Morocco Emerges as Top Maghreb Military Power, Spanish Report Finds

The Spanish newspaper El Confidencial notes a difference between Moroccan and Algerian military equipment, in terms of quality and diversity. Certainly, Algeria remains the leading military power in the region in terms of quantity, but Morocco stands out for the quality and diversity of its military arsenal.

In other words, Morocco has preferred quality and technology to quantity, and has not sought to compete with Algeria in terms of the quantity of military equipment. According to the Spanish newspaper, Algeria has bought large quantities of Russian weapons over the past decade, while Morocco has acquired sophisticated weapons from the United States and drones from Israel since the normalization of their relations.

Moreover, the strengthening of the Morocco-Israel military alliance worries the Spanish army, analyzes El Confidencial, specifying that some Spanish senior officers fear that this alliance will make Morocco the leading military power in the region, thus changing the balance of power in the western Mediterranean. Morocco is already the second largest arms importer in Africa and the 29th in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Last year, Algeria’s military budget was over $20 billion and aimed to acquire new weapons from countries other than Russia. For its part, Morocco continues its dynamic of modernizing its military arsenal by buying weapons from the United States, Turkey, China, France and Israel.