerian Consulate General in Casablanca, with the desecration of the national flag on November 1, 2013; this serious attack on the symbols and values of the Algerian people did not give an apology or explanation, and its perpetrator, an activist from a so-called royalist youth movement, received an outrageously lax sentence of two months in prison suspended for an act perpetrated against an institution of internationally protected sovereignty, “complacently described as” “infringement of private property “.
Recently, other overruns have been noted leading Algeria to “immediately close”, as from Wednesday, September 23rd, 2021, its airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircrafts as well as those with Moroccan registration numbers. The decision was taken following the meeting of the High-Security Council chaired by the Algerian President of the Republic, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Minister of National Defence, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
“The High-Security Council has decided to shut its airspace immediately to all civilian and military aircraft as well as to those registered in Morocco,” the Algerian presidency said in a statement.
The decision came “in view of the continued provocations and hostile practices on the Moroccan side,” added the same communiqué.
Noting that this move came after Algiers formally broke off diplomatic ties with Rabat on 24 August, 2021, following the backdrop of long-standing hostile acts perpetrated by Rabat against it and which continue until now. Algeria cited a series of hostile and malicious acts as well as an accumulation of grievances leading to this decision which culminates a period of growing tension between the North African countries which are mired in a decades-long feud, with their borders closed to each other.
In this vein, and in addition to the above-mentioned acts, Algeria denounced the massive and systematic acts of espionage held by Morocco, which resorted to a Zionist-made Pegasus spyware against Algerian officials and citizens. Besides, as stated by the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs and National Community Abroad, Ramtane Lamamra, Morocco is supporting a terrorist and separatist group (MAK) and failed in bilateral commitments, including on the Western Sahara issue. The Makhzen normalized diplomatic ties with the Zionist Entity, which came with a quid pro quo of American recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, the last colony in the African continent.
It’s worth mentioning that Morocco had triggered bilateral crises with neighboring countries, resorting to staging lies and baseless accusations. For some time, Morocco has experienced a series of diplomatic quarrels with a number of countries, first with Germany, then with Spain and Iran, against the backdrop of the conflict in Western Sahara occupied by the kingdom since 1975.
Among the reasons for severing diplomatic ties, the Minister highlighted the remarks pronounced, in July 2021, by Moroccan diplomatic representation in New York, after he delivered to the member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement an official memorandum in which Morocco expressly declared its support for the so-called “right to self-determination of the Kabyle people” in Algeria, a serious deviation condemned, categorically, by Algeria, a sovereign and indivisible country, dubbing it as a hostile campaign against it.
Algeria considered this memorandum to be: “A recognition of the multifaceted Moroccan support currently provided to a well-known terrorist group,” referring to the separatist Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), which Algeria designated as a terrorist group, along with the Rachad Movement.
Algeria described the Moroccan diplomatic statement as: “Reckless, irresponsible and manipulative.” It stressed that it is: “Part of a short-sighted, reductive and futile attempt aimed at creating a shameful confusion between the issue of decolonization recognized as such by the international community and what is a mere conspiracy plotted against the unity of the Algerian nation.”
Algeria, also, considered that the Moroccan statement: “Directly contradicts the principles and agreements that structure and inspire Algeria-Morocco relations, in addition to flagrantly contradicting international law and the constitutive law of the African Union.”
The North African country, strongly, condemned what it described as: “A serious deviation, including the interior of the Kingdom of Morocco and within its internationally-recognized borders.”
Also, among the reasons to sever the Algerian-Moroccan diplomatic ties, were the recent comments by the Zionist Foreign Minister Yair Lapid who was on a historic visit to Morocco as part of their normalization of ties. The Zionist official attacked Algeria from this neighboring country, in blatant violations of good neighboring relations.
“Morocco has turned its territory into a platform allowing foreign powers to speak with hostility about Algeria. Since 1948, no Zionist official has made a hostile declaration to an Arab country from another Arab country ” APS agency quoted Mr. Lamamra as saying.
In the face of a provocation that is reaching its climax, Algeria has shown self-restraint by publicly demanding clarification from a competent Moroccan authority. The deafening silence of the Moroccan side in this regard, which had persisted, clearly reflected the political support from the highest Moroccan authority.
The hostile actions persisted with the active and documented collaboration of the Kingdom of Morocco with two terrorist organizations known as MAK and RACHAD, whose latest heinous crimes are linked to their premeditated involvement in the lethal wildfires which ravaged several provinces of the country, burning tens of thousands of hectares of forest and killing at least 90 people, including more than 30 soldiers, in addition, to their involvement in the torture and the abject assassination, immolation, and mutilation of the Algerian compatriot Djamel Bensmaïl.
Besides, Morocco’s consul in Oran (western Algeria) made, in 2020, heinous statements against Algeria that are unrelated to diplomatic norms. During his talk with his countrymen in front of the consulate headquarters on the waterfront of Oran (western Algeria), the consul informed, in a video published and shared on social media, Moroccan citizens wishing to return to the homeland, because of the health conditions, that they were “in an enemy country” (Algeria), calling them to be cautious during their presence in it.
The Moroccan consul’ statements represented a serious mistake committed by a Moroccan official who admitted to the direct enmity against Algeria when Moroccan nationals gathered in Oran to discuss their concerns to their country’s consulate, before they were surprised by the Moroccan consul who said; “You do not need to gather, you know that we are in an enemy country”!!
Regarding the commitment relating to the organization of a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara, the Kingdom of Morocco has renounced it, although it was solemnly taken by King Hassan II and recorded in the documents officials of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations, and the current leaders of the Kingdom now harbor the illusion of being able to impose their diktat on the international community concerning an alleged preeminence and exclusivity of their autonomy thesis. After having systematically and by making use of singular bad faith, fail all international efforts led under the aegis of the United Nations, the Kingdom of Morocco has, thus, destroyed all confidence in its word and in its signature, while it pretends to support the United Nations, whose responsibility is fully and irreversibly engaged in the search for a mutually acceptable solution for both parties, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, which guarantees the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination.
For all these reasons, based on the facts, Algeria decided to sever diplomatic relations. Moroccan leaders bear responsibility for the successive crises that have drawn us into a tunnel without an exit.
Despite the severance of ties, the Moroccan regime expanded, once again, its heinous and malicious conspiracy against Algeria, resorting to the help of its “old and new” ally, the Zionist entity, as the “two loathsome lovers” concluded, in January 2023, new agreements related to intelligence, air defense and electronic warfare, targeting the security of Algeria.