Algeria and South Africa have strengthened their alliance in the Sahara issue against Morocco. Their sudden complicity testifies to a desire of Algiers to intensify its diplomatic offensive against the territorial integrity of the Kingdom after the failure of its diplomacy to influence the Security Council.
While Algeria continues to deny its leading role in the creation and perpetuation of the Sahara conflict, a conflict that Morocco describes as “artificial”, its actions and the mobilization of all its diplomacy to defend the thesis of the separatists continue to prove otherwise.
After the double failure of his diplomacy to influence the report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres on the events of El Guerguerate, and that of influencing the content of the last resolution of the Security Council by refusing to participate in the tables round in an attempt to restrict itself to its responsibility, Algeria continues to pull the strings of its strategy.
A few days after accusing Morocco of having allegedly killed 3 Algerian truck drivers who had entered a military zone in the Sahara, while making their bodies disappear, Algeria returned this time to the diplomatic shutter by seeking to display its agreement with South Africa.
The two countries commonly known as the “axis of evil” signed a joint communiqué indicating that they agreed to strengthen the tradition of coordination and consultation at all levels in order to preserve the convergence of views between the two countries on the issues. of common interest, in other words the Sahara issue for which they display a perfect understanding.
The head of South African diplomacy, Naledi Pandor, was invited to Algiers by her counterpart Ramtane Lamamra, then went to the Tindouf camps to meet the leaders of the polisario separatist group.
In their joint communiqué, the two parties underlined “the imperative to respect the principle of African solutions to African problems” in yet another attempt to undermine the UN process and pull the file towards the African Union where their influence is significant.
And to go further, calling on the new Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, Staffan de Mistura, to “coordinate closely” with the AU, when they have no more than a right of scrutiny in the file and do not have the right to impose their policy on the UN envoy.
In fact, Algeria, which has officially sought to escape its responsibilities in the matter, still wants to influence it through the African Union, precisely the Peace and Security Council (PSC).
For the academic Said Saddiki, this sudden alliance displayed between Algiers and Pretoria is explained by a position of South Africa against the territorial integrity of Morocco. South Africa is “one of the few countries which continues to have a traditional vision of the Sahara issue and continues to support the Polisario front as well as the separatist thesis,” he said.
If the position of South Africa concerning the Sahara conflict is “known”, the meeting with Algeria and these movements aimed at supporting the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario, “are the facts of Algeria” initiator and instigator of the Sahara conflict, Saddiki believes.
And “the recent coordination of South Africa with Algeria shows that Algeria is working hard to convince its allies and involve them in political and diplomatic initiatives against Morocco,” he noted.
According to the specialist in International Relations, after Algeria’s failure to convince the UN Security Council to include parties against Morocco in its last voted resolution, “she felt that she had lost her political battles. and diplomatic against Morocco in recent months, so now she is looking for other means to put pressure on Morocco, especially through the African Union ”.
This idea of passing the file on to the African Union is not new in the Algerian argument, it has become more insistent since the appointment of Ramtane Lamamra as Minister of Foreign Affairs because of his extensive network of influence within of the AU. For their part, Morocco and the international community insist and are convinced that the best institutional framework to settle the Sahara conflict is that of the United Nations.
“As long as a number of African countries have influence within the AU and that they take the file with partiality” the AU will not be able to have an objective and constructive role in the resolution of the conflict and ” the United Nations is the only institution which remains impartial and in any case, this subject is closed ”, affirms the specialist in the Sahara dossier.
“It is expected to see Algeria undertake other types of movements, especially on the diplomatic side, but not on the military side,” said the professor of the University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Fez, especially more than in the last attempt to implicate Morocco in the supposed murder of 3 truckers, the international community ignored Algerian claims seeing clearly in its game.
Finally, regarding this call to Staffan de Mitsura to coordinate “closely” with the AU, Said Saddiki, explained that the United Nations can cooperate with regional institutions to resolve disputes but is not obliged to do so, and in the specific case of the Sahara issue and taking into account the influential position of some pro-separatist African countries within the AU as well as the specificity of the Union which brought in the separatists of the Polisario as a member thanks to these countries, “Morocco is not reassured as to the impartiality of the organs of the African Union”.
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