In an article published Thursday under the title "The tamer can be bitten by his viper: the Polisario occupies Tindouf?", Talaâ Saoud Al Atlassi reports that the Algerian ambassador to France, Mohamed-Antar Daoud, expressed to French magazine Le Point regarding two sentences in this article, under the title "Algerian maneuvers in the Sahara, near the Moroccan border".

Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki reports that the Algerian diplomat described as "serious slippage" the content of this article published in the column "Africa point" of January 19, calling for correction from the editorial team of the weekly magazine which, according to him, will be able to "find the appropriate terms to restore the reality of the facts in their significance".

Mr. Al Atlassi said that it must be a "serious" anger that led the Ambassador to mobilize his diverse "cultural" armada which extends to the techniques and rules of journalistic writing, reproaching the editor of the article not to "faithfully copy the paragraphs of French News Agency AFP".

The Algerian diplomat, he continued, said he was "astonished" the editor of the incriminated article did not "verify the information he reported before pouring into baseless allegations on the territorial affiliation of the wilaya of Tindouf".

Using his geographical knowledge, explained Mr. Al Atlassi, the Algerian diplomat lectured the editor to inform him that "without offending your knowledge in geographic and geopolitical matters, it should be noted that Tindouf is an integral part of Algeria".

As a conclusion, the Algerian diplomat reserved for the editor of the French weekly "the coup de grace" through semiology, calling on him to "find the appropriate terms to restore the reality of the facts in their significance".

For Mr. Al Atlassi, the anger of the ambassador implies that the Algerian ministry of Foreign Affairs did not perceive the article of the French publication as a simple editorial "blunder", but rather as a premeditated "act" that is intended to convey a message.

According to him, the Algerian ministry may have estimated that Le Point, through these little sentences, conferred on the Polisario two powers of which it is dispossessed towards Algiers, in this case the power of 'an independent decision making that would enable it to have its own influence, and the power of control over Tindouf where its holds its military camp.

This is to say that Algeria does not tolerate, even for editorial vagueness, any insinuation other than the one dictated by the Algerian leadership 45 years ago to the Polisario.

Perhaps even for years to come if the situation continues with the intransigence and deafness of Algiers regarding Morocco's call for peace, its proposal and its continued efforts in this direction, he pointed out, noting that Algeria would like to keep the separatist movement under its control.

What if this brief piece of reduced-word information was just a test balloon where the "magazine" had been subconsciously manipulated? A balloon to provoke the reaction of Algiers on a possible installation of the separatists in Tindouf?

Al Atlassi does not exclude the possibility of an act elaborated on the basis of propaganda to launch an idea or a lie, to maintain its attractiveness and to test its viability. And for good reason, parts of the Polisario are already on the way to bypassing the grip of Algiers.

And then, he argued, let's admit that this information is a "blunder". Doesn't it indirectly open up a possible avenue for the end of the dispute? This is quite plausible as long as Algeria does not take much interest in the inhabitants of the camps and does not help in the search for the solution recommended by the UN Security Council, especially with the increasingly international support to the Moroccan Autonomy Plan.

For him, this is all the more true as the camps and their inhabitants are for the Algerian leadership nothing but trucks and platforms from which it launches its resentment against Morocco; but the situation cannot continue indefinitely.

The author of the article recalls that it is indeed the Algerian propaganda which brought, for more than 40 years, the visitors to Tindouf to present them to what it calls a "State".

However, if some of these same visitors assured, in public or in private, that it is the Polisario that controls Tindouf, they were only saying the reality that they experienced, or at least the one that was presented to them, the author of the article said.

Worse still, the Polisario, even though Algiers allows it to return to Morocco through self-determination, would not go to settle anywhere else than in Tindouf, which it will not leave, as it has long been deprived of attachment to the Homeland, the authentic home, Morocco, he noted.

"I have said many times, like others before, that the separatist movement is a burden that Algeria cannot endure indefinitely, especially in the currently turbulent political conditions, the ignorance of the mechanisms for managing international relations and the depletion of its financial resources, which are now insufficient to meet its own social needs,” he said.

He underlined that Algeria continues to supply and arm the Polisario in an African desert area, a stretch of landforms difficult to control where separatist movements, armed gangs, terrorists and smugglers mix. It is indeed a Molotov cocktail of violent movements that risk exploding on the borders of Algeria and even inside.

The viper having often turned against its tamer, magic having many times boomeranged, it is important for Algiers to consider now, in the medium or long term, the possibility of asking for international support to determine the fate of Tindouf and provide, if necessary, for a self-determination referendum.

Because for Algeria, he said, this would be the price to pay for the stubborn refusal of the Moroccan autonomy proposal, which is one of the possible, realistic, equitable, lasting and consensual formulas of self-determination.

"Wouldn't autonomy be the way that would free it from a burden that it has long and dearly dragged?", he wondered, noting that in the current situation, the status quo helping, the content as brief, short and ephemeral as it may be in a French weekly magazine, can commute information lacking accuracy into a political earthquake in Algiers.