Paris is back in Algiers. Morocco is watching

France and Algeria have taken a significant step toward normalising their bruised relationship, as French Armed Forces Minister Alice Rufo met Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Saturday and agreed a roadmap to "intensify" bilateral cooperation, particularly in security and defence.

The visit,  the second by a French government minister in less than three months, formally consecrated a thaw that Paris has been carefully engineering since the nadir of the crisis. France's ambassador, recalled by President Emmanuel Macron at the height of tensions nearly a year ago, returned to his post in Algiers on the occasion of Saturday's visit.

The diplomatic rupture was triggered in the summer of 2024 when Paris endorsed Morocco's plan for autonomy "under Moroccan sovereignty" over the disputed Western Sahara territory, a position Algiers viewed as a direct betrayal, given its decades-long support for the Polisario Front independence movement. Algeria immediately recalled its ambassador from Paris.

The crisis deepened further in November 2024 with the arrest in France of Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, a move widely seen as politically motivated, before Tebboune pardoned him in November 2025, helping to clear the air.

Algeria's complex strategic alignments

What makes this Franco-Algerian rapprochement particularly delicate is Algeria's broader strategic posture. Algiers maintains close relationships with both Russia and Iran,  two countries that France and its Western partners are actively confronting, in Ukraine and across the Middle East respectively.

Algeria has consistently refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has deepened energy and military ties with Moscow. Its relationship with Tehran, while more discreet, is grounded in shared anti-Western positioning and longstanding ideological affinities.

Morocco watches closely

The kingdom, which triggered the original crisis through its Western Sahara plan, backed by France, is observing the Paris-Algiers rapprochement with careful attention and undisguised caution.

Any perception in Rabat that France is shifting its position on the Sahara question, or tilting toward Algiers at Morocco's expense, could quickly generate a new set of diplomatic complications for Paris.

For now, both the French-Moroccan and French-Algerian relationships remain works in progress, a difficult balancing act for a French diplomacy already stretched thin across multiple fronts.