Tebboune Mortgages Algeria’s Future: Resources Squandered and Dignity Sold for the Sake of the Polisario Front

Editorial – ALDAR: Iman Alaoui

In a series of increasingly alarming decisions, the economic and diplomatic policies adopted by the Algerian regime under Abdelmadjid Tebboune can only be described as a reckless gamble with Algeria’s future and the dignity of its people, all in favor of foreign agendas—chief among them the costly and unconditional support for the separatist Polisario Front.

Tebboune has gone beyond merely squandering Algeria’s natural wealth—oil and gas—in the service of a fabricated cause. He is now engaged in something even more dangerous: placing the country’s human and moral assets on the auction block of political bargaining, simply to keep a fictitious entity alive.

Reliable international sources, including reports by the World Bank and the Spanish newspaper El País, estimate that Algeria has spent over $10 billion on the Polisario Front over the past four decades. This support has taken the form of direct aid, supplies, and luxurious accommodations for the front’s leadership in Tindouf—while millions of Algerians continue to endure worsening economic conditions, evident in rising unemployment, the high cost of living, housing shortages, and failing public services.

How can a country gripped by a severe economic crisis continue to bankroll an unrecognized entity, while its hospitals suffer from medicine shortages, its schools crumble from neglect, and its youth lose all hope for a better future?

The current reality reveals a tragic paradox: the average Algerian is deprived of basic dignities of life, while Polisario leaders enjoy a lavish lifestyle funded by the Algerian public treasury. Algeria pays for their upscale residences, diplomatic travels, and even their personal expenses—while dozens of Algerian families sleep on the streets, abandoned in the aftermath of floods, without state rehabilitation efforts in sight.

These policies have not gone unnoticed by the international community. Many European and African capitals have expressed astonishment at Algeria’s insistence on supporting the Polisario, despite the growing international consensus that the only realistic solution to the Sahara issue lies in Morocco’s autonomy plan, proposed in 2007 and increasingly endorsed by the UN Security Council.

Tebboune and military chief Chengriha’s persistence in these policies reflects a deep disconnect from the Algerian people’s concerns and a prioritization of crumbling ideological projects over national development. This trajectory now poses a threat to Algeria’s social fabric, as public frustration and resentment continue to grow.

What the Algerian regime is doing today is not a simple diplomatic misstep—it is a systematic mortgaging of the state’s capacities for the sake of a doomed project with no international horizon. It is a course that is dragging Algeria further into isolation and internal division.