Algeria cuts diplomatic ties with the UAE and shuts airspace

Algeria has severed diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates and ordered its ambassador to leave the country within 48 hours, bringing months of simmering tension over regional influence to a formal rupture.

The Algerian foreign ministry announced the decision on Thursday, citing "provocative and hostile acts" by Abu Dhabi. Alongside expelling the ambassador, Yousef Saif Khamis Subaa Al-Ali, Algeria's defence ministry said it will close its airspace to all UAE-registered civilian and military aircraft starting Friday 11 September. Only commercial flights to and from Houari Boumediene International Airport in Algiers will be exempt, and only until their current contracts expire at the end of 2026.

What drove the split?

The split is the culmination of years of friction over competing foreign policy goals. The two nations have found themselves on opposing sides of several major regional flashpoints. Most notably, the UAE backs Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara, while Algeria supports the Polisario Front's campaign for an independent state.

Tensions have also been sharpened by the UAE's normalisation of relations with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords, a move Algeria strongly opposes. Meanwhile, both nations have been competing for influence in the Sahel region, where Algeria's relationships with its southern neighbours have been complicated by recent military coups.

While Algiers did not pinpoint a single triggering event for the sudden expulsion, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has dropped heavy hints for months. In October 2025, he accused an unnamed Gulf state of meddling in domestic affairs. By July, his rhetoric had hardened, warning of a "statelet" that was destabilising Mali, Libya and Sudan, and declaring that "wherever they set foot, blood flows."

How the UAE responded

The UAE foreign ministry said it hoped the rupture would be "temporary" and expressed its appreciation for the Algerian people. However, Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, took a sharper tone online.

Without naming Algeria directly, Gargash wrote that successful diplomacy should be built on "rationality, communication and clarity of interests" rather than "riddles and signals that require decoding." He added that ambiguity is not a policy, and that "noise does not compensate for the absence of vision."

A broader pattern of regional tension

The rupture is not an isolated incident for the UAE. Earlier this year, Somalia scrapped several security and port agreements with Abu Dhabi over sovereignty disputes, while Sudan has repeatedly accused the Gulf state of supplying drones and weapons to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in its ongoing civil war—an accusation the UAE denies.

Relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have also faced strain over the war in Yemen, where Saudi forces struck what they described as a UAE-linked weapons shipment to separatists.