Morocco’s Makhzen Regime Loses Politically And Sportingly In the CHAN “Affair”

The Moroccan Makhzen Regime suffered a double setback, political and sporting, after failing to try to impose its warped logic on Algeria, along with the Confederation of African Football, by breaking the ban imposed on its civil and military aviation, imposed on it by the Algerian authorities, as a punishment for its hostile stances towards its neighbor, as the Algerian Foreign Ministry then said, on the day of the announcement of the severance of bilateral relations.

For about twenty days, the propaganda machine of the Moroccan regime did not stop provoking Algeria, by trying to push it to back down from its sovereign decision banning the passage of Moroccan civil and military aircraft through Algerian airspace, before this provocation ended with a diplomatic and sports setback, witnessed by both the president of the federation. International Football Association, Gianni Infantino, and the President of the African Confederation, Patrice Motsepe, and behind them the whole world.

At first, the “sports theorist” of the Makhzen regime and the president of its football federation, Faouzi Lakjaa, believed by putting Algeria between the option of allowing his country’s team to travel to Algeria via a Royal Air Morocco plane in a direct flight, or boycotting the African Cup for locals, hoping that the organizing country would submit to blackmail and give up its sovereign decision, but its calculations proved wrong.

The Algerian party was strict in its decision and left the Moroccan regime to suffer until the last moment, putting it under pressure, which made it confused and unable to act in a balanced manner, to the point that it tried to sympathize with the presidents of “FIFA” and “CAF”, by bringing the Moroccan team’s players to the airport near Rabat, coinciding with the arrival of Infantino and Motsepe planes, in anticipation of the FIFA Club World Cup draw.

The scene was unfortunate for the Moroccan team members as they were waiting for a date that they realized would not come, because whoever brought them there did not aim to take them to Algeria to participate in the “CHAN”, but rather to depict a scene of a miserable scenario even when they realizes that they are losing in advance, hoping to sympathize with the leaders of the African football body to avert expected penalties for withdrawing from the CHAN competition at the last moment.

The statements of the President of the Confederation of African Football from Rabat Airport, were clear and frank and do not accept any interpretation, to the effect that the Confederation does not discuss the sovereign decisions of countries, while the Moroccan regime did not hesitate to involve politics in sports, and more than that, it tried to implicate the African Football Authority in a political dispute par excellence.

The Moroccan regime, through its fabrication of the incident of its team’s participation in the Algerian “CHAN”, had nothing but an attempt to draw the attention of international public opinion to the decision to ban the passage of Moroccan civil and military aviation over Algerian airspace, a decision that seems to have caused excruciating pain to the Makhzen regime, which means severe damage to Royal Air Maroc for an indefinite period.

And after all the noise and shouting made by the Moroccan regime in the hope of influencing the organization of the activities of the Continental Cup for the locals, and it is well aware of the mentality of the Algerians that cannot be tamed. without affecting the continental football event.

Thus, it can be said that the Moroccan regime failed at more than one level in its attempt to impose its logic on Algeria and the African Union. It lost politically by failing to market its maneuvers because they were exposed from the beginning.

All in all, the Moroccan Makhzen Regime also lost mathematically, because it prevented its team from defending its title in a neighboring country with which it shares all the right conditions for the North African teams, and above all, it lost many of his chances of hosting the 2025 African Football Cup of Nations, by striving  to woefully implicate the African Union in a political issue.