Racism at heart of brewing tension between Algeria and Niger

Niger is becoming the next country to be targeted by Algeria’s hostile acts that are rooted in a racist attitude among Algerian state officials towards a neighborhood where Algiers has sowed discord with most neighbors.

At the heart of the new discord is the recurrent issue of Algerian mistreatment of Sub-Saharan migrants and Niger nationals in particular.

For decades, Algeria has been violently arresting migrants and busing them in harsh conditions to the Niger border where they are abandoned in the desert. Thousands died in an underreported rights violation.

While the deposed regime in Niger has turned a blind eye to the degrading practice suffered by Sub-Saharans in Algeria, the new military rulers in Niamey shifted the paradigm strongly protesting at the abject treatment and violent approach towards Sub-Saharan migrants by Algeria.

Algeria seems to have taken aim at poor Niger migrants in its south as a retaliation for Niger’s refusal last year of Algiers mediation after the coup.

Algeria has a proven track record of using foreign nationals in reprisal. In the 1970s, at least 350,000 Moroccans were expelled from the country and their belongings and real estate confiscated after Morocco retrieved the Sahara territory.

The new crisis with Niger highlights the amateurism of an Algerian regime, led by old ailing men in uniform. Algeria pursued self-defeating arm-wrestling diplomacy in the neighbourhood leading to a cold war with both Morocco and Mali, a Mauritania that distances itself from Algiers, and Niger that complains of Algerian racism, while in Libya, Algeria backs a party against another.

The Tunisian case shows to neighboring countries that to have good ties with Algiers you need to lose your sovereignty and become a vassal state nodding to Algiers men in uniform.

Racism

Algeria’s state behavior regarding African migrants is rooted in a false sense of superiority and arrogance towards the rest of Africa.

Racism against African resurges in events including ironically sports which is supposed to bring people together.

“Sorry Africa, our stadiums are better off without your odors,” this was the reaction of the Algerian regime’s media after their country lost its bid to host the 2025 African Cup of Nations.

Even the officials or bodies in charge of human rights openly express racist stances. In 2016, head of Algeria’s human rights commission Farouk Ksentini bluntly accused sub-Saharans of spreading HIV in Algeria, in public statement that bears the hallmarks of racism in its abhorrent forms.

“We Algerians are exposed to the risk of HIV contamination and other sexually transmitted diseases because of these migrants,” he shamefully said.

In 2018, the country that seeks to host continental event took a segregationist move to ban migrants from using taxis and buses in a wave of anti-migrant drive launched by the Algerian authorities in blatant disregard for human dignity and in total violation of basic human rights.

Then Algerian PM, Ahmed Ouyahya, surfed on the tide of anti-migrant populism uttering heinous remarks when he described Sub-Saharan migrants as a “source of crime, drugs and other calamities.”

Persisting on the same xenophobic remarks, then Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel accused Sub-Saharan migrants of “involvement in crime and drug trafficking.”

Following the example of his predecessor, President Tebboune has no visit in his presidential record to any African country!

With an endemic racism espoused by state officials and discrimination against Sub-Saharans, Algeria will further distance itself from its Sahel neighbourhood where it is gradually being ejected.