In the political echelons of the Ministry of the Interior they have made the calculation that at some point, in the middle of the Andalusian campaign, one, two or more small boats arrive at a beach in Almería Algerian women who animate not a little the electoral debate.
But that fear, they say in that environment, is prior to the This Wednesday’s escalation in the tension of Algiers with Madrid on account of the change in Spain’s position with respect to its former last colony: Western Sahara.
The security one does not seem to the consulted sources that it is going to be friction ground between Algeria and Spain as are the diplomatic and the commercial, or it can be the energetic. The Ministries of the Interior of both countries are currently keeping anti-terrorist and immigration collaboration isolated in a capsule, “for the account that brings us to the two states & rdquor ;, comments a source close to the minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
The Spanish Minister of the Interior maintains contact with his Algerian counterpart, Kamel Beljoud, and there have been conversations between the two ministries on several occasions since the crisis began, confirm government sources, who describe the frequency of contacts as “high & rdquor ;. In those conversations there has been no avoiding comment on the environment created with the crisis.
Below the realm of senior management, and more outside of the ups and downs, the police intelligence chiefs and police liaison officers from both embassies maintain an active working relationship. “Police cooperation remains unchanged. Between policemen it is created a lasting relationship, more solid than the government-government contact & rdquor ;, they explain in Interior. Communication between the two ministers and between the police working groups is the last bridge standing, as happened with Morocco in the avalanche crisis over Ceuta in the spring of 2021.
migrant boats
Despite not taking their eyes off Almería these days, police sources rule out that the growing distance with Algeria will bring over Spanish territory another migratory wave like that of that month of May. “Algeria does not have a button that opens a faucet –they explain-. Their ability to destabilize with immigration is less than that of Morocco in the Strait & rdquor ;.
Despite the mess in diplomatic relations with Algiers, the flow of immigrants from its shores has been reduced, according to the accounts that Minister Grande-Marlaska presented this Thursday, between 30 and 35%. So far in 2022, they have reached on the Algerian route 2,824 people and 274 boats. Last year there were 4,379 human beings and 274 boats.
However, the sources consulted they do not rule out some notable arrival of migrant boats along the Algerian route this summer, and point to the Balearic Islands as a destination. “They will come to Ibiza, but it will not be an Arguineguín & rdquor ;, they bet.
So that the dramatic scenes of that Canarian port are not repeated, just in case, in the old Son Tous barracks, in Palma de Mallorca, the installation of tents for a CATE (Temporary Assistance Center for Foreigners) is progressing, which in August would be prepared to house 150 people without papers who overflowed the police stations from the city.
the griffin of algiers
“No one has an immigration faucet on their own,” says a senior State Security executive, because immigration is not an easily modulated flow, which is not managed by both the states and the mafias, and is influenced by many other factors.
Now, with the Spanish-Moroccan relationship reopened, boats continue to arrive in the Canary Islands. “It is because Morocco controls the Strait of Gibraltar well, but it does not control the Atlantic façade well,” adds this source. On that coast, operators of the human trafficking business have safe points in Senegal and Guinea Konakri to issue their human merchandise by the most dangerous route of all the Africans: the journey to the Canary Islands.
The immigration that crosses the sea through the Algerian route is different. It is true that it sets sail from a populated and police-controlled coast, just like in the north of Morocco, but it is different in the amount, in the degree of desperation and in the composition of the passage of the boats. And for two reasons: the Algerian route is the most expensive and hardest route in the Mediterranean -much more expensive than crossing between Senegal and the Canary Islands-, so its migrants have more money, “and they consider the crossing to Europe as an investment to reach to France, settle for a few years, learn, save and return to Algeria & rdquor ;.
In addition, the passage of these boats – smaller and more motorized than the Moroccan ones – is more “uniform & rdquor ;, he says with a euphemism trying not to pronounce the word “race & rdquor ;: the reason why sub-Saharans do not arrive In this way, only Algerians in the boats, the Sahara is lost below. “We do not know what will happen in Tamanrasset&rdquor ;, releases this expert, leaving the window of possibilities open. That Saharan city is the point of confluence, and abrupt stop, of the migrants who come up from Nigeria and Niger.
common enemy
But it may be that the control of migration is not as strong a glue for Spain and Algeria as that of the fight against the common terrorist enemy. of the potential it has Algeria as a base to launch jihadists into Europe The General Information Police Station of the National Police took good note in October 2021, when it already had three recent attempts to introduce terrorists through the Algerian boat route.
Abdel-Majid Abdel Bari, an Anglo-Egyptian terrorist with combat and command experience in Syria and with subordinates under his charge, spent part of the confinement of the 2020 pandemic hidden in a flat in Almería. He had rented it cash in hand, after disembark near the city of a boat which had left the Algerian shore of the Mediterranean. The Police located him thanks to a failure in the discretion of the exits to the street of the men he trusted.
In January and March 2021, the Police again detected, first, a traveling group of jihadists, and in the spring, their boss, or sheikh. All had also arrived from Algeria.
The jihadism based in the largest country in the Maghreb has a different tone from the one that Morocco tries to control. In Algeria it is majority Jund Al Khilagah branch, split from Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb that emerged in the investigations of the Algerian police in 2014, made up of military leaders of the Islamic State tanned in iraq.
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The recent arrest in a joint operation of the Mossos d’Esquadra and the National Police in Tarragona of a violent proselytizer is one of the reasons for keeping this country in the alert four counter terrorism. An equally alarming situation prevails in Algeria, a country tragically plagued by Islamist terrorism in the past.
Beldjoud, the Algerian Minister of the Interior, attached to one of the three most influential military factions among those who share the power in post-Bouteflika Algeria, has discussed on several occasions with his Spanish counterpart the terrorist danger. The last one, on November 11, 2021 in Madrid. Earlier, in May of that year in Lisbon, at an EU-Africa summit on Home Affairs. And before his predecessor, Salah Eddine Dahmoune, in August 2020 and in November 2019, in Algiers during visits by the Spanish minister.