The president of the World Amazigh Assembly is challenging North African diplomatic heads: he is calling for the dissolution of the Arab Maghreb Union born in 1989 but paralyzed for decades and proposes replacing it with a regional union founded on Amazigh identity and African values.
The 37th anniversary of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) passed on February 17, 2026, without the slightest official commemoration. This discretion speaks volumes about the state of an organization that, since its creation in Marrakech in 1989, has never managed to establish itself as a true engine of regional integration. It was precisely on the occasion of this anniversary that Rachid Raha, president of the World Amazigh Assembly (WAA), chose to raise the stakes by addressing an open letter to the five foreign ministers of the region—Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Libya—to call, quite simply, for the dissolution of the AMU.
A moribund union with structural blockages
For Rachid Raha, the failure of the AMU is not accidental; it is inherent to its foundations. He identifies three main causes. The first is identity-based: the very name “Arab Maghreb Union” obscures, in his view, the millennial history and Amazigh identity of North African peoples, making it neither inclusive nor unifying. The second is ideological: the union is based on an Arab-Islamism that he considers imported and artificially imposed, the signs of whose collapse he sees even in the stands of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations hosted in Morocco, where the lack of solidarity among North African supporters was, in his eyes, revealing. The third is geopolitical: the Western Sahara conflict, maintained for over fifty years by Algerian generals to the detriment of Moroccan-Algerian relations, has led to the total paralysis of the organization.
The AMU has not held a summit of heads of state since 1994. The border between Morocco and Algeria has been closed ever since. And despite repeated encouragement from the European Union, which as, part of the Barcelona Process launched in 1995, explicitly included the goal of fostering regional integration in its association agreements with Maghreb countries, the organization has never managed to overcome its founding contradictions.
The “Union of Tamazgha,” a pan-amazigh alternative
In place of the AMU, Rachid Raha proposes the creation of a “Union of Tamazgha,” whose model would be inspired by the European Union but anchored in the historical and cultural realities of North Africa. This new union would be founded on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It would make women’s rights, respect for ethno-linguistic diversity, religious plurality, and multiparty systems its absolute priorities.
Institutionally, Rachid Raha advocates for a federal system granting broad autonomy to regions, inspired by ancient Amazigh tribal confederations. He sees this as a framework capable of resolving several crises simultaneously: the Western Sahara issue—in light of UN Security Council Resolution 2797 of October 2025, which established the Moroccan autonomy plan as “the most realistic and credible basis” the Kabyle aspirations in Algeria, and the chronic instability in Libya.
He also draws on recent institutional progress: Algeria constitutionally recognized the Amazigh language in 2016 and officialized the Amazigh calendar in 2018; Morocco did the same for the language in 2011 and for the calendar in 2023. These mutual recognitions constitute, according to him, a foundation upon which a new regional solidarity could be built.
A symbolic appeal, a real febate
Rachid Raha’s letter has not yet received an official response from the chancelleries concerned. And it would be illusory to imagine that sovereign governments would commit, in the short term, to such a radically innovative path. But the initiative illustrates a fundamental debate running through North African societies: that of the place of Amazigh identity in the political construction of the region, long relegated to the background in favor of an Arabism that is now being contested.
By invoking the maxim of Massinissa “Africa to the Africans” the Amazigh activist is formulating less an immediate diplomatic proposal than a challenge to North African political elites: that of reconciling themselves with a history that is older, more complex, and perhaps more unifying than the 20th-century ideologies upon which the AMU was built.
Sources: Open letter from Rachid Raha to North African Foreign Ministers, February 17, 2026; UN Security Council Resolution 2797, October 31, 2025.