War / Africa
Sudan Civil War
Sudan's war regionalizes as basing-for-weapons deals deepen and RSF arms bleed into South Sudan.
The Maghreb
Algeria and Morocco have been locked in a cold rivalry since 1975, when Spain withdrew from Western Sahara and Algeria began arming the Polisario Front against Moroccan rule there.
The two countries had already fought a brief border war in 1963. They share a 1,600-kilometer border that has been closed since 1994, one of the longest-shut land frontiers in the world. Algeria severed diplomatic relations in 2021 and killed the gas pipeline running through Morocco a year later. The Gulf states and Washington tilt toward Rabat.
The rivalry sets the ceiling on what North Africa can do as a region: no integrated market, no shared security, no unified Sahel policy.
Morocco's July 30-31 Ceuta crossing has converted a bilateral coercive instrument into a durable European political crisis, with blame running almost entirely against Madrid rather than Rabat.
It matters because the territorial dispute continues to tie down Algeria and Morocco, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Africa.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Morocco's coercive migration instrument is now validated at mass scale twice: the 2021 Ceuta crossing involved roughly 6,000 people; the July 2025 operation produced roughly 78,000 in under 48 hours.
Spain's official spontaneity finding, attributing the surge to social media coordination rather than state direction, is a political choice as much as an analytic one.
Algeria backs Polisario Front diplomatically and logistically; Morocco backed by UAE, Saudi Arabia, and tacitly by US following 2020 normalization deal
War / Africa
Sudan's war regionalizes as basing-for-weapons deals deepen and RSF arms bleed into South Sudan.
War / Africa
Ethiopia's multi-front war deepens as Fano consolidates, Tigray ceasefire collapses, and the Egypt-Eritrea axis hardens into operational infrastructure.
Polisario Front operates from Algerian territory as Algiers's primary coercive pressure vector against Morocco in Western Sahara.
Sonatrach functions as a quasi-diplomatic instrument, deploying European gas contract leverage and Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline momentum to contest Moroccan.
Niger's junta serves as a structurally fragile but critical transit node for Algeria's Trans-Saharan pipeline route.
Mali's junta maintains a security alignment with Algeria that limits Moroccan diplomatic and commercial reach into the central Sahel.
Morocco's Royal Armed Forces-linked commercial networks in Mauritania function as a counter-influence layer against Algerian Sahel penetration.