Algeria which is waging a diplomatic war against its Moroccan neighbor over the Western Sahara conflict has moved the battle field to Mauritania.
The Mauritanian presidential elections slated for June 21 offer an opportunity to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and to the powerful boss of the Algerian military intelligence services (DRS,) General Mohamed Mediène aka Toufik, to snatch Nouakchott from Morocco’s sphere of influence.
According to a military attaché at a Western embassy in Algiers, the two Algerian strong men are betting so heavily on the reelection of outgoing President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz to achieve their goal especially that Mauritania is currently holding the rotating chairmanship of the African Union (AU.)
Their tactic consists in co-financing the electoral campaign of President Ould Abdel Aziz on the one hand and in forcing the some 6000 to 8000 Sahrawis of Mauritanian origin settled in the Polisario-run Tindouf camps to participate in the poll on the other.
The news was confirmed last Friday by the AlgeriaTimes e-journal which quoted sources from the Mauritanian opposition in Nouakchott as saying that President Bouteflika had entrusted his Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra with handing over to the Mauritanian president $ 200 million to fund his presidential campaign.
The fact that the Algerian Foreign Minister Lamamra and the Polisario coordinator with MINURSO, Mhamed Khadad, were both received by the Mauritanian head of state at the presidential palace respectively on May 15 and May 30 backs up these revelations.
In the territorial dispute opposing it to Morocco, Algeria is often very generous with potential backers especially in Africa.
During the past four years, President Bouteflika had decided, without any prior consultation with the Parliament or the Council of Ministers, to write off the debts of 14 African countries that were amounting to $ 902 million. Early last May, on the occasion of a visit of the head of the Tunisian government, Mehdi Jomaa, to Algiers, Bouteflika’s Algeria donated Tunisia $ 50 million.
Awaiting 2030, the announced date of the depletion of the Algerian oil resources, Bouteflika and his generals use all the financial means at their disposal in their attempt to weaken Morocco diplomatically and isolate it at the geostrategic scale.
Bouteflika’s Stealthy Financial Support to Mauritanian President Revealed
