A state within a state... Algeria's problem
See Saud Al-Atlassi (Moroccan writer and journalist)
The French writer of Algerian origin, Boualem Sansal, sent a letter of defiance to his jailer from inside his prison in El Harrach, Algeria, describing the Algerian government as “not a state, it is a mincer (cutting machine)”… and that he challenges it with the strength of his principles and the strength of his attachment to life and hope…
The imprisoned writer elaborated on the nature of his country’s state, having previously detailed it in detail over the years in books and articles. He added that it is not only a “slicing machine” for the country’s internal political management, but that it originally runs a country whose geography is partly cut off from Moroccan territory… This is a historical fact, first announced by French President Charles de Gaulle… and confirmed by French researchers, who extrapolated it from documents of the French colonization of Algeria… In the negotiations for Moroccan independence, King Mohammed V rejected the demand to return those lands to their Moroccan origins, deferring the matter to discussion with the independent Algerian state… In the context of fraternal relations with it, he was confident in its potential after the victory of the Algerian struggle, to which Morocco, its king and national parties, provided all actual, political and moral support…
The first thing the “chopped state” did was sever its ties of brotherhood with Morocco, by provoking the Sand War in 1963. After that, for half a century, it sought to cut off its Saharan provinces from it, fostering a separatist tumor through which it continues its hostility towards Morocco, in a failed attempt to dwarf it territorially and sever its geographical extension with Africa...
The Algerian leadership was preoccupied with its hostility to Morocco… It had its own basic strategy for managing its rule in Algeria… “Moroccophobia” became rampant… to the point that it viewed Morocco in all its policies, both foreign and domestic, as a fierce competitor to the point of being an enemy… The National Liberation Front monopolized power… It alienated all other components of the national liberation ranks, and imposed itself as the ruling party, closing off spaces for political participation and democratic expression to popular sensitivities… until one day it woke up to popular anger exploding in the spaces of public affairs, carried by an Islamist movement. The ruling party (the National Liberation Front) had become flabby and its authoritarian luster had faded… The country was swept into a bloody, black decade, and only emerged from it with a weak pluralism, with components that were mostly artificial, and with fragile popular connections, as revealed by the results of the parliamentary and presidential elections… A pluralism that does not hide the dominance of the “gang,” as they say in Algeria, or the deep state, over the wheels of government The country's political and security... a state hidden behind a pile of slogans challenging an alleged aggression threatening the country, its source, hinting at Morocco on several occasions and clarifying it repeatedly. The Algerian state has penetrated the structures of the “non-state”… The authoritarianism of the army has spread within it, and it has been stripped of its civilian cloak that accompanied it since the presidency of Ben Bella until the middle of the second term of Bouteflika’s presidency… Through death or isolation, natural death or premeditated assassinations (most notably the case of President Mohamed Boudiaf), voluntary withdrawal, or forced isolation. The Algerian state has lost many competent politicians, such as Abdelhamid Mehri, Sid Ahmed Ghozali, Mohamed Boudiaf, Ali Kafi, Lakhdar Brahimi, Taleb Brahimi, Mouloud Hamrouche, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, and the list is long… To reveal, publicly, the military nature of the regime with the clear control over the political life of the late Army Chief of Staff Ahmed Gaid Salah from September 2013 until his death in December 2019, and continues, with his successor, Saïd Chengriha, the official face of the military state hidden in the corridors of the state, and composed of the late General Khaled Nezzar, General Toufik (Medine), General Jabbar Mahna, and to them were added General Mohamed Kaidi, General Abdelkader, and Arabi... all of whom are, formerly or currently, generals of the intelligence and security services...
The presence of this structure in the Algerian system weakens its other structures, such as the presidency, the government, and the elected institutions. Rather, the state loses its definition as the general, unifying “mind,” expressing and defending the will of the people with all their sensitivities and categories. It becomes a “state” with multiple floors and wings, driven by the interests of its components, not the public interest. The tools of military and security force prevail in it. After that, Boualem Sansal, the researcher and experimenter, has the right to say that it is a “mincer”… a cutting machine for its exterior and interior.
Hostility towards Morocco is compatible with military dominance over the Algerian regime… It ensures that the generals continue to benefit from ruling Algeria… even if this distances them from their people and makes them unable to serve the public interest… and keeps the regime in a state of popular malnutrition… which it is currently trying to treat with the “general mobilization law,” to curb the mechanisms of democratic political life in favor of absolute loyalty to a leadership, under the pretext that it is rising to the challenges of the dangers threatening the country… The truth is that it is a leadership that only works to extend the life of a ruling regime that lost its powers and exhausted its usefulness, about twenty years ago… This is what the late Abdelhamid Mehri, who was a pillar of the regime until his death in 2012, revealed at the time… He has a recorded statement to that effect, in a video circulating these days…
The Algerian leadership’s insistence on its hostility to Morocco has placed it in a state of tension, tension, and alienation with its most prominent foreign partners… It has implicated Morocco in these relations, and by it it measures the degree of harm to what it considers its national security… On the one hand, it supports Moroccan unity… A pathological sensitivity to Moroccan diplomatic successes, which has achieved international acceptance of its peaceful proposal to resolve the conflict over the Moroccan Sahara, expressed by more than 130 countries, including veto-holding countries in the Security Council and influential countries on all continents… A reality that has made the Algerian Foreign Ministry the world’s largest producer of statements of regret and disappointment with international biases towards Morocco… Indeed, it has become addicted to withdrawing ambassadors and returning them without compensation… In addition to provoking severe crises with the African Sahel countries and with France, and its silent crises with other Arab, African, and European countries… In its foreign relations, Algeria is a “shredding machine state” moving in all directions…
The Algerian leadership is sensitive to every country that declares its recognition of Morocco’s national right and supports its proposal for an autonomy solution within Moroccan sovereignty to the dispute over the Moroccan Sahara… It gets angry and reads this as a “stab in the dignity” of Algeria… a disparagement, belittling and favoring Morocco at its expense… Except with the American administration… Its recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahrawi territories was a shock that silenced it… And whenever it tried to appease and entice the American administration, it responded by affirming its position… Trump’s roaring terrified it, so it entrusted his matter to God…
How does the Algerian regime confront this situation? … It confronts it by increasing the speed of the intelligence propaganda machine against Morocco… It wants a Morocco tailored to its own needs and wishes it the same impotence and the same disappointments of its failure… And Morocco does not care. It continues its diplomatic activity with the same enthusiasm and perseveres in developing its internal situation with the same confidence and the same vigilance that combines diligence with continuous evaluation…
In the official Algerian media, and in the “jets” of Algerian electronic flies, activity is frenzied by a conspiratorial imagination against Morocco… In that imagination, Morocco is nothing but conspiracies, intrigues, greed, oppression, poverty, decadence, moral and financial corruption, and fighting between institutions and agencies… That imagination in that media imagines that Morocco is nothing but piles of hay, towards which it directs the fires of its hatred in the hope of devouring them… While, in reality, it does nothing but copy the Algerian system and apply its situation to Morocco… It is nothing but “fabrications” of intelligence propaganda, which Morocco’s immunity and the strength of its institutions are beyond its ability… It produces bubbles that burst before they reach their goal and bring upon it more disappointments and failures…
And here she captures the answer to her campaign from the reality of Morocco, live on air… A strong Morocco with the passionate and evident solidarity in all aspects of life between the Moroccan people and King Mohammed VI… Commemorating two national holidays, the Revolution of the King and the People of August 1953 and Youth Day… A holiday that recalls the history of the Moroccan people’s struggle and their victories, which resulted from the interaction between the will of the popular forces and the royal institution… A holiday to affirm the renewal of that interaction between two wills that have risen to the challenges of the present to win the future…
This campaign against Morocco was the Algerian regime’s response to King Mohammed VI’s call for dialogue and understanding… The Moroccan royal call opens the way to the future and comes from a king strong in the unity of his people, the effectiveness of his state, and the resilience of his entity… The Algerian regime wants something different for Morocco… It portrays it as weak and wants it to be an enemy… Algeria’s interests do not matter… The interests of the generals come first… It has no interest in a future in which it does not see itself…
About the author
