In a recently published piece in the Geopolitics, analyst Ghazi Ben Ahmed presented readers with a striking proposal: Washington should transform Tunisia into a stabilising “third pillar” to help resolve Algeria-Morocco tensions and catalyse a “new arc of cooperation” modelled on the Abraham Accords.
This narrative ignores the realities of North Africa. True prosperity in the Maghreb cannot be imported via US “smart-border tech” or the Abraham Accords; it must come from internal reconciliation and the rejection of the “proxy” mentality that the author ironically promotes.
The piece labels Algeria’s political system as “shaky”. While various analysts have predicted the collapse of the Algerian state since the unrest of 1988, the regime has demonstrated a remarkable, if often underestimated, resilience and agility.
It weathered the October 1988 riots, the “Black Decade” of the 1990s, and the 2001 riots in Kabylia. It navigated the Arab Spring in 2011 and the 2014 oil price collapse, and it successfully managed the 2019 Hirak mass movement through a sophisticated balance of “carrot and stick” – a subject I have explored at length in my book on the resilience of semi-authoritarianism.
Ultimately, Algeria remains a deeply complex state where outside predictions are not only difficult to formulate but are often proven wrong.
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Far from being built on “anti-Moroccan nationalism”, as the piece claims, the regime’s legitimacy is rooted in a deeply held sovereignty-first ethos born from a traumatic decolonisation struggle (1954-62).
While both Algiers and Rabat have at times leveraged the Western Sahara dispute to stir domestic sentiment, reducing the state’s legitimacy to this single factor ignores the deep structural and military foundations that make Algeria the region’s “swing state”.
Medical hub illusion
In addition, the claim that Algeria treats Tunisia as a “de facto wilaya” – a provocative sentiment occasionally echoed by isolated commentators – is dangerous hyperbole that robs Tunisia of its sovereign agency. More importantly, it does not reflect the reality of how the Algerian leadership views its neighbour.
While Algeria possesses significant economic and security leverage over Tunisia, this does not equate to a desire for annexation or the erasure of Tunisian statehood.
Historically, Algiers has acted not as a suppressor of Tunisia’s path, but as a stabiliser. During Tunisia’s 2013-14 constitutional crisis, Algiers played a quiet but essential role in mediating between factions like Ennahda and its secular rivals to prevent state collapse.
The suggestion that the Abraham Accords are a model for ‘infectious peace’ that will eventually spread across the Maghreb ignores the actual fallout on the ground
Financially, Algeria has remained a steady partner, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and central bank deposits – at times surpassing the financial assistance provided by the European Union. This included a $300m loan in 2021, split between a credit line and a grant.
The vision of a US-backed medical hub – designed to generate $50-$100bn and help insulate Tunisia from “Algiers’ coercive leverage” – is also a pipe dream. It presumes that external capital and “know-how” can bypass the fundamental collapse of the country’s human infrastructure.
While the author frames Tunisia’s relationship with Algeria as a “toxic dependency” to be broken, the reality is far more pragmatic: Algiers provides the literal energy – including roughly 20,000 tonnes of liquefied gas sent in early 2025 – to prevent the blackout of the very clinics and hospitals the author hopes to market to the US.
The “medical hub” proposal also ignores the current state of Tunisia’s fiscal challenges and health infrastructure. While the country has a legacy of medical excellence, its public health system, which suffers from chronic underinvestment, is struggling with severe structural challenges and brain drain. In 2025 alone, an estimated 1,600 doctors out of a graduating class of 1,900 reportedly left the country.
Last November, thousands of young doctors went on a nationwide strike, warning that the national health system was on the brink of collapse. The vision of a regional medical hub is thus disconnected from Tunisia’s grim fiscal and logistical realities.
Peace fallacy
At the same time, the suggestion that the Abraham Accords are a model for “infectious peace” that will eventually spread across the Maghreb ignores the actual fallout on the ground.
The introduction of the Israeli card has not scaled up prosperity; it has shattered the regional balance of power. The 2020 US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara in exchange for normalisation did not close the file; it reignited the cold war between Algiers and Rabat.
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Washington’s approach is increasingly defined by transactional politics, where long-term regional stability is traded for immediate, symbolic diplomatic “wins”.
The 2020 move, framed as a victory for the Abraham Accords, only hardened the Algeria-Morocco rivalry and signalled to Algiers that Washington’s moves are tactical, not strategic.
Far from being a catalyst for peace, this diplomacy has deepened regional fractures, accelerated a destabilising arms race and pushed Algiers to deepen security cooperation with Russia and China as a hedge against perceived encirclement.
The proposal to pivot Tunisia towards a similar US-led orbit follows this same flawed logic. To suggest that “smart-border tech” and drones can “insulate” Tunis is to prioritise military containment over the actual work of governance, which serves only to militarise fragile states and deepen the authoritarian reflexes it claims to discourage.
Finally, the idea that peace is “contagious” and would quickly spread to Libya is belied by a decade of conflict. If peace were a contagion, the relative stability of the three neighbouring Maghreb states would have long ago quelled the violence in Tripoli and beyond.
Indeed, despite homogenous cultural ties, the Maghreb remains one of the least integrated regions in the world, with intra-regional trade historically stuck below 5 percent of total trade.
Ultimately, the most glaring error in this proposed strategy is its overt antagonism towards Algeria, the region’s largest power. Labelling Algiers as a “spoiler” to be bypassed ignores the reality that a stable, constructively engaged Algeria is the sine qua non of North African security.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
