Algerian Security Services Succeed In Combating Smuggling To Morocco

Moroccan media are speaking, since a period of time, about a significant decline in the activity of smuggling from Algeria, through previewing markets in the cities of the east of the kingdom, particularly the city of Oujda and the town of Bani Adrar, compared with past years, although there are some activities, that are seasonal sometimes, and that belong to some materials at other times.

They also reported that many of the traffickers in contraband materials replaced their trade with goods, commodities and Moroccan products, or chose other commercial activities.

Smuggling was confined on the western border of Algeria, according to observers, due to the strict security procedures, guarding and monitoring, both at ports or border crossings or roads that are leading to it, and the use of radars and cameras that are installed at some crossing points that are used by smugglers, before the Algerian authorities started since two weeks ago the construction of the concrete wall on the land border with Morocco, and that was officially closed in 1994, after the iron fence that was built by the Moroccan authorities on a distance of 140 kilometres.

With the unprecedented security state in the border areas between Morocco and Algeria, the suffering of Moroccans who reside in the border is continuing, as the website “Hespress” said that the deterioration does not affect only the prices of the smuggled goods, especially the fuel, but it also touches clearly the social situation of the population which fears of cutting the livelihood, which is based on smuggling on both sides of the border, as it is the primary source on money.

In this regard, “Yahia”, a young man,23, complained of the difficulties that are faced by workers in the smuggling trade, saying: “We are residents of the border areas, and we are suffering an unprecedented security tightening on contraband materials that make up the basis of our living resource”.

Same young man spoke bitterly about the difficulty of life in the border areas, saying: “There are no factories or companies in our region that help us work, which prompted me to work in the smuggling of fuel and food from Algeria”, as published in the website.

Strict security measures on the border led the Moroccans who are living on smuggling and the depletion of the Algerian economy, to protest more than once against the recession in their activity in the recent months and years, and aggravated their suffering, as a result of that rigorousness, what prevented smuggling which was their daily source of livelihood, as they asked their country’s authorities to provide alternatives to combat unemployment in light of the absence of employment opportunities.