Algeria raises white flag of surrender in row with France over Sahara stance

Algeria has finally conceded defeat following a row it has started with France since July last year, when President Macron recognized the Sahara territory as part of Morocco’s sovereignty.

Ahead of the deadline set by the French government for Algeria to cooperate on migration or else risk retaliatory measures, the Algerian President had a phone conversation with Macron, followed by a joint statement indicating the end of the crisis without Algeria achieving its goal: a French volt face on the Sahara issue.

The statement announces the immediate resumption of cooperation on security and migration issues and included a call by Macron to Tebboune to “show humanity towards Mister Boualem Sansal,” a dual national novelist, arrested for having mentioned the colonial origins of Algeria’s French-drawn borders at Morocco’s expense.

The statement announced an upcoming visit by French foreign and justice ministers to Algiers to continue dialogue.

Nowhere in the statement the Sahara issue, the origin of the dispute, was mentioned.

Algeria has withdrawn its ambassador from Paris, accused France of conspiring against Algerian security and of manipulating terrorism, declined to take back its nationals deported for having violated French laws, instigated its henchmen influencers against France and attempted to use its large diaspora in France to unsettle Paris politically, using its far-left relics.

As with a two-year crisis with Spain, Algeria patched up the dispute it had started with France without achieving its goal of getting Paris to backpedal on its recognition on the Sahara issue.

France made it clear that its bilateral ties with Morocco are none of Algeria’s business and that Algeria’s use of the Sahara issue as a foreign policy mantra has failed.

The Algerian escalation with Spain and France further shows to the whole world that Algiers is the real party to the conflict.

France’s tough stance regarding Algeria’s interference in French sovereign decisions has paid back.

Prior to this humiliating defeat in its row with France, the Algerian president had said that his point of contact was Macron and that France’s support for Morocco on the Sahara issue did not bother Algeria. His statement announced Algeria’s failure to use tension and blackmail in reaction to sovereign decisions by powerful states. But it indicates that Algeria is the real party to the conflict overshadowing its Polisario separatist proxies.