On a Thursday in September 2026, Algeria formally severed diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, expelling its ambassador and closing its skies — a rupture years in the making, born of competing visions for what the Arab world should be and who should shape it. Algiers had watched, with mounting alarm, as Abu Dhabi extended its influence into Libya, Mali, and Sudan, and had never forgiven the UAE's 2020 normalization with Israel. The break is not a sudden storm but the final settling of a long fault line — one that separates those who see regional order as a shared inheritance from tho