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French radio station Monte Carlo Doualiya, citing its correspondent in Damascus, reported that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has rejected a request from Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf concerning the release of detainees from the Algerian army and the Polisario militias.
During a visit to Syria three days ago, the Algerian Foreign Minister met with the newly appointed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Unlike visits by officials from other countries, the Syrian official media treated the Algerian minister's visit with noticeable indifference.
The radio station reported on its website that these detainees had been fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad's forces near Aleppo. They were captured by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham during a late November offensive, which led to the regime's downfall.
According to the same source, al-Sharaa informed the Algerian Foreign Minister that Algerian military officers of general rank, along with approximately 500 soldiers from the Algerian army and Polisario militias, would face trial alongside remnants of Assad's forces who were captured.
Al-Sharaa emphasized that all detainees, whether from the Algerian army or the Polisario, would be treated in accordance with international rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war. This decision reportedly caused confusion in the Algerian Foreign Minister's statements, highlighting the delicate nature of relations between the two countries.
The abrupt collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime denied the Algerian government the opportunity to evacuate its soldiers from Syria, unlike other Assad allies such as Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and some Iraqi Shia militias, who managed to evacuate their fighters.
Bashar al-Assad's regime remains the only Arab regime in the Middle East that recognizes the «Republic» of the Polisario.
Alliance and support for years
Following the fall of Damascus, members of the new regime leaked a secret document revealing the participation of Polisario militias alongside Assad's forces since the early months of the popular revolution in 2011.
Issued by the Syrian intelligence services, the document exposed the dangerous relationship between the separatist movement and Bashar's regime. It indicates that in 2012, the Polisario «offered» to assist the Syrian army in countering the advance of opposition forces.
وزير الخارجية الجزائري أحمد عطاف: نؤكد دعمنا لـ #سوريا في المجالات كافة#الحدث #قناة_الحدث pic.twitter.com/vOoed0isYJ
— ا لـحـدث (@AlHadath) February 8, 2025
The document highlighted Algeria's pivotal role in orchestrating this operation. It detailed that the Polisario Front's «offer» was a subject of correspondence between the Algerian Ministry of Defense and its Syrian counterpart, receiving special attention from both «brotherly» parties.
Unlike most Arab countries, Algeria quickly declared its support for Bashar al-Assad's regime after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, adopting his narrative against the protests and labeling the opposition as terrorism. Algeria, along with Iraq, was among the few Arab countries that opposed the Arab League's decision to suspend Syria's membership.
In 2016, Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel made a rare visit by an Arab official to Damascus, meeting with former President Bashar al-Assad. Months earlier, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa had visited Algeria.
The two regimes continued to exchange visits, and in April 2023, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune received former Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, who conveyed an oral message from Bashar al-Assad.
In November 2023, the former Syrian president expressed the rapprochement with Algeria in a statement comparing the conflict he was fighting against the armed opposition to the conflict in which Algeria was embroiled for nearly a decade in the 1990s.
