Algeria’s President Accuses Unnamed Western Neighbor of Drug War

"Algeria is the target of an undeclared war, whose weapon is drugs in all its forms, and which has been targeting it since its western and southern borders," Abdelmadjid Tebboune said during a Council of Ministers he chaired on Sunday. And to specify: this war is "led by the forces of evil, with the aim of weakening generations of young people and breaking the scale of Algerian social values, which our country continues to defend and to which it remains attached".

Algeria constantly repeats the same accusations. In April 2023, Brahim Merad, Algerian Minister of the Interior, Local Authorities and Spatial Planning, had stated that Morocco, without naming it, was waging a drug war against his country and had called for the mobilization of all means. "Algeria is targeted through drugs and is facing a war led by its western neighbor (Morocco, editor’s note)," he had said during a plenary session at the People’s National Assembly (APN) devoted to oral questions to several members of the government, where he was responding to a question on measures taken by his services to fight the phenomenon of drug use and trafficking and the means of caring for drug addicts, especially young people.

The same month, Faouzi Moualek, divisional commissioner and head of the criminal research and analysis service at the Judicial Police Directorate, had stated that Morocco, without naming it, had become an important route for cannabis that passes through Algeria or is poured onto Algerian territory. "Algeria is surrounded by a ring of fire. To the West, we share our borders with a country (Morocco, editor’s note) ranked by UN agencies as the world’s No. 1 producer of cannabis. [...]," he had specified.

In May of the same year, it was the turn of the Chief of Staff of the Algerian Army, General Saïd Chanegriha, to level the same accusations against Morocco. During a meeting with the cadres and members of the 3rd Military Region of Béchar, the Chief of Staff of the ANP had declared that Algeria would respond with force to this "drug war", calling on all national actors to participate in this fight against this scourge.