Algeria Protests Franco-Moroccan Military Exercises Near Border

Algeria is expressing its opposition to the planned military exercises between Morocco and France on the Algerian-Moroccan border. During an audience on Thursday, March 6 at the headquarters of his office, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lounès Magramane, conveyed his country’s position to the French Ambassador in Algeria, Stéphane Romatet. "The purpose of this audience was to draw the French diplomat’s attention to the seriousness of the project of Franco-Moroccan military maneuvers, ’Chergui 2025’, whose name is very evocative, scheduled for next September, in Er-Rachidia, near the Algerian border," the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Since France’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara, relations between Paris and Rabat have deteriorated. Hence the rejection of the project of military exercises between Morocco and France on the Algerian-Moroccan border. Lounès Magramane "specified to his interlocutor that this exercise is apprehended by the Algerian side as an act of provocation towards Algeria, and that ’such an act will not fail to fuel the crisis that now characterizes the Algero-French relations and to bring the climate of tensions between the two countries to a higher level of gravity’," the MAE statement added.

Lounès Magramane asked the French Ambassador to obtain the necessary clarifications on this subject. He also invited him to convey, to his hierarchy, Algeria’s position as it was expressed to him.

This reaction is all the more surprising since the Chergui exercise has existed for many years between France and Morocco without this raising any protest from the Algerian side.