1962: the choice of the industrial myth
At independence, Algeria possessed considerable assets: agricultural land, water resources, hydrocarbons and immense human potential. But very quickly, the military power emerging from the FLN made a different choice, that of heavy, centralized and bureaucratic industrialization financed by oil rent, while abandoning a necessary agrarian reform. The outcome is well known.
Agriculture was marginalized. Land was poorly managed. Hydraulic infrastructure failed to keep pace. Today, food dependency has become irreversible. The Algerian economy is a rent-based economy, incapable of real diversification. Each drop in oil prices exposes the fragility of the system.
Meanwhile, Morocco, with far more modest means and without any energy rent, embarked on a methodical dam-building policy. The late King Hassan II spoke of a “policy of major dams”. This approach has been pursued without interruption by his son, King Mohammed VI. Today, more than 150 structures shape the national territory. The mega-dam of “Kheng Grou”, exceeding one billion cubic meters near the eastern border areas and nearing completion, will completely deprive Algeria of vital water resources that previously came from its neighbor, and eternal enemy. The trap is closing.
Water as a revealer of economic failure
When Algeria accuses Morocco of “turning off the tap”, it transforms a climatic problem into a political instrument. Drought affects both countries. Rainfall is declining. Aquifers are shrinking. Algerian dams, including “Djorf Torba”, suffer from massive evaporation and questionable management. Yet instead of questioning national hydraulic planning, the Algerian authorities externalize responsibility.
The construction of the “Kaddoussa” dam in 2021, followed today by “Kheng Grou”, is part of a deliberate strategy: securing upstream water resources in a context of increasing water stress. This is exactly what any state concerned with its water sovereignty would do.
The controversy mainly exposes an uncomfortable reality: despite its colossal financial resources derived from hydrocarbons, Algeria has not built a hydraulic policy that is as coherent, nor anticipated the intensification of climate change, as Morocco has done with intelligence.
Algerian rent versus Moroccan resilience
The contrast is striking. On one side, an Algerian economy that has relied on steelmaking, heavy industrial complexes and pharaonic projects dependent on energy rent and technological imports. On the other, a Morocco that has invested in irrigation, agricultural modernization, desalination, interconnection of basins and territorial planning.
In Algeria, shortages of drinking water in certain regions, taps opened once every ten days, and massive imports of agricultural products are not the result of a Moroccan dam. They are the consequence of a frozen economic model, dominated by a politico-military logic in which planning serves the survival of the regime more than sustainable development.
A rhetoric of diversion
The “water war” is a convenient narrative. It makes it possible to mobilize public opinion around an external enemy. It diverts attention from internal deficits: food dependency, structural unemployment, lack of diversification and institutional fragility. But geography is stubborn. Climate is too. Water cannot be decreed. It must be managed, conserved and anticipated.
The question, therefore, is not whether a water war will take place. The real question is this: can a regime indefinitely mask its economic dead ends through permanent conflict? Morocco has wagered on hydraulic planning for six decades. Algeria has chosen rent and centralized industrialization. History is not written through accusations, but through strategic decisions.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French – le7tv