Algeria mends the breaks it chooses, lets Mali fester

Algeria spent the spring closing the easy breaks and leaving the hard one open. The clearest turn was with France, whose ties Algiers had let collapse over Western Sahara two years ago. French ambassador Stephane Romatet went back to his post, his armed forces minister Alice Rufo flew in twice in under three months, and in early May the two governments agreed to revive security and defense cooperation and to work together on migration and drug trafficking. None of it touched the underlying dispute, but both sides decided the freeze had cost more than the principle was worth.

The same logic drove Algeria's gas diplomacy. Within two days in late March, the Italian and Spanish leaders both came calling for energy, and Algiers welcomed them. It is now Spain's largest gas supplier and a third of Italy's, and it used that leverage to push the relationship with Madrid back toward full normalization after years of strain. Europe needs the gas and the help policing migration across the Mediterranean, and Algeria is happy to be needed without joining anyone's camp.

Reconciliation reached the Sahel too, but only partly. Niger and Algeria announced what both called a new partnership, with a high-level Nigerien delegation received in Algiers in May to widen cooperation on pipelines and infrastructure. Mali was the exception that proved the rule. A Malian drone strike on trucks near the border in March kept the wound open, the two countries' airspace stayed shut to each other, and as a rebel offensive overran the Malian north, Algiers quietly brokered the safe exit of Russian Africa Corps fighters rather than let the chaos spill across its frontier.

The one line Algeria would not soften was Western Sahara. It welcomed the latest United Nations process in words while still refusing to be treated as a party to the conflict, held a live-fire exercise near the Moroccan border in mid-May, and absorbed mounting pressure from Washington, where lawmakers pushed to brand its ally the Polisario Front a terrorist group. The pattern held: Algeria would pay almost any diplomatic price except the one tied to its core cause.