Algerian president delivers new diatribe against Morocco, complains of milk shortage to Blinken
The civilian façade of the Algerian military regime, Abdelmedjid Tebboune, made a new scandal drawing a picture of a state where basic commodities are lacking, during his meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken during his short visit to Algiers.
Tebboune has often bragged about his country being a regional power and a rival of the West but all this rhetoric dissipated as he spoke about oil and gas-rich Algeria as a state that cannot meet the basic milk needs of its citizens.
“In terms of cattle, we are facing a deficiency when it comes to milk material. We are importing milk powder and we reproduce it here mixed with water,” said Teboune in a long comment prior to his meeting with Blinken.
“The elections that we had, including the presidential elections, legislative and local ones, we gained one thing. For the first time, opposition or not, no one said that the election was rigged. This is already a big benefit for a third-world country,” said Tebboune, who omitted to mention the historically low turnout of 14.5% nationwide and near 0 in the restive Kabylie region.
Tebboune did not miss to read out a diatribe against Morocco before his meeting with Blinken, repeating the same old worn-out narrative. He said the worsening relations were because Morocco attacked Algeria in 1962 during the sand war, which is registered in history as a small-scale conflict that was triggered by Algerian forces that first attacked a Moroccan garrison in the border,
He even inverted roles by saying this “They (Moroccans) always wanted to destabilize Algeria. There are other issues – they always wanted to destabilize Algeria and I don’t know the reason for that, although we have always protected Morocco.”
Algeria’s safest borders are with Morocco and Algiers has hosted, armed and backed diplomatically the separatist Polisario armed group which announced its withdrawal from the 1991 UN-brokered ceasefire.
He even shameless said that it’s not normal for borders to be closed for 40 years between the two countries, but failed to say who closed these borders and who insists on keeping them closed and goes as far as closing his country’s airspace to all Moroccan aircrafts and who halted the only cooperation mechanism between the two countries: the gas pipeline, nurturing the false hope of undermining Morocco.
Disillusioned Teboune omitted telling Blinken who entertains a warmongering rhetoric in recent months, especially after Morocco’s diplomatic inroads.
He brushed aside his regime’s anti-Israeli rhetoric to say that Algeria only wants a state for Palestinians.
Tebboune’s long diatribe is reflective of a regime at the receiving end of a series of diplomatic setbacks in the region where the balance of economic, diplomatic and military power is steadily shifting in Morocco’s favour.
The recent announcement by Spain of its policy shift to support Morocco’s autonomy plan, following similar moves by the US, France, Germany and Israel is near to traumatic for an Algerian regime that has squandered its oil and gas oil to support a separatist scheme that has only backfired at Algiers, where real homegrown separatist movements are gaining growing support base in Kabylie region and in the extreme south attached to Algeria by French colonialism.
