Another year of closed land borders in effect between Algeria and Morocco has passed. It is an exceptional situation, which has resulted from a misunderstanding over how to handle a purely security-related issue. However, it has become a rule in relations, and it will be difficult for the new generation, which has always lived with closed border-crossings, to understand how and why this exceptional situation has become the rule. Decision-makers in both neighboring countries could suffice by conducting an opinion poll to learn about how many decisions issued from the top fail to respect people's feelings, interests and aspirations. The closed borders today were important meeting points, where the joint struggle to resist French colonialism was forged. There were the sites of encouraging beginnings, through the establishment of large-scale interests for the border economies, during the early years of the two countries' independence. No one thought about autarchy and chauvinism when the first components of economic cooperation were laid down, in the direction of integration. However, the dreams of earlier generations dissipated with the insistence on continuing this mistake, and there seem to be no foreseeable prospects for an improvement on this front. It is a crisis of democracy before it is a flagrant example of the dichotomy in official discourse. Instead of allowing the Moroccans and Algerians, who are harmed by the negative repercussions of the decision to close the borders, to speak about the matter, experts pride themselves on drafting, with no feeling, reports to assess the gain and loss in the language of numbers, with no human dimension. Algeria has won much and Morocco has lost considerably; this has been reflected in the high cost to their tense relations, which exit one crisis only to enter another, more dark and forbidding. The problem is that the experts formulate justifications that satisfy the politicians, while their reports should be causing those in power to lose sleep. While the experts, who talk about coexistence and seeing the borders remain closed as a source of reassurance, are unable to express themselves this way, political figures, union leaders, intellectuals and civil society can hint at the real situation, even if indirectly. The irony is that these figures, who have been busy with issues that go beyond the normalization of Moroccan-Algerian relations, were involved in the first steps of Maghreb Unity, beginning in 1958. However, they are unable to affect the course of events. Between the talk about popular Maghreb and the Maghreb of the decision-makers, the facts and aspirations have become lost, not the least of which being coexistence with the state of exception. The search continues today for the fair option that will lead both Rabat and Algiers to meet each other in the middle of the road, which is cut off by extended hands that have not yet materialized as part of courageous decisions. No side has dropped the policy of blaming the other in favor of exercising a bit of self-criticism, which will guarantee the return of a climate of trust. No side has tried to move in the other direction armed with some scolding and considerable modesty. Diplomatic relations between the two neighbors exist, despite the accumulated disputes. However, the question poses itself: if diplomatic channels are there for dialogue in the first place, then what kind of dialogue is one that remains unable to solve the problem of geographical obstacles, which have developed into walls and barricades, and that has failed in removing a single stone from a structure that is likely to collapse? The disputes between Morocco and Algeria might not even be subject to political logic; worse, they have affected social conditions in the border area. However, what is difficult to remove in one go may be broken up gradually. Therefore, moving to a normal situation and to the question of what the two neighbors' future borders should be is now asserting itself, if not at the political and economic levels, at least at the humanitarian one – to cement the notion that the borders are not a barrier but an element of cooperation, openness and fusion. It will be tremendously frustrating if another year goes by with this situation of exceptional borders, which have imposed arbitrariness, violence and selfishness.
