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Written by Piero Messina
We don’t need the crystal ball to bet on the next crisis in North Africa. The growing tension between Morocco and Algeria will add to the Libyan chaos and the institutional collapse of Tunisia. With a third wheel: Israel. Tel Aviv has become a strategic partner of Rabat and for Algeria this situation is becoming a factor of national security.
Since the summer of 2021, Algeria has unilaterally severed diplomatic relations with Morocco, accusing the Moroccan kingdom of “hostile acts”. Rabat contests this decision which it deems completely unjustified. The main dispute between the two Maghreb countries concerns the territory of Western Sahara. The status of this former Spanish colony, considered a “non-autonomous territory” by the United Nations, has pitted Morocco against the Saharawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers, since the 1970s. Rabat, which controls almost 80 percent of this territory, supports an autonomy plan under its sovereignty. Instead, Polisario is calling for a self-determination referendum under the aegis of the UN. In the background is also the Palestine dossier: Algeria supports the Palestinian cause and judges Morocco’s growing cooperation, especially in the military sphere, with the “Zionist entity”, i.e. Israel, as extremely negative.
At the end of 2022, the King of Morocco Mohammed VI attempted to defuse tensions, inviting the President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to Rabat for a “dialogue session”. But that meeting never took place.
The arms dossier from Israel to Rabat worries the Algerian government. Over the past two years, ties between Tel Aviv and Rabat have expanded, encompassing strong military and security cooperation producing promising business opportunities. It all started thanks to the normalization agreement between the two countries, mediated by the Trump administration in 2020. With that document, the two countries signed over thirty agreements and memoranda concerning the sectors of defence, trade and agriculture. Military cooperation is certainly the most intense one.
Morocco gained direct access to Israeli defense technologies. Tel Aviv, for its part, counts on the support of the North African kingdom for a constant and gradual increase of its presence in North Africa. In the field of defence, in the last year alone, there have been two important meetings between military exponents of Morocco and Israel. The first was in November last year when the respective defense ministers signed a memorandum of understanding which provided for the purchase of armaments, information security technologies and planning of joint military exercises. Between July and September of this year, however, there was an exchange of visits between General Belkhir el-Farouk, general inspector of the Royal Armed Forces of Morocco (Forces Armées Royales, FAR), and the head of state Major of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Aviv Kochavi.
Morocco counts on intense collaborative military relations with the United States and the EU, but the partnership with Israel offers a further opportunity to improve its capabilities. From the military supermarket in Tel Aviv, Rabat has acquired five different types of drones: Heron, Hermes 900, WanderB, ThunderB, and Harfang. The shopping continues with a batch of Harop drones (known as kamikaze drones, they can fly for up to nine hours, carry 20 kg of explosives and reach a maximum speed of 225 knots) for 22 million dollars in 2021. The endowments obtained from Israel go add up the weapons that Morocco bought in China, the United States and Turkey: the Wing Loong I (Chinese), the Bayraktar TB2 (Turkish), the MQ-A1 Predator and the MQ-9B Sea Guardian (American). In 2021, the Rabat Defense Staff had purchased the Israeli Skylock Dome anti-drone system capable of identifying and neutralizing drones and thanks to an agreement with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) it is equipped for the air defense system and Barak MX missile defense, a flexible and modular missile defense system that protects soldiers from enemy fighters, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, drones and helicopters.
Algeria did not stand by and watch. The government of Algiers is in talks with North Industries Group Corporation Limited (Norinco) for the purchase of the SY-400 short-range ballistic missile launcher (SRBM). This would complement the Russian-made Iskander E ballistic missile system and Chinese-made YJ-12B missiles. From the Saharawi desert we can already hear the drums of war.
