Algerian Residents in Morocco Anxious as Diplomatic Tensions Escalate

"I didn’t think the situation would deteriorate so quickly," Karima, a fifty-year-old Algerian woman who has been living in Morocco for a few months after spending several years in the Middle East, told the newspaper La Croix. "In Algeria as in Morocco, we consider ourselves as brotherly peoples." She says she is devastated after learning of Algeria’s decisions to cut ties with Rabat and close Algerian airspace to all Moroccan planes. A blow for this teacher who has settled in Casablanca to get closer to her loved ones. "I cried. How will I do if something happens to my mother?" she worries.

"In Morocco, I have never had the slightest problem as an Algerian," Karima assures. "In the same way, in Algeria, everyone remembers the support of Morocco during the war of independence." But shortly after independence, there was the Sand War in October 1963, a military conflict between the two countries. In 1975, tens of thousands of Moroccans working in Algeria had been expelled after Rabat took control of part of the Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the Polisario, protected by Algeria. "The current period reminds me a bit of those years," Karima worries, as rumors of a new wave of expulsions are circulating.

"The problem is at the political level but, this time, the relations between the peoples are tainted. There is hatred on both sides," laments Nadia, a 27-year-old Algerian architect living in Rabat whose parents settled in Morocco in 1992. "It’s my two identities that are in conflict. And I’m taking it very badly," she sighs. "I would never have imagined that the conflict could degenerate so much," she admits. "Now I tell myself that we have to consider the worst. Among the Algerians around me, there is the same feeling of anxiety. We can only wait and hope that the situation calms down," she adds.

In 2014, there were officially 5,700 Algerians living in Morocco, the third largest foreign community in the country, according to the High Commission for Planning.