ABNA24 - Interventionist policies of the UAE in West Asia and North Africa have brought the relations of Abu Dhabi with a number of regional countries to a critical point, with some choosing to review their ties with this Persian Gulf tiny monarchy as it insists on clinging on this approach.
Algeria is one of players that after years of tensions and dispute with the UAE has finally decided that it is impossible to continue diplomatic ties in the current conditions.
In this relation, the Algerian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that it has decided to sever ties with the Emirates as it has been following all ways to save these relations. The ministry further added that the North African countries exercised utmost responsibility and self-restraint and spared no initiative to draw attention of the Emirati side and warn it about the serious consequences of its hostile and provocative actions.
The Algeria announced Wednesday that it is severing diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, saying Abu Dhabi had ignored repeated warnings and persisted in actions that have now crossed the threshold of what can be tolerated between two sovereign states.
Foreign ministry said the UAE's conduct had reached a point where it could no longer be accepted, endured, or left unanswered within the framework of bilateral relations, and that Algiers had therefore decided to cut diplomatic ties.
Algeria also informed the Emirati ambassador that he must leave the country within 48 hours.
The defense ministry said a ban on the use of Algerian airspace by Emirati aircraft would take effect Friday, with the exception of commercial flights to and from Algiers airport, which will continue operating through the end of 2026.
Algeria had already been steadily downgrading its ties with the UAE, scaling back its diplomatic presence in January and launching moves in February to cancel an air services agreement signed in Abu Dhabi in May 2013.
In Abu Dhabi's first official response to the rupture, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE's ruler, stressed the need for transparency in relations between states.
"Diplomatic relations should not be held hostage to internal tensions or to a failure to explain interests and set priorities," Gargash claimed. "Ambiguity is not policy, and noise does not substitute for a lack of vision," Gargash said.
Abu Dhabi’s interference in Algerian internal affairs
The rift between the UAE and Algeria is hardly confined to a single issue. A tangle of domestic and regional disputes has been driving the two countries toward confrontation for years, and one case in particular stands out: Abu Dhabi's posture toward Algerian opposition and separatist groups.
Algiers is especially sensitive to what it describes as the UAE's covert contacts with and support for the Kabyle self-determination movement, known as the MAK. The group, based in northern Algeria, is seeking autonomy or independence for the Kabylie region, and Algerian authorities classify it as a terrorist organization.
Algerian officials see any support for or engagement with the movement as direct interference in the country's internal affairs and a threat to its territorial integrity. The Kabyle file has thus become one of the deepest sources of mistrust between Algiers and Abu Dhabi, and a major accelerant of the political confrontation now playing out between them.
Emirati interventions in North Africa and Sahel region
The expansion of the UAE's security footprint across North Africa and the Sahel has been another flashpoint in the deepening rupture with Algeria. In Libya, Abu Dhabi has for years backed forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, the commander opposing the Tripoli government, emerging as one of the most consequential foreign players in the country's military and political calculus, a posture that collides directly with Algeria's push for a political settlement and its opposition to outside intervention.
In Sudan, Abu Dhabi is backing the Rapid Support Forces in their war against the national army. United Nations reports have documented arms and equipment flowing to the paramilitaries from the UAE, an allegation Abu Dhabi denies. Algeria views that role with alarm: the Sudanese crisis sits adjacent to North Africa's security perimeter and the Sahel, and the spread of foreign influence and entrenched instability there could carry direct security and political consequences for Algiers.
In Western Sahara, the UAE has lined up squarely behind Morocco, opening a consulate in the city of Laayoune in 2020 and formally endorsing Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory. That stance clashes with Algeria's position: Algiers backs self-determination for the Sahrawi people and the Polisario Front, and treats Western Sahara as a central pillar of its foreign policy.
Taken together, these moves show how Abu Dhabi has spent recent years, through security partnerships, backing for local proxies, investment, and political alliances, trying to redraw the fault lines of North Africa and the Sahel and entrench itself as a player operating well beyond its own neighborhood. From Algiers' vantage point, that trajectory threatens to tilt the region's traditional balance of power against it.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune of Algeria has repeatedly branded the UAE a "micro-state" bent on destabilizing North African countries, pointing specifically to the conflicts in Libya, Mali, and Sudan. In a television interview in July, he launched a blistering attack on Abu Dhabi, saying "wherever they set foot, blood is spilled." Tebboune added that had Algiers not wanted to prevent "deepening the rifts" in the Arab world, "the severing of ties would have happened long ago. We want them to stay away from us so that blood is not spilled in our country."
Emirati cooperation with Israeli regime
The rift between Algiers and Abu Dhabi is not just a story of regional rivalries, but it is rooted in two fundamentally different diplomatic postures. The UAE normalized relations with Israeli regime in 2020, and in the years since, political, economic, and security ties between the two have expanded markedly. Morocco followed suit that December with Abu Dhabi's help, opening relations with Tel Aviv and steadily deepening security and military cooperation.
Abdelaziz Djerad, Algeria's prime minister at the time, voiced his displeasure with Morocco's normalization deal and warned against what he called "bringing Israel and the Zionist entity to Algeria's borders." His stance made clear that Algiers' concerns about regional normalization extend well beyond the Palestinian question and they carry a hard security and geopolitical edge.
A Financial Times report in July 2025 found that Algeria is watching the Morocco-UAE-Israel closeness with deep suspicion, particularly their military and security cooperation. From its perspective, the convergence of Moroccan, Emirati, and Israeli influence across North Africa risks producing a new regional alignment, one that could extend Israeli reach into Algeria's immediate neighborhood.
Finally, Algeria's break with Abu Dhabi can be read as the culmination of disputes that have accumulated and deepened across multiple files over years. The move stands to influence the UAE's relations with other North African states, and to push the contest for influence in the region into new heights.
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