Morocco’s Relationship With the Gara Djebilat Mine Legally Dropped in 1976

As expected, Algeria’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Turkey for the exploitation of the sleeping giant, Gara Djebeilat Steel Mine, angered the Moroccan regime, as it hastened, through its media and electronic flies, to launch a campaign against the large project, by publishing historical, legal and political fallacies about it. Although, its relationship with this project ended in 1976 after violating the agreement of the neighbourhood.

One of the flimsy justifications for the Moroccan side is that Algeria’s move is a violation of the joint exploitation agreement signed between the two countries regarding the borders in 1972, but what the Makhzen horns do not know is that the agreement between the two countries regarding the mine dropped and that the “paragraph 4 of the agreement clearly states that Algeria is the owner of this mine that is located on its territory and subject to its full sovereignty”.

Among the justifications that give Algeria the right to cancel the agreement is the Moroccan decision to unilaterally sever its relations with Algeria in 1976, which contradicts the objectives of the agreement signed between the two countries in 1972 regarding the exploitation of the Algerian Gara Djebilat mine in cooperation with Morocco because of its location close to the border.

Fifty-one years after signing the border demarcation treaties between the two countries on its territory and registering them on the shelves of the largest international organization, the United Nations, the Moroccan regime still insists on contradicting itself and evading its international obligations and seeks to make the war of maps with its neighbours a field for bidding, especially amid its internal and external crises.

Algeria ignored the campaigns of the Makhzen and its mouthpieces because the matter is settled politically and legally with several treaties and agreements documented by the two countries, the first of which is the Treaty of Brotherhood, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation between Algeria and Morocco signed in Ifrane Morocco on January 15, 1969, which Algeria ratified by Order No. 6-3 of January 22, 1969.

The second agreement is the Algerian-Moroccan joint statement related to the border treaty between the two countries signed in Rabat on June 15, 1972, by the late President Houari Boumediene and the late Moroccan King Hassan II.

The Moroccan regime’s commitments were also embodied in the Algerian-Moroccan treaty related to the border line existing between the two countries and signed in Rabat on June 15, 1972, which Algeria ratified by Order No. 20/73 of May 17, 1973, as well as Morocco’s ratification of the treaty on March 09, 1989, and the treaty was published under the Royal Decree No. 480-89- dated June 22, 1992.

In addition to all this, the Makhzen regime signed the minutes of the exchange of ratification documents for the treaty related to the border line existing between Algeria and Morocco in Algeria on May 14, 1989, by the foreign ministers of the two countries, and it was issued in the Official Gazette n° 48 on June 15, 1973.

The matter did not stop there, as the documents of ratification were deposited with the General Secretariat of the United Nations, according to Article 9 of the treaty, which was stated in Article 102 of a document issued by the United Nations in June 2002.