From the Editor

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Opinion by Arezki Daoud: 4 June 2020: Just like Algeria has been doing, Morocco is spending the money it does not have to procure more military equipment it will never use and without major security logic. The country is facing a collapsed economy due to the impact of Covid-19, yet its leaders found it fit to ink an arms contract with the United States, throwing out-of-the windows $9 billion they could use to propel the Moroccan economy and create the jobs the country needs badly.

The kinds of weapons the kingdom is procuring are completely misaligned with the threats it is facing. Starting with the permanent Jihadi risk and to a lesser extent the Polisario Front to the south, both requiring more agile weapons systems and a great deal of intelligence work. And so it is understandable that Morocco acquires 36 Apache helicopters, as they are fit to perform the kind of counter-insurgency operations along borders and inside the country. But getting 25 F-16 and 23 F-16 Viper jet fighters is a very questionable move.  By the way, Algeria has done the same thing with Russian equivalents, and yet the country’s economy is also collapsing under its feet.  So what to make of Morocco and Algeria spending billions on equipment they will never use while Covid-19 is guaranteed to increase poverty?

Let me be clear:  Algeria and Morocco will never resort to military action against one another, no matter what the circumstances. They both have a lot to lose if a confrontation happens. The reality is that the two regimes do not see each other as a threat. They sure love to make noise on how bad the other one is, and enjoy getting their diplomats all riled up in international venues and in the media, but I will go even further and will say that they protect each other’s interests. In the height of the Hirak movement last year in Algeria, the Moroccan monarchy did not say a word in support of the Algerian people. Not out of fear of the Algerian generals, but because a successful Hirak in Algeria would stimulate social and political unrest in Moroccan.  You see: there are no distinctions between Algerians and Moroccans. They are the same ethnically, religiously, culturally, etc.. and so a confrontation between the two is one of the most unlikely scenarios.

So then why Algeria and Morocco spend billions on useless hardware? I do not pretend to have any answer, but let me speculate: if the Hirak anti-regime movement in Algeria is still work in progress, one year of protest exposed the depth of corruption in government and business. Although Algeria arrested Prime Ministers, cabinet ministers, businessmen, and others for widespread corruption, the investigations on these cases were conducted by the military. If the civilian administrations are so corrupt, could we assume that the military is as corrupt if not more?  At one point the Algerian military’s declared budget was $11 billion. And without transparency and independent watchdogs to keep an eye on spending and contracts, the generals in charge can do whatever they want, including spending money on hardware no one really needs. Some of them got caught. Amid a clan warfare pitting generals against generals, the head of the Algerian domestic intelligence, General Bouazza Wassini was recently arrested and thrown in jail allegedly for treason. His mistake was to bet on the wrong presidential candidate and now that President Tebboune is in power, it is payback time. During the investigation on Wassini, a raid was conducted on his house in Algiers where officers found huge amounts of money. There is a countless number of Algerian generals who bet on the wrong horse and are now in prison or in exile… most of them are some of the country’s richest men.

Sadly, both Algeria and Morocco are facing economic abyss. Their priorities should include de-escalating tension with neighbors, a position that Tunisia has always taken, and refocus on economic discipline, prioritizing spending and setting up a real strategy of growth. But with the same people who bought useless jetfighters are still in power, so let’s not expect too much from them.