ABSTRACT
Algeria and Morocco are the two principal states of the Maghrib, in terms of geographical extent and population size (circa 30 million inhabitants in each of the two countries). An Algero-Moroccan partnership has the greatest potential as the motor of dynamic economic and political development for the whole region. These two states share linguistic, religious, ethnic and historical elements (the Arabic language, Islam, a numerous berberophone minority, a heritage of harsh struggle for independence from the same colonial power). On 17 February 1989, the constitutive summit of the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA) was held in Marrakesh. In the summit’s final declaration, the five states present (Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia) pledged themselves to create a free trade zone, to facilitate the free circulation of goods and persons, and to establish a customs union. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the UMA’s development process is impassably blocked, principally due to the impasse in Algero-Moroccan relations, the stalled motor of North African dynamics. I shall examine in this article how the question of the Western Sahara, from the ‘war of the sands’ in 1963 through the Green March (November 1975) and Algerian support for the POLISARIO Front, weighs heavily on relations between Algeria and Morocco. Beyond the-fundamental-Sahara dispute, however, lie other factors: differential contemporary relationships to space and to history, which also require consideration.
