Moroccans and Algerians: brothers in history probably, political enemies certainly. 855
The question of whether Moroccans and Algerians are brothers recurs recurrently, often laden with emotion, rarely addressed with the historical depth and political lucidity it deserves. The slogan conceals a complex reality, marked by anthropological and civilizational unity, but also by successive ruptures, some ancient, others more recent, largely imposed by external dominations and then by post-independence political choices.
At the origin, human and civilizational unity is undeniable. On historical, anthropological, and cultural levels, there is little doubt that North Africa long constituted **a single continuous human space**. The great Berber confederations: Sanhaja, Zenata, Masmouda; Islamic contributions; networks of religious brotherhoods; trade routes; and Moroccan dynasties Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, Saadian structured an **organic Maghreb**, without rigid borders. Belongings were tribal, religious, spiritual, or dynastic. The circulation of people, ideas, and elites was constant. **Moroccans and Algerians clearly shared the same civilizational foundation**.
Then came the Ottoman parenthesis and a first structural divergence. From the 16th century onward, a **major differentiation** emerged between the western shores of the Maghreb. While Morocco remained a sovereign state, structured around a rooted Sharifian monarchy, Algeria fell under **Ottoman domination**, integrated as a peripheral regency of the Empire, a domination that lasted nearly three centuries and was far from neutral. It introduced:
* an **exogenous power**, military and urban, detached from the interior tribal world;
* a hierarchical system dominated by a politico-military caste: Janissaries, deys, beys, often of non-local origin;
* a social organization marked by a clear separation between rulers and ruled, without true political integration of the populations.
This Ottoman model, more based on coercion than allegiance, contrasted deeply with the Moroccan model, where central power rested on **bay‘a**, religious legitimacy, and indigenous dynastic continuity.
Without “denaturing” the populations in the biological sense, this long Ottoman period **altered relationships to the state, authority, and sovereignty**, and gradually distanced, on cultural and political levels, the societies of western Algeria from those of Morocco.
Then came French colonization and institutionalized separation.
French colonization of Algeria (1830–1962) introduced an even deeper rupture. Paris methodically worked to **tear Algeria from its natural Maghrebi environment**, transforming it into a settler colony, then into French departments.
Borders were unilaterally redrawn to Morocco's detriment, and an Algerian identity was progressively constructed **in opposition to its western neighbor**, portrayed as archaic. This is a direct legacy of French colonial software.
Yet, despite this separation enterprise, fraternity between the peoples endured. Morocco hosted, supported, and armed FLN fighters; thousands of Moroccans participated in the liberation war; the late HM Mohammed V committed the kingdom's prestige and resources to Algerian independence. At that precise moment, fraternity was neither a myth nor rhetoric: it was **a concrete historical fact**.
At Algerian independence, an unexpected political rupture was embraced.
Paradoxically, it was **after 1962**, once Algeria was independent, that the fracture became enduring. The power emerging from the Army of the Frontiers reneged on agreements concluded with the GPRA regarding colonial-inherited borders. The **1963 Sand War**, launched against a weakened but previously supportive Morocco, became a founding trauma. From then on, hostility became structural:
* Direct support for Moroccan opponents and putschists;
* Political, diplomatic, military, and financial backing for Polisario separatists;
* Relentless media campaigns against Morocco and its monarchy;
* Repeated interferences in Morocco's sovereign choices, including its international alliances, notably with Israel;
* Heavy accusations, often raised in Algerian public debate;
* Destabilization operations, including the 1994 Asni Hotel attack in Marrakech;
* Instrumentalization of Algerian school education, where Morocco is portrayed as a “colonialist” state;
* Brutal deportation of 45,000 Moroccans from Algeria;
* Sabotage of rapprochement attempts, including under President Mohamed Boudiaf, whose assassination, while he was initiating dialogue with Rabat, remains shrouded in shadows.
More recently, the case of **Boualem Sansal**, imprisoned for expressing historically inconvenient truths challenging the official narrative, illustrates the Algerian regime's inability to accept a free and serene reading of Maghrebi history.
Thus, two irreconcilable national trajectories.
To this political hostility is added a profound divergence in national trajectories. Morocco, not without criticisms, has pursued gradual transformation: institutional reforms, pluralism, major infrastructure projects, African integration, economic and diplomatic diversification. In contrast, Algeria remains trapped in a **militaro-security system inherited from both Ottoman logic and the liberation war**, centralized, distrustful of society, dependent on energy rents, and structurally hostile to any regional success perceived as competitive.
This asymmetry fuels frustration and resentment, where Morocco becomes a **useful ideological adversary, the classic enemy**.
So, brothers or not? The answer is nuanced, but unambiguous.
**Moroccans and Algerians are brothers through long history, deep culture, geography, and human ties.** They were for centuries, before Ottoman domination, before French colonization, and perhaps remain so at the level of the peoples. But **they no longer are at the level of the states**, due to a deliberate political choice by the Algerian regime since independence: to build its legitimacy on external hostility, particularly toward Morocco.
Fraternity has not disappeared; it has been **progressively altered, then confiscated** by imperial, colonial, and postcolonial history. It persists in popular memory, in separated families, in the painful silence of closed borders.
History, unbiased by passion or ideology, delivers the verdict—and the 35th CAN contributes to it:
**the peoples are brothers; the Algerian regime has decided otherwise**.
