Ill winds are blowing on Algeria’s Saharan borders at a time when its relations with Morocco, the Sahel and Libya are more problematic than ever. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the outgoing 78-year-old Algerian president, whose re-election announcement, with 94.65% If the votes that fell on Sunday, September 8, are you able to restore your country’s strategic position, which has been greatly deteriorated in recent years? The geopolitical challenge posed by the arc of crises unfolding on national borders will undoubtedly be one of the major problems of your second term.
If the threat is often dramatized in the Algerian press as a conspiracy… A plan is emerging addressed to surround Algeria because of conflicts in neighbouring countries (…), with an obvious objective of destabilization “, writes the newspaper Algerian night In a column published on September 2, entitled “The machinations,” it is a fact that the country’s regional environment has become volatile. And Algiers is struggling to regain control as if its diplomatic software were obsolete.
Denunciation of the Algiers agreement
While the dispute with Morocco over Western Sahara continues to fester, to the point of fuelling a worrying arms race, a new crisis with Mali is set to erupt in 2024. On 25 January, Bamako denounced the “Algiers agreement” for the stabilisation of northern Mali signed in 2015 with rebel groups under the auspices of Algeria.
The gesture of rupture only created a new situation on the ground, where the Malian junta resulting from the two coups d’état of 2020 and 2021 resumed the offensive against the rebel groups in the north – Tuareg and Arab – with the support of Wagner’s Russian paramilitaries.
The Bamako authorities then punished the“interference” of Algeria protecting its Tuareg and Arab allies, now “terrorists” before their eyes, while the Algerian press brandished the spectre of a new “Chaos in Mali”. In fact, fighting resumed in northern Mali until it reached its peak during the summer: a month later, a heavy defeat was suffered by Bamako forces and Wagner soldiers (25-27 July) in the Tin Zaouatine region, on the border with Algeria, by bombings by Malian drones, the famous Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, in the same border area with Algeria, at the cost of numerous civilian victims.
“Securing the borders”
“In two days, 5,000 people flocked to Algeria”Abdelaziz Rahabi, former Algerian minister and ambassador, said: “In view of the seriousness of the events, the permanent representative of Algeria to the United Nations, Amar Bendjama, immediately denounced in Washington “violations of private armies used by certain countries” – allusion to Wagner in the service of Bamako, even going so far as to demand “sanctions”. His Malian counterpart accused him in return “the relay of terrorist propaganda in [la] region “.
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