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Written by Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
Algeria has just recalled its Ambassador from Paris in response to France’s support of the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed Western Sahara region. Moreover, amid the escalation of tensions, Algeria has started to block deportations of its citizens from the European country, by refusing to take back those given deportation orders by the French authorities. Such a new migration spat could be just the beginning. Paris in fact also risks facing gas export sanctions from the North African country.
On July 30, Macron sent a note to Moroccan King Mohammed VI, supporting his majesty’s claims over Western Sahara. This development, albeit subtle, has been described as a pivotal strategic move by some analysts, marking a shift in French foreign policy for West Africa. As we know, the European power’s influence in that continent has been declining, as seen in the disasters (from a France’s perspective) in Niger, Mali, and Chad.
I wrote on the roots of the Western Sahara conflict elsewhere. The Moroccan authorities in Rabat today control most of that region, largely populated by the Sawari people (an ethnic group composed of several mixed tribes of Arab, Berber, and Black African elements), while the Algeria-backed Polisario Front and its guerrilla control the border region. The self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), founded by the aforementioned Front, remains a full member of the African Union, and the United Nations maintains that the Polisario Front is a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people. On the other hand, Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara have been supported by both the Arab League and the Arab Maghreb Union.
One may recall that former US President Donald Trump’s 2020 recognition of the Moroccan claims was a kind of “quid pro quo” after the Moroccan authorities in Rabat normalized its relations with the state of Israel. The Western Sahara question was a divisive issue back then and remains so (just as the normalization deals with Israel were and are) and at the time I wrote that the American move could enhance pre-existent tensions beyond the Maghreb region, affecting the geopolitics of Africa. Such has been precisely the case. According to Joseph Huddleston (associate professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University), “through its involvement in the Western Sahara-Morocco case, the United States has undermined international norms once again. US policy towards MINURSO (The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) has damaged UN functions. In 2020, the United States undermined the UN’s position by recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.”
The situation in the disputed region has persistently kept the contours of a frozen conflict amid a five-decade proxy war between Rabat and Algiers. The pressing issue today could be summarized thus: why is French President Emmanuel Macron following Trump’s steps?
As I wrote in April, Macron has been clearly trying to “show strength”, as exemplified by his rather sudden new “tougher” and hawkish stance on Russia. This has to do with displaying greater autonomy from Washington, albeit always within NATO’s frameworks, and with “flexing muscle” in preparation for a new Trump presidency scenario. The French leader has been thus pushing daring shifts in foreign policy but faces plenty of domestic challenges amid a political crisis that may not have come to an end yet.
According to Salih Kaya (an editor at TRT Haber, and a Ph.D. candidate at Galatasaray University), since the 2011 Libyan war Morocco has become increasingly critical in such a way that “West African countries are obliged to pass through the infrastructure Morocco offers”, thereby replacing the role of a gateway country that Libya once had (before NATO destroyed it). It also has “invested heavily in its soft power in sub-Saharan Africa for many years”, as Kaya describes it. Unlike most of its neighbors, Rabat adopts a Westernist or Western-oriented approach and discourse, and Paris has thus “seen a window of opportunity for its national interest” there, says Kaya. For Macron, supporting Rabat’s territorial claims on the issue of Western Sahara is a kind of bargaining chip that is part of a potentially larger partnership. According to Kaya, in doing so, “France can regain influence through Morocco’s soft power, while Morocco gains legitimacy for its claims over Western Sahara.”
That is a lot at stake, both from European and North African perspectives. Algeria itself has become the EU’s third largest gas supplier since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict started in 2022, and France has been seeking to increase its own supply of Algerian gas. Gas is of course tremendously important for post-Nord Stream Europe, being used for household heating (over 30% of the EU households depend on it), power generation, and industrial processes. In the context of Western support for Ukraine, the European bloc has been trying to replace Russian gas, but it still remains very much dependent on it.
One may recall that Moscow used to provide about 40% of Europe’s natural gas, as recently as 2022, before Nord Stream was blown up in a terrorist attack carried out (according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh) by the United States. In this context, Algiers aspires to become a key energy provider to Western Europe, however, as I wrote in January 2023, its tensions with neighboring Morocco are a problem, with the specter of a war always haunting the region. It therefore remains unrealistic, for a number of reasons, to expect any robust energy supply from North Africa pipelines to the EU – the latter still facing economic, energy and industry problems.
The ongoing crisis today in the Red Sea involving the Houthi rebels as well as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza (which impacts the whole Middle East) are direct results of questionable American policies, as I’ve argued. Even today, US-brokered Moroccan-Israeli military ties fuel tensions with Algeria and other states. A new crisis is now unfolding in North Africa and this one once again has Washington’s fingerprints all over it.
Now France is also potentially contributing to further destabilize the region. It remains to be seen whether this foreign policy move will show itself to be rewarding even from a French national interest perspective or whether its outcomes will prove the whole shift to have been simply not worth it, with undesirable consequences for both Europe and Africa.
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moroccan king is a zionist western puppet, just like the ultra-zionist king of jordan who is actually a mi6 agent.
the morroccan people really dislike this king, he is a thief who let its own people live in a state of degrading poverty and is a zionist like his father “hassan 2nd” (which had a jewish mother) and betrayed the arab league by giving confidential recordings from the 1965 casablanca summit to the zionist entity to help them win the 6 day war.
french people hate macron too!
what a coincidence…
he spends most of his time outside the kingdom, mostly in france where he lives a life of debauchery (he’s known to like men…) drinking and partying while his people suffer at home. in morocco the real man in charge of the kingdom is a jew named andrey azoulay and nothing can be done without its approval.
queer folks are great at making anything into a mess. they can be happy no matter what, hence the term.
the king of morocco is queer, he chased his wife out of the palace to fully indulge in sodomite lifestyle.
everyone in morocco knows it but they can’t say a word as they fear to be “disappeared” by the secret police which monitors every neighborhood, even close friends and family members might make a denunciation to get some reward.
trump kept the classified files about macron wife being an old transgender and john bolton reported that trump said: “everything macron touches turns to shit”, not so sure that he’s helping out morocco by touching this topic… just look at how france became a mess of a shithole under his rule.
western sahara is africa’s last colony and the sahrawi people hate the zionist moroccan kingdom which steal resources for its western masters and mistreat the sahrawi people. it is not to the west to say under which state the sahrawi people should live but to the sahrawi themselves, the u.n. should organise the referendum on independence and enforce the rule of international law.
counting on the u.n. to end colonialism is futile as it is complicit in neocolonialism anyway.
moroccan migrants in europe are being used as a private army to contain the local indigenous people.
morocco is using migrants as a weapon in blackmailing spain.
tbpдo ko kupaц
this world problem is white people. whether in eastern europe or iraq or africa or climate change them mother f*ckers are the start of all of the problems. a curse on the earth.
that’s weird because if you go back far enough in history you will find out that non-whites were the problem for instance the moors invading italy. so by your logic or lack of it wouldn’t make sense to climate change these non-whites? mr johnson are you still with us or did you hang yourself?
the problem is not white people as such, but a certain group of chosen people who leech off the rest of humanity, all races.
agree, the populations don’t benefit from all this thieving done in their name by the the chosen few.
the only what can stop wars is when people refuse to join the army.
without soldier’s no wars !
the frogs are being kicked out all over africa. niger, mali, burkina faso, chad, central african republic, senegal. people have had a bellyful of their thieving and arrogance. they used to pay peanuts for african resources. previously ten cents a kilogram for niger’s uranium. they now pay $200, the world price. they have been ripping off these countries since so called independence 70 years ago. that’s all over now.
the article’s picture is worth a thousand words.
that’s why i only work little in france to avoid paying many taxes.
france is even more of a s***hole than the uk now.