Support for Polisario separatists sabotages Algeria’s sports
Algeria’s U17 handball team has withdrawn from an Arab championship to avoid playing against a Moroccan squad with jerseys bearing the Kingdom’s full map including Sahara provinces.
The decision is the second in a row involving the Moroccan map, after Algerian customs detained jerseys of RS Berkane football team.
The African football federation had judged that withholding the jerseys is an unlawful act that will trigger sanctions against Algeria’s football federation.
Morocco’s handball national teams, men and women, have all been using a jersey decorated with Morocco’s full map. Moroccan Handball teams from different age groups have previously played against Algeria, without the latter protesting against the map.
The same thing can be said about RS Berkane whose jersey received prior authorization by CAF and has been previously used in different games, as part of the African confederation cup.
The two escalatory moves meant that both Algerian teams lost their games without playing them.
The two incidents also highlight the extent of absurdity shown by an Algerian regime, bent on politicizing sports to serve a Polisario thesis on the demise.
No African federation, either in football or handball, has backed Algeria which has compromised its diplomacy to supporting the Polisario separatists.
Algeria is now perceived by the entire Africa and the World as the real party to the Sahara conflict. Algerian officials and media have all engaged in a collective fanfare describing the ban on Morocco’s full map as a matter of “national sovereignty.”
Algeria’s hostility to Morocco’s territorial sovereignty is backfiring. After a series of diplomatic blows that left Algeria isolated with tense relations with most neighbors, Algeria is now self-isolating itself by withdrawing or obstructing games with Moroccan teams, a saga that is set to continue and draw severe sanctions on Algerian sports clubs.
Through these scandals that reveal a lack of sportsmanship and an endemic hatred of anything Moroccan, the Algerian regime has succeeded in one thing: distracting its people from its daily regime-inflicted woes and fueling enmity through its media mouthpieces towards Morocco, which has been demonized mor
