North Africa: More pettiness over Western Sahara

In preparation for the ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad), which takes place next August in Yokohama, Japan organised a ministerial meeting on August 24-25 in Tokyo. A preparatory meeting for this ministerial meeting was held on August 23. What promised to be a dry affair dedicated to the protocol of the investment event was livened up by a bit of physical violence.

The background is that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Sadr), the theoretical government-in-waiting of an independent Western Sahara, is not invited to Ticad even though it is an AU member. Japan does not recognise it and wants to avoid the Western Sahara dispute overshadowing the investment discussions that should be the meat of Ticad – with reason. In 2022, Ticad 8 in Tunis was derailed by drama when Tunisia’s President Ka?s Sa?ed not only invited Sadr President Brahim Ghali but gave him a red-carpet welcome at the airport. Morocco stayed away from Ticad and recalled its ambassador to Tunis (Tunisia reciprocated the following day).

This year, the Algerian delegation took Lamine Bali, the Sadr’s ambassador to the AU, along with it to Tokyo. After sitting down for the protocol meeting, Mr Bali brought a little tabletop sign reading ‘Sahrawi Republic’ out of his bag and placed it on his desk. A member of the Moroccan delegation went over and tried to grab the sign, and then a member of the Algerian delegation tackled the Moroccan diplomat. Some heated words were exchanged.

On the first day of the meeting itself, Japan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fukazawa Yoichi said that the presence of “entities that are not recognised by Japan … in no way changes the position of Japan,” which consists of inviting only UN members to Ticad (only the Sadr is an AU member but not a UN member).

The stunt of bringing Mr Bali and provoking the Moroccans was mainly intended for use by the Sadr’s public relations channels and for domestic consumption in Algeria, where President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is running for re-election on September 7. Another strange incident in Algeria may have been staged – or at least retrospectively explained – to favour Mr Tebboune’s candidacy. On August 4, Moussa Za?di was arrested at the harbour in Beja?a as he was coming off a ferry from Marseille, France, with a car full of shotguns and shotgun shells. Ten days later, he confessed on television that he had smuggled the arms to Algeria in preparation for terrorist attacks to cause chaos during the election. In Mr Za?di’s confession, he attested to having had help from French, Moroccan, and Israeli agents and that he had been acting on behalf of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie (MAK), a movement that exists mainly in exile in France.

Algerians in the diaspora tend to dismiss the Za?di confession as ‘dahdouhia’ – a fake confession named after Abou Dahdouh, who claimed on television in 2021 to have been involved in orchestrating street protests over the previous two years in cahoots with Morocco. It is relevant to Mr Za?di’s confession that one of Mr Tebboune’s two challengers in the election, Youssef Aouchiche, is Kabyle. Within the AU, the Western Sahara issue continues to impede coordination on investment and trade.