01 August 2011

RABAT: Morocco’s King Mohammed VI may be pressing hard for better relations with neighboring Algeria, but the unresolved Western Sahara question stands in the way of any real progress, analysts say.

Morocco closed the border following a 1994 Islamist militant attack in Marrakesh, which it blamed on Algeria’s secret service.

The border region remains tense: only last week a Moroccan border guard was killed during a clash with gunmen trying to enter from Algeria.

The king had already called for better ties between the two countries July 5, when Algeria celebrated the anniversary of its independence from France.

But his speech Saturday proposed a concrete measure to add to the good intentions: the reopening of their 500-kilometer border.

In recent months ministers from both countries crossed the border in both ways for talks with their counterparts.

In April, Algeria’s Agriculture Minister Rachid Benaissa suggested in comments to AFP that it was only a matter of time: the border, he said, would open “sooner or later.”

And such a move would certainly make economic sense. According to official figures from Morocco, only 1 percent of its exports go to Algeria, which accounts for only 2 percent of its imports.

The surge of pro-democracy activism in the region has also concentrated minds, say observers.

“The Arab Spring has raised fears on one side and the other, and pushed the leaders of the two countries to redouble calls for better ties and economic cooperation,” said Maati Monjib of Rabat’s Institute of African Studies.

Political specialist Khadija Mohsen Finan who teaches at Paris VIII University, agrees.

The nationalist ideology promoted by the leadership of both countries is struggling to adapt to the challenge of the rejuvenated, re-energized grass-roots protest movements, she argued.

“The Libyan and Tunisian examples, two countries which are part of the Arab Maghreb Union [with Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria] are there,” she added.

The uprising in Tunisia, which sparked the Arab Spring, drove president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali into exile in mid-January after just under a month of protests.

Libyan rebels are engaged in a bitter armed conflict with longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

But the deep scars from old conflicts between Algeria and Morocco have yet to heal properly – and the most toxic issue remains that of the Western Sahara.

Morocco’s 1975 annexation of the territory, a former Spanish colony, sparked a war between its forces and Algerian-backed Polisario guerrillas.

The two sides agreed to a cease-fire in 1991 but U.N.-sponsored talks on Western Sahara’s future have since made no headway.

“It’s clear that the Western Sahara affair hangs over on relations between the two neighbors, even the narrow nationalist schema that gave it more weight, is increasingly running out of steam,” Finan said.

Moroccan political analyst Mohammad Darif argues that many people here believe Algeria could help solve the Western Sahara conflict – but chooses not to do so in order to keep Morocco tied up there.

Historian Monjib put it this way: “It’s like two crocodiles in the same creek.”

Both are fighting it out to be the dominant force in the region, he argued.

This rivalry dates back even further than the Western Sahara dispute: as early as 1963 the two regional rivals clashed over their common border before a cease-fire the next year.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.