ALGERIAN PATRIOTS - ENGLISH

On July 20, 2026, the US Embassy in Algiers announced the opening of a sub-office of the FBI’s Legal Attaché (LEGAT) within its diplomatic mission. Far from an isolated gesture, this decision fits into a coherent sequence of events that, taken together, reveal its underlying logic and lend it legitimacy. 1. The timing owes nothing to chance Barely a month separates two announcements: on June 19, 2026, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed Algeria from its grey list, twenty months after placing it there, following a compliance process that led to an overhaul of anti-money-laundering legislation and tighter know-your-customer rules in the banking sector. Then, on July 20, the FBI announced its return. This temporal proximity is no coincidence: Washington traditionally makes the redeployment of financial-investigation capabilities conditional on certification against international anti-money-laundering standards. In plain terms, the United States was waiting for a signal of ...

Pedro Sánchez's visit to Algiers unmistakably marks an important diplomatic sequence: after several years of open crisis between Algiers and Madrid, the head of the Spanish government came to display a desire for a "new momentum" with Algeria, centred on energy, investment, political dialogue, migration and economic cooperation. France 24 notes that this is Pedro Sánchez's first visit to Algeria in four years, coming after the crisis triggered in 2022 by Spain's support for Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara. 1. The Return of Spanish Realism: Algeria Becomes Unavoidable Again The first reading of this visit is straightforward: Madrid has understood that it could not afford, over the long term, a degraded relationship with Algiers. Algeria is not merely a neighbour on the southern shore of the Mediterranean; it is a major energy supplier, a central actor in regional security, a partner on migration, and an important market for Spanish companies. Pedro S...

An Investigation That Reopens an Unhealed Wound Five years after the earthquake of the original “Pegasus Project,” a new wave of revelations, published on July 16, 2026 by Haaretz in partnership with an international consortium including Le Monde, Forbidden Stories, El Confidencial, Die Zeit, and The Guardian, is a reminder that the Israeli spyware affair was never truly settled. This time, the reporting rests on an insider witness: a former Moroccan intelligence officer, identified under the pseudonym “Safir,” whose account was corroborated by internal documents, leaked emails, and forensic data previously analyzed by Amnesty International’s Security Lab. The picture that emerges goes well beyond the 2021 Franco-Moroccan diplomatic dispute. It outlines a structured system: a dedicated unit within the DGST (Morocco’s domestic intelligence service), led by its own chief, tasked with running digital interception operations against journalists, human rights defenders, Spanish officials...

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's statements in Rabat have generated considerable attention after he declared that France's position on Western Sahara is now "unchangeable" and that Paris stands alongside Morocco "loyally and faithfully." Yet despite their political significance, these remarks do not represent a fundamental shift in French policy. France did not choose its side today. It chose its side nearly half a century ago. Western Sahara: A Decolonization Issue, Not a Regional Dispute Contrary to the narrative often promoted in many Western media outlets, the Western Sahara question is not merely a regional dispute between Algeria and Morocco. From the perspective of the United Nations, the territory remains on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories and continues to be considered an unfinished decolonization issue. Therefore, the core of the matter is not military balance or facts established on the ground, but rather the right of the Sahra...

The dismantling, in the wilaya of Tizi Ouzou, of a criminal group belonging to the terrorist movement known as the MAK is not merely a routine security incident. It is a warning signal—a serious, stark, and unmistakable reminder that the threats facing Algeria are neither imaginary nor exaggerated, nor simply the product of patriotic rhetoric that some are quick to ridicule. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of National Defence (MDN) on Monday, July 13, Army security services, acting on effectively exploited intelligence, succeeded in dismantling a group of six individuals affiliated with the MAK. Among them were four Moroccan nationals residing illegally on Algerian territory. This detail is far from insignificant. In fact, it is central to the matter. It raises a question that many prefer to avoid confronting directly: how can foreign nationals living illegally in the country become involved, according to the authorities, in a structure linked to a movement classified a...

The Moroccan newspaper Assahifa ’s article attempting to portray Algeria as a source of instability in the Sahel is less a security analysis than a political propaganda exercise. Under the pretext of commenting on the dismantling of an ISIS-linked cell in Morocco, the article constructs a carefully crafted narrative: terrorism in the Sahel is allegedly fueled by separatism, separatism is allegedly sustained by Algeria, and Europe should therefore regard Rabat as its primary security bulwark. This narrative may serve a state communication strategy, but it does not withstand scrutiny when confronted with facts, international data, or the recent history of the region. The first weakness of the article is methodological. It begins with a genuine security event—an anti-terrorist operation conducted in Morocco—and gradually shifts toward a geopolitical indictment of Algeria. Yet no direct operational evidence is provided linking the dismantled cell to Algerian territory, Algerian institution...

There is a scene that repeats itself, in one form or another, in almost every Algerian household: an Algerian doctor whose diagnosis is questioned until it is confirmed by a French colleague; a local engineer whose recommendations are dismissed until a foreign expert rephrases them in another language; a national product viewed with suspicion until an imported brand name is attached to it. This scene is not an isolated incident, but rather a recurring symptom of a civilizational pathology that Malek Bennabi described with remarkable precision more than half a century ago: colonizability . The true value of this concept lies not in its accusatory nature, but in its diagnostic function. Bennabi did not write to absolve the colonizer; he raised a far more disturbing question: Why does colonialism find fertile ground in which to expand? According to him, the answer lies not only in the artillery of the conqueror, but also in a weakness embedded within the very consciousness of the coloniz...

The official visit that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is expected to make to Algeria on July 20 represents a major diplomatic event. More than a routine bilateral meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the visit appears to mark the culmination of a gradual reconciliation process between two countries that have experienced one of the deepest crises in their modern relations. A Crisis Triggered by Spain's Shift on Western Sahara To understand the significance of this visit, it is necessary to revisit the origins of the diplomatic crisis that erupted between Algiers and Madrid in 2022. For decades, Spain had maintained a relatively balanced position regarding the Western Sahara dispute, an issue of particular importance to Algeria. This long-standing policy changed dramatically when Pedro Sánchez's government publicly endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan as the basis for resolving the conflict. From Algeria's perspective, the move represented a departure from the ...