Former Tunisian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ounaies: “The Polisario is an empty body, the Sahara file is definitively settled”
Former Tunisian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Ounaies delivered an uncompromising reading of the latest maneuvers by the Algerian regime around the Moroccan Sahara issue, which he now considers closed, won and irreversible in favor of the Kingdom of Morocco.
According to him, the recent vote by the Algerian Parliament on a law criminalizing colonization, accompanied by a new demand for official apologies addressed to France, reflects neither historical courage nor a resurgence of memory, but above all a febrile political reaction to Paris’s clear and openly declared support for the Moroccan autonomy plan.
“It is a direct Algerian response to the strategic choice made by President Emmanuel Macron on the question of the Moroccan Sahara,” Ounaies states.
The nervousness of a regime running out of arguments
For the former head of Tunisian diplomacy, Algiers is now doing nothing more than gesticulating in the face of an international dynamic that is largely aligned with Rabat. Morocco, he stresses, has accumulated major diplomatic successes by securing unprecedented positions from key powers in the western Mediterranean basin, Spain and France, after the United States, which have recognized in a clear and definitive manner the Moroccan nature of the Sahara.
“The Sahara file is now won, sealed and without any possible return. The Polisario is nothing more than a political artifact emptied of all substance,” he declares.
A statement heavy with meaning, which lays bare the reality of a separatism artificially kept alive through political, diplomatic and financial support by Algeria, but now abandoned by the international community.
The Polisario, a diplomatic fiction maintained by Algiers
Ahmed Ounaies does not mince his words when he refers to the presence of the Polisario leader in Tunis during the TICAD summit in 2022, an episode instrumentalized by the Algerian regime to try to create a lasting diplomatic incident between Rabat and Tunis.
He recalls that this invitation did not originate from the Tunisian state, but from the African Union, which was mandated at the time to manage the invitations.
“Ibrahim Ghali was invited as the representative of a so called ‘republic’ that I consider to be an empty body left on the side of the road of History. Tunisia has never recognized this so called State,” he insists.
In clear terms, Algiers tried to exploit a simple protocol act to artificially create a regional crisis in the service of a cause already condemned by the facts.
Algeria, gravedigger of the Maghreb
The former Tunisian minister openly regrets the Algerian decision to unilaterally sever diplomatic relations with Morocco, which he describes as an irresponsible and destructive choice for the entire Maghreb region.
“This break only reinforces the need to relaunch the Arab Maghreb Union. And if one country must today play a role of mediation, it is indeed Tunisia,” he believes.
A statement that implicitly underlines the crushing responsibility of the Algerian regime in blocking the Maghreb project, sacrificed on the altar of an anti Moroccan obsession that has become state doctrine.
Security maneuvers and violations of Tunisian sovereignty
More worrying still, Ahmed Ounaies mentions the information circulating about a supposed security agreement between Algeria and Tunisia that would allow the Algerian army to intervene up to 50 kilometers inside Tunisian territory under the pretext of counterterrorism pursuits.
Even though he notes that he did not have access to the official text, he points out that this prospect has raised serious concerns among Tunisian elites, as it would pose a major problem for national sovereignty.
“I sincerely hope that this information is unfounded, because it would be extremely serious,” he warns.
An isolated, tense and unmasked Algerian regime
Throughout this analysis, one conclusion stands out. The Algerian military regime is now trapped in a sterile strategy of confrontation, unable to accept the evolution of the world, the erosion of its diplomatic relays and the collapse of the separatist thesis it has carried for decades.
While Morocco moves forward, builds solid alliances and puts forward a realistic political solution, Algiers clings to memorial laws, victimization discourse and rear guard maneuvers.
Ahmed Ounaies’s words thus act as a revelation. The Polisario is no longer an actor, Algeria is no longer audible, and the Moroccan Sahara is now an internationally consecrated reality.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French article – le7tv
