The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2024 signed into law by President Biden no longer imposes conditions on defense cooperation between Morocco and the United States.
US President Joe Biden has just signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2024. The new NDAA no longer sets conditions for military and security cooperation with Morocco. In the past, this aid was conditional, in particular, on its commitment to open negotiations with the Polisario separatists on the future of the Sahara.
It goes without saying that since the recognition by the Trump Administration of Morocco’s full sovereignty over its southern provinces and, incidentally, after the departure, in November 2022, of Algeria’s chief lobbyist, James Inhofe, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, things have changed a lot. The proof, that the pro-Polisario parliamentarians, or what remains of the Algerian lobby, were discreet during the examination of the law, comes from the sources who follow this file.
That said, in the NDAA that President Biden has just promulgated, a passage has been reserved for Morocco. But this time to highlight the Joint Declaration between Morocco, the United States, and Israel, signed in Rabat on December 22, 2020. An agreement, it should be noted, which established precisely the recognition of the United States of Moroccanness of the Sahara.
In this sense, the text of the NDAA 2024 also underlined that “the agreement between Israel and Morocco allowed the intelligence community to obtain new and valuable information regarding national intelligence priorities”.
Recall that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, passed just before James Inhofe left office, provided that “none of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available of the Department of Defense for Fiscal Year 2022 may be used by the Secretary of Defense to support the participation of the military forces of the Kingdom of Morocco in any multilateral exercise administered by the Department of Defense, unless the Secretary determines, in consultation with the Secretary of State, that the Kingdom of Morocco is committed to seeking a mutually acceptable political solution to the Sahara.
