The Illusory Equation: Western Sahara, the MAK, and Morocco's Irreparable Strategic Mistake in the Face of the Living Memory of the Rif

At the heart of Maghrebi turbulence, a deceptive fable has crept into certain Moroccan political and media discourses, one that seeks to forge a false symmetry between Algeria’s unwavering commitment to the sacred right of the Sahrawi people to self‑determination and what is brazenly presented as a purported Moroccan “right” to foment secessionist stirrings on Algerian soil—chief among them the phantom‑like Movement for the Self‑Determination of Kabylia (MAK).

This equation is not only intellectually unsound but deeply perilous, for it dares to confuse a universally recognized decolonization cause with an identity‑subversion enterprise directed against a sovereign and millennial nation. By granting sponsorship to the MAK, Morocco has committed a strategic error of exceptional gravity, handing Algeria—on a silver platter—the opportunity to exploit a profound historical fault line: that of the Rif, a proud and indomitable land which, unlike Kabylia—eternally fused with the Algerian soul—has never bent to Moroccan authority and still carries the intact legitimacy of an independence once proclaimed.

Western Sahara: A Just and Inalienable Cause, Not a Diplomatic Instrument

Western Sahara is neither an Algerian creation nor a card played to suit circumstances. Listed since 1963 by the United Nations as a Non‑Self‑Governing Territory, it remains hostage to an unfinished decolonization process. The Polisario Front embodies the legitimate voice of the Sahrawi people, pending the self‑determination referendum that international law imperatively commands. Algeria’s engagement is not partisan support, but absolute fidelity to a founding principle of the post‑colonial world order: the inalienable right of peoples to self‑determination.

To equate this principled stance with backing for factional movements inside a sovereign state is a deliberate perversion of the law of nations—a vain attempt to relativize the irreducible justice of the Sahrawi cause.

The MAK: A Groundless Chimera versus Kabylia, the Beating Heart of an Undivided Algeria

By contrast, the MAK is defined by an abyssal void: no international recognition, no legal anchoring, no representation of a colonized people, no genuine popular base. Rightly designated a terrorist organization in Algeria for its suspect connections and calls for destabilization, it bears no comparison with the Polisario. This forced equivalence is not a misstep, but a calculated maneuver to justify an escalation whose consequences are beyond control.

The asymmetry becomes glaring when Kabylia is evoked. Unlike the Rif, this Amazigh region has never existed apart from the Algerian whole. From the Ottoman and French eras through the war of national liberation, it was the vibrant heart of resistance and of Algerian identity. Its aspirations—legitimately cultural and regional—are inscribed within the indivisible unity of the Nation, never bearing the slightest secessionist legitimacy. Kabylia is Algeria, and Algeria is Kabylia—a historical truth that none can shake.

Crossing the Red Line: Moroccan Audacity and Algeria’s Response—Measured Yet Implacable

By offering political and media support to the MAK, Morocco has deliberately broken a Maghrebi tacit pact: not to exploit the internal fissures of neighboring states. This choice was neither forced nor defensive; it was deliberate, but premised on a misreading of its repercussions. It compelled Algeria—faithful to its tradition of strategic restraint—to deliver a reciprocal deterrent response of cool elegance. The opening of a representation office of the Rif Republic on Algerian soil sends a crystalline message: whoever turns identities into geopolitical weapons opens abysses whose depths they cannot control. Here lies Algeria’s capacity for riposte—subtle yet decisive—exposing a vulnerability the adversary highlighted by its own hand.

The Rif: Rebellious Land, Forgotten Republic, Inextinguishable Memory

The Rif, that mountainous Amazigh fortress of northern Morocco, bears a history of fierce independence. Once classed among the Bilād al‑Sība, lands where the authority of the ’Alawite sultans was merely nominal, it never knew effective submission to the Makhzen. Its tribes, organized in customary assemblies, defied empires and colonizers with legendary constancy.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al‑Karīm al‑Khattābī, the tutelary figure born in 1882, embodied this destiny. After a brilliant education, he passed from initial collaboration with the Spanish occupier to total rebellion against colonial abuses. Unifying the tribes, he struck the decisive blow at Anoual (1921), humiliating the Spanish army and opening the way to proclaim the Confederated Republic of the Tribes of the Rif. This pioneering republic—the first entity born of a liberation war in Africa in the 20th century—equipped itself with modern institutions: a government, a disciplined army, currency, and reformed justice. It did not arise against a mythical Morocco, but outside any historic allegiance to the ’Alawite throne, in a space devoid of effective domination.

Crushed in 1926 by a Franco‑Spanish coalition resorting to the most abject chemical weapons—mustard gas dropped on villages and civilians—the Rif Republic was annihilated militarily, then administratively annexed by France into the nascent Moroccan protectorate. The 1956 independence thus inherited colonial borders, not an ancestral sovereign continuity. The Rif uprisings of 1958–1959, repressed in blood, then those of 1984 and the Hirak of 2016–2017, testify to a living memory and a sense of exclusion never assuaged. Al‑Khattābī, whose legacy inspired Hồ Chí Minh and Che Guevara, is often distorted in the Moroccan official narrative, which occludes his republican project to reduce him to a mere anti‑colonial resister.

This history confers upon the Rif a unique independence legitimacy, anchored in a sovereignty once effectively exercised—a legitimacy Kabylia, forever integrated within Algeria, cannot claim. It is this profound dissymmetry that Algeria, with serene mastery, brings to light.

The Fatal Trap: Legitimizing the Unacceptable

By sponsoring the MAK, Morocco has imprudently validated a logic of identity and territorial fragmentation it professed to abhor. It has reopened a historical dossier it had every interest in keeping sealed, granting Algeria an irrefutable precedent and an argument of principle of formidable force. It is not Algiers that internationalized Morocco’s fractures; it is Rabat that institutionalized the war of identities, naively believing it could master the flames.

This error weakens not Algeria—whose unity and resilience were forged in trial—but the very foundations of Morocco’s sovereign discourse, shaken by the return of shadows it chose to awaken.

Conclusion: Doors History Hesitates to Close

Algeria’s commitment alongside the Sahrawi people is constant, lawful, and coherent with our own history of struggle against colonial oppression. Morocco’s support for the MAK, by contrast, is a strategic miscalculation of historic breadth—a rupture with political reason, a losing gamble whose consequences will haunt the Maghreb for a long time.

By reviving the memory of the Rif—a land that can, more than any other, lay claim to legitimate independence where Kabylia remains the inseparable heart of Algeria—Algeria quietly reminds the region that none may threaten its integrity without paying the price. For in relations among nations, certain doors—once carelessly ajar—are blown wide open by the gusts of History, and do not close again.

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By Belgacem Merbah

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