Tebboune, terrorism in the Sahel and the silence of the Polisario Front

The President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, recently made statements in some Arab media in which he stated that "the terrorist threat has taken on alarming proportions, especially in the Sahel region and the Sahara, and has caused enormous losses and human and material damage". They are surprising both for their unusualness and novelty, despite the distances marked with their predecessor, and above all for the feeling that one feels when listening to them, given the number of times we have received all kinds of disqualifications from Polisario Front acolytes when denouncing the terrorist risk in that area for years, possibly more than a decade, in a multitude of publications. Especially when we referred to the accessibility of the vicinity of the Tindouf camps by the terrorist elements that make up that threat.

Moreover, Tebboune noted that "the aggressions committed result in the loss of human lives, sow terror among the population, increase instability and the return of foreign terrorist fighters, especially in the Middle East, as well as the confirmed links between terrorism and organised crime which provides the groups with enormous financial means, through ransom payments, drugs, human trafficking, smuggling and piracy". Not that these words are exactly a novel contribution to the issue. But beyond Algeria's anti-terrorism efforts - where Morocco undoubtedly stands out as a regional leader - the public and explicit acknowledgement of this terrible problem by certain actors who are usually reluctant to do so is even more striking.

Of course, the Algerian president omitted an important detail: the direct or indirect participation or involvement, over the years, of members of the Polisario Front. And it is not because we have not been reiterating it for some time. For example, we made it clear via a communiqué following the alarm caused by the Spanish government itself, at the end of 2019, about the risk of a terrorist attack in the areas near the Tindouf camps. The Polisario's communication apparatus was quick to deny the alarm, criticising it harshly, and even mocking it, when in fact it was known, through foreign intelligence services, that a serious attack could take place imminently in Tindouf "against Spanish citizens who might be in the area", according to Spanish government sources.

At the time, we rejected the irresponsible attitude of the Polisario Front leaders who, in their usual conspiracy theory, described the warning as "suspicious", linking it to the visit to Madrid during those days of the Moroccan Foreign Minister, Nasser Bourita. At the time, the threat came mainly from the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara. A group led by Abu Walid Abu Sahraoui, born in El Aaiún between 1973 and 1971, a Sahrawi jihadist and former member of the Polisario Front, who in May 2015 proclaimed his adherence to the Islamic State. Fortunately, the aforementioned subject was neutralised last August by French forces, putting an end to years of terror and suffering caused by this EIGS leader. Not in vain, we must remember that this subject had already carried out numerous actions in the territorial space of this area, being the authors, among others, of the kidnapping of two Spanish aid workers (Ainhoa Fernández de Rincón and Enric Gonyalons) and an Italian (Rosella Urru) in October 2011 in the Tindouf camps, by the jihadist group MUJAO, led by Al-Saharawi at the time.

We had also previously denounced it when in 2018 the conclusions of the SAFTE report were released, of which we published a summary. A report co-financed by the Internal Security Fund of the European Union, which takes stock of the access of terrorist movements to the illegal arms trade. The SAFTE project - an acronym for Studying the Acquisition of Illicit Firearms by Terrorists in Europe - is an international research initiative that aims, as its name suggests, to study and investigate the acquisition of illicit firearms by terrorists in Europe. The report focused on the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. It includes Western Sahara as a study territory, and reveals the increase in the illicit trade in firearms in the area, due to the weak capacity of states to control their borders.

It stated that thanks to the support of certain states, in particular Algeria and Libya, the Polisario Front was equipped with a relatively large arsenal, mainly from Libyan and Malian stockpiles. In addition, some surplus stocks ended up in arms trafficking networks, destined for Mauritania, by former Polisario Front combatants, with this illicit cross-border trafficking taking place in both directions (Western Sahara/Mauritania). This report implicated MUJAO, AQIM, Al-Qaeda and the Polisario Front interchangeably.

In these statements, the Algerian president recalled "Algeria's proposals in 2021 to adopt a new African approach to breathe new life into the collective effort to combat terrorism and violent extremism, and to take into account the instability in the Sahel-Saharan region and the heightened threat of terrorism and other threats". Whatever these proposals may be, what is clear is that the situation in the region has clearly changed for the worse, as many analysts in the field claim. Indeed, a few days ago French troops confirmed the death of a prominent al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terrorist, Yahiba Djouadi, just as they did a few months ago with the aforementioned Abu Walid Abu Sahraoui.

Obviously, we know that this is not a matter that is confined to the place we are referring to. It would be naïve or biased, as it is common knowledge that the terrorist threat in the area is an infinitely broader problem today, where political instability and difficult conditions on the ground facilitate the continuous transfer of terrorist elements, due to the permeability of the borders of the countries involved, among many other adjacent issues that cause this.

But, as we stated at the time, we understood that it was and is irresponsible to look the other way only as a matter of strategy or political interest, alluding to hoaxes or conspiracies against them, just to damage the image of the Tindouf camps, the raison d'être or economic existence of the Polisario Front and its leaders through the aid that arrives from abroad. Thus deliberately and recklessly ignoring the real possibility of a fatal outcome in the form of a jihadist attack with victims just for their own personal interest. It is therefore somewhat surprising that the Algerian president, regardless of who these statements are aimed at, has now publicly sought to overlook his overprotection of the Polisario Front, speaking of a real and increasingly worrying problem. Now it is time to wait for a Polisario official to reproduce the statements made by the highest authority of its dear ally.

Although we do not hold out much hope since, with this issue as with many others, they know how to use the disguise of victimhood very well, to get defensive and evade it with cross accusations, just as they did in 2019 with the Spanish government and its defence minister. Or with anyone who dares to support such theses with an emphasis on the Polisario. As many of us have been doing for years.