Two tragedies, one an act of God and the other from the hands of wicked men, have sent a pair of old North African foes into a trembling embrace.
Apart from reducing property worth tens of millions of dollars to rubble and killing 2 261 people, the May 21 earthquake exposed shortcomings in Algeria’s emergency measures and left Algerians feeling vulnerable.
The five suicide bombs that shook Casablanca on May 16 killed 29 people and showed Morocco that its self-imposed isolation cannot protect it.
Now these uneasy neighbours at the top of Africa are talking about a security pact. To this end Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa saw President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algiers last week.
Algeria is the acknowledged expert on terrorism, having lost 150 000 people to the evil this past decade.
Since the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, the United States in particular has taken a more sympathetic view of Algeria’s plight. Last year Algeria became the seat of the proposed African Union anti-terrorism body.
There is more at stake than safety and security if Morocco and Algeria can get their relations out of the deep freeze.
The best result for the region would be the reactivation of the Maghreb Arab Union that incorporates Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisa and Mauritania.
This organisation has been paralysed for most of its 24-year existence by Morocco’s persistent defiance of the international community.
The kingdom’s occupation of neighbouring Western Sahara keeps it at odds with all of its neighbours and even with Spain across the narrow Gibraltar strait.
The only winner of this Moroccan- induced Maghreb disunity is Europe, which continues to profit from its dealings with the divided southern edge of the Mediterranean basin.
Benaissa spoke in Algiers about relaunching the union, but Moroccan credibility in the region is low.
On a bilateral level, Algeria prefers to take relations with Morocco one cautious step at a time. Benaissa’s talk about moves toward reopening the borders closed by Morocco and reactivating political, social, cultural and economic relations can only be talk until the decision is taken by King Mohammed VI.
Speculation about a heads of state meeting between Algeria and Morocco was quickly squashed by the palace. The king never lets his hand-picked government run away with itself.
Morocco’s delicate democratic façade is often cracked by the whim of Mohammed, whose promises of reform on succeeding his despotic father have proved empty.
Currently Morocco has left its democratic friends having to explain their support for a regime that has jailed Ali Lmrabet, the editor of a satirical magazine, for lampooning royal allowances and printing an interview with a republican who believes Morocco should leave Western Sahara. It is difficult to say which of the two was the great crime.
The royal family’s profligacy in a country that has 40% unemployment becomes even more socially dangerous at a time when tourism, the kingdom’s major foreign currency earner, has been shattered by terrorism.
But Western Sahara, which keeps more than 100 000 Moroccan soldiers out of the ranks of the unemployed, is the kingdom’s sorest point.
Morocco quit the Organisation of African Unity in 1984 when that continental grouping recognised the Saharwi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The kingdom opted to continue its self-imposed estrangement from the African Union when the new organisation refused to expel the Saharwis.
Morocco has reduced its relationship with Africa to playing a spoiling role. Buying political leaders and opinion formers it has attempted a propaganda campaign unseen in terms of expense and imagination since the days of apartheid South Africa.
Moroccan ambassadors have carte blanche to send politicians, academics and journalists, accompanied by their spouses on trips to the best hotels the kingdom can offer.
The customary price is to suspend their disbelief while listening to extraordinary tales of Saharwis being kept in concentration camps in Algeria and sold into slavery in Cuba.
Any real rapprochement with Algeria would have to see these Moroccan official fantasists find other employment.