Morocco’s Prince Moulay Rachid addresses attendees at the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, September 30, 2015. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz.
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Security in the Sahara Not a Shell Game – Jean R. AbiNader Threat not Overstated; Remedies Require “Losing Old Paradigms”
Contradictions are not rare in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region when it comes to politics and diplomacy. This is particularly evident in the continuing efforts to resolve the Western Sahara conflict. While all of the parties voice concern over the lack of a resolution, most, namely the Polisario and Algeria, are unwilling to offer credible options for how to do so, essential for regional cooperation needed to address extremist threats emanating from ungoverned spaces and, unsurprisingly, a lack of regional coordination.
The stalemated negotiations atrophying in the UN Secretary General’s office have underscored these concerns about how this situation impacts regional security and yet have offered little in the way of realistic options for resolving the conflict.
From the UN perspective, one needs look no further than the UN Secretary General’s report on his trip to the region. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon noted “The frustrations I witnessed among Western Saharans, coupled with the expansion of criminal and extremists’ networks in the Sahel-Sahara region, present increased risks for the stability and security of all the countries of this region. A settlement of the Western Sahara conflict would mitigate these potential risks and promote regional cooperation in the face of common threats and regional integration to bolster economic opportunity.” And yet, rather than use the security imperative to spur action towards a resolution, Ban Ki-Moon’s actions prior to the report put a negotiated political compromise further out of reach.
Soon, we will know the Security Council’s response and one can only hope that the future of the UN’s presence in the territory will move forward toward a realistic settlement that would not rely on dead initiatives like a referendum, but engage in discussions built on achievable solutions. Only then will the region be able to revive some sort of effective security coordination among all the state actions.
This has yet to be realized despite clear deterioration of security in the Sahel-Sahara region, largely because of ongoing regional rivalries and the antiquated thinking of Algeria and the Polisario. As Professor Mohammed Benhammou, President of the Moroccan Center for Strategic Studies, noted in recent article, “Regrettably, in the Maghreb the conditions for cooperation do not always exist due to antiquated thinking, particularly over the Sahara. The closed border between Morocco and Algeria has impacted most regional relationships. For example, Tunisia, Libya, and Mali are forced to develop security strategies with both countries separately at the expense of a more effective coordinated regional strategy.”
Some of the challenges to developing such a regional strategy, particularly with regard to Algeria’s role, are outlined in a recent article in the Sada Journal about the reconstitution of Algeria’s security forces. As the author indicates, the restructuring of the security services (DRS) over the past two years, designed at least in part to improve counterterrorism capabilities, has done little more than eliminate a competing power center to the presidency.
Another part of the current strategy – highly visible counterterrorism operations to “rebuild popular confidence in the Algerian military’s ability to maintain public security,” thereby, “sending a message to France, its neighbors in the Sahel, and other countries interested in regional security that Algeria is still the dominant player,” also rings hollow given Algeria’s increasing difficulty in securing its own borders. Not to mention when one considers the failure of Algerian regional initiatives such as the Joint Military Staff Committee (CEMOC), which purported to be a regional security mechanism that was convened without Morocco, largely because of the dispute over the Sahara issue.
This is hardly a recipe for effectiveness and conflict resolution. Unless the old paradigms dissipate in order to activate true regional security cooperation including all stakeholders, Ban Ki-moon’s fears will become even more tangible and immediate.
Morocco on the move
Western Sahara : Waiting On Washington
Nine years have passed since Morocco took the initiative, with the strong encouragement and backing of Washington, to offer a compromise political solution to the enduring Cold War legacy dispute over Western Sahara. Beginning with the presidency of Bill Clinton, three US Administrations–including that of President Obama–have endorsed yearly calls from the UN Security Council for a « mutually acceptable political solution » to resolve this fundamental roadblock to cooperation between Morocco and Algeria and thus greater socio-economic and security integration in North Africa – a key US objective well before the Arab Spring sent the region spinning out of control.
The Moroccan initiative was the perfect fit to the basic compromise design repeatedly suggested by succeeding US Administrations. That is, a large degree of autonomy for the territory which would remain under Moroccan sovereignty. Morocco would maintain its historical territorial integrity and the people of the region would be free to conduct their own daily affairs. In addition, the region and the larger international community would avoid, maybe I should say escape, the threatening creation of a new, non-viable, certain-to-fail state in an already far too dangerous and tumultuous corner of the African continent. More ungovernable political space in the Maghreb fits nobody’s national interest these days (except, perhaps, that of various salafist jihadi groups already infesting the region).
Washington has dutifully praised the Moroccan initiative as « serious, credible and realistic » many times since it was first revealed in April 2007. How could it be otherwise, since this idea originated from inside the US State Department in 1999? The language has since become a staple of all high-level meetings between US and Moroccan officials. Indeed, it was solemnly repeated by President Obama on the occasion of King Mohamed VI’s visit to Washington and by Secretary of State John Kerry.
But as the saying goes, « beauty is as beauty does. » The problem here is that our difficult-to-deal-with friends in Algeria seem to have a hard time hearing the message because what the US has to say on the matter fails to match up well with what the US is seen to be doing about it. High-minded, high-level verbal endorsements have not been followed with concrete and visible actions to reinforce the message that the US is firmly and irrevocably committed to this kind of compromise solution. The lack of such tangible support leaves those in Algiers, and among the intransigent political leadership of Algeria’s puppet Sahrawi followers in the Polisario, with the notion that the US is perhaps only lukewarm about this policy initiative of its own making and can possibly be persuaded to change its mind at some point. This leads to the stalemate we have seen on this issue since the notion of a political compromise first gained the support of the Security Council over a decade ago. The time has come for Washington to assume some responsibility and demonstrate that it actually means what it says. Few people around the world take us at our word these days for exactly this kind of fecklessness.
So what can be done to begin to persuade our friends in Algiers, and among the calcified leadership of the Polisario, that the US is actually serious about this sovereignty/autonomy trade-off as the only viable solution to this problem?
In the first instance, the US needs to demonstrate that the Herculean and expensive efforts that Morocco has made over the past 20 years to dramatically improve the well being and quality of life of the Sahrawis living in Morocco’s Saharan provinces is both commendable and worthy of our direct assistance and support. The Congress of the United States certainly thinks so. For the last several years, a bipartisan majority of both the House and the Senate have been urging the US Administration to step up and be more demonstrable in its support for Morocco’s autonomy initiative. In the last Tree funding bills to pass Congress, specific language was included that specifically urged the Obama Administration to get behind Morocco’s effort to improve circumstances in the Sahara with direct US development assistance. Congress has it right. The Administration needs to follow suit. If and when it does, Algiers and the Polisario might just begin to get the message we say we want to send. Words need to become deeds here. This would be a good first step.
Another strong signal would be to lift the senseless ban on senior US diplomats visiting the Moroccan Sahara. The State Department deserves to be informed by the personal views of its most senior diplomats regarding what Morocco has accomplished and continues to do regarding the single most enduring issue in our bilateral relationship over the last 40 years. We should let our Ambassadors and Assistant Secretaries go talk to people there and have a look for themselves. Maybe they will gain a better appreciation of why we need to get behind Morocco’s efforts there – and help send the signal to those who are unwilling to accept a reasonable and just compromise that the US is going to be moving on without them if they continue to prefer conflict over cooperation.
Sahara Watch Organisation
It’s time for serious negotiations on the only credible solution : Autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty
Against the backdrop of North Korea and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, it is understandable that within the United States, the Western Sahara is largely forgotten. It should not be. Across North Africa and the Sahel, political chaos reigns and stability is in short supply. Nature abhors a vacuum, but terrorists love them. Fueled by loose weapons from Libya, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other offshoot terrorist groups have destabilized wide swaths of the Sahel. Freedom House once categorized Mali as the most free Muslim majority country in the world, but now it teeters on the brink of state failure, victim of weapons smuggling, terrorism, and its own porous borders. Across North Africa and the Sahel, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, the only truly stable country is Morocco, a country whose sovereignty over the Western Sahara remains at the center of a decades-long diplomatic dispute.
It has now been almost 40 years since Spain left what was then called the Spanish Sahara, a territory that it had administered for almost a century. Conflict erupted quickly after Spain left. Morocco recover nearly the entire territory. But Algeria, a reliable Soviet ally in the context of the Cold War, had other plans. It supported the Polisario Front, a group that claimed independence for the former Spanish territory and declared itself the rightful government of the so called » Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic » . The subsequent guerilla conflict continued until 1991, when Morocco and the Polisario Front backed Algeria reached a ceasefire. The two sides initially agreed that a referendum would determine the Western Sahara’s future, but that vote was never held because they could reach no consensus about who qualified to vote. Today, the so called « Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic » exists on paper only although thanks to Algerian largesse, which sees the Polisario as a useful wedge against rival Morocco and so bankrolls its diplomatic missions.
In reality, the Polisario controls little more than a series of small refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria’s Western-most province along the border of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. While the Polisario Front claims more than 100,000 Sahwari refugees live in the camps and some journalists and short-term visitors parrot that figure, diplomats with long experience in the camps and in the region, as well as former refugees, estimate that no more than 40,000 reside in the camps. Only half of these are actual refugees from the portion of the Western Sahara that Morocco controls; the remainder has roots in Algeria, Mauritania, or Mali. Indeed, there is a reason why Algeria refuses to allow an independent census.
List of the countries that still recognize SADR, dropping from 85 to 29 In 2014, Most of them has benefited from the cancellation of their debts to Algeria.
The danger is not that war is going to re-erupt between Algeria and Morocco, or that the Polisario will be able to renew its insurgency inside Morocco. Rather, the problem is smuggling. By inflating camp population and then pocketing the difference in aid allocations, the Polisario bolsters its militia and its leaders’ profits. Polisario smuggling is evident in markets around Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania, where merchants sell aid supplies delivered to Tindouf.
Siphoned aid is only the tip of the iceberg: Polisario smugglers also transport African migrants northward toward Europe, and jihadis and weaponry southward from Libya, through Algeria, and across the increasingly unstable Sahel. Counterterror analysts say that AQIM now recruits in Polisario camps.
The simple fact is that the camps need not exist. Many residents of the Tindouf camps seek to return to Morocco, which welcomes them with open arms. Whereas from the 1970s through the 1990s, Morocco kept the Western Sahara as a poor backwater, the strategy of Mohammed IV of Morocco, who assumed the throne in 1999, has been to focus on economic development in the Western Sahara, and he has put the Kingdom’s money to work to show that his rhetoric is not empty. Standards of living are higher in the Western Sahara now than they are in the rest of Morocco, and rather than simply exploit the region’s mineral wealth or its fisheries, the government now focuses on sustainable development, the tourism sector, other businesses, and education. More importantly, at U.S. insistence, the Moroccan government has agreed to grant the Western Sahara now it’s time to move the negotiations on this formula. Not only does such a solution make historical sense – most recent Moroccan dynasties have roots in what is now the Western Sahara – but the Moroccans have followed through. Former Polisario members and refugees occupy the highest positions and set policy. Many returnees, meanwhile, suggest that thousands more would follow if the Polisario allowed them to leave. Far from being refugees, the autocratic Polisario now treats Sahrawi camp residents not as constituents but as hostages.
Diplomats naturally seek compromise, but win-win situations only work when both sides sincerely seek a settlement. Alas, Algeria and its Polisario proxies do not. The Algerian government opposes autonomy in the Western Sahara, likely because it fears a precedent which could unravel Algerian control over its own restive Berber provinces. It effectively views the Polisario in the same way that Iran does Hezbollah: as a useful proxy to wield against enemies.
But with AQIM wreaking havoc in the region, and smuggling pouring fuel on the fire, the United States and its European and African allies should no longer sit idle and let the problem fester. Morocco, the first country to extend the United States diplomatic recognition in 1777, has been a steadfast ally to the United States ever since; Washington should repay the favor. It should side unequivocally with Rabat; make aid to the Tindouf camps contingent on an independent census; and demand that Algeria allow Tindouf residents to travel with their families freely, by bus, to Morocco. No longer should the Polisario be allowed to keep family members hostage to encourage the return of the few camp residents who can get seats on U.N.-sponsored flights.
As the United States should have learned from Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Timor Leste, and Syria, state failure is hard to reverse. The key is to prevent collapse in the first place. As the only stable state in the region, it behooves the United States to support Morocco and work through it to rebuild the economies of the region, and train forces to restore stability to countries like Mali, the Central African Republic, Tunisia, and Libya. It should formally recognize Moroccan suzerainty over the Western Sahara, dismiss Algerian claims, allow the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), a decades-long failure, to expire and let the Polisario fade into the dustbin of history, a Cold War relic like the Baader-Meinhof gang, Shining Path or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).
By doing so, the United States can not only do what is right, but it can also reduce opportunities for al Qaeda to arm and thrive, support an ally, resolve uncertainty that undercuts regional investment, bolster its own national security, and achieve a clear foreign policy success with bipartisan and State Department support.
Sahara Watch Organisation
Congressmen, Experts Urge Negotiated Solution to Western Sahara Conflict in Capitol Hill Hearing on US-Morocco Relations
WASHINGTON, DC–(Marketwired – April 21, 2016) – In a hearing on US-Morocco relations held Wednesday in Rayburn House Office Building, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle praised Morocco as a « stable and stalwart US ally in a complicated part of the world, » and called for a negotiated solution to the forty-year-old Western Sahara conflict based on a formula of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
« The US and Morocco have had a long and strategic relationships for so very long, » said Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in opening statements at the event, which was co-sponsored by Subcommittee Ranking Member Ted Deutch (D-FL). « Morocco has been one of the few bright spots… of stability, of reform, of progress in North Africa, and we want to see that continue. »
Referring to the imminent renewal of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in the Sahara known as MINURSO, the Chairman noted, « That’s why it is so vital that the United States reaffirm our position in support of Morocco and work with our ally to draft a clean resolution that will bring this crisis to a close. » The crisis she was referring to dates back to last month when, as she explained at the hearing, « [United Nations] Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made some outrageous comments misrepresenting Morocco’s administration of the Western Sahara. The Secretary General’s indiscrete comments called into question the neutrality of the United Nations and its ability to facilitate what we want — a negotiated solution. »
Other members of Congress in attendance included Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), and Congressman Albio Sires (D-NJ). A panel of experts provided testimony in support of Moroccan sovereignty over the region.
« Polisario intransigence, coupled with historical North African rivalry embedded in Algeria’s view of the Western Sahara, represent the two defining impediments to a solution, » said former US Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, reflecting on his experience in Rabat under the first Clinton Administration. Remarking on the UN Secretary General’s recent comments on the issue, Ambassador Ginsberg expressed his « deep disappointment with the unwarranted and unhelpful interference by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, » adding that Ban « has singularly undermined the critical role which the United Nations has heretofore played to preserve the peace. »
« [Autonomy] under Moroccan sovereignty constitutes a just and viable solution, particularly at a time where the expansion of ISIS and Al Qaeda in North Africa should render independence the least justifiable option for American security, » he went on.
Echoing the sentiment, former US Ambassador to Morocco Michael Ussery said, « For the US, the clear option going forward is one of common sense, supporting Morocco, our long-standing friend and an ally in the war on terror, and a nation of religious tolerance. » He warned that an independent Western Sahara « is a path that can lead to more regional instability and terrorism and possibly the next Libya. »
« I think it is important that we speak plainly and with common sense about the best outcome for the people and territory of Western Sahara and, frankly, what is in the national security interest of the United States, » said former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Staff Director Lester Munson. « This outcome — genuine local autonomy [under Moroccan sovereignty] for the people of Western Sahara — is a reasonable compromise that accounts for most of the interests of all parties. »
Speaking to the welfare of the people of the region, Nizar Baraka, President of Morocco’s Economic, Social, and Environmental Council, explained how Morocco is doing everything it can to improve life for those living in the Western Sahara, namely through the country’s regionalization plan, which « consists of a large transfer of authority to directly elected regional councils, » as well as a number of infrastructure and economic development initiatives. « Through their elected representatives, the populations of the Moroccan Sahara choose to take full and entire responsibility in building a better future for their children without being hostage of the long-lasting UN process. »
US policy on the Western Sahara dates back to 1999 and has continued under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations. In a Joint Statement issued on November 22, 2013 following a meeting between President Obama and King Mohammed VI, the US reiterated that Morocco’s autonomy plan is « serious, realistic, and credible. » The two leaders also affirmed « their shared commitment to the improvement of the lives of the people of the Western Sahara. »
The policy — and support for Morocco’s autonomy plan — has also been reiterated by bipartisan majorities of both the US House and Senate. In April 2009, 233 members of the United States House of Representatives sent a letter to President Obama reaffirming their support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal. The letter built on another letter from 2007 signed by 173 Members of the House reiterating Congressional support for the Moroccan plan, and a letter from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other former policy makers. In March 2010, 54 members of the United States Senate affirmed their support for Morocco’s autonomy plan in a letter addressed to then‐Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her to « make the resolution of the Western Sahara stalemate a U.S. foreign policy priority for North Africa. » In its legislative report for the 2016 Appropriations Bill passed in December 2015, Congress re-affirmed its strong bipartisan support for a negotiated solution to the dispute over the region based on autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, and encouraged American private sector investment in Western Sahara.
The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about political and social developments in Morocco and the role being played by the Kingdom of Morocco in broader strategic developments in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
This material is distributed by the Moroccan American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
Sahara Watch Organisation
Talking Policy : Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Parliament discusses Western Sahara
During a visit to a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria last month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the word “occupation” in reference to Morocco’s annexation of the disputed territory of Western Sahara in 1975. His comments drew hundreds of thousands of Moroccans into the streets to protest in Rabat. Wedged between Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania on North Africa’s Atlantic coast, the Western Sahara is a sparsely inhabited but resource-rich region. The Moroccan government considers the territory—which it often refers to as the Southern Provinces—to be an inseparable part of the Moroccan state. Meanwhile, the Polisario Front, an armed group supporting independence for the territory’s indigenous Sahrawi people, considers the region to be an independent entity, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
After 16 years of fighting between Moroccan forces and the Polisario Front, the U.N. brokered a cease-fire in 1991. The dispute over the political status of the region, however, remains. Neither the Kingdom of Morocco nor the Polisario Front has conceded to the other’s demands, leaving the conflict in a deadlock. Human rights organizations have criticized Morocco’s policies in the region, and tens of thousands of Sahrawis currently live in camps in Algeria. World Policy Journal spoke with Mehdi Bensaid, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Moroccan Parliament, about the Moroccan response to Ban Ki-moon’s comments and Morocco’s relationships with its neighbors in the Maghreb region.
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL: Tell us about the reaction in Morocco to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments about Western Sahara, in which he referred to the conditions in the region as an “occupation.”
MEHDI BENSAID: The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, by describing the presence of Morocco in Moroccan Sahara, discredited himself as a “neutral” arbitrator in the conflict. None of his predecessors ever used this dangerous vocabulary to describe the situation in Moroccan Sahara. That’s why such statements outraged the Moroccan people, especially coming from a person occupying such a high function.
Morocco is a member of the United Nations and respects the U.N. The situation right now is that the U.N. doesn’t respect its role, because the role of the secretary-general needs to be that of a mediator. When the secretary-general gives his personal view—a political view—he neglects his role. So that’s why we have a problem with [Ban Ki-moon’s statements]. The whole body, including the secretary-general, needs to be neutral. He can’t support one country against another country.
Morocco had demonstrated a willingness to resolve the conflict by presenting the autonomy plan to the U.N. Security Council years ago, and clarified that this was a final proposal. Therefore, the secretary-general’s position will change the relationship between the states and the U.N.; by taking a position in a regional conflict, the secretary-general transforms his position from a « world referee » to a politician defending a program and a position. This will change even the election of the secretary-general by making countries’ interests central for the vote.
WPJ: Do you think Ban Ki-moon’s comments compromise the U.N.’s role as an arbiter in this conflict?
MB: The role of the secretary-general in the past was to give a chance for peace and for a common view between two peoples. When the secretary-general goes to Algeria and meets members of the Polisario and uses that word, it’s not a diplomatic word—it’s a political word. That’s why we don’t agree with him. He needs to be fair; he needs to be neutral. Morocco is a member of the United Nations and Morocco is staying in the United Nations and working inside the United Nations, but we have to guarantee the neutrality of the U.N. secretary-general first. We want the secretary-general to be secretary-general for all the countries in the world, not just for certain countries.
WPJ: The U.N.’s goal since 1991 has been to facilitate talks between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front regarding the political status of the Western Sahara region. The negotiations have not made significant progress since that time—do you see any path to an agreement between the two parties?
MB: The path is clear and Morocco has drawn it: The Autonomy Plan of the Sahara under Moroccan Sovereignty. This initiative in Moroccan Sahara comes in response to the Moroccan desire to find an acceptable solution to this conflict inherited from the Cold War. It is the product of a long consultation process that included all sectors of Sahrawi Population.
The plan provides a solution that includes the elections of a local legislature, which then elects a local executive authority, under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco.
The local government would have an exclusive authority in number of issues (local administration, local police, education, local development, tourism, investment, etc.), shared authority with the central government in other issues, and a consultation prerogative in the local specificities for issues involving the central government.
Unfortunately, since this initiative, welcomed by several countries in the world, including the U.S., Algeria, and the Polisario Front oppose a status quo and refuse to move negotiations forward to serve the interests of the Sahrawi population detained in the Algerian territory. Instead, they ask for a self-determination referendum, which, by the admission of many nations, is impracticable given the reality on the ground.
WPJ: What role is Algeria is playing in the conflict in Western Sahara, and what is the nature of Morocco’s relationship with Algeria?
MB: It’s very simple. All the world says the problem is with Morocco and the Sahrawi. In fact, the problem is not between Morocco and the Sahrawi, the problem is between Morocco and Algeria. Algeria is a party to the conflict; they not only house the Sahrawi in their territory, but also fund their jailers and offer them coverage, maintaining the conflict.
In Morocco, the people and the government both hope to normalize relationship between our two countries, as we consider that we are one. In this framework, King Mohammed VI invited the Algerian government, in several discourses, to open the borders and begin a new page in our bilateral relations.
I think that the problem between Algeria and Morocco is a generational conflict. During the Cold War, and Morocco supported the U.S and its allies, and Algeria supported the communists. Now, after the end of the Cold War, Algeria hasn’t changed leadership. It is the same as it was in the 1960s. In Morocco, we have a new king, a new political party—a new generation of politicians.
Moroccan decision-makers are a new generation that has not known the War of Sands between the two countries, while Algerian decision-makers are still from the “first generation” that fought the Liberation War against France.
We make a difference between the people in Algeria; these people have the same problems as our people, the same economic and social problems. It’s the same people. But the government of Algeria is different. Why? Because we think in Morocco that Algeria wants to be a leader in the region–the Maghreb region, the North Africa region. We think they don’t need to be a leader in the region now. We should have a strong regional union, like what happened in Europe and in other parts of the world. We need to create this union of the Maghreb—work with Algeria, with Tunisia, with Libya, with Mauritania. So if we realize this union, we think we can help the progress in Libya and other developments in the region. A strong region can help with security, etc.
The problem now is some countries in this region think they can be sole leaders of the region. This ideology is strong and it’s not the right ideology for our time. We need to build a strong region between us, because the world has changed. Our people in the Maghreb now are dealing with Algerian people, with Mauritanian people. We have a community of Jews, Moroccan Jews, like in Algeria, Libya, and outside of the region. So we need to build together a different region for the future, and forget the past. I’m sure that if you ask the government of Algeria, they want the same thing. They don’t think about Sahara, they think about the economy and other matters. That’s why we need to learn to forget the past and forget the Cold War. We need to spend most of our time thinking about the future.
WPJ: Do you think that, in order to improve relations and create a union in the region, a younger generation will need to come to power in Algeria? Or will it be possible to improve these ties with the current generation of leaders?
MB: We need to open the borders between Morocco and Algeria. We need to try to grow this union, this coalition with Libya, Mauritania, and Tunisia. Tunisia is developing, but we need to help Mauritania and we need to help Libya with its security—that’s our responsibility. But now because the border is closed, because Algeria closed the border, because we don’t have this union, because Algeria still uses its weight against Morocco, the loser is our people—the Moroccan people, the Algerian people, and the Libyan people. All of this region loses because of this problem. That’s why as Morocco, as the new generation, we try to talk with—if they exist—the new generation in Algeria to say we need to have a new idea for this region.
WPJ: One initiative you are pursuing as head of the Foreign Affairs Committee is improving Morocco’s relationships with Anglophone countries in Africa. Why is this policy so important, and what are you doing to achieve it?
MB: Africa had suffered from colonization, and within the colonization period, was linguistically divided by colonial powers. Following independence, the countries speaking the same languages have maintained very strong relationships. My action is not only directed to English-speaking countries in Africa, but also to all African countries including those who do not speak French, such as countries where Portuguese or Spanish are spoken. This is due to my belief that only a strong Africa can make a difference, and that Africa must trust in Africa, as His Majesty the King Mohammed VI said in his Abidjan discourse.
WPJ: South Africa and Nigeria are both major players on the African continent, and both recognize the independence of Western Sahara. How does this issue factor into Morocco’s relations with these two countries?
A lot of African countries recognize the self-proclaimed entity, including Nigeria and South Africa. I think that the main reason is that they simply ignore Moroccan arguments, since Morocco left the African Union in 1984, and also because there is the Cold War heritage that remains strong in Africa.
We are sure of the justice of our national cause, as well as of the importance of unifying African efforts to solve all the conflicts and problems all over the continent, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, so Morocco works to build a strong relationship with all the African countries.
WPJ: The issue of the Western Sahara has created tensions in Morocco’s relationships with some African and European countries that recognize the Western Sahara as an independent entity. How does Morocco navigate relationships with these countries when the issue of Western Sahara becomes a point of contention? How does Morocco go about trying to work with these countries on other issues?
MB: The Moroccan arguments are not well known by many foreign countries. Moreover, Morocco is the victim of a “David and Goliath” view. Another challenge is the legacy of the Cold War because some countries supported communism and some countries supported the free world. Of the countries that supported the free world, all these countries recognize the South as Moroccan. And the others recognize the freedom of the SADR. We try to create a channel of communication to explain our position in the region to Nigeria and other countries in Africa. It’s difficult, mostly because of the language difference and the cultural difference, but we try to understand and we try to have an exchange. We invite them to visit and when they see that life is normal, we can change their view. We need to pull Africa together and forget our problems.
Right now we have a program of action in my commission, the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Affairs, National Defense, and Moroccan Diaspora, and we try to understand all viewpoints. We tried to play the role of diplomats and understand the Moroccan view, the South African view, the Mauritanian view, the Rwandan view, and after that some people changed their view of the problem. Like in the conflict in Kashmir between Pakistan and India, it’s a serious problem, but I try to be neutral because it’s a complicated problem. So now it’s time to ask—and this is the role of my commission—to talk with the deputies from each country in Africa. Of course we have the reality of people who want independence, but the majority of people in the Southern Provinces are Moroccan. That’s why we invite people to come here and talk with them, not just read some articles and understand only the Algerian opinion. They need to come and see what is happening in this region.
Western Sahara : A helpful tutorial
Through my discussion with some of the petitioners who came to speak in defense of the Polisario, I realized how lacking these people’s knowledge about the Sahara issue is. The first argument that these people put forth is that Moroccans are “occupying” the Sahara and that Morocco has sought to “annex” the territory. The same phrase also always appears in all the news stories on the Sahara issue.
Yet when you ask these people to go more in depth into the history of the territory, they seem uninformed about the broader historical context of the Sahara. They often give inconsistent or inaccurate answers. This shows that these advocates for the right of people to “self-determination” are defending a “cause” whose historical background they ignore.
According to the dictionary, “annexation means the formal act of acquiring something (especially territory) by conquest or occupation”. If we stick to this definition, the statements made by Polisario advocates imply that Morocco has tried to take over and occupy the Sahara. But can we conceive of a country annexing a territory that was part of it for centuries?
These proponents of the Polisario seem mostly unaware of the historical ties that existed between the Saharawi population and Moroccan Sultans. They also seem to be unaware of the recent history of the Sahara, especially concerning the status of the territory during the early years of the decolonization process at the United Nations, when this disputed territory was regarded by the UN’s Fourth Committee as part of the territories that Spain had to return to Morocco.
Does this definition of annexation apply to the case of the Sahara? Did Morocco annex the Sahara? Had there been a country called the Sahara before 1975 or before 1884, a year when Spain started taking control of the Sahara? Had a movement called the Polisario been waging a liberation war against Spain since 1884? Was the Polisario the first entity to call on Spain to end its presence in the Sahara and negotiate with Madrid the terms of its withdrawal?
Since Spain took over the Sahara in 1884, Morocco had always fought for the reintegration of the territory to Moroccan sovereignty. Although Spain began its occupation of the Sahara in 1884, because of the resistance it encountered, no Spanish leader visited the territory until Franco paid an official visit to the territory in 1950. Throughout this period, Moroccans never gave up their desire to expel the Spaniards from the Sahara.
Morocco as the only interested party in the question of the Sahara
After the independence of Morocco in 1956 and until 1975, Rabat laid claim to its sovereignty over the Sahara. Throughout this period, it brought forward the issue at the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.
At the height of the decolonization period, in 1957 Morocco first raised at the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations- which was set-up to promote the self-determination of colonized peoples after World War II- the question of Spain’s occupation of Morocco’s southern provinces, including Sidi Ifni and the Sahara.
On December 14, 1960, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 1514 on the non-self-governing territories, which called on Spain to take the steps necessary to end its presence in the south of Morocco.
In 1961, Morocco took advantage of the admission of Mauritania as a full-fledged member of the United Nations, to further raise the question of the occupation of the southern territory by Spain.
During this period when the General Assembly was urging Spain to abide by the provisions of Resolution 1514 and end its presence in southern Morocco, in no moment was the solution envisaged by the UN body to dissociate the question of the Sahara from the question of Sidi Ifni or to hold a referendum of self-determination to determine the fate of the territory.
Accordingly, up until June 1966, all the resolutions related to the territorial dispute between Morocco and Spain included Sidi Ifni and the Sahara in the same package.
In that year, however, an uncalculated step by Moroccan diplomacy would cause the United Nations to conceive of a solution for the Sahara issue only from the perspective of holding a referendum for self-determination. It was a mistake for which Morocco would pay dearly in the decades to come.
The blunder to dissociate the Sahara from Sidi Ifni
While Morocco was struggling to recover its sovereignty over the Sahara and Sidi Ifni, it was also laying claim to the enclaves of Sebta and Melillia, in northern Morocco, which to this day are still under Spanish sovereignty.
In the face of the dilatory posture of Spanish authorities and their reluctance to address these issues at the same time, coupled by Morocco’s relative weakness having only recently achieved independence, the authorities of the later decided to acquiesce to Spanish demands to dissociate the two southern territories, namely Sidi Ifni and the Sahara.
As a result, and since the territory of Sidi Ifni had no strategic importance in the eyes of Spanish leaders, Morocco and Spain reached an agreement on 4 January 1969, known as the Fez Agreement. In accordance with this agreement, Spain returned Sidi Ifni to Morocco’s sovereignty.
Beginning in June 1966, the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a series of resolutions that urged Spain to take the necessary steps in order to hold a referendum of self-determination in the Sahara. In principle, this popular consultation was supposed to take place by the end of 1967. The first resolution adopted, in this regard, was resolution 2229 (XX) of 20 December 1966, followed, by resolutions 2354 (XXII) of 10 December 1967, 2428 (XXIII) of 18 December 1968, 2621 (XXV) of 14 October 1970 and resolution 2711 (XXV) of 14 December 1970.
In spite of these resolutions, Spanish leaders did not show any interest in being responsive to the calls addressed to them by the General assembly. Rather, Spain sought to keep the territory under its sovereignty or, in case it could not achieve this objective, to create a satellite entity under its influence.
One of the first measures Madrid adopted to reach that goal was the creation of an assembly (Djemaa), supposedly representative of the population living in the territory. The members of this assembly were chosen depending on the degree of their allegiance to Spain. Immediately after the creation of this “representative” body, some of its members rushed to express their attachment to the presence of Spain in the Sahara. As American Scholar Paul Rockower put it “the creation of the Djemaa was an attempt by Spain to silence its critics and give the appearance that the Sahara was progressing towards self-rule.”
Morocco’s short-lived alliance with Algeria and Mauritania
Following this “foot-dragging” shown by Spain, Morocco attempted to iron-out its territorial differences with Mauritania and Algeria with the view to develop a common front with the two countries that could put more pressure on Spain to organize a referendum of self-determination in the Sahara.
The first step made towards the normalization of relations between Morocco and its two North African neighbors was the holding of a tripartite meeting on the margins of the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now known as Organization of Islamic Cooperation) in Rabat in September 1969.
In exchange of the recognition by Morocco of the independence of Mauritania and of giving up on its territorial claims over Tindouf in Algeria, the two states pledged to lend their support to Morocco in its endeavors aimed at pushing Spain to decolonize the Sahara and abide by the relevant United Nations resolutions.
This tripartite meeting was followed by two Maghrebian summits, the first of which was held in Nouakchott in October 1970 and the second one being held in Algiers in April 1972. In these two summits, the leaders of the three countries pledged to unite and intensify their efforts to put an end to Spain’s presence in the Sahara and thwart its maneuvers geared towards preventing its return to Morocco’s sovereignty.
Yet to Morocco’s dismay the alliance was short-lived. It couldn’t hold up against the aggressive diplomatic campaign carried out by Spain in order to prevent Morocco from gaining the support of its immediate neighbors. The alliance could also not stand the double game policy followed by Algeria, whose leaders had no interest in seeing Morocco recover its sovereignty over the Sahara. These leaders were intent on making Rabat pay for its “irredentism” over Tindouf and other parts of Western Algeria, (considered as part of Morocco’s historic frontiers), as well as for the “Sand War”, that had pitted Morocco against Algeria in 1963.
Since the independence of Morocco in 1956 and the independence of Algeria in 1962, there existed fundamental differences between the two countries over their frontiers inherited from European colonialism. As Algeria came out of French colonialism with a vast territory- a sizable part of which was taken from Morocco starting in 1844 when France defeated the Kingdom at the Battle of Lala Maghnia- it adhered to the principle of the inviolability of frontiers inherited from colonialism. Morocco, for its part, as it was separated from a vast part of its historical territory, considered this principle as detrimental to its territorial integrity and its claims over many parts that it believed should return to Moroccan sovereignty, among which was the Sahara.
The reason behind Algeria’s later alliance with Spain and its support to the Polisario was not only to retaliate against Morocco for the “Sand War” or to impose itself as regional power in the Maghreb, but also to prevent setting a precedent with the Sahara, a possibility that entailed the risk of seeing Rabat turning to and reviving its “irredentism” against Algeria proper.
Spain’s maneuvering to delay the settlement of the Sahara
In fact, taking advantage of the strained relations between Morocco and its two North African neighbors, Spain rushed to thwart Morocco’s efforts to present a common front with Algeria and Mauritania.
Immediately after the Algiers tripartite summit, Spain’s Foreign Minister, Lopez Bravo, paid back-to-back visits to Mauritania and Algeria with the unstated goal of convincing both countries’ leaders of withdrawing their support to Morocco.
His visits were crowned by the signature of two economic agreements with the two countries. In accordance with an agreement with Mauritania, Spain pledged to provide economic aid to the latter and establish joint fishing ventures. With Algeria, Madrid signed an energy accord in virtue of which Spain would buy $500 million worth of Algeria’s natural gas.
Algeria’s stakes in the Sahara stemmed from the fact that it viewed the creation of a satellite State in the Sahara as enabling it unfettered access to the Atlantic for the exportation of iron located in the deposits of Garet-J’bilet near Tindouf. Algerian leaders did not want to depend on the good will of Morocco, despite the latter’s proposal to allow Algeria to have unimpeded access to the Atlantic.
Spain, for its part, was still intent on keeping the Sahara under its influence because of the natural resources of the territory, especially after the discovery of phosphates in the beginning of the 1960’s, as well as for the richness of its fishing grounds. Hence an alliance was formed between Algeria and Spain to thwart Morocco’s endeavors to push for a settlement to the Sahara issue in line with its historical rights over the territory and its strategic interests.
Spain’s strategy to cling to its presence in the Sahara became clearer in 1974 after Rabat learned of Madrid’s intention to grant autonomy to this territory and organize a pseudo-referendum, in total disregard of all relevant United Nations resolutions that were calling on it to decolonize the Sahara and allow its people to express their self-determination.
Furthermore, the Spanish government proceeded to create a fictitious nationalism in the Sahara, whose representatives stated that they did not represent Morocco, or any other country.
At the behest of Madrid, many delegations from the Sahara went to New York to attend the deliberations of the United Nations Special Decolonization Committee, in which they stated their attachment to Spain’s presence. These were the first steps taken by Spain towards creating an artificial movement, which would allow it to preserve its interests in the territory. This was also the first step towards the creation of the Polisario in 1973, which would count on the generous financial and political support of Algeria and Libya and eventually widespread sympathy from Spanish public opinion.
Hassan II decides to adopt a new strategy
In face of these Spanish attempts to cling to one of its last colonies, Morocco decided that the time had come to adopt a new and more aggressive strategy to put Madrid under pressure. Morocco’s late King, Hassan II, decided to engage in arm wrestling with Spain. After securing the support of Morocco’s main Western allies, France and the United States, in the event of the breakout of a diplomatic crisis with Spain, Hassan II decided to launch the Green March.
Throughout this chronology, the international community had never heard of the Polisario until 1973. It was not until that year that the Polisario started claiming to be the representative of the Sahrawi people and demanding their independence.
After the withdrawal of Spain from the territory and subsequent signature of the Madrid Accord of November 14, 1975, Morocco and the Polisario waged a war over the sovereignty over the Sahara. Confrontations between the two sides lasted until 1991 when the United Nations brokered a ceasefire that took effect in September that year.
Polisario: an artificial entity created by Morocco’s rivals
The arguments put forth by people who support the Polisario and express their leaning towards allowing people under occupation to exercise the right of self determination, suffer from several shortcomings.
First of all, they overlook the fact that the Polisario is a pure creation of Algeria, that without Algeria’s generous financial, political and diplomatic support, it wouldn’t have come into being in the first place. The creation of Polisario came also in the context of the Cold War, at a time when Morocco and Algeria were pitted against each other not only for territorial reasons, but also for ideological reasons.
It is the ideological opposition between Morocco and Algeria that prompted other “democratic” and “progressive” countries to provide their support to the Polisario. An example, in this regard, is that of the late Muammar Gaddafi. In fact, the reason behind the latter’s support to this movement wasn’t because he believed in the righteousness of its “cause”. The rationale behind it was merely the hatred he held against monarchies, especially Morocco’s late King Hassan II.
Secondly, to say that a country is under occupation implies the existence of that country before it was occupied by any foreign country. Yet the Polisario had never existed before its creation by Algeria and Gaddafi’s Libya in 1973. Before that period, and since 1957, the only country that laid claim to this territory was Morocco.
Thirdly, the political fuss that has surrounded the question since the beginning of the 1960’s and the vested interests of many players in the Sahara would not have happened if those players did not know about the potential richness of the territory. Yet, during the heyday of the colonial era and when no one had ever learned of a liberation movement in the Sahara called the Polisario, Moroccans were engaged in an unrelenting war of liberation against Spain.
Since 1884, up until the beginning of 1960’s, Moroccans were not fighting against Spain because they were aware of the potential richness of the territory; they were determined to dislodge Spain from the Sahara, because they were convinced that this territory was part of Morocco. It is only because of the potential of the territory that Spain, in a preemptive attempt to thwart Morocco’s efforts to recover the Sahara, decided by the decree of 21 April 1961 and of 29 November 1962 to separate the Sahara from Sidi Ifni and make the former a Spanish province, equal in status to other metropolitan provinces.
In addition, in no history books has there been a country called the Sahara or such thing as Saharawi people. What existed was a nomadic population that was living in the Sahara, which had allegiance to Morocco. This fact was confirmed by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, according to which the Sahara was not a no man’s land but there existed links of allegiance between the Saharawi populations and Morocco’s Sultans (Kings). Even the term Saharawi did not exist until the 1960s.
If there has been a distinct Saharawi people and a country in the Sahara, one wonders where they were when Morocco was putting pressure on Spain in to order to push it to decolonize this territory. One wonders also, where were the “leaders” of the Polisario when Morocco was negotiating with Spain the terms of its withdrawal from the Sahara. Were the leaders of the Polisario fighting against the Spanish presence in the Sahara since 1884? Was the population of the Sahara fighting against Spain under the banner of the Polisario?
Those who nowadays support the Polisario also overlook the fact that it was Morocco’s unfortunate decision to dissociate the Sahara from Sidi Ifni and accept the principle of holding a referendum of self-determination that pushed the United Nations General Assembly to envisage a separate settlement for both territories.
As shown in Part II of this series, until 1966, all relevant United Nations resolutions regarding the territorial dispute between Morocco and Spain included the Sahara and Sid Ifni in one package.
Furthermore, during the same period, there were no other interested parties in the territorial dispute over the Sahara besides Morocco and Spain. It is only after Morocco was lured by Spain into accepting the dissociation of both territories that the United Nations doctrine regarding the settlement of the Sahara changed and a solution based on the principle of self-determination was chosen. The phrase “interested parties” appeared for the first time in the United Nations Special Decolonization Committee’s resolution A/6300 of 16 November 1966.
By the same token, it was the initial diplomatic blunder made by Morocco’s diplomacy to dissociate Sidi Ifni from the Sahara and accept the principle of self-determination that provided for the inclusion of other interested parties in the settlement of the conflict. It enabled Spain to have more room for maneuver, buy time, play on the differences between the three Maghrebin States and thwart Morocco’s attempts to recover its sovereignty over the territory. This inclusion was all the more profitable to Spain, especially since Morocco had strained relations with both Algeria and Mauritania. Spain knew how to use this situation to its advantage and put Morocco in an uncomfortable situation of isolation.
On the other hand, the recognition that Polisario obtained since the termination of Spain’s presence in the Sahara has more to do with the lack of vision, clear-sightedness and communication strategy of Moroccan diplomacy for the most part of the past three decades, than with the legitimacy of the claims of the Polisario.
It has also more to do with the unlimited financial and political support that Algeria and Gaddafi provided to the Polisario since its inception, in addition to the sympathy that this separatist movement enjoys in Spain.
In addition, Morocco’s unfortunate decision in 1984 to withdraw from the Organization of the African Unity (present day African Union) after the Polisario was accepted as a full-fledged member of the pan-African body has weakened the Kingdom’s ability to gain support for its case. This decision allowed Algeria to have free rein to lobby for the positions of the Polisario, which resulted in many African countries sympathizing with this movement.
On the other hand, besides the historical aversion of a large part of Spanish society to Morocco, the support lent by Spanish public opinion is motivated by resentment held by the latter against the former. Part of this hostility comes from Moroccan leaders who took advantage of the uncertainty hovering over the future of Spain at a time when Franco was dying and who proceeded to reinstate Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara. In fact, most Spaniards regard the Green March as an act of treason perpetrated by Moroccan against Spain.
In his landmark book entitled Moroccan Saharan Frontiers, published in 1967, Frank E. Trout showed clearly that both in the 1902 Accord between France and Spain and the 1904 Accord between France and the UK over the sharing of zones of influence in Morocco and North Africa, the three colonial powers recognized that the Sahara (the territory located between Oued Daraa and Cape Bojador) was Moroccan and could become a zone of influence of Spain.
These historical facts stand in stark contrast with the allegations of all those who state that Morocco has “annexed” the Sahara and that the Saharawis are living under “occupation”. If there was an annexation of the Sahara, this took place in 1884 when Spain moved to occupy this territory. What Morocco did in 1975 was recover a part of its territory that was snatched away from it by Spanish colonialism.
Following the dissociation of the question of the Spanish controlled territories of the Sahara and Sidi Ifni in the late 1960s, the discourse over the contested region has largely overlooked this historical fact. Accusing Morocco of occupying or annexing the Sahara is all the more mistaken because there is tangible evidence that historical ties existed between the tribes of the region and the Moroccan Sultans for centuries even before the advent of the national state.
Even the much-politicized phrase “Western Sahara” had never been used before 1962. Since Spain started colonizing the Sahara in 1884, this territory was referred to in international literature as the “Spanish Protectorate of the African Coast” of Rio de Oro. And the process of the drawing of Spanish-controlled Sahara was not achieved until the signing of the Franco-Spanish Convention of 1912, which was signed after the Treaty of March 1912, the consequence of which also made Morocco a French Protectorate.
By virtue of the French-Spanish Convention, signed in Paris, the northern and southern parts of the Kingdom, including the Saharan territories were delegated to Spain. In 1946, Spain detached Sidi Ifni and the Sahara from the other parts of its de facto protectorate in Morocco, and created a centralized administrative territory, known as Spanish West Africa.
In another attempt by Spain to preempt any Moroccan claim to the Saharan territory, Madrid promulgated a decree on 10 January 1958, which stipulated that the Sahara would be administered as a province equal in status to other parts of Spain proper. Morocco’s reaction to this decree was not late in coming. On 25 February 1958, the late King Mohamed V delivered a speech to the Saharawi population in the oasis of M’hamid el-Ghizlane in the Sahara and recalled the historical ties of allegiance between them and the monarchs of Morocco. He promised a total mobilization on the part of the Kingdom for the return of the Sahara to the country’s sovereignty.
Elaborating on the often-dismissed ties between Morocco and the Sahara, Abdeslam Maghraoui, a professor of comparative politics at Duke University, acknowledges that although the authority of Moroccan Sultans “did not extend evenly and consistently to all territories they considered to be under their sovereignty”, official representatives appointed through royal decrees operated throughout the distant Saharan territories within the framework of the sultan’s administrative apparatus. Maghraoui goes on to say that the recovering of the Sahara by Morocco is framed by the belief of Moroccans in their right to reconstitute “an empire that it had lost at the time of the Spanish colonization of its territory and thus vindicate its historic title to the territory”.
The protracted Sahara conflict has been forgotten in the context of the legacy of colonialism that divided up the historical Kingdom of Morocco in the late 19th century, and this history was lost in the geopolitical rivalries of the early 1970s.
The Moroccan people have been not only victims of Spanish and French colonialism, which were deleterious to their country, but they have been also victims of the international community’s decision to apply in the Sahara, since the emergence of the Polisario in the 1970s, a “one-size-fits-all” solution for European decolonization. This has meant establishing new states based on colonial borders. The policy was followed to facilitate the decolonization process, a legacy which is often blamed for interethnic conflicts plaguing the African continent up to nowadays.
In its report about the Sahara, the International Crisis Group recognizes “that self-determination is anything but a panacea for the resolution of conflicting sovereignty claims, as it offers a one-size-fits-all solution that may not be appropriate in the case of some present-day conflicts, including Western Sahara.” In Morocco’s case, this simplistic approach ignores the historical legitimacy and reasons for Morocco’s claims to the territory, and the colonial era in which Morocco was divided up between France, Spain and the the International zone in Tangiers.
The international Crisis Group goes on even further to say that the continuing focus of the United Nations to address the Sahara exclusively from a self-determination standpoint, is one of the main hindrances to the settlement of this conflict. “By continuing to define the issue as self-determination, the U.N. has encouraged the Polisario Front and Algeria to continue to invest all their energy in seeking the realization of this principle and at the same time has pressured the Moroccan government to pay lip service to self-determination, when in reality Rabat has never sincerely subscribed to it. The U.N. thereby has inhibited the parties to the dispute from exploring the possibility of a resolution based on a different principle or set of principles”.
By persisting to define the dispute through the lens of self-determination, without considering that Saharawi nationalism was created by Spanish and Algerian leaders, and at the same time urging the parties to reach a consensual and mutually acceptable solution, the United Nations is following an unclear path that does not create the conditions conducive to putting an end to this issue. Self-determination and a consensual solution are like two parallels that will never meet. The United Nations needs to move away from its rigid approach regarding self-determination and take into account the facts on the ground. And the reality suggests that the current approach will not lead to an acceptable solution.
The past two decades have proven that an agreement between Morocco and the Polisario to hold a potential referendum is impossible in light of the diametrical opposition in the views of both parties on defining the electorate. This is what prompted the former United Nations Secretary General’s Personal Envoy to the Sahara, Peter Van Walsum to state in an interview with the Spanish daily el Pais in August 2008 that the option of an independent State in the Sahara is not an accessible objective.
Rather than helping to find a lasting solution to the Sahara conflict, the concept of self-determination as strictly interpreted by the Polisario and Algeria constitutes an obstacle to ridding the Maghreb region of one of the protracted inheritances of European colonialism in the Maghreb. Hence the need for the United Nations to find a new way forward through negotiations.
But for these negotiations to “offer any serious prospect of securing a sustainable agreement that might resolve the conflict … it is essential that negotiations not be prejudiced at the outset by the stipulation that their objective is to secure the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. Their objective should be to resolve the conflict between the parties through an agreement to which they all genuinely adhere, whatever principles that agreement may be based on.”
As a matter of fact, the proponents of the Polisario have been so vocal in not envisaging any option other than self-determination. As the International Crisis Group put it in its 2007 report about the Sahara, “the protracted attempt to resolve the Western Sahara question on the basis of the principle of self-determination has led most actors and observers alike to become fixated on this principle as if is the only one at issue.”
Through its fixation on the principle of self-determination, the international community at large overlooks the interests and principles that lie at the heart of the territorial dispute over the Sahara.
Finding a lasting and mutually acceptable solution is contingent on taking into account the historical rights and the strategic interests of the parties involved in the conflict, including Algeria. The first step in this direction is to understand the fact that Morocco has always had historical ties and claims over the Sahara and that this issue falls within the framework of its efforts to preserve its territorial integrity. On the other hand, the concerns of the Polisario and the Saharawi population to preserve their identity are also to be taken into account. The concerns of Algeria regarding the intangibility of frontiers inherited from the colonial era, needs also to be addressed.
The proposal made by Morocco in April 2007 for broad autonomy to the Sahara, which has been hailed by the international community as a “credible and serious offer”, does not only offer the preservation of the Sahrawi people’s interests but will also allow them to fully partake in the political and economic life of their region. However imperfect it may be now, this proposal should be used as a platform for negotiations with a view to reach a final and fair solution to the conflict.
On the other hand, as regards Algeria, Morocco has long dropped any intention to lay claim to parts of the Algerian territory, previously deemed part of Morocco before the colonial era. Morocco has also been keen on working together with Algeria towards laying the foundations of the Maghreb Arab Union.
The activation of the lethargic Arab Maghreb Union will not only result in broader economic and political cooperation between countries of the Maghreb, but also in creating equilibrium in the region. As demonstrated by the International Crisis Group, “these are all matters of genuine principle for the concerned parties. A negotiation which took them into account might possibly yield an agreement. And an agreement based on them would deserve the international community’s respect.”
Based on the forgoing, it seems clear that the only option to put an end to this protracted conflict is that the parties negotiate a mutually acceptable solution, away from any insistence that a referendum of self-determination is the only path towards attaining a possible settlement. Those who criticize Morocco for not accepting the option of a referendum overlook the fact that thousands of Moroccans of Saharawi descent who relocated to other parts of Morocco in the late 1950’s cannot take part in a possible referendum.
Many also forget the fact that these Moroccans left their homes as result of the scorched earth policy of Spain and France during peration “Ecouvillon”, conducted jointly in 1958 by these two former colonizers in order to quell the insurgency movement in the Sahara. This campaign led to a mass exodus of the Saharawi population, who relocated in other parts of Morocco. The number of people who fled ranged between 20,000 and 30,000. The Polisario and its supporters refuse adamantly that these people be counted in a possible referendum.
Since the referendum cannot be conducted owing to the diametrical differences between Morocco and the Polisario over who is eligible to vote in a popular consultation, the Polisario and its supporters have to come to terms with the idea that the referendum cannot be an option. Thus, the need to start in earnest a process of real and result-oriented negotiations with the goal of achieving a long lasting solution to the conflict, which should take into account both the historical rights of Morocco over the Sahara and the interest of the entire Saharawi population.
Sahara Watch Organisation
Just Say No to Another Failed State in Africa
It is never a good idea to make broad generalizations about Africa. For every long-term dictatorship, there is another nation that has embraced democracy. For every country that is struggling economically, such as Sierra Leone, ranked nearly last in the world in economic growth, there are two more African nations that are thriving, like Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire, each with growth rates over eight percent.
There is one generalization, however, that holds true much of the time: Creating new nations doesn’t solve problems so much as create new ones. The past quarter century has seen two new nations born in Africa — Eritrea and South Sudan. Neither has thrived. Since its founding in 1993, Eritrea has launched wars against all of its neighbors — including Yemen, which is separated from Eritrea by the Red Sea. Since its creation in 2011, South Sudan has headed straight into civil war and humanitarian catastrophe. (This is not to say that new sovereign nations shouldn’t be considered when they can bring stability out of chaos, as with the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, or the case of Somaliland).
So the somewhat-remote possibility of a new nation in the Sahara should be seen as a cause for concern. That possibility exists in Western Sahara, a little-known but large swath of land on the Atlantic side of the desert. Long part of Morocco, Western Sahara was reclaimed by Morocco in the 1970s as the Spanish ended their colonial rule there. Unfortunately, local rebels teamed up with Algeria, Cuba, and other Soviet-era comrades to launch a war against the Moroccans. In 1991, the sides reached a ceasefire, with Morocco controlling nearly all of its former territory.
The rebel forces, known as the Polisario, retreated to camps in the Algerian portion of the Sahara. The United Nations began to plan for a referendum on the future of Western Sahara, but after a decade of international efforts, no consensus emerged on who, exactly, would vote. At the urging of several nations, including the United States, Morocco has put forward a plan for an autonomous region in Western Sahara, but under the ultimate sovereignty of Morocco. The Polisario has refused to consider the plan, and has threatened a return to violence.
This issue received attention recently, when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki moon, during a trip in the region, made reference to Western Sahara being “occupied” by Moroccan forces. The remark prompted a massive demonstration in Morocco, with as many as three million people marching in the streets.
This minor controversy has provided an opportunity for the international community to take the sensible step of communicating to the Polisario and Algeria that independence for Western Sahara is not a viable option, and that it should accept Morocco’s offer of autonomy. This outcome — limited independence for the people of Western Sahara — is a reasonable compromise that accounts for most of the interests of all parties. To be blunt, an independent Western Sahara would be a disaster, much like Eritrea and South Sudan have become.
Looking east from Morocco, the map of the Horn of Africa is filled with turmoil, much of it caused by the two new nations, and some of it spilling over to the Arabian Peninsula, where the United States has vast strategic interests. Eritrea, which once supported Houthi rebels in Yemen, is now on the side of the coalition seeking to thwart them. In South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, one that would not exist but for American diplomacy, tens of thousands have been killed in a brutal civil war and two million people have been driven from their homes. It is Syria on the Nile — the world’s latest failed state.
There is no reason to visit this chaos on Morocco or the Sahara region. Morocco, which was the first nation to recognize the United States in 1777, is one of our oldest and closest friends. It was a staunch ally of the United States in the Cold War, and is now a key Arab nation in the fight against terror and radical extremism.
Both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush noted, regarding Western Sahara, that “[g]enuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty [is] the only feasible solution.” The Obama administration should use the current controversy to make this solution a reality.
By
Western Sahara : Artificial Conflict
Before the advent of colonization, Morocco was fully sovereign, independent, and united. The Sahara was under Moroccan sovereignty meaning that during that era there was no entity in the Sahara that was separate from Morocco.
There is not a single document or item in existence which disproves this historical reality. This fact is all the more evident when one considers that it was the populations of the Sahara who actually founded the Almoravid dynasty, the pre-cursor to the modern Moroccan state, back in antiquity.
Indeed, the existing documents prove that each time a foreign power attempted to penetrate the Sahara or when some national citizens of these powers were taken into captivity, it was the sultan of Morocco who actually settled the matter.
In the year 1884, the Berlin conference convened to lay some ground rules for the colonial partitioning of the African continent, Morocco was awarded to France and Spain. When the partition materialized during the signing of the Protectorate in 1912, Morocco lost its independence and sovereignty. This, of course, ushered in an era of total colonization.
When Morocco received its independence in 1956, the decolonization procedure with France and Spain took a different process.
From France, Morocco recovered all territories which were under the Protectorate in 1956. The process was different with Spain since the territories under its protectorate were scattered between the north, the center, and the south. Recovery was achieved gradually: the north in 1956, Tangier in April 1956, Tan Tan and Tarfaya in 1958, Sidi Ifni in 1969 and the Sahara in 1975. The latter was recovered after the Green March, which constituted a symbiosis between the Alaouite throne, the Sahrawi populations, and all Moroccan people.
The Sahara issue favors the Algeria-backed Polisario separatists over Morocco as the overall sovereigns. The dispute broke out in 1976 when the Polisario separatists, which proclaimed the so-called Sahraoui republic on the Algerian territory, laid claims to this former Spanish colony, which Morocco had retrieved a year before under the Madrid Accord with Mauritania and Spain.
With Morocco having recovered is southern provinces, the Polisario found nothing better to do than to park the Sahrawi population in camps set up on Algerian territory, called refugee camps or sometimes referred to under fictitious names such and the camps of Laayoune, Smara, ’Aouserd, or Dakhla.
The existence of the Polisario is connected to the very existence of these camps. But this policy can lead nowhere other than to simply drift away. The very existence of these camps on a hostile territory and in subhuman conditions over such a long period is a flagrant infringement of human rights.
The Polisario has constantly and deliberately violated the most elementary human rights for over 30 years. For more than 25 years it has held Moroccan prisoners separated from their families and relatives in conditions of unbearable suffering.
The Polisario is a political and military movement that has instituted a system similar to that which existed in ex-totalitarian countries with single party systems, sole institutions and structures, and sole bureaucracies with everything wrapped up in one-track thinking.
It began armed control over the population using food aid as a tool for permanent blackmail and control of people in the camps by strict physical, psychological and moral domination akin to political commissaries for each activity and service.
The front instituted methods of denunciation as a method of control and permanent enlistment, or more particularly, brainwashing of both the young and adults, as well as the falsification of history and the manipulation of events and as a general rule teaching hate.
The Polisario is the product of another era prior to the collapse of the totalitarian system when the world began to see change starting 1991. But it has remained apart from such changes: no free elections, no democracy, no plurality, no freedom of expression, no free opinions, and no civil society. It totally clamped down on everything and partitioned off structures to make them seemingly last forever. All the political or politico-military type movements similar to the Polisario have disappeared from the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Either they have changed names or disintegrated by themselves, or they have created new structures corresponding to the new globalized, free and democratic world.
The Polisario, which considers itself independent, a so-called Democratic Sahrawi Arab Republic (RASD), while referring to the land liberated by Morocco in the Western Sahara as occupied territories. The so-called RASD is in flagrant contradiction with the request by the Polisario for a referendum on self-determination.
Today, history offers a golden opportunity for the Polisario to accept the only solution possible, indeed the best one; political autonomy under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco.
If it has the slightest bit of feeling or respect for the Sahraoui, it should readily seize this historic opportunity.
The Polisario has to get out of the trap it finds itself in and must not serve the interests of anyone else or be used as a thorn in the sides of the Kingdom of Morocco to obtain political hegemony.
Sahara Watch Organisation
Polisario : The puppet of the Algerian military
Why the Polisario takes hostage refugees?
Humanitarian assistance always sounds like a great idea. Against the backdrop of a tsunami or an earthquake, it can be the difference between life and death. When abused, however, it can often do more harm than good. Wherever one stands on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, grassroots Palestinians would be the first to acknowledge that a lack of accountability has enabled leading Palestinian officials to siphon off vast quantities of international assistance. In Afghanistan, too, humanitarian and development assistance have turned into tremendous scams transforming many enterprising Afghans into millionaires. Living in both Yemen many years ago and pre-war Iraq, I would often come across bags and boxes of American assistance, funded by the American taxpayer, for sale in local markets. Graft is unfortunate, and more competent officials would move to end it just for the sake of fiscal responsibility. When such corruption impacts U.S. national security, however, the urgency becomes greater.
In several recent posts, I have touched upon the Polisario Front, a Cold War remnant that claims to be fighting for independence in the Western Sahara, a Moroccan territory once colonized by the Spanish and French on Africa’s northwestern coast. In reality, what remains of the Polisario Front is no longer relevant, little more than a puppet of the Algerian military.
The problem is that the Polisario runs several refugee camps in the Tindouf province of western Algeria. It claims upwards of 120,000 Sahrawi refugees languish in the camps, unable to return to the Western Sahara so long as Morocco remains the predominant power in the territory. The reality is quite different: Morocco welcomes back Sahrawi refugees stuck in Algeria since the end of the two countries hot war in 1991. When Sahwari refugees do escape from the Polisario camps, they get housing, stipends, and with so much Moroccan investment in the Sahara, often far more lucrative jobs then they would have access to in Tangiers, Casablanca, Rabat, or other northern Moroccan cities.
The reason why the Polisario doesn’t let the refugees in whose name it claims to speak go home is that holding them hostage is quite lucrative. The United Nations and Eurepean Union provide humanitarian aid for those refugees, which the Polisario effectively administers, as they control the camps when the UN officials retreat to their headquarters. Herein lays the scam: While the Polisario claims its camps hold 120,000 refugees, most diplomats and independent observers place the figure at closer to 40,000. And many of these residents are not even refugees, as they originate in Algeria and Mauritania. Back-of-the-napkin calculation based on informal surveying of escapees from the Polisario camps: maybe only 20,000 technically qualify as refugees. Both Algeria and the Polisario know this, and so they refuse to allow the United Nations to conduct any census. Rather than stand up for accountability or suspend relief operations until the Algerians enable such a census, the United Nations simply accepts the fiction of the Polisario claims, and supplies relief for perhaps five times the number of refugees who actually live in the Polisario’s camps.
This is where corruption crosses the line into a threat to security: Across North Africa and the Sahel, Polisario smugglers are taking relief supplies given by the international community and indirectly subsidized by U.S. donations to the United Nations and selling them for profit. Many security analysts have already pointed out the growinginterplay between the Polisario Front and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which uses the Polisario camps for recruitment and may increasingly cooperate with the Islamist terrorist groups wreaking havoc across the Sahel. Like so many other regional countries, smuggling of international relief in response to the Polisario Front’s tenuous claims, therefore, has now crossed the line into a security problem as AQIM co-opts the smuggling routes enabled by fraudulent relief to expand its coffers and fund its operations. Algeria now seems to acquiesce to the bargain: turn a blind eye toward jihadists so long as they conduct their operations outside Algerian borders, no matter what the cost to Mali, Libya, Tunisia, or Morocco.
The solution is blindly obvious: If the Obama administration and Congress are truly committed to preventing an al-Qaeda resurgence in the post-bin Laden-era; if they also care about making sure taxpayer funds and foreign assistance are not wasted in an age of budget cutbacks and austerity; and if President Obama and Ambassador Samantha Power truly want to ensure the United Nations has credibility, then it behooves everyone to ensure that no money goes to the Polisario camps until there is basic accountability. Ignoring corruption is no longer a question of preventing waste; increasingly, it is a matter of national security.
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