Algiers asserts that “the cowardly assassination” of three Algerian roads in Sahrawi territory by shots attributed to the Moroccan forces will remain “not impuni”.
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The incident testifies to the critical round taken by an algebra-Moroccan crisis threatening more day the strategic balance in the Western Maghreb. Algiers promised, Wednesday, November 3, that the “cowardly assassination” of three Algerian roads two days earlier in Western Sahara by shots attributed to “Moroccan occupation forces” will not “remain unpunished”, according to the terms of a Communiqué of the Algerian Presidency taken up by the official APS agency.
The truck convoy was stopped between the localities of Ain Bentili and Bir Lahlou, a segment controlled by the Polisario Front – Movement fighting for the independence of Western Sahara since 1973 – on the road connecting the Algeria at Mauritania, when it was touched by artillery fire from the Moroccan “wall of separation” at more than 25 km away, according to the security expert Akram Kharief, founder of the site menadefense.net. The Algerian Presidency has described the facts of “barbaric bombardment”, realized by means of a “sophisticated arming” unspecified.
A collateral effect of Trump’s “Deal” of Trump
The incident is part of an escalation of the tension between Algeria and Morocco, which has already resulted in a breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries – decided on 24 August at the initiative of Algiers -, on a backdrop of disagreement around the fate of Western Sahara, unresolved litigation where the international community has shown its impotence. Divorce is a collateral effect of Donald Trump’s “deal” from December 10, 2020 between Morocco and the United States, under which Washington has recognized “Morocco’s” Western Sahara, in exchange for the normalization of relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv.
Algiers had then denounced “the arrival of the Zionist entity” at his borders, paving the way for “the destabilization” of Algeria. A month earlier, the Polisario Front had decreed the end of a thirty-year-old ceasefire following a vicinity of the Moroccan army near the Mauritanian border in the Guerguerate area, up to there controlled by the Sahrawi Independentists. The operation had devoted the formal recovery of Western Sahara hostilities, even if the deterioration of the situation has never taken the form of large-scale clashes portrayed by the propaganda of the Polisario Front. The area was also more tense than the Moroccan propaganda did.
Anyway, it’s a bit back to the departure box for this unwanted legacy of decolonization in Africa. The departure, in 1976, of the former Spanish colonizing of this region had led to a conflict between the Polisario – supported by Algeria – and Rabat, which claims the “Moroccanity” on behalf of old tribal allegiances. A referendum of “self-determination” on the future of Western Sahara had been promised by a resolution of the 1991 UN Security Council. Morocco has continued to oppose it, successfully playing its influence With Western capitals, especially France, which ended up rallying to a simple Moroccan plan of autonomy.
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