Morocco Ambassador Returns To Diplomatic Tasks In Algeria

Morocco’s Ambassador to Algeria, Hacene Abdel Khalik, joined his country’s embassy in Algiers, after an absence of more than a month following the crisis that broke out again between the two countries, following the unprecedented statements by the Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, in which he said that the Moroccan economy is based on the financial resources that derived of drug promotion.

Identical sources in Algeria and Morocco said that Hacene Abdel Khalik resumed his diplomatic career as ambassador to his country in Algeria, but these sources did not provide clarifications of the reasons for this return, whether they were made in the framework of understandings between the two countries, or whether the matter is a unilateral decision by Rabat.

Morocco’s Foreign Ministry summoned its ambassador to Algeria on October 20 for consultations and at the same time it summoned the Chargé d’Affaires of the Algerian embassy in Rabat to protest Messahel’s statements. 

The Algerian side considered the Rabat statement as being “bad and unacceptable”, asserting that the Minister Messahel’s statements are not offensive, but they are rather ordinary statements, and are stated by the UN bodies which recognize that Morocco is a producer and exporter of drugs”.

Observers believe that the return of the Moroccan ambassador to his activity in Algeria can not be considered an indication of the return of relationships between the two countries to stability because the diplomatic representation of Algeria in Morocco is at its lowest level since the recall of the Algerian ambassador in Rabat, following the desecration of the Algerian flag and the attack on the consulate building in Casablanca in 2013.

The relationships between the two countries noticed many bumps during the last few years, the latest of which was the crisis that erupted last spring in the Caribbean islands on the sidelines of a UN meeting, where Morocco accused an Algerian diplomat of attacking one of its diplomats, while the Algerian side said it is harassment against by a member of the Moroccan delegation against the Algerian diplomatic delegation there.

Algerian-Moroccan relationships remain hostage to files that are difficult to overcome. First, the issue of Western Sahara, which Algeria’s foreign policy regards as a matter of principle,

because it is related to the decolonization of the continent, and the second file is the drug trafficking crisis which Morocco is introducing through Algeria’s Western borders, as these files led to the death of the Arab Maghreb Union.