♦Mohamed OUBAADI
The dispute over the Moroccan Sahara is today going through a pivotal stage: it could get closer to a definitive settlement of this decades-old issue, or else plunge back into an even deeper freeze.
All signals from the region indicate that the recent tour of Paul Massad, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump and advisor on African affairs, has opened the way for deep questions, Massad visited Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, where he met with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He was initially supposed to end his visit in Rabat, but, unexpectedly, he flew directly to Washington, even though the official program of his tour included Morocco as the last stop.
This misunderstood absence has triggered a flood of interpretations. The most notable is that Rabat would have reacted badly to his comments made in Algeria, when he declared that Trump’s proclamation in 2020 – recognizing the Moroccan nature of the Sahara – had not definitively closed the file, but left the door open to a dialogue satisfactory for all parties, including the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria.
According to certain media leaks, Moroccan diplomacy did not appreciate this speech, which it perceived as a step backwards and a lack of understanding of recent American positions reaffirming Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara. Rabat’s response was concrete: refuse to welcome him. At the same time, a message from President Trump addressed to King Mohammed VI on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of his accession to the throne came to reassure and reaffirm that the American position has not changed: the Sahara is Moroccan, and autonomy constitutes the only possible solution, within the framework of a realistic and pragmatic settlement guaranteeing stability and shared interests in North Africa.
However, the American approach, although clear, seeks at the same time to avoid placing Algeria in the posture of the “defeated”, in order to preserve its dignity, This explains the subtlety of the royal speech during the Throne Day: “Neither winner nor loser… a solution which saves the face of all parties.
But while the sovereign extended his hand with diplomatic intelligence, Algiers refused to make the slightest gesture of protocolary courtesy. Unusually, President Tebboune did not send a message of congratulations to the king this year: an absence which, in itself, underlines the persistence of tensions and Algeria’s inability to adapt to the transformations underway in the region and in the world.
It is a delicate situation, where the threads of diplomacy are woven between Rabat, Washington and Algiers. The crucial question remains: are we on the cusp of the end of a half-century-old conflict, or on the cusp of an even deeper and more icy frost?
