From time to time, the Morocco-phobic Algerian regime reaches for a familiar playbook, casting the Kingdom as the villain in a drama staged for a disenchanted population still queuing for basic goods.
This time the conspiracy theory produces a script featuring the arrest of 61 Moroccans allegedly preparing sabotage acts, armed with nothing more than passports and Moroccan money, according to Algerian state media.
One of those detained, the reports claim, is a former Moroccan soldier.
The group supposedly flew to Tunis, slipped across the border through mountain trails, travelled the length of the country undetected and assembled in Oran ready to strike.
The official communiqué lists Moroccan passports and modest sums of cash in dirhams and euros as damning evidence.
No weapons. No explosives. No precise dates. No identified targets. State media has so far shown only the covers of the passports, leaving open the basic question of whether the documents are even genuine.
The announcement fits a well-rehearsed pattern in which Algeria has a long record of conspiracy theories and carefully staged television spectacles.
In 2021 Morocco – and Israel – were accused, without proof, of sparking the deadly Kabylie wildfires.
The same year Algerian forces expelled Moroccan farmers from ancestral lands near Figuig.
In 2023 coast guards shot dead two lost Moroccan tourists whose jet skis had drifted across the maritime border.
In 2024 visas were imposed on Moroccans on the claim that they were flooding the country with “Zionist spies.”
Blurred-face televised confessions usually follow within weeks.
No day passes without Morocco featuring in Algerian media through a steady stream of fake news, a practice that began the moment Algiers unilaterally broke ties with Rabat.
While egg prices soar, car parts are lacking, water cuts multiply and thousands of young Algerians risk the Mediterranean in search of work, the regime reliably produces a new Moroccan menace to occupy the headlines and the airwaves.
The latest batch of 61 arrives conveniently ahead of the UN Security Council’s expected vote on the Sahara file.
In the meantime, the real problems facing ordinary Algerians remain safely off-screen.