Morocco-Algeria Rivalry Escalates in Bid for North African Leadership

"The Western Sahara issue is the currency that shapes the tensions between Algiers and Rabat. At the same time, the ongoing cold war concerns more important issues," political scientist Zine Labidine Ghebouli told Al Jazeera. According to him, Morocco and Algeria want to assume a leadership role for North Africa. To do this, "they are seeking to expand and strengthen their regional influence across North Africa, the Sahel and the Mediterranean," the political analyst is convinced.

"This is due both to Rabat’s desire to consolidate its diplomatic posture as an ally of the West and to Algiers’ desire to mark its return as a powerful independent actor," he added. Observations that lead Intissar Fakir, senior fellow and founding director of the North Africa and Sahel program at the Middle East Institute, to rule out the hypothesis that the two countries could one day become great neighbors and friends.

"The way I see it, there is no scenario in which these Moroccan leaders and these Algerian leaders could become great neighbors and friends," she said, believing that Algeria is happy to keep things as they are because... in the current geopolitical climate with high energy and gas prices and Europe is very patient, this works well for it.

However, the tensions between Morocco and Algeria do not affect the historical ties between the two peoples. "I think the historical ties between the Algerian and Moroccan peoples are much stronger and much deeper [than they can] be easily touched or marked by the ongoing tensions or even by the attempts of certain parties in the two capitals to influence this relationship," noted political scientist Ghebouli.