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Algeria-Morocco: Heightened tensions as Rabat receives new fight drones from Turkey
MEE workers
Tue, 09/28/2021 – 15:40
Weeks after Algeria broke off diplomatic ties with Morocco, Rabat’s buy of latest fight drones from a non-public Turkish agency has solely added extra gasoline to the hearth between the neighbouring nations.
In mid-September, Morocco acquired 13 Bayraktar TB2 fight drones, based on a put up on Far-Maroc, an unofficial Fb web page of the Moroccan Armed Forces (FAR), which was picked up by varied native media sources. The drone order was reportedly positioned “to modernise the arsenal of the Moroccan Armed Forces with the intention to put together for any hazard and up to date hostilities” based on Far-Maroc.
In latest weeks, after the contract was signed with the non-public Turkish firm Baykar, for an quantity reported within the media as $70m, Morocco has despatched navy personnel for coaching in Turkey, based on Far-Maroc.
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Over the previous few years Baykar, managed by a son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has exported its main mannequin, the Bayraktar TB2, to Ukraine, Qatar and Azerbaijan.
In flip, Algeria, which already has six varieties of drones in its arsenal, together with 4 assault drones, has, based on the web site Menadefense, ordered 24 WingLoong II drones from the Chinese language firm AVIC.
The drones in every of those circumstances are fight drones (outfitted with missiles that search a goal, destroy it and return to base). Nevertheless, info disclosed on 15 September within the Africa Intelligence confidential letter indicated that Rabat is planning to arrange a programme for the event of ‘kamikaze’ drones in collaboration with the BlueBird Aero Programs, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
In response to the letter, the “institution of native subsidiary, with the help of Israeli operators, can be a tradeoff for the acquisition of tactical commentary drones by Rabat from an IAI subsidiary.”
Not like fight drones, kamikaze drones are crammed with explosives that may drop down on their goal when ordered to and explode on impression.
‘No have to dramatise’
Though not but confirmed by both the Moroccan or the Israeli aspect, this info does nonetheless elevate considerations at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between Algeria and Morocco, largely fed by the media of each nations.
On 27 September, the French-language Algerian every day El Watan attributed accountability for the “precariousness of stability” to “Morocco’s angle that consists of blocking the UN mission for a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara”. In the meantime, the Moroccan web site, Le360, has accused the Algerian Overseas Minister Ramtane Lamamra of “hysteria” and described Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune as a “puppet president”.
‘There’s no have to over-dramatise the acquisition of those drones’
– Akram Kharief, Menadefense presenter
The latest normalisation of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, following US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, has intensified tensions with Algeria, a fervent supporter of the Palestinian and Saharan causes.
These relations took a brand new flip final Wednesday when Algeria introduced that it had closed its airspace to all Moroccan industrial and navy air visitors.
On the finish of August, Algeria additionally introduced its intention to not renew the working licence of the Maghreb-Europe fuel pipeline, depriving Morocco of part of its fuel provides. In Morocco, some media voices expressed concern on the potential undermining of {the electrical} interconnection system between the nations.
Final week, Algeria additionally closed a bit of the strategic nationwide route linking the southern Moroccan metropolis of Agadir and a metropolis positioned about 900km to the north of Algeria (Bouarfa), from the Algerian aspect.
“There’s no have to over-dramatise the acquisition of those drones: these have been deliberate purchases. Morocco, like Algeria, has been shopping for these drones for a very long time and can proceed to purchase them, there’s nothing out of the bizarre in it,” Akram Kharief, a presenter on web site Menadefense, advised Center East Eye, declaring that latest theatres of conflict that includes the usage of drones bore no comparability to the Algeria-Morocco situation.
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“Drones have both been used because the ‘poor man’s aviation’ in Yemen or Libya, or on all of the brief entrance traces, comparable to in Higher-Karabakh, actually very totally different contexts.”
After a virtually 30-year-long ceasefire, hostilities between the Western Saharan independence motion Polisario and Morocco resumed mid-November, following the deployment of Moroccan troops within the far south of Western Sahara, to sort out a bunch of separatists who have been blocking the one route out in direction of West Africa, which they contemplate as unlawful.
Up to now, all makes an attempt to settle the battle have failed.
Rabat, which controls almost 80 % of Western Sahara, an unlimited desert territory the place Morocco has, in recent times, arrange some main growth websites, has put ahead a proposal for autonomy, underneath its sovereignty.
The Polisario Entrance, in flip, is looking for a referendum on self-determination underneath the auspices of the United Nations, which was included within the phrases of the ceasefire signed between Morocco and the Western Saharan motion in September 1991.
– This text is a translation of a narrative initially printed on Center East Eye’s French web site.
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