MOROCCO/ALGERIA: Quiet Town Unmoved By Algerian Media Blitz

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nizar al-Ali

OUJDA, Moroccan-Algerian border, May 28 1998 (IPS) - Officially, state relations between Morocco and Algeria are at best unhealthy, at worst mildly hostile, but here on the border between the two, the communities mix more easily.

The border itself is formally closed, but in the Moroccan border town of Oujda, 12,000 Algerian nationals still live on the Moroccan side of the line, in the city’s eastern half.

Inevitably some of the tensions between the two states have given rise to media reports of friction between the two communities. Local MP Driss Houate dismisses their claims.

Relations between the people of Morocco’s eastern areas and their neighbours from western Algeria, he says, “have always been marked by friendliness, despite the closure of borders many times in recent history”.

In 1988 Algeria opened a consulate in Oujda as part of the easing of a 13 year diplomatic freeze between the two dating back to Algeria’s support for Sahawri nationalist groups in Western Sahara, which Morocco claims as its territory.

Algeria closed the borders again in 1994 in protest when Morocco applied visa restrictions on Algerians after two Spanish tourists were killed by a bomb in a Marrakesh hotel, an attack blamed on Algerian extremists.

The four years since have seen an escalation in the conflict between Algerian security forces and armed Islamic groups that began in 1991 when the military backed government cancelled parliamentary elections that an Islamist party was poised to win.

More than 65,000 people have died since. Yet over the same period, Oujda’s Algerian and Moroccan inhabitants, their incomes hard hit by the loss of cross-border trade, have become accustomed to the situation.

“The inhabitants of the region do suffer from the clashes between the Algerian army and the armed Islamist groups”, says Ahmed Chergui, a young man from the Cheragua tribe, traditionally located on the Moroccan-Algerian border.

Ahmed, who smuggles Algerian petroleum into Morocco, cites a raid by armed men on a local tribe during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The raiders stole the tribe’s traditional collection fund for the poor.

“The Cheragua, like its neighbouring A’raara tribe, is divided in two: one side on Moroccan territory and the other in Algeria,” he says. “Each segment suffers from what happens to its relatives on the other side.”

Abdelhamid, from the A’raara, says the problems have been exaggerated by the Algerian media to distract attention from the bloodshed that takes place in central and northern Algeria. One community leader from the nearby Sidi Hazem region jokily recalls A lgerian press reports of his “slaughter” in April at the hands of armed Islamists. It was an “April Fool,” he says.

However Algeria persistently raises the allegation that the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) radicals are finding easy refuge over the border in Morocco. One paper, the Algiers daily el-Watan, has been particularly outspoken.

In a item posted last month on a web site run by the Algerian daily, reporter Tayeb Belghiche claimed that “Islamic terrorism” had spread to Oujda. “We have learned from sources close to the Moroccan opposition,” he wrote, “that 10 ordinary Moroccan citizens had their throats cut at the beginning of April in the region of Oujda.”

Belghiche speculated that the killings could be the work of “a newly created Moroccan version of the GIA,” or a group he called the Moroccan Islamic Jihad Group (GIJ). “The GIA has trained Moroccan terrorists,” he theorised, “while it was itself sen ding its men to train in camps set up for this purpose by the Moroccan secret services.”

In other reports the paper has claimed the destruction of the Moroccan villages of Sidi Mansour, the use of Moroccan troops to hunt Islamist guerrillas and quoted former Algerian chief of staff, General Khaled Nezzar, as accusing Morocco of supporting th e GIA as part of a bid to “blackmail” Algeria over the Western Sahara issue.

Rabat firmly denies all such claims. “Morocco is a stable country that is endowed with democratic institutions,” noted government spokesman Khalid Alioua in Paris this month. “Maybe this situation does not arouse enthusiasm in our region…” The tens ion, he added, may be linked to a “secret desire to foil the peace process in the Sahara.”

The Moroccan border police say there have been no infiltrations of Algerian armed group members for two years, when two were caught on the border. They say they try to avoid bloodshed while keeping a knowing eye on the smugglers’ routes over the mountain ous regions that divide the two states.

Sporadic shootings occur from time to time in the area. “Most of the wounded persons brought to the hospital claim that they were victim of random shooting by the Algerian border police,” said a nurse based at Oujda’s al-Farabi hospital.

The astounding cruelty of the conflict in Algeria has shocked the region, but is seen here as a Algerian phenomena, not applicable to other states, says Dr Ahmed Benhamza, who runs an Islamic research centre in Oujda.

“The bloodshed in (Algeria),” he says, “came as result of the marginalisation of religious institutions in the 1970’s (which led some) to resort to other, foreign references, which automatically lead to extremism, not necessarily religious.

“This cannot happen in Morocco for the simple reason that religious education, particularly in the eastern areas relies on inculcating the genuine tolerant precepts of Islam.

“Moreover,” he adds, “people in this area are peaceful by nature.”