What’s behind the Algeria-UAE rupture
Following years of rising tensions, Algeria announced this month that it was severing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It gave the Emirati ambassador forty-eight hours to leave the country and closed its airspace to UAE-registered civilian and military aircraft, except for commercial flights to Algiers through the end of 2026.
Friction between the two countries is not new. In January 2024, Algeria’s High Security Council expressed concern about what it described as “hostile behavior” originating from a “brotherly Arab country,” remarks that Algerian political and media circles widely interpreted as a reference to the UAE. Earlier this year, Algeria terminated its 2013 air services agreement with the UAE. On several occasions, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has accused the UAE of inciting trouble in the Sahel—and the recent coup attempt in Niger came just days before Algeria severed ties.
Personal relations between Tebboune and the Emirati leadership had been tense for a while. Yet, this Algeria-UAE crisis is first and foremost geopolitical and must be understood as the outcome of dynamics operating at three distinct but interconnected levels: domestic, regional, and across the broader Arab world. In Algiers’s view, the UAE has played a destabilizing role in each of these levels.
The region: From the Red Sea to the Sahel
The regional level is the most significant one in the current crisis. Algiers believes that Abu Dhabi supports politico-military forces that represent a strategic threat to Algeria, through a regional model that backs openly secessionist actors such as Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, Aidarus al-Zubaidi’s southern Yemeni movement, and others. The Algerian statement does not cite any single episode because the rupture stems from an accumulation of problems over several years. On the eve of the break, these tensions had led APS—the official Algerian news agency—to describe the UAE as the “conductor” of regional crises.
Recent events in Niger have shown that Algeria is becoming increasingly concerned about Sahelian insecurity. Algiers made the unprecedented decision to provide military support to General Abdourahamane Tiani’s Nigerien junta after an attempted mutiny and coup, a move that cuts against Algeria’s traditionally cautious strategic culture. While there is no evidence that the UAE played any role in the coup attempt in Niger, Algeria’s leadership likely decided to act to signal it is willing to be more assertive in the region, especially with countries Algiers believes are meddling in Sahel dynamics.
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The Arab world: The UAE, Morocco, and the Abraham Accords
Relations with Morocco are, of course, part of the backdrop. But in this case the problem extends beyond the two countries’ longstanding dispute over Western Sahara to relations across the Arab world. In this context, the strategic question remains how to engage Israel. Algerian officials have shown, including under the Trump administration, that they want to develop relations with the United States, despite the US—and Trump himself—being the main driver of the Abraham Accords. However, they find it extremely difficult to accept normalization with Israel, particularly after Israel’s actions over the past three years. Algeria, meanwhile, regards the UAE as the regional power most involved in the Abraham Accords architecture, and their relationship has shifted since the accords were signed in 2020. The UAE’s ties with Morocco began to flourish within this new Abraham Accords framework, culminating in a series of new agreements signed at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, Algeria cut diplomatic ties with Morocco in August 2021, accusing Rabat of “hostile actions,” bringing the relationship to an all-time low.
From Algiers’ perspective, the strategic triangle created by the Abraham Accords, linking the UAE, Morocco, and Israel, has a dual significance. The first and more immediate dimension is the paradigm shift that Morocco’s inclusion in this framework has produced in Western Sahara, as shown by the United Nations Security Council vote on Resolution 2797 in October 2025, in which for the first time the Security Council embraced Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan, but not independence, for the disputed territory. This issue also connects to the regional level discussed above, given Morocco’s ambitions in the region through its Atlantic Initiative, its religious soft-power programs, the competition between the Algiers-backed Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline and Morocco’s rival Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project, and the broader convergence between Morocco and the UAE in the Maghreb and the Sahel.
The second, broader dimension concerns Arab unity in the face of the Palestinian tragedy. Algeria has historically played a major role in the Arab world, rejecting normalization with Israel. For instance, Algeria was among the four Arab countries that launched the “Steadfastness and Confrontation Front,” a political alliance formed in December 1977 by several Arab governments and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to isolate Egypt after Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the subsequent Camp David Accords, which were seen as a betrayal of Arab unity. Something similar is happening today around the Abraham Accords, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Tunisia, and Mauritania resisting joining, even if this opposition has not taken the form of a coordinated front, following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and the subsequent destruction of Gaza by the Netanyahu government.
Subnational: The MAK and Kabylia
The third level is the least discussed and known. Last year, Algeria had to contend with the proclamation of Kabylia’s “independence” by the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), which Algeria considers a terrorist organization. The MAK’s longtime leader, the Amazigh folk singer Ferhat Mehenni, announced the region’s secession in a sparsely attended Paris hotel room in December 2025. The proclamation plainly did not translate into reality and received little coverage in the international press. However, Algerian officials regard any threat to the country’s territorial integrity and national unity as particularly serious.
Algerian sources claim that the UAE played a role in these dynamics. El Khabar, a newspaper close to the Algerian presidency, alleged in January 2026 that Abu Dhabi was pressuring France to facilitate the continued presence of individuals hostile to Algeria’s national unity and suggested that a diplomatic rupture with the UAE was forthcoming. Amar Belani, a former ambassador and former spokesman for Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made a similar point in an article for the Algerian news site TSA: Support for the MAK, along with providing refuge to fugitives accused of corruption, is considered among the causes of the crisis. While allegations that the UAE supported the MAK should be taken with a pinch of salt, they show how widespread the perception is within the Algerian leadership that Abu Dhabi has a stake in these dynamics.
The Emirati response
The Emiratis have not said much in response to the crisis. In a measured post on X, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the UAE “reaffirms the importance it attaches to its relations with all countries,” adding that it hoped the decision would be temporary. The unofficial reaction was sharper. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, appeared to allude to the dispute when he posted that relations “cannot be held hostage to internal tensions or to an inability to explain interests and define priorities.” He added: “Ambiguity is not a policy, and noise does not compensate for the absence of vision. Successful diplomacy rests on clear positions and sound management of interests and disagreements.”
The remarks suggest that the UAE rejects Algeria’s interpretation of the crisis, but they do not directly answer Algiers’ allegations. As a result, one side of the dispute has articulated its position far more fully than the other. Other observers, including Tareq Alotaiba, currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and a former UAE federal government official, instead view the crisis as an Algerian attempt to shift blame for certain domestic problems. According to Alotaiba, having exhausted the list of enemies it can blame for the poor state of its economy, Algiers finds it more convenient to construct a narrative against a distant, prosperous state unlikely to respond.
The bottom line
The rupture between Algeria and the UAE did not come as a complete surprise. The crisis reflects several interconnected regional, intra-Arab, and subnational disputes. The rupture is particularly striking because the two countries, despite their profound differences in ideology, strategic culture, and economic development, have often found common ground in opposing Islamist movements, particularly Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated forces.
The rupture should therefore be understood not as a mere diplomatic dispute between two distant states, but as a manifestation of an expanding contest over regional order, shaped by different philosophical and geopolitical approaches. Algeria’s defense of sovereignty and centralized state authority, combined with its steadfast support for the Palestinian cause, increasingly conflicts with the Emirati approach. Abu Dhabi favors more flexible partnerships with influential political and military actors, has led efforts to normalize relations with Israel, and, in this context, has also become a major ally of Morocco.
However, in the short term, the unusually public and high-profile nature of the rupture may incentivize both countries to seek reconciliation. The UAE’s restrained response suggests that Abu Dhabi may wish to leave room for such an outcome. Algeria, for its part, has recently shown that it can change course quickly and repair strained relations, as seen in its approach to Sahelian juntas in Mali and Niger, despite the tensions that followed the coups and the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States in 2023. That being said, even if formal diplomatic relations are restored, it will take a more sustained diplomatic effort to reconcile the competing Algerian and Emirati conceptions of the regional political order.
Karim Mezran is a resident senior fellow with the North Africa project at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs.
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Image: The Algerian flag flies on the facade of the Algerian Embassy in Paris, France, April 16, 2025. (Gonzalo Fuentes via Reuters Connect)