Isn't it time for the Moroccan-Algerian estrangement to calm down?

Flags of the countries of Morocco and Algeria (Shutterstock)

I read with great interest what Algerian politician Louisa Hanoune said, saying that she refuses to let her country be involved in a war with Morocco. It is not a statement that is thrown at its meaning; Because Louisa Hanoune is one of the pillars of politics in Algeria, she has a long experience, during which she crossed decisive stages in her country’s paths, and paid a heavy price for her positions and commitments. Her weight is not measured by the weight of the party she heads, as she is one of those who constitute the conscience of a country, a reference, and a compass for it.

I say this as I am a Moroccan who does not find himself in estrangement with Algeria, rather hostility. Everything unites Morocco and Algeria, except politics, and politics is linked to a system, reference, context, and perhaps people. It is not the constant, but the variable.. But this variable is what has overshadowed the constant, rather the constants, and is about to overthrow everything.

Despite the estrangement between the two countries, the flame of hope has not been extinguished, and the evidence is Verbena Hanoun’s affectionate call, and similar calls, which I hear here in my country, even if they are faint and barely intelligible. There is still room for reason and deliberation, and there are still, here and there, strong minds and prudent voices... but we realize that the call to reason is the last thing that is implemented when the commotion grows louder and the screaming spreads. We are in the hour of screaming, and for those who continue to scream.

The current generation in the two countries does not know each other except through an official narrative that has drawn a necessary enemy, or an intimate enemy, as they say. The current generation in both countries has opened its eyes while the borders between the two countries are closed. He did not live through the liberation phase, nor did he live through the hope of the unity of the Greater Maghreb that followed.

Media actors clash over common things that are evidence of the intersection of the two peoples, over the identity of the couscous, the caftan, the zellij, and the malhoun... I find it very difficult to always mention it to my students, that in Morocco we were studying, when I was a student, the history of the Association of Muslim Scholars, and the literature of Abdel Hamid Ibn Badis. And the texts of Al-Bashir Al-Ibrahimi, and before that the North African Star, and after that, the novel by the Fakir’s son about the birth of Pharaoh, and the industrial revolution in Algeria.

My students look at me in amazement as if I were telling them about something from Mars. These Karagla, who call us bitter, you study their affairs, and do not evaluate the difference between yourselves? Are you serious, professor?

Of course, the verbal skirmishes fueled by “influencers” cannot be underestimated, even if they arise from suspicion, reflect ignorance, and are motivated by prejudice. Fire is fanned with two sticks, as the poet says, and the beginning of war is speech, as he implies.

There is no doubt, as far as I can tell, that the two leaderships are aware of the consequences of the adventure, and are aware of the depth of the ties between the two countries, but we realize that the world is intertwined, and that wars may be fought by proxy, priced by others, for their benefit. This is what wise people in both countries should remember. From what Louisa Hanoune pointed out, there are parties whose interest it is to turn this against that, and then give up and have weakened this and that.

The war I want between my country, Morocco, and Algeria, is the war against poverty and ignorance. Rather, I want us to fight it together, and this “war” can only be won together.

Politics is, of course, based on realism. Indeed, as some know it, it is the art of the possible, but politics according to what is possible, in a certain context, may be squaring the circle, rumination, and remorse in the same place, as a horse does with its hooves. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to tear through the veil of realism and break. The barriers erected, by dream and imagination, and in scientific terms, the paradigm must be changed in the face of a problematic situation.

There is no breakthrough on the horizon between the two countries according to the existing model regulating relations between the two countries. The symptom became a cause, and the cause became mixed with the effect, and it became like someone offering a “treatment” based on a bad diagnosis. Imagine someone taking a headache relief pill while complaining of a stomach ulcer. He keeps taking pill after pill, and the sore gets worse and does not heal.

I could expect the worst. I strive to think pessimistically, so that we may act optimistically. I do not expect that after the war on Gaza calms down, the region will be left alone... I do not see that those who sought to stereotype the region after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and after September 11, will give up their hands. They will wage wars that they like, by exploiting our contradictions and playing on our narcissism: Morocco against Algeria, and Algeria against Morocco, by telling Algeria what it wants to hear, repeating what Moroccan officials want to hear, and pitting the Arabs against the Amazighs, the Amazighs against the Arabs, the modernists against the conservatives, and the conservatives against Modernists, and so on.

We will witness a new generation of shaping the imagination, as the neoconservatives recommended two decades ago. I believe that the work began on the part of academics to mold the region. I hope I'm wrong.

Let us leave politics to the politicians, those who work in the circle of the possible and square the circle, and let those who are not swayed by the whims of politics or carried away by whims, be allowed to meet among themselves and speak freely. Perhaps they will diagnose the disease, and perhaps they will find the cure, or at least stop the disease. Taking the wrong medication.

In September 1991, on the occasion of the Maghreb summit in Casablanca (which I think was the last), and the “Desert Storm” war had ended, and I was then assigned to study in the Moroccan Foreign Ministry, a journalist from the Moroccan newspaper “L’Opinon” (Al-Rai), Mr. Naim Kamal, asked me to: To meet me at the Sheraton Hotel, so I can put him in the picture, as they say.

From what I said to him, and the conversation between us was in French: They will work on us (such), and I mean the region. His response, out of my fear, was that it was not unlikely. Unfortunately, what I expected came true, the Maghreb dream stopped, the siege was imposed on Libya, and Algeria entered a period of strong tremors, and a Maghreb summit did not meet after that.

Who knows? Perhaps the post-Desert Storm scenario will be repeated after the war on Gaza, and if it is repeated, it will be more foolish, neither lasting nor effective.

I say exactly what Louisa Hanoun said, and I do not have her weight, her audacity, or her wisdom: I do not want my country to be thrown into an adventure with Algeria... and I still look for rational people, here and there, to extinguish the fuse of estrangement, and I see who will embrace these rational people. There is a historic opportunity for the rational people of the two countries to listen to each other, and it is not wise to waste it.

If Hanoun says, believe her, for what Hanoun said is what she said.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.