Algeria severs diplomatic ties with the UAE and gives the ambassador 48 hours to leave

Algeria cut diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates on Thursday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government had exhausted every means of keeping the relationship alive. Algerian state television carried the same line. The Emirati ambassador was received at the ministry on 10 September, told of the decision, and given 48 hours to comply and leave.

The public statement did not list a single triggering event. The file behind it has been accumulating for months. Algerian outlets close to the state have accused Abu Dhabi of backing the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), a group Algiers lists as terrorist. They have also pointed to a growing Emirati presence in Libya, Mali and Niger, and to the UAE's support for Morocco's position on Western Sahara. In February Algeria began terminating the 2013 air-services agreement with the UAE. No official reason was given then either.

The two countries still hold embassies in each other's capitals and sit together in the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Those memberships do not require full diplomatic relations, but a break of this kind is rare between Algiers and a Gulf capital. High-level visits have been thin for years. A 2010 economy-ministry trip and older talk of the UAE as a "gateway" for Algerian business are now archive.

For the UAE the cost is a closed embassy and a political signal in North Africa at a moment when Abu Dhabi is also sitting inside an expanded BRICS that Algeria watches from outside. For Algeria the cost is another isolated track in a foreign policy already tense with Morocco and cautious toward several Sahel juntas. Neither side published a charge sheet of specific acts on Thursday. That is typical of a rupture framed as the end of patience rather than as a response to one incident.

Practical steps follow a script. Diplomats pack. Consular work moves to a protecting power or shuts. Flights, already under pressure from the air-services notice, become harder. Trade and investment between the two are modest next to Algeria's energy ties with Europe and the UAE's wider African book, so the economic hit is smaller than the political noise.

What the 48-hour clock does is make the break operational before anyone can walk it back with a clarifying phone call. If Abu Dhabi names a protecting power and Algiers accepts one, low-level contact can continue. If it does not, the relationship falls to the level of statements at the Arab League. Thursday's text left that choice open. It closed the embassy door first.