Qatar Again Denies Mediating Between Algeria And Morocco

Once again, the Qatari government intervenes to announce that it has not played any mediation role between Algeria and the Kingdom of Morocco, in line with the desire that the Moroccan regime has not stopped expressing from time to time, refuting the allegations alluded to by the Moroccan monarch, Mohammed VI, in his last speech.
Less than a week ago, the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, received two letters, the first from the King of the Alawite Kingdom, Mohammed VI, and three days later, another message arrived in Doha from President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, received by the Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sultan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi, from the Chargé d’Affaires of the Algerian Embassy in Qatar, Amirouche Rakah.
These two messages were accompanied by an organized campaign on the Moroccan media and social networks, or what they call “Makhzen flies,” promoting the thesis that Algerian-Moroccan relations are in a state of stability, despite the diplomatic estrangement between the two countries that has lasted for almost two years.
This fake movement resonated in the Qatari capital, Doha. On Tuesday, August 15, 2023, Madjid al-Ansari, advisor to the prime minister and Qatari foreign minister, was asked during the weekly briefing of the Qatari foreign ministry whether the two letters that the Emir of Qatar received from President Tebboune and the Moroccan monarch were centered on a possible Qatari mediation to restore the severed diplomatic relations. The Qatari official responded by denying that Doha had anything to do with this file.
The Qatari official explained that the written message received by the Qatari Emir from President Tebboune is related to “the strong bilateral relations between the two brotherly countries and ways to support and enhance them,” which means that Algeria maintains its position of refusing any rapprochement with the Moroccan regime because of the “hostile acts” in which it has been involved against Algeria, as stated by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the National Community Abroad, Ramtane Lamamra, on the day of the announcement of the severance of diplomatic relations on August 25, 2021.
On July 29, the Moroccan monarch delivered a speech that lacked realism, in which he said that Algerian-Moroccan relations are “stable,” a description that baffled observers because the two countries do not have diplomatic representation between them, and the Algerian sanctions against Morocco have exhausted its economy, which is what challenges the words of the first man in the upper kingdom.
The most accurate description of the reality of relations between Algeria and Rabat remains that given by President Tebboune in the interview he gave to the Al-Jazeera channel on March 23, in which he said that Algerian-Moroccan relations had reached the point of “no return” and blamed the Moroccan side.
President Tebboune’s words mean that Moroccan hostilities against Algeria have crossed all borders in a way that makes it impossible to return to what was before, a position that is considered an extension of another statement by the first judge that had the same meaning.
In December 2022, President Tebboune said in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper that the decision to sever relations with Morocco is “an alternative to a war between the two states” and it is “the result of accumulations since 1963.”
The Moroccan king had recently sent messages to a number of leaders of the Gulf states, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and he did not reveal the content of these messages, but Moroccan specialists, including political analyst Mohamed Choucair, told a Moroccan newspaper that the Moroccan regime had asked for “financial support to finance some economic and social projects that the kingdom wants to implement.
The rich Gulf kingdoms and emirates used to provide financial support to the Moroccan regime, even financing arms deals, but the flow of Gulf money to the Alawite kingdom has not been as abundant in recent years, either because of successive economic crises or because of differences, as happened between Rabat and Riyadh. This was the case after Morocco withdrew its soldiers who had participated in the war on Yemen.