Saudis, Kuwaitis or Mauritanians do not seem to lack potential mediators for the diplomatic conflict between Algeria and Morocco, which worsened in August when Algiers decided to cut relations and reached a new level when Algiers closed the gas pipeline that supplied Spain and Portugal via the territory of Moroccan . In addition to several Arab countries, the Arab League itself is at the forefront of this mediation, and the European Union, aware of the gravity of the tension that builds up on its southern border, also made itself available to try to make the country presided over by Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the Kingdom of Mohammed VI exchange the drums of war for peace talks. Even Switzerland, aware that much of the problem between the two North African countries stems from Western Sahara, made itself available to obtain a source between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the movement that claimed a former Spanish colony and supported by Algiers, refusing to be sober in Rabat.

Anyone who knows the two countries knows how much in common the Algerian and Moroccan peoples have, both with a cultural matrix that mixes Arab and Berber elements. Even the different colonial experiences, with Algeria changing from an Ottoman province to a French possession in the first half of the 19th century while Morocco, for centuries independent, became a late French-Spanish protectorate, and not even a different form of reconquest of the sovereignty, war against the French in the Algerian case but I agree with Paris and Madrid in the Moroccan case, explain nearly six decades of much hostility and little cooperation. It is commonplace to even mention how this history of misunderstanding harms the economy of both countries, not because a border closed since 1994 costs a few percentage points of GDP for both, but also because both Algeria and Morocco are at the top of the list of Africa, second only to Egypt, which means that funds that should be used for development are channeled towards defence.

There are many possible explanations for the harshness of Algiers’ judicial decisions, from a consolidation of control of Sara (or southern provinces) by Rabat, to an inability of the UN to organize the self-determination referendum that Morocco and Polisario previously agreed to in 1991, new official relations between the kingdom of Mohammed VI and Israel, the supposed support of Moroccan diplomacy for separatism in Kabyl, or also, in another dimension, Tebboune’s need to impose himself on the military and gain the support of public Algerian opinion.

There was already a war in the 1960s between Algeria and Morocco and its name, War of the Sands, should not devalue what the two armies fought for. The sands of the Sahara are sacred territory in North Africa like any other, and if a new conflict occurs, there will certainly also be sands in dispute. But the biggest problem is that the battlefield would not be just sands, because however small a new war might be, it is likely that it would reach strategic installations and even urban centers. In purely arithmetic rifle counting, one Algeria wins, but Morocco has its own retaliatory debtors and therefore no one is a sure winner, although one, it should be added, is Russia’s partner and the other an America’s ally. In fact, there would be two losers, because even though Algeria is the fourth economy in Africa (thanks to oil and gas) and Morocco the fifth (industry, agriculture and tourism), they are not rich countries, but nations that should be concerned more with education and health than with war games.

I am talking, and this is especially important in this context of tension, of two neighbors of Portugal. Morocco is closer and has a stronger historical connection, but the importance of Algeria is now very evident if we think about the natural gas it supplies to our homes and businesses. Is there any chance that Portugal, with excellent relations both with Algiers and with Rabat, could be the mediator that is sorely lacking? Even if it has to be discreetly?