Morocco is not what we fear
David Ashworth — Londres, Royaume-Uni — 2026-09-27
A phrase has been circulating for a few days in the French, Spanish and financial press: Algeria is allegedly “the second most costly army in the world”, and it is allegedly on account of Morocco.
The figure is accurate. The conclusion is false. And 1963 is enough to demonstrate it.
What they write
Let us take their sentences again, without arranging them.
**The Spanish daily Infodefensa headlines: “El Magreb se arma hasta los dientes” — the Maghreb is arming itself to the teeth. And it calls Algeria an “economía de cuartel”**, a barracks economy.
The article states that this budget answers Algeria's objective “of establishing itself as a military leader in the Maghreb and in Africa, and as a measure of pressure frente à Maroc in the Western Sahara conflict”.
And it sets against this budget “the country's internal economic fragility, which suffers from youth unemployment, inflation and shortages of basic goods and drinking water”.
The figures put forward, however, are accurate. They are those of SIPRI, the Stockholm institute, published on 27 April 2026:
[[BAR]]
Military spending 2025 — the SIPRI figures
!Algeria | 25,4 | billion $
Morocco | 6,3 | billion $
Africa total | 58,2 | billion $
Of which North Africa | 35,0 | billion $
Spain (for scale) | 40,2 | billion $
[[/BAR]]
And the most commented-on indicator:
[[BAR]]
Military burden — share of GDP devoted to defence (SIPRI, 2025)
Ukraine (at war) | 39,56 | %
!Algeria | 8,83 | %
Israel | 7,81 | %
Morocco | 3,54 | %
[[/BAR]]
That is what they say. Now here is what they forget.
1963: what actually happened
They speak of an “arms race” with Morocco. Let us go back to its origin — because the history being told is not the one that took place.
In October 1963, Algeria had been liberated for fifteen months. Its army was that of the war of liberation: maquis fighters turned soldiers overnight, with no air force, no armour, no modern general staff. Morocco, for its part, had a constituted, trained army, and one backed by the United States.
On paper, there was no contest.
What the Sand War produced, however, is not what you think.
According to the International Crisis Group, in its MENA report no. 247, the ceasefire negotiated by the Organisation of African Unity “kept the border in place”.****
To translate: no change of border. No territory exchanged.
And Algeria kept the entirety of the territory it claimed — Tindouf, Colomb-Béchar, Hassi Beïda, Tinjoub. Morocco abandoned its attempts on those areas.
Algerian incursions did take place on Moroccan territory — at Ich on 18 October, at Tendrara on the 19th, at Figuig from 1 to 4 November. They were temporary. The two armies withdrew in December 1963, a demilitarised zone was created, and Malian and Ethiopian observers monitored it.
A country liberated fifteen months earlier, with an embryonic army, facing an army equipped by Washington: it lost nothing.
The fact that settles the question — and it is Moroccan
There is a document that no one cites in these articles, and it should come first.
On 15 June 1972, Morocco signed the recognition of the inviolability of the borders inherited from colonisation. It ratified it in 1992.
Let us reread that sentence, because it is decisive.
It was not Algiers that fixed the border. It was not Algiers that refused to discuss it. It was Morocco that signed, twenty years after 1963, a text recognising that the border was that one — and that ratified it after the Cold War.
In other words: the party that claimed a territory ended up recognising in writing that it would not obtain it.
**And now we are told, fifty-four years later, that Algeria is arming its border against a country that signed that border?**
The argument does not stand up.
What 1963 actually taught Algeria
Here we must be precise, and we must be honest — because the truth is more interesting than the legend.
In 1963, Algeria discovered that an independent country without an army is not an independent country. Not against Morocco: against the world as it is.
What followed is documented, and it is eloquent: the Library of Congress of the United States, in its country study devoted to Algeria, notes that the first Soviet military credit — around one hundred million dollars — followed Boumédiène's urgent visit to Moscow, in late 1963, “after a setback in the border war with Morocco”.
More than 3 500 Algerian servicemen were trained in the USSR between late 1963 and 1985.
That is the origin of the Armée nationale populaire. It did not spring from a desire for conquest. It sprang from a lesson: that of a people that nearly had itself carved up fifteen months after its liberation.
So what is this budget for?
This is where their articles become not dishonest, but simply incomplete. They look at the map of the Maghreb. One has to look at the map next to it.
Algeria is the largest country in Africa, and one of the largest in the world — 2,38 million square kilometres. Its land border exceeds 6 500 kilometres. And what lies on the other side of that border is not a country that has signed its borders: it is a set of zones in crisis.
Let us look at what borders Algeria in 2026:
- Libya — a state collapsed since 2011, with armed militias, arms trafficking and jihadist groups. The shared border exceeds 950 kilometres.
- The Sahel — Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso. A jihadist insurgency that has lasted more than ten years, that has toppled governments, and that controls entire territories.
- Northern Mali and southern Algeria — a zone of drug, arms and human trafficking, crossed by convoys that the trans-Saharan routes make easier.
- And the memory of the black decade. Between 1991 and 2002, Algeria endured a civil war and a terrorism that killed tens of thousands of people. No country that has lived through that leaves its southern border open.
Those are the dangers. Their name is not Morocco.
Algiers does not devote eight point eight per cent of its wealth to protecting itself from a neighbour that spends four times less. That would be absurd — and if that were the case, the budget would be excessive, as they say.
What it finances are drones, anti-aircraft systems and frigates — surveillance and interception equipment, not tanks meant to cross a border. The nature of the materiel bought says what it is meant for: one does not buy frigates to invade a continental neighbour.
One buys them to monitor 1 200 kilometres of coastline and a strait.
What we concede — and it is a real debate
We will not say that this budget poses no problem. That would be false, and it would be to hold our readers in contempt.
8,83 % of GDP for defence is a considerable effort. It is the second highest in the world, after a Ukraine in total war. A quarter of the state's public spending goes into it. And yes, it is financed with hydrocarbons — a resource that is running out and whose price fluctuates.
**The question raised by Infodefensa — does the army cost more than health or education? — is a genuine budgetary question, and it deserves a serious debate, in a country, not in a foreign editorial.**
What we reject is the conclusion they draw from it. They take a figure, attach an intention to it — pressure on Morocco — and draw from it an indictment for warmongering.
It is a lazy reading, it is contradicted by the history of the file, and it imputes to us intentions that three facts contradict:
1. The border Algeria defends is the very one Morocco itself recognised in writing in 1972.
2. The materiel purchased is defensive — surveillance, interception, air cover.
3. And Algeria's 6 500 kilometres of land border do not border a single country.
What would make the argument credible
There is a way of testing the thesis of a “budget against Morocco”: look at what would happen if Rabat became an ordinary neighbour again.
Would the budget fall? No. Because Libya would not become a functioning state again by the grace of an Algerian–Moroccan rapprochement. Because the Sahel would not stabilise itself because Algiers and Rabat talk to each other. Because terrorism would not disappear with a joint communiqué.
That is why we say that Morocco is not what we fear — not out of contempt, but out of geographical lucidity.
One glance at the map suffices: to the south and east of Algeria there are spaces where the state has ceased to exist. That is where the money goes.
Sources: SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), annual report on world military spending, published on 27 April 2026 — 2025 data: Algeria 25,4 billion $ (+11 %), Morocco 6,3 billion $ (+6,6 %), Africa 58,2 billion $, North Africa 35,0 billion $, Spain 40,2 billion $; military burden Algeria 8,83 % of GDP, Morocco 3,54 % · International Crisis Group, MENA report no. 247, 29 November 2024 — the OAU ceasefire having “kept the border in place”; Morocco's recognition of the inviolability of colonial borders (signature of 15 June 1972, ratification in 1992) · Two declassified American memoranda (CIA, Office of Current Intelligence), 18 and 29 October 1963 · Organisation of African Unity, resolution AHG/Res. 16(I), 21 July 1964 — inviolability of the borders inherited at independence · P. Mweti Munya, Boston College Third World Law Journal 19:537 (1999) — content of the Bamako communiqué · Library of Congress, Country Study: Algeria — first Soviet military credit of around 100 million dollars after Boumédiène's visit to Moscow in late 1963; more than 3 500 Algerian servicemen trained in the USSR between late 1963 and 1985 · É. Méric, Revue française de science politique, 15(4), 1965 · contemporary American press, UPI and AP, 4 November 1963 · Infodefensa (Spain) — “El Magreb se arma hasta los dientes” · La Nouvelle Tribune — “Armement en Afrique : l'Algérie et le Maroc, leaders des dépenses militaires en 2025” · Le Point — “Algérie : la deuxième armée la plus coûteuse du monde, pour un pays qui n'est pas en guerre” · ***Le Revenu* video** (X, 27/09/2026).