In a major escalation of long-simmering bilateral discord, Algeria formally announced Thursday it is severing all diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, a decision that came after Algiers said it had exhausted every possible avenue to preserve cooperative ties between the two nations.
The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlined the break in an official public statement, noting that the country had repeatedly issued warnings to the UAE over what it describes as persistent hostile actions against Algerian interests. According to the statement, Algeria invested extensive diplomatic effort into drawing Abu Dhabi’s attention to the severe fallout that could stem from its “regrettable and unjustified behavior.”
“Despite these numerous warnings, the United Arab Emirates has persisted in these actions, which have reached a point where they can no longer be considered acceptable or tolerable within the framework of relations between two sovereign states, or remain unanswered,” the statement continued. The ministry confirmed it has formally notified the UAE’s ambassador to Algeria of the decision and issued a 48-hour deadline for the envoy to leave the country.
Tensions between the two North African and Gulf nations have built steadily over recent years, driven by growing Algerian concern over what regional analysts frame as the UAE’s increasingly destabilizing interventionist role across the broader Middle East and North Africa region. As far back as 2023, prominent Algerian daily newspaper Le Soir d’Algerie labeled the UAE a “pyromaniac state” in a scathing headline, condemning what it called the UAE’s harmful meddling along Algeria’s borders.
Over the past decade, the UAE has poured significant funding into authoritarian factions and breakaway movements across the Sahel and North Africa, according to regional security researchers. In war-torn Libya, Abu Dhabi has long backed eastern-based military strongman Khalifa Haftar, a sponsorship that deepened fragmentation within Libya and ripple instability into neighboring Chad, Sudan and Niger.
The UAE has also leveraged its presence in Libya to funnel military and political support to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia that has faced widespread international accusations of perpetrating genocide amid the ongoing Sudanese civil war. As early as April 2024, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune made public comments widely interpreted as a direct rebuke of the UAE, saying: “Wherever there is conflict, the money of this state [the Emirates] is there – in Mali, Libya, and Sudan.”
Tebboune has also made veiled, disparaging references to the UAE as a “dwarf state” that attempts to interfere in regional affairs from which Algeria has already blocked much larger global powers. He notably declined to name the country in those earlier remarks, choosing instead to criticize it indirectly for months before the formal diplomatic break.
Andreas Krieg, an associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, told Middle East Eye that the break was a long time in the making, and that its true significance extends far beyond the severing of ties itself to reveal how Algeria now views the UAE’s regional ambitions.
“Algiers has effectively concluded that Abu Dhabi’s regional playbook – cultivating what I call an ‘axis of secessionists,’ from Haftar in Libya to the RSF in Sudan to the southern movement in Yemen – was being turned toward Algeria itself,” Krieg explained.
Algeria has spent much of 2024 signaling its growing dissatisfaction with Abu Dhabi’s actions. Back in February, Algiers moved to cancel its bilateral air services agreement with the UAE. While no formal official explanation was issued for that decision, most regional analysts agree it was a direct response to the UAE’s continued intervention in territories along Algeria’s periphery.
Krieg noted that Algeria’s sharpest concern stems from suspected contact between the UAE and the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), an autonomy movement that Algiers has designated a terrorist organization and views as an existential threat to national unity. That suspected contact crosses a clear red line for Algerian leadership, he added.
Earlier this year, when the UAE announced its early withdrawal from OPEC+, Tebboune publicly downplayed the move as a “non-event,” noting that Saudi Arabia remained the core pillar of the oil producers’ bloc, and adding that “the book is closed” on the UAE’s role in the grouping.
“The foreign ministry’s wording is the tell,” Krieg said. “It says the decision came ‘after exhausting all means’ to save the relationship, and it pointedly names no single trigger. That’s deliberate: this wasn’t one incident but an accumulation – the suspected outreach to separatists, the UAE’s military footprint in Libya and the Sahel, and Abu Dhabi’s backing of Morocco on Western Sahara, which for Algeria is the most sensitive file of all.”
“President Tebboune had spent the better part of a year railing against a ‘small state’ bent on stirring trouble; today he just stopped pretending it was anonymous,” Krieg added.