One routine question in Brussels about the deployment of Algerian troops to Niger was enough to set the machinery in motion. State news agency APS, followed by pro-government media, reduced the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Anouar El Anouni, to his supposed “Franco-Moroccan” origins. Unable to justify its military venture, the regime in Algiers resorted to its usual response: insults, suspicion and an obsession with Morocco.
