Following the Ceuta migration debacle eight weeks ago that revealed fractures in the Moroccan monarchy’s usually seamless façade, palace intrigue and succession squabbles are continuing to spill into public.
And that’s a wrap, y’all. Algeria severed diplomatic ties with the UAE. And the UAE gave Algeria 48 hours to close up its embassy in Abu Dhabi and its consulate in Dubai. The rupture had been brewing for a while, so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Algeria simply ran out of patience.
In a surprise move, on 9 August, Algeria gifted four military helicopters and accompanying equipment to Niger. The aid package consisted of two Mi-24 SuperHind attack helicopters and two Mi-171 transport helicopters. Algeria’s donation doubled Niger’s Mi-171 inventory and tripled the number of Nigerien attack helicopters. On 13 August, Algerian Prime Minister Sifi Ghreib visited Niger to inaugurate drilling operations at the Kafra wellsite with a drill rig dispatched the week before by ENAFOR, the Algerian state-owned drilling company.
On 10 August, a small suicide drone destroyed a 4.5 million liter fuel storage tank at the Energy Complex of Zawiya, just 45km west of Tripoli. The perpetrator is unknown, and it is too early to advance a theory.
Reports emerged in early July 2026 that Russia had opened a new front for its logistics operations in the Sahel, with a sanctioned ship docking in the Togolese port of Lomé in early July to offload significant military cargo destined for Mali.The convoy’s departure and new disembarkation point reveal several important trends related to regional geopolitics and investment.
Tunisia is having a moment. A merciless heatwave has been suffocating the country for weeks on end. The electricity grid tried and failed to keep up. Blackouts are rendering air conditioners useless. People sweat through the night. There is no respite. Food is spoiling without refrigeration. Merchants throw out rotten meat and turned milk. Wildfires are scorching orchards, scrubland, and parched pasturage. Water shortages in the south are leaving taps dry and crippling industry.
The US is pushing harder than at any point in recent years to bring about a political arrangement between eastern and western Libya. But the harder it pushes, the more it seems to be relying on a shallow method.
Back in February during a roundtable discussion in Washington, DC, Algeria’s Ambassador to the US Sabri Boukadoum said that Algeria’s foreign policy is pragmatic, a comment that elicited pushback from the roundtable’s other participants, who argued that Algeria’s foreign policy is too rigidly ideological. What Amb. Boukadoum was alluding to is a subtle evolution in Algeria’s approach to foreign policy that has begun to take shape over the last couple of months.
If the Strait of Hormuz were a song it’d be 40oz.To Freedom and it’s not going back. Sure, the strait could open again, but the fact that it’s been closed is a Rubicon that’s been crossed, and its closure is not going back to being unthinkable.
The disruption of Qatari LNG production and exports, which constitute 20% global LNG supplies, and the shutdown of Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field has caused considerable concern in global gas markets. But Algeria – Europe’s second largest gas supplier – holds fast. An unflappable island of stable supply.
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