Officially, Algeria declares seeking a Maghreb union without Morocco
Algeria’s mouthpiece APS has officially made it clear that the country under the rule of General Chengriha is seeking a Maghreb without Morocco.
The Arab Maghreb Union, bringing together Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, is dead and should be replaced by the “Declaration of Carthage”, the APS said referring to a meeting between Algeria’s Tebboune, Tunisia’s Saied, and Libya’s Menfi.
“The G3 was born in Carthage: The Maghreb of action succeeds to the Maghreb of slogans,” said the APS which speaks for the Algerian military junta.
The statement puts western Libya’s authorities before a dim reality that of Algeria’s quest to create a regional grouping, not for the sake of regional integration, but to isolate a Morocco that has for decades understood the Algerian-imposed lethargy of the Maghreb and diversified its partners while keeping hope that sooner or later reason, brotherliness and neighborliness will triumph and resurrect with it the AMU.
The APS story on an imaginary diplomatic achievement in bringing cash-strapped and vassalized Tunisia with an ambivalent Libya to turn in Algeria’s orbit was seen as an attempt to distract the Algerian public from the reality of diplomatic isolation.
Algeria has almost failed in all its diplomatic endeavors from a resounding rejection by the BRICS club to tensions with southern Mali and Niger neighbors, not to mention its frosty ties with eastern Libya.
Algeria has blocked progress on regional integration by backing the Polisario separatists, keeping borders close with Morocco since 1994 and later cutting all economic ties.
Hostility to Morocco, once an Algerian ruling elite issue, is now spilling over to the larger Algerian public as the military regime politicizes sports and asks its teams- in a self-harming approach- to abstain from playing in Morocco or against Moroccan teams as was the case with USMA-RS Berkane saga.
The Maghreb that Algeria wants is made up of vassal states like Tunisia that depend on Algeria’s diminishing oil and gas instead of an economically integrated Maghreb.
