France was dreaming of escaping the fatality of a "zero-sum game" in North Africa, the dilemma whereby any warming up with Morocco implies a cooling down with Algeria, and vice versa. But after Algiers withdrew its ambassador to France on Tuesday, July 30, a few hours after President Emmanuel Macron's letter to King Mohammed VI on the 25th anniversary of his reign, France's gamble now looks complicated, even if the threshold of irreparability has not yet been crossed. In the letter, Macron told Mohammed VI that France now recognized the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, dating from 2007, "under Moroccan sovereignty" was the "only basis" for resolving this conflict at the heart of the regional rivalry between Rabat and Algiers.
Until now, Paris has simply considered this prospect, put on the table by Morocco in 2007, to be "a serious and credible basis for discussion," refraining from expressly mentioning "Moroccan sovereignty" in this context. After three years of tensions provoked by an increasingly offensive, even aggressive Morocco – a consequence of the recognition of the "Moroccan sovereignty" of Western Sahara in December 2020 by Donald Trump, then president of the US – France bowed to pressure from Rabat. The stalemate in its relationship with Algeria, where attempts at reconciliation, notably on the subject of remembrance of the Algerian War, supported by Macron have failed to bring the expected results, was a major contributing factor.
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