Algeria’s impolitic military ruler to the rescue of a diplomacy in disarray
As it continues to deepen its isolation in its immediate neighbourhood, the blunders of a military-controlled diplomacy have ensued new setbacks in ties with Saudi Arabia, where Algeria’s genuine ruler general Said Chengriha has spent more than ten days without being able to meet Saudi leader Mohamed Bin Salman.
Chengriha, who pulls the strings of the Algerian government and foreign policy, has been waiting since February 3 to meet Saudi leader Mohamad Bin Salman in vain.
Old Chengriha attended a defense show and met the young Saudi defense minister, 42 years younger than him.
The media also reported that as Chengriha was waiting for an improbable meeting with Bin Salman, he rejected an Omar offer by the Saudi defense ministry, a tradition and show of generosity from the Saudi ministry to its Muslim guests.
Chengriha seeks to complain to the Saudis of Morocco and the UAE, two countries on which Algeria has pinned its recent diplomatic setbacks, Algerian analysts said.
They also think that Algeria is worried about the frank and tangible support of Saudi Arabia for Morocco on the Sahara issue, with outspoken positions in support of Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory both at the Arab and international levels.
The Saudi Crown Prince had ordered that all Saudi administrations should use the full map of Morocco including its Sahara territories.
The return of Chengriha without meeting Crown Prince Bin Salman would reflect the status of “new Algeria” as a country whose leadership is increasingly shunned by great powers and regional players.
Worsening ties with the GCC leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, relations in limbo with Spain and France, Moscow taking its distances with Algiers, and Algeria’s near rupture of ties with Sahel countries not to mention the cold-war with Morocco. These are all indicators of a military-run diplomacy that reaped a series of set-backs in defense of an Algerian-created chimera of having a separatist entity in Morocco’s Sahara.
