For fifty years, Algeria has continued to support the Polisario Front, claiming to defend the right to self-determination for the Sahrawi people. Yet, behind this façade lies a much darker reality: a geopolitical manipulation at the expense of identity and regional peace.
According to Western experts, Algeria uses the Polisario as a geopolitical tool in a disguised Cold War in Africa against France and the United States, reminiscent of the Soviet era, seeking to mask its own historical and identity fragility.
Lacking historical roots, Algeria has never been a truly sovereign state. This territory, which was successively under the domination of several Arab-Berber dynasties, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and later France, has always been defined by external powers.
The Algerian identity, as it is claimed today, is the result of an artificial creation imposed by French colonization and solidified by a so-called war of independence. This lack of continuity or historical gaps as an independent political entity largely explains the obsession of Algerian regimes to position themselves as defenders of foreign causes.
By supporting the Polisario and even Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran against Israel, Algeria seeks to fill an identity void by inventing itself as a protector, while diverting attention from its own history as a colonized nation.
The Polisario Front, far from being a liberation movement, has become a mere tool of geopolitical or geo-identity manipulation in the hands of the Algerian military regime.
By providing military, financial, and logistical support to this organization, Algeria maintains an artificial conflict, fueling regional instability that allows it to conceal its own internal identity failures.
The fact that Algeria is the only country in the world to so actively support this isolated cause speaks volumes about the regime’s real motivations.
Algeria likes to present itself as a leader in advocating for peoples’ right to self-determination. However, this discourse is deeply hypocritical. While the entire world—from Arab countries to African states, as well as Europe, USA and Asia—recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara or supports the autonomy plan proposed by Rabat, Algeria remains entrenched in a posture of systematic opposition.
Currently, this obstinacy is not driven by principles but by a cynical calculation. By fueling the Sahara conflict, Algeria seeks to divert attention from its own internal problems: a declining economy, endemic corruption, and a military regime that clings to power by repressing any dissenting voice.
This blind support for the Polisario is nothing more than a dangerous anachronism, threatening not only peace in the region but also the future of Algeria itself as a viable state.
By using the Sahara conflict as a tool to legitimize an aging and autocratic military regime, Algeria betrays not only the Sahrawi population but also its own citizens, locking them into a worldview that belongs to the past.
The true challenge for Algeria lies not in the Sahara, but rather in the north, with the independence claims of Kabylie, and in the south with the liberation movements.