Chengriha, who pulls the strings of the Algerian government and foreign policy, has been waiting since February 3 to meet Saudi leader Mohamad Bin Salman in vain. Old Chengriha attended a defense show and met the young Saudi defense minister, 42 years younger than him. The Saudi Crown Prince had ordered that all Saudi administrations should use the full map of Morocco including its Sahara territories. The return of Chengriha without meeting Crown Prince Bin Salman would reflect the status of “new Algeria” as a country whose leadership is increasingly shunned by great powers and regional players. These are all indicators of a military-run diplomacy that reaped a series of set-backs in defense of an Algerian-created chimera of having a separatist entity in Morocco’s Sahara.
