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Do the Algerians really want the opening of the borders with Morocco?

The closure of the land borders between Algeria and Morocco in 1994 caused significant damage to the economic fabric of the Moroccan regions bordering Algeria. Indeed, these "Moroccan" regions lived exclusively from smuggling and drug trafficking with Algeria.

The economic crisis in the region of Oujda has become even more acute since 2016 when Algeria undertook pharaonic works by digging trenches that separate the two borders: these trenches, 11 meters deep and 8 meters wide, have substantially reduced smuggling between Morocco and Algeria.

Since 2016, not a week goes by without seeing "spontaneous" demonstrations organized by the Moroccan Makhzen, to beg the Algerian authorities to open the borders and put an end to the ordeal of more than 4 million Moroccans who were living on the hook of Algeria. On the Algerian side the establishment of the trenches has been beneficial for Algerians living in the border regions, as it has meant a definitive end to the shortages of fuel and basic necessities that were sold in Morocco: before 2016, the inhabitants of Maghnia made more than 150km to fill up with fuel, because there was no fuel in the local gas stations, which were completely dedicated to smuggling fuel with Morocco.

Moroccan lamentations are indecent and inappropriate because Algeria has shown enough benevolence by taking care of more than four million Moroccans for several decades, without the Moroccan side showing any gratitude. What we have received in return as Algerians are insults against the living and the dead (even our glorious martyrs have not escaped the Moroccan hate campaigns), slander and a lot of drugs, psychotropic drugs, and all sorts of trafficking: human trafficking, prostitution, etc.

For a long time, Algeria has shown composure and restraint, hoping that its Zionist neighbor Morocco would pull itself together and stop its hate campaigns against our country: nothing has been spared on the Moroccan side: people, history, heritage, martyrs, national symbols, national unity, etc. Faced with repeated malicious behavior, Algeria was obliged to end diplomatic relations on August 24, 2021. This date was a turning point in relations between the two North African countries. Algeria has changed the paradigm in its vision of its relationship with Morocco, benevolence and coolness have been replaced by a firmer policy where the national interest is put at the center of concerns because Algeria understood that the common destiny and the hollow slogans of the Arab Maghreb Union were only a chimera in which only Algerians sincerely believed.

Today, Moroccans must understand that Algeria is a "cash cow" no more. Objectively and pragmatically, Algeria has no interest in opening its borders to a drug-dealing country. The Algerian people in its great majority share this analysis. Arguments of brotherhood and common destiny no longer work with the Algerians, because facts and deeds say otherwise, can we be brothers with people who consider that 35% of the Algerian territory is Moroccan or who insult our martyrs, or who make fun of the Algerian skulls in the Museum of Man in Paris?

The Algerians have definitively turned the page on Morocco and have turned to new partnerships for the future such as the BRICS, Silk Road, etc. Any relationship cannot be one-way, it must be beneficial to both parties, this was not the case with Morocco and Algeria has drawn all the consequences. 



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