Algeria declared the death of the Arab Maghreb Union

A week after the meeting in Tunis on April 22, between Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, the Algerian APS agency published a dispatch in the form of a death certificate for the Arab Maghreb Union, launched on February 17, 1989 in Marrakesh. The official news agency holds Morocco responsible for the paralysis of the AMU.

“Today, all African countries are organized into a regional community except for North Africa, due to Morocco favoring alliances with the Zionist entity” and “referring to other organic structures of Mashreq”. An allusion to the partnership agreements between the kingdom and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In an interview with Algerian media on March 30, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune justified Morocco’s exclusion from the three-way Maghreb project: “Our western neighbors want to join the West African Development Organization (ECOWAS) and they can do that.

To support its declaration of the death of the UMA, the APS found an official Moroccan request from 1995, calling for the suspension of the Union’s authority, but taking care to remain silent on its real motives.

Attaf and APS ignore the motivation of the 1995 Moroccan request

The request was indeed an act of protest against Algeria, which supports Polisario, the violation of the provisions of the constitutive act of the UMA, in particular its article 15. from member states. They also undertake to refrain from joining any pact, military or political alliance, which would be directed against the political independence or territorial unity of other member states”, it is specified in the same text.

On August 29, 2023, during a press briefing in Algeria, current Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf returned to Morocco’s 1995 request to confirm that “Algeria is not responsible for the blockade known to the Arab Maghreb Union. Since then, the circumstances have not changed. Worse, they got worse. Today it is difficult to talk about revitalizing or giving new life to the Arab Maghreb Union in the context we all know.” The head of diplomacy ignored the causes that forced Morocco to call for the freezing of AMU 29 years ago.

The release of APS comes at a time when the Algerian Maghreb project without Morocco is digging. Libya, which was present at the summit in Tunis, is increasingly calling for the strengthening of the Arab Maghreb Union. Twenty-four hours after the tripartite meeting was held in the capital of Tunisia, the President of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mohamed Younès El-Menfi, sent a message to King Mohammed VI to that effect.

The next day it was the turn of the first vice-president of the Government of National Unity (recognized by the international community), Minister of Agriculture Hussein Atiya El Katran, to repeat the same call during a meeting, in Rabat, with the Secretary General of the UMA, the Tunisian Taïeb Baccouche. On April 24, the President of the Libyan Presidential Council sent a written message to the President of Mauritania on the same topic. Despite pressure from Algeria, the southern neighbor has so far refused to join the Maghreb without Morocco.