Locked in a slow-burning diplomatic crisis with no end in sight, Algeria and Morocco approach the new year with diverging expectations and facing a modest but rising risk of accidental escalation. Rooted in Algiers’ perception of growing insecurity and Rabat’s confident and daring foreign policy, the tensions between them have risked at times triggering accidental escalation over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Mutual self-restraint and United States engagement have prevented a direct conflict from materializing, but after Donald Trump’s re-election as president, the two sides’ perceptions are shifting again. The risk is that with Washington unlikely to play the same calming role as before, the security repercussions of future incidents will become harder to manage, unless European governments decide to take up the role previously played by the US in the region.

A crisis contained

The current crisis between the two neighbors dates back to August 2021, when Algiers suspended its diplomatic ties with Rabat after a string of incidents related to Morocco’s normalization of relations with Israel and alleged backing for the self-determination of Kabylia, an Amazigh-majority region in Algeria. Behind these episodes lies Algiers’ perception of growing insecurity, fueled by the increasing encroachment of several foreign actors (such as Russia and Türkiye) in North Africa and the Sahel and Morocco’s assertive foreign policy. For Algiers, its neighbor’s normalization of relations and military cooperation with Israel is a direct threat to its national security. (Algeria is monthly rotating president of the United Nations Security Council in January.)

While the Western Sahara conflict has not emerged as a key driver of tensions between Algeria and Morocco, it is the military theater that poses a limited but growing risk of accidental escalation between them. Rabat, which controls 80 percent of its territory, and the pro-independence Polisario Front, which enjoys Algiers’ backing, resumed hostilities in November 2020, after the UN tried but eventually failed to organize a self-determination referendum in the 1990s and later attempted to broker a different political solution to no avail.

Morocco aims to settle this conflict by negotiating with the Polisario Front; Algeria (which it considers Polisario’s puppeteer and the real decision-maker); and Mauritania. Its goal is to agree on terms of devolving powers to Western Sahara such that the territory would be under its sovereignty — what Morocco refers to as the Autonomy Plan. From its side, the Polisario wants bilateral talks with Rabat to agree on a self-determination referendum, a position shared by Algeria. In the meantime, the Polisario military units continue to operate inside a buffer zone that despite the breakdown of the UN-mediated 1991 ceasefire, keeps Morocco-controlled Western Sahara separate from Algeria, which hosts Sahrawi refugee camps.

Since 2021, a series of incidents in the buffer zone have threatened to take the two countries closer to an accidental escalation. In November 2021, an alleged Moroccan strike killed a group of Algerian truck drivers in Western Sahara, prompting Algiers to vow retaliation, only to later limit itself to a diplomatic protest. In 2022, the UN peacekeeping mission to Western Sahara, Minurso, was on the brink of withdrawing from the buffer zone due to the Polisario’s refusal to allow ground resupply operations after Morocco bombed one of its supply trucks.

In response, Rabat threatened to take over the area, raising the possibility that Moroccan troops would face the Algerian army along the border with Western Sahara and pursue future Polisario attacks directly inside Algerian territory. Finally, in October 2023 a Polisario rocket hit the city of Smara, killing a Moroccan civilian. Officials in Rabat pinned responsibility for the attack explicitly on Algeria.

Yet, mutual self-restraint and US engagement have proved enough to contain these escalatory triggers. As neither country wants war, Algeria and Morocco have managed to refrain from intentionally provoking each other in the aftermath of each incident even in the absence of direct communication. Moreover, under the Biden administration Washington has deliberately engaged with both countries to assuage Algeria’s security concerns and continue to cultivate ties with Morocco. When needed, the US has also stepped in to send de-escalatory messages and help contain these episodes.

With Trump in the White House, could tensions heat up?

The relative solidity of this arrangement has been on show over the past year, as the conflict in Western Sahara did not record a major uptick, and diplomatic developments were handled by both sides with restraint. Since the October 2023 attack on Smara, the low-intensity conflict between Morocco and the Polisario has remained confined to its implicit “rules of the game,” i.e., no targeting of civilians and no interference with Minurso operations, thus minimizing any escalation risk. Meanwhile, France’s July 2024 recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and new language on the Autonomy Plan (which it now identifies as “the only solution” to the conflict) antagonized Algeria, which withdrew its ambassador from Paris but otherwise did not trigger a consequential reaction.

Likewise, when in October the European Union Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Polisario that Western Sahara should not be included in the EU’s fishery and agriculture treaty with Morocco without the consent of its people, Algiers and Rabat limited themselves to diplomatic reactions.

The precarious equilibrium between the two countries only began to unravel after Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House in November. During his first administration, Trump avoided taking any stance on Western Sahara until December 2020 (after he had lost the presidential election to Joe Biden), when he officially recognized Rabat’s sovereignty over this territory in return for Morocco’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel. Unsurprisingly, Morocco has welcomed his 2024 re-election, while Algeria and the Polisario view it with deep concern.

In the weeks after Trump’s election victory, both sides showed signs of nervousness regarding each other. On Nov. 8, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita warned a group of parliamentarians that Algeria was preparing for war. On Nov. 9, the Polisario fired four shells on Mahbes, in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara, narrowly missing a gathering of dozens of civilians. On Nov. 18, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune appointed Army Chief of Staff Said Chengriha to delegate minister in the defense ministry, making him the de facto defense minister while officially this portfolio’s political responsibility remains with the president. The appointment reinforces the security apparatus’s influence over decision-making in Algeria. All of these episodes highlighted the actors’ growing restlessness as they face a less predictable international environment.

Yet Algeria and Morocco are unlikely to engage in an open war anytime soon. It remains unclear what policy the Trump administration will adopt regarding Western Sahara and the crisis between Algiers and Rabat. Morocco hopes to enlist the US in its efforts to promote the Autonomy Plan and isolate Algeria and views favorably the appointment of Marco Rubio as US secretary of state, given his support of opening a consulate in Western Sahara and imposing sanctions on Algeria for its purchase of Russian weaponry. Yet, it is also possible that Washington will simply disengage from an area it considers peripheral to its core interests, as Trump did during most of his previous administration.

Either way, a partisan or disengaged US foreign policy in the region is likely to remove an important backstop against potential escalation. Under Trump, it is hard to imagine Washington deliberately engaging with both countries and stepping in at times of heightened tensions. This policy change is a risk factor that is likely to place the burden of conflict prevention entirely on the two neighbors’ rational choices and self-restraint.

The European Union and main European governments can reduce the risk if they decide to assume the role that the Biden administration has played. But for this to happen, they will need to better coordinate their positions and find a minimum common denominator for a crisis that has so far resulted in EU member states dealing with its repercussions on an almost exclusively bilateral basis to protect their national interests.

This essay originally appeared in Diplomacy Now, a publication of the International Center for Dialogue Initiatives.

We welcome your comments on this article.  What are your thoughts on the Moroccan-Algerian relationship?

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Riccardo Fabiani

Riccardo Fabiani is the North Africa Project Director for the International Crisis Group. He has more than 10 years of professional experience as a political analyst and economist on North Africa, having worked for Eurasia Group, Energy Aspects and other consultancies. He has published articles for the Carnegie Endowment’s Sada Journal, Jadaliyya, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Financial Times.