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Review of “Perspectives on Western Sahara: Myths, Nationalisms, and Geopolitics,” ed. by Anouar Boukhars and Jacques Roussellier

Beware academic volumes that bear this disclaimer: “The views expressed are those of the authors alone.” Perspectives on Western Sahara, edited by Anouar Boukhars and Jacques Roussellier, contains several chapters in which this caveat is made. And for good reason: Perspectives on Western Sahara is primarily a political text, one backed by well-researched, if sometimes problematic, accounts of the conflict’s local, regional, and global dynamics. Most of the contributors have backgrounds in government, consulting, and think tanks; the others have formal academic positions. Several are well known for their defense of Morocco’s position on Western Sahara; others seem to have been recruited or shanghaied into the cause with little to no research or publication background on the issue. One of the chapters, an analysis of United States foreign policy towards the conflict, is even authored by two former US Foreign Service Officers who now work as lobbyists for Morocco, Edward Gabriel and Robert Holley. Boukhars and Roussellier’s collection also serves as a pro-Moroccan response to Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, which this reviewer coauthored with Stephen Zunes in 2010.

The Western Sahara conflict itself began in 1975, when Morocco invaded the colony of Spanish Sahara just as Madrid was planning to grant it independence. Local nationalist insurgents, supported by Algeria, fought Morocco in a desert war until the United Nations arrived in 1991 promising to end the dispute by holding a referendum. Given the high stakes involved in such a vote, the UN Security Council proved unwilling to force the issue. Soon after Morocco’s current ruler, King Muhammad VI, took power in 1999, he preferred to offer Western Sahara autonomy instead of a vote on independence. The United Nations has yet to find a compromise solution between Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara and the native population’s right to vote on independence.

Despite a clear bias in Perspectives on Western Sahara, several of the chapters make honest and dispassionate efforts to explicate important aspects of the conflict. Historians Osama Abi-Mershed and Adam Farrar (Chapter 1) provide a succinct and effective account of the conflict’s origins; international relations scholar William Zartman (Chapter 3) offers a refreshingly candid evaluation of the interlocking nature of Morocco’s domestic and foreign policies towards the Sahara; anthropologist Aomar Boum (Chapter 12) critiques romanticized accounts of life in the Western Saharan refugee camps in Algeria; and analyst Khadidja Mohsen-Finan (chapter 13) superbly documents how the new and old regional forces — historical Moroccan-Algerian antagonisms, the oscillations of democracy witnessed in the “Arab Spring,” the destabilizing influence of al-Qa‘ida affiliates in the central Sahara desert — will keep the Western Sahara impasse in a state of suspended animation. Though there are many insights in Perspectives on Western Sahara, the least valuable one — from the perspective of any would-be mediator unlucky enough to find themselves at the Western Sahara negotiating table — is likely its conclusion. Penned by J. Peter Pham, the volume’s final chapter is a simplistic paean to Morocco’s 2007 proposal to end the conflict by granting Western Sahara limited self-governance under Moroccan sovereignty.

Perspectives on Western Sahara is thus the most coherent intellectual defense of the Moroccan position on the Western Sahara conflict currently available. While this virtue is also a major fault of the volume, it is nonetheless indicative of an evolution in Moroccan thinking on the Western Sahara conflict. A decade ago, a volume of this sort would have been unthinkable within the constraints of Moroccan political and academic discourse vis-à-vis the question of the “Saharan Provinces.” For example, one chapter admits the authentic existence of Western Saharan nationalism (Stephen J. King, Chapter 4); another admits Western Sahara’s inviolable right to independence under international law (Joshua Castellino and Elvira Domínguez-Redondo, Chapter 2); and another essentially describes the illegality of both Morocco’s acquisition of the territory in 1975 and its continued exploitation of the territory’s natural resources (Glynn Torres-Spelliscy, Chapter 11). Though the Moroccan equivalent of Israel’s “new historians” have yet to emerge (note that very few Moroccan scholars actually contributed to this collection), Perspectives on Western Sahara…

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Recent analysis looks at role of international oil corporations and the Western Sahara dispute

US oil company set to violate international law in Western Sahara
In North-West Africa, American and British energy companies may be about to violate international law in pursuit of oil profits.

#Energy

Tom Stevenson
Sunday 28 September 2014 16:32 BST

Tags:
Western Sahara, UN, oil, Kosmos, Morocco

Kosmos Energy, a US oil and gas exploration firm, along with UK oil exploration company, Cairn Energy, are planning to begin searching for oil reserves off the shores of a territory known as Western Sahara.

However, according to Sahrawi representatives, the companies have no authorisation from the people of Western Sahara, a United Nations designated non-self-governing territory larger than the UK that has been subject to occupation by neighbouring Morocco since it invaded in 1975. The Moroccan government maintains that its civilians peacefully reclaimed Western Sahara by marching into the territory, but scholarly work has long since falsified this account.

The UN has been planning to organise a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara since 1991 but for now Morocco has successfully blocked the plans and retains control of the territory which it claims as its “southern provinces” and calls Moroccan Sahara.

Kosmos has held rights to explore Western Saharan waters since 2006, when it signed an agreement with Morocco’s state oil company, the Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (ONHYM).

The agreement was renewed in 2011 and, at Kosmos’s direction, a drill ship named Atwood Achiever is currently on its way from South Korea to Western Saharan waters in order to commence oil exploration in a block known as Cap Boujdor in November.

In a letter dated 19 September and addressed to Kosmos’s Senior Vice President, William Hayes, which has been seen by Middle East Eye, the Sahrawi Centre for Media and Communication – a campaigning group made up of indigenous Sahrawi and based in the territory’s capital Laayoune – condemned international energy companies planning to drill for “joining hands with Morocco” and “consolidating its sovereignty over Western Sahara.”

“Formally, it is illegal for international companies to operate in the land and coastal waters of Western Sahara without the consent of its people and without them being consulted and benefiting from these business operations,” the letter stated.

“Such illegal business is also a direct threat to the whole peace settlement as it puts at stake the right of self-determination by ignoring international law and legality,” the Sahrawi group claimed.

However, the Sahrawi are not alone in believing that oil exploration in Western Sahara without authorisation from the Sahrawi would be illegal under international law. In 2002, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Hans Corell gave a legal opinion which agreed with the Sahrawi.

“If further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the international law principles applicable to mineral resource activities in non-self-governing territories,” Corell wrote.

A number of previous attempts by oil companies to drill in Western Saharan waters have been abandoned, due to the legal status of the territory and subsequent divestment by shareholders. Kosmos, however, appears resolute and French oil major Total also has plans to drill next year.

Kosmos has defended its decision by arguing that while it does not have the authorisation of the Sahrawi, its activities will be beneficial to them.

“We believe that, if exploration is successful, responsible resource development in Western Sahara has the potential to create significant long-term social and economic benefits for the people of the territory,” Kosmos wrote in a statement on the issue in February.

But the UN’s Corell has made clear on multiple occasions that this is not sufficient to make the drilling lawful. In 2008, he issued a clarification of his original legal opinion that described it as “formulated in such a manner that it would be crystal clear that Morocco had no authority to engage in exploration or exploitation of mineral resources in Western Sahara if this was done in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara.”

Speaking to the Financial Times on 17 September, Corell said that “the more resources are found in Western Sahara and its maritime zone, the less will be the incentive for Morocco to fulfil the UN resolutions and international law.”

Neither Morocco’s ONHYM nor the Moroccan government responded to requests for comment.

The Sahrawi population is divided into those still living in the occupied territory, and the thousands who fled from the Moroccan army in 1975 and became refugees living in camps in South-West Algeria.

Sahrawi living in the refugee camps are also highly critical of the drilling.

“Kosmos and Cairn plan to participate in the looting of our country,” said Kamal Fadel a representative of the Sahrawi government in the camps, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).

“This is a shameful act by Kosmos and Cairn that puts their greed before the respect of legality and human rights, and it helps perpetuate the illegal occupation of our homeland, encouraging Morocco to continue to obstruct UN efforts to resolve the conflict,” Fadel told MEE.

International firms in other sectors besides energy have also engaged in potentially illegal resource exploitation in occupied Western Sahara.

Last October, the Canadian agricultural firm Agrium Inc. organised a deal with the Moroccan state phosphate company Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP) for Western Saharan phosphate.

Despite international pressure, more than $10 mn of phosphate rock mined by Morocco’s OCP in Western Sahara were loaded onto a freighter and shipped to Vancouver for use by Agrium as a result of the deal.

In December, the European Union also approved a four-year accord with Morocco, allowing EU boats – the majority of them Spanish – to fish in Western Saharan waters. Demonstrations were held in Laayoune by some Sahrawi but were met with a harsh response from Moroccan security forces.

“A significant oil or gas find in Western Saharan waters will only increase Morocco’s unwillingness to recognise the territory’s international right to self-determination,” said Jacob Mundy, assistant professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University, in New York.

“The danger in all of this is the Security Council’s lack of interest in the Western Sahara situation generally,” Mundy told MEE.

“Having watched Morocco plunder the territory’s fisheries and minerals for years, it is difficult to imagine the Western Saharan independence movement remaining passive in the face of these new offshore developments.”

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Waiting for Disruption: The Western Sahara Stalemate

The Western Sahara conflict is fast approaching its 40th anniversary with no end in sight. A web of geopolitical interests keeps the conflict in a permanent state of limbo. At the heart of this web is the U.N. Security Council, which has managed the conflict since the late 1980s. The council has been historically reticent to take dramatic action to resolve the dispute and remains so today. Though there has been “peace” in Western Sahara since 1991 when a cease-fire came into effect, all efforts to reconcile Morocco’s claim of sovereignty against the local population’s right to self-determination have failed. The status quo thus seems indefinitely sustainable. Unless the conflict takes a sudden turn for the worse, it is unlikely that the international community will make the tough choices necessary to achieve a lasting solution. Therein lies the paradox of the Western Sahara peace process: The peace process now exists to contain the conflict, but only a crisis will save Western Sahara.

For these reasons, observers often speculate as to which forces could shake things up in Western Sahara. In recent years, three developments have emerged that initially appeared to have the potential to unbalance the deadlock: the Arab Spring, the 2012 Mali crisis and renewed oil and gas interest in the area. However, it is unlikely that a popular mass revolt will drive Morocco out of Western Sahara, or bring down the Moroccan monarchy. Meanwhile, it is abundantly clear that North Atlantic powers see Morocco as a bulwark of stability in a region plagued by civil strife along the Mediterranean coast and by terrorist groups in the Sahara. Finally, international energy companies that have returned to Western Sahara seek to work with Morocco to exploit the contested territory’s possible riches. Whether or not oil companies will bring peace or war to Western Sahara will likely hinge on the response of the territory’s nationalist movement, which remains to be seen.

A Brief History of the Stalemate

Morocco invaded Western Sahara in 1975 as the Spanish colonial authorities were about to conduct a referendum on the territory’s independence. Rather than face war with its neighbor across the Strait of Gibraltar, Madrid opted to transfer its colonial authority to Morocco and Mauritania. The United Nations viewed this transfer as largely illegitimate and continued to call for the territory’s self-determination. A local nationalist movement, led by the Polisario Front, had been fighting the Spanish for several years and, upon Morocco’s invasion, began to receive significant support from Rabat’s regional rival, Algeria. In the chaos of the invasion, nearly half of the native Sahrawi population fled to Algeria, where they live today as refugees under Polisario’s control; today they number over 100,000. The Morocco-Polisario war—Mauritania left the territory it controlled in Western Sahara in 1979—dragged on until 1991, when a cease-fire was declared to allow a U.N. mission to organize a referendum.

The U.N. arrived in Western Sahara with the intent to solve the conflict in less than 12 months by organizing a vote on independence. Twenty-three years later, the mission is still there. Disputes over how to register voters for the referendum dragged on until Moroccan King Hassan II died in 1999 and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed VI. King Mohammed soon reversed his father’s position and rejected the idea of an independence referendum. Morocco signaled its willingness to grant the territory autonomy but has steadfastly rejected any plan that has an independence option. In 2007, Morocco presented a formal autonomy proposal, but it has been treated as a non-starter for Polisario so long as an independence vote is off the table.

Since 1997, three U.N. envoys have attempted to mediate the dispute, including former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. The current U.N. envoy, former U.S. Ambassador Christopher Ross, has held the position since 2008. For all intents and purposes, Morocco has stopped negotiating and even tried to have Ross dismissed in 2013. Morocco’s current position demands that Polisario accept its autonomy proposal as the basis of negotiations. Polisario is willing to discuss any proposal so long as it includes a referendum on independence, which is technically Western Sahara’s right under international law as Africa’s last non-self-governing territory.

The Western Sahara impasse owes as much to the mutually incompatible positions of the parties as to the U.N. Security Council’s unwillingness to place demands on either of them. Western Sahara’s relatively low standing on the international agenda owes as much to the territory’s intrinsic features as to its extrinsic ones. Intrinsically, the conflict suffers from obscurity because of the territory’s geography. Even with the large number of Moroccan settlers that have moved there in the past three decades, it is still one of the least densely populated countries. The native Sahrawi population is estimated to be less than half a million strong. Unlike other African countries along the great desert, Western Sahara has neither a mild Mediterranean coast nor a tropical south to augment the endless desert that defines its landscapes. What Western Sahara does have are some of the world’s richest fishing grounds off its long Atlantic coastline and some significant phosphate deposits.

But when the great powers of the Security Council look at Western Sahara, they do not simply see fish, phosphates, a protracted humanitarian crisis or Africa’s last colony. Paris and Washington, most of all, see one of their strongest allies, Morocco, and one of the world’s most important energy producers, Algeria. Both of these states are not only pivotal to stability in the Maghreb, they are increasingly viewed as important players on the African and Middle Eastern stages as well. Yet the Western Sahara conflict is not simply a Moroccan-Algerian affair. Central to the dispute are fundamental norms of decolonization and the prohibition of territorial expansion by force, issues that are central to the post-World War II order enshrined in the United Nations. After four decades of fighting for independence, it is also abundantly clear that Western Saharan nationalism will not accept a Moroccan fait accompli. Indeed, it is now widely understood that an international failure to accommodate Western Saharans’ right to self-determination will leave them no choice but to pursue armed struggle once again, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

The fundamental tension at the heart of the Western Sahara peace process is based on two fears: If the international community pushes too hard for a settlement, the situation could deteriorate; but if efforts to shift the status quo are abandoned, the situation could also deteriorate. Despite shifting international circumstances, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 to the Arab Spring, there has been no exogenous disruption powerful enough to change the status quo in Western Sahara.

The Missed Opportunities of the Arab Spring

There was much hope that the Arab Spring might bring some positive change to Western Sahara. Whether through reforms in Morocco or in Polisario’s exiled leadership, or through mass demonstrations in the territory, the possibilities for change seemed endless in early 2011. Such hopes proved to be misguided. In several ways, the Arab Spring has made the Western Sahara peace process worse.

Reforms instituted by the Moroccan regime only enhanced its domestic and international credibility, thus resulting in a bold and uncompromising posture in recent negotiations. Though Arab Spring protests in Morocco, led by the February 20 Movement, failed to coalesce into a force that could threaten the regime, the monarchy nonetheless responded with a series of reforms that curbed the de jure powers of the throne. In reality, these reforms were part of a long trend in Moroccan politics whereby the monarchy has used electoral processes and power-sharing to delegitimize its foes and so enhance its de facto power within the country. First were Morocco’s democratic socialists, who were allowed to govern in the late 1990s; then came the Islamists in the early 2000s. In both cases, the government failed to deliver on long-promised reforms, promises that were easy to make when these parties were in the opposition. The monarchy, on the other hand, having symbolically retreated from politics, now wields power through informal and financial mechanisms. While political parties are blamed for the country’s failings, the monarchy—among the top 10 wealthiest royal families in the world—now uses its globalized holdings and influence over domestic economics to rule by other means.

Internationally, the monarchy’s top-down reforms also touched on the question of the “Saharan Provinces,” as Western Sahara is called in Morocco. These steps included recognizing the Sahrawi identity and loosening restrictions on travel between the occupied territory and the refugee camps. For Moroccan journalist Samia Errazzouki, a co-editor at the Jadaliyya website, the Moroccan regime deftly used the Arab Spring to improve its image vis-a-vis Western Sahara. “For many abroad,” she claims, “it appeared as if Morocco was making concessions and ceding to the demands of the people. This was no different than how Morocco responded to criticisms from abroad over its repression of pro-democracy protests associated with the February 20th Movement.” The instability witnessed in Egypt, Syria, Libya and Mali further convinced Washington and Paris to view the Moroccan monarchy as a pillar of stability in the Arab world.

Western Saharan nationalists are bitter not only because the Arab Spring has been a boon for Morocco, but because their protests have been largely ignored internationally. Indeed, weeks before protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, Western Sahara witnessed the largest pro-independence demonstrations ever organized in the Moroccan-occupied territory. In a massive showing of solidarity with the Western Saharan refugees in Algeria, Sahrawi activists established a protest camp on the outskirts of the territory’s main city, Al-Ayun, in a place called Gdaym Izik. Soon the camp boasted tens of thousands of Sahrawis, until Moroccan security forces violently demolished it in early November 2010. Following the camps’ dispersal, the territory saw the most intense and sustained civil unrest since Moroccan forces arrived in 1975, resulting in several casualties among the Sahrawis and Moroccan police, as well as clashes between Moroccan settlers and nationalist activists.

At the United Nations, these protests raised concerns about the fact that the U.N. mission in Western Sahara has no mandate to monitor human rights. Though all other missions now have such provisions, France, Morocco’s main ally, has steadfastly blocked all efforts to amend the U.N. mission.

Concerns about human rights inside the Moroccan-controlled territory had been growing since widespread Sahrawi protests greeted the new king in 1999. A massive uprising in 2005 drew even more attention due to the role the Internet played in the diffusion of images, videos and testimonies of the Sahrawi protestors. For years, the human rights group Freedom House has considered the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara one of the worst situations in the world, and in 2008, Human Rights Watch released a damning report detailing the excesses of the Moroccan occupation, including widespread torture. The following year, Aminatou Haidar, a Sahrawi rights activist, won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, causing further embarrassment for Rabat.

With the Gdaym Izik protests in 2010, things appeared to be coming to a head. Then the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the civil wars in Libya and Syria, changed everything. Morocco not only used the Arab Spring to advance its image as a moderate ally of Paris and Washington, the Arab Spring also drew attention away from Morocco’s repression in Western Sahara, which included the imprisonment of dozens of young activists who had created the Gdaym Izik camp. Most have received sentences of 25 years to life imprisonment.

According to Errazzouki, “November 2010 marked a turning point for the Moroccan regime’s treatment and response to dissent within the territory.” She added, “This is evident through the widespread torture, arbitrary arrests, harassment and even death of Sahrawis who dare to demand their right to self-determination.”

Hijacked by Radicals

One effect of the Arab Spring has undoubtedly had a negative impact on the Western Sahara conflict: the short-lived secessionist Tuareg republic in northern Mali that was hijacked by al-Qaida-linked groups. Key members of the Security Council, particularly the United States, are now more reluctant than ever to take risks to resolve the Western Sahara conflict, particularly if a solution leads to a weak and unstable new state.

Fed by the arms unleashed on the Sahara by the Libyan civil war of 2011, Tuareg rebels—many having been forced to flee the collapse of the Gadhafi regime—relaunched their decades-old bid to create an independent state for their people in the north of Mali. Humiliated by the rebels, elements of the Malian military staged an impromptu coup in March 2012. Amid the chaos, various armed Islamist organizations, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM), hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and declared an Islamic state in northern Mali. A year later, French forces quickly routed the Islamists and restored a modicum of central government control to Mali’s vast northern stretches. However, a daring attack on a gas facility in eastern Algeria proved that the Islamists’ reach and audacity had grown well beyond their humble origins in the early 2000s.

For many, these developments in the Sahara were the outcome of a long-neglected front in the global war on terrorism. Concerns over the Sahara-Sahel region’s security grew as remnants of Algeria’s Islamist insurgency of the 1990s began to seek shelter and sustenance in the Sahara by linking up with smuggling networks and taking Europeans as hostages. The latter activity allowed AQIM to amass a small fortune from ransom payments to spend on arms and recruits. Though traditionally a region dominated by French influence, the United States launched a special, albeit modest, counterterrorism initiative there in 2003 to improve border security and address some of the root issues driving radicalization.

It was not long before concerns about trans-Saharan terrorism began to affect the Western Sahara conflict. A coordinated suicide attack in Casablanca in 2003 did much to convince the George W. Bush administration that a solution to the Western Sahara conflict should not be imposed on Morocco. Indeed, Morocco began insinuating that there were connections between al-Qaida activists in the Sahara and the refugee camps run by the Polisario in southwestern Algeria.

Recent reports in The Daily Beast, Time Magazine and Vice have offered contradictory and incomplete accounts of the supposed terrorist threat posed by the Western Saharan refugees and Polisario. On the face of it, these concerns seem ill-founded. Polisario is a secular Arab nationalist umbrella organization not unlike the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Algeria, which has been at war with jihadists since the early 1990s, is Polisario’s main diplomatic and financial backer. That said, aid workers in the camps were kidnapped in 2011 and delivered to one of the region’s armed Islamist organizations.

So is it possible, as recent reports often insinuate, that clandestine militant Islamist groups are recruiting or even operating within the Western Saharan refugee camps? Could we see Polisario’s revolution hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists in the same way the recent Tuareg rebellion in Mali or the rebellion in Syria have been hijacked by radical groups?

Anthropologists and aid workers with extensive experience in the camps remain skeptical about such claims.

Dr. Konstantina Isidoros has been visiting the camps regularly over the past six years, including two years of sustained ethnographic research. In her view, recent claims that the Sahrawi refugee camps have become overrun with criminal and terrorist networks are “absolute rubbish.” As she argues, “the close-knit kinship nature of Sahrawi society makes it very hard for an external entity to penetrate.” She adds, “The idea of ‘terrorism’ is pointless to the Polisario and the Sahrawi—they are focused on international legal frameworks.”

Nadia Zoubir, a political affairs consultant who recently visited the camps for the African Union, noticed significant improvements in local security measures following the 2011 kidnapping. She likewise doubted the presence of any militant organizations in the camps besides Polisario given the nature of the society. “I think that it would be very difficult to take place in a community that practices a more liberal and tolerant form of Islam than witnessed in other Muslim communities.”

“Polisario works hand in hand with the Algerian government in supporting anti-terrorist activities,” she noted.

Alice Wilson, who holds a doctorate in social anthropology, likewise finds recent media reports about terrorism in the camps incongruous with her years of experience there. The major political debate in the camps, she observed, was between those who favored the diplomatic approach to national liberation and those who favored a return to the military approach.

According to Wilson, “In general, I would say that Sahrawi refugees were not hopeful for the short term, but were hopeful about a long term, even a whole generation away or longer, in which Western Sahara would not be under Moroccan control.” But, she adds, “When people expressed such views, they weren’t specific about how to get from the current situation to something different. . . . Some refugees wish for a return to war as a means of shaking the stalemate. Others are opposed to this, on varying grounds.”

How Oil Could Upend Everything

The conditions under which Polisario might return to armed struggle are currently unclear. The liberation front almost went to war with Morocco in 2001. That year, Moroccan forces fired warning shots as they crossed the armistice line to clear mines for the Paris-Dakar Rally. While Algeria pulled Polisario back from the brink, these events demonstrated a widespread Sahrawi willingness and capacity to field a significant fighting force. Although Polisario’s forces are incapable of driving Morocco from Western Sahara, they could once again make Rabat’s occupation very expensive and send a strong signal to the U.N. Security Council.

The year 2001 also saw the entrance of a new factor into the Western Sahara conflict: the oil question. Moroccan efforts to attract French and U.S. energy companies to Western Sahara also succeeded in attracting U.N. legal attention. In an important 2002 opinion, Hans Corel, then the United Nations’ top international law expert, described Moroccan efforts to exploit Western Saharan natural resources as illegal. Given the extraordinarily strange international legal status of Western Sahara, foreign energy companies soon walked away from the territory, citing underwhelming prospects.

Just over a decade later, the oil companies are back with a vengeance, though Morocco has worked hard to keep things quiet this time. Using a precedent set in its fisheries accord with the European Union, Morocco has convinced foreign energy companies that the legal risks are minimal so long as resource exploitation in Western Sahara includes “social responsibility” programs that benefit the local population. Sahrawis have recently begun taking to the streets to protest the activities of Kosmos Energy, the U.S.-based firm leading the charge. According to the Maghrib Confidential newsletter, Morocco could become an energy-producing country by the end of the year.

“Clearly drilling in Moroccan-licensed acreage off the Western Sahara fits into the Moroccan political agenda,” explains John Marks, chairman of Cross-border Information, a consultancy that specializes in the region’s energy issues.

As for the companies’ motives in coming back to Western Sahara, Marks see a much more simple explanation. “The [international oil companies] who will make a heavy investment in offshore drilling,” he says, “are not doing it to burnish the Moroccans’—or Polisario’s—political credentials.”

“For the companies, it’s all about making a big offshore find in some attractive acreage with good terms on offer,” he adds. “Kosmos and Total have tried to implicate their governments in lobbying, but this is no power play; it’s about money.”

So could oil become the disruption to break the Western Sahara impasse? Morocco, for certain, will only become more intransigent. Oil’s effect will largely depend on how Sahrawi nationalists and, in turn, the U.N. Security Council respond. Polisario has said very little about the oil issue though it has recently become more aggressive in the international legal arena. In the East Timor conflict, a dispute between Indonesia and Australia over oil rights is often cited as an important step in that territory’s road to independence.

Conclusion

Right now, oil is the factor to watch when it comes to the Western Sahara dispute. The political and military stalemate that has been in effect since the late 1980s is otherwise unlikely to be disturbed. With much more serious crises unfolding in Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe, Western Sahara will continue to remain at the bottom of the international agenda. The impasse has not only shown an extraordinary ability to sap all diplomatic initiatives, it has survived profound geopolitical shocks, from the Cold War’s end to the Arab Spring. But what impact would a significant oil find have on the impasse?

It would certainly galvanize the Moroccan position. The question is how Polisario would respond. Mass protest by the Sahrawis is impossible given the Moroccan security presence in the territory. International legal initiatives are the nationalist movement’s strongest suit, and perhaps the only card left in their hand. No one doubts that international law is on Western Sahara’s side. But this has been the case since the start of the conflict in 1975. Unless the U.N. is willing to enforce the law in Western Sahara, the Sahrawis will continue to see no alternative but to take the law into their own hands.

Jacob Mundy is an Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University where he also contributes to the Africa and Middle East studies programs. His books include “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution,” “The Post-Conflict Environment: Investigation and Critique,” and the forthcoming “Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence.”

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Western Sahara: nonviolent resistance as a last resort

A chapter by Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy from Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transitions from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle, edited by Véronique Dudouet. Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, 2014.

This book investigates the decision-making process, rationale and determining factors which underlie the strategic shifts of armed movements from violent to nonviolent resistance. The revival of global interest in the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle since the 2011 Arab Spring offers a welcome opportunity to revisit the potential of unarmed resistance as an alternative pathway out of armed conflicts, in cases where neither military (or counter-insurgency) nor negotiated solutions have succeeded. This volume brings together academics from various disciplinary traditions and offers a wide range of case studies – including South Africa, Palestine and Egypt – through which to view the changes from violence to nonviolence within self-determination, revolutionary or pro-democracy struggles. While current historiography focuses on armed conflicts and their termination through military means or negotiated settlements, this book is a first attempt to investigate the nature and the drivers of transitions from armed strategies to unarmed methods of contentious collective action on the part of non-state conflict actors. The text concentrates in particular on the internal and relational factors which underpin the decision-making process, from a change of leadership and a pragmatic re-evaluation of the goals and means of insurgency in the light of evolving inter-party power dynamics, to the search for new local or international allies and the cross-border emulation or diffusion of new repertoires of action. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, peace and conflict studies, political sociology and IR in general.

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Book review in International Journal of Middle East Studies

Hugh Roberts (2014). Review of ‘Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 46, pp 418-420. doi:10.1017/S0020743814000324.

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Bringing the tribe back in? The Western Sahara dispute, ethno-history, and the imagineering of minority conflicts in the Arab world

An essay by Jacob Mundy from the new book Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford University Press 2014), edited by Will Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl.

Since the Arab Spring, Arab states have become the new front line in the struggle for democratization and for open societies. As the experience of other regions has shown, one of the most significant challenges facing democratization relates to minority rights. This book explores how minority claims are framed and debated in the region, and in particular, how political actors draw upon, re-interpret, or resist both the new global discourses of minority rights and more local traditions and practices of co-existence. The contributors examine a range of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial factors that shape contemporary minority politics in the Arab world, and that encumber the reception of international norms of multiculturalism. These factors include the contested legacies of Islamic doctrines of the `dhimmi’ and the Ottoman millet system, colonial-era divide and rule strategies, and post-colonial Arab nation-building. While these legacies complicate struggles for minority rights, they do not entail an `Arab exceptionalism’ to global trends to multiculturalism. This volume explores a number of openings for new more pluralistic conceptions of nationhood and citizenship, and suggests that minority politics at its best can serve as a vehicle for a more general transformative politics, supporting a broader culture of democracy and human rights, and challenging older authoritarian, clientalistic, or patriarchal political tendencies. The chapters include both broad theoretical and historical perspectives as well as more focused case studies (including Western Sahara/Morocco, Algeria, Israel/Palestine; Sudan; United Arab Emirates, and Iraq). Readership: Scholars and students of political theory, international relations, political philosophy, international law, human rights, ethnic studies, and Middle East politics.

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On recent Moroccan-Algerian tensions over Western Sahara

Protester tears down Algerian flag from its embassy in Morocco
By Laura Angela Bagnetto
Saturday, 2 November 2013

A man is currently in police custody in Morocco’s commercial capital, Casablanca, after tearing down the Algerian flag from its embassy in the city. The man was protesting against comments made on behalf of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in relation to Western Sahara. Bouteflika reportedly said that Morocco had committed human rights violations against the people of Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. Morocco illegally occupied Western Sahara in 1975. It is the largest disputed land mass in the world. RFI spoke to expert Jacob Mundy on Morocco’s reaction to withdrawing its ambassador.

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Daily Beast article quotes Jacob Mundy

Are Polisario Camps Becoming Prime Recruiting Grounds for al Qaeda?
The Daily Beast
Vivian Salama
October 21, 2013

Deep in the Sahara, the camps of the Polisario—former Marxist rebels ousted from Morocco after Spain’s withdrawal—are reportedly becoming prime recruiting grounds for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Vivian Salama reports from Morocco.

In Algeria’s no-man’s land, buried in the vastness of the Sahara desert, there exists a community of mud huts and tents that have, over time, transformed from a destitute refugee camp into a bustling community forced to make due. Electricity is sporadic and living conditions are harsh—to be expected in one of the hottest places on Earth. There are schools and hospitals (though the latter are poorly equipped). There’s even an annual Sahara Film Festival to distract from reality.
Sahrawis

Throughout the region’s history, maps have been drawn and redrawn—and with each new draft, there emerge winners who stake their claim to the land. For four decades, people here have lived as refugees—causalities of war and colonialism, largely forgotten amid regional instability and political upheaval.

When Spanish colonialists pulled out of the Western Sahara in 1975, Moroccan forces quickly annexed the large piece of land bordering the Atlantic, making it the largest and most populated region on the United Nations’ list of “non-self-governing territories.” Today, the future of the Western Sahara, dubbed by some as Africa’s last colony, is no clearer than when Spain withdrew. The rebel movement-cum-government in exile of the Polisario, formed to end Spanish colonization of the Western Sahara—only to be pushed out by Moroccan forces following Spain’s withdrawal—remains in refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. Along with tens of thousands of their fellow indigenous Sahrawi people, they are cut off from their would-be nation by a series of checkpoints, landmines and a Moroccan-built barrier of sand and stone spanning 170 miles across the desert—a bitter reminder that winner takes all.

A new generation is coming of age in the camps, frustrated by the perpetual status quo of talks over the future of Western Sahara, and detached from the far-left ideologies of Che Guevara and Gamal Abdel Nasser that fueled the Polisario’s fight 40 years ago. At least 56 percent of the refugee camp population is under the age of 18, according to UNHCR, and have never stepped foot on Western Sahara soil. Concerns are growing that the camps are becoming a potent recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda and that other extremists have begun to prey on the scalding frustrations of disillusioned Sahrawi youth who face a future of uncertainty.

A new generation is coming of age in the camps, frustrated by the perpetual status quo of talks over the future of Western Sahara, and detached from the far-left ideologies of Che Guevara and Gamal Abdel Nasser that fueled the Polisario’s fight 40 years ago.

Members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s North African affiliate, are thought to roam freely between the border of Mali and Algeria, near to the refugee camps, particularly after France launched a military offensive in Mali in January to drive out Islamic militants who had seized Timbuktu. That same month, a deadly hostage crisis orchestrated by AQIM at a gas facility in Al Amenas, Algeria further hinted that Algerian forces may be stretched thin in their efforts to combat domestic terrorism.

“If the situation inside the camps turns dangerous, it’s not just a problem for Morocco and Algeria alone—it’s a problem for Europe, Africa and the whole world,” says “Wali” Hamid Chabar, governor of Morocco’s southernmost region, part of the disputed territory.

In an April report to the 15-nation Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted “serious concern over the risk that the fighting in Mali could spill over into the neighboring countries and contribute to radicalizing the Western Saharan refugee camps,” Even the Polisario, he added, “have not ruled out terrorist infiltrations.”

But Polisario leaders say they are taking extensive measures to prevent this from happening, and accuse the Moroccan government of bribing former refugees to speak out against the rebels. “Moroccan terrorists were linked to the 9/11 attacks, to the Madrid bombings; there are Moroccan fighters in Mali now, there are Moroccan fighters in Syria,” says Mohammed Yeslem Beisat, the Polisario’s ambassador in the United States. “I challenge those making these accusations to find me one Sahrawi terrorist who has been arrested anywhere—in Mali, Iraq, Syria. Give me names!”

Morocco was no exception to the wave of protests that consumed most of North Africa in 2011. The youth-based February 20 Movement took to the streets by the thousands, demanding jobs and an end to corruption by those closest to the monarchy. But King Mohammed VI was quick to respond just weeks after the protests began, addressing the nation in a rare televised speech, proposing new legislations and reforms. Despite efforts to target corruption and human rights violations, however, critics point to failures by the government to take genuine efforts to address these and other issues, and virtually no effort to curb the powers of the king himself.

The arrest of a prominent Moroccan journalist last month underscores just how seriously the government in Rabat is taking security concerns. Ali Anouzla, editor of the news website Lakome, was arrested for directing readers to an article in Spanish daily El País. The original Spanish report provides a direct link to a YouTube video purportedly posted by AQIM. The video berates Morocco’s King Mohammed VI for despotism and corruption, and depicts a photo of the young ruler engulfed in flames. It also summons Moroccan youth to take up arms in the name of jihad.

A senior Moroccan intelligence source, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said that the government has “concrete evidence” that as many as 100 members of the Polisario are working with Mujao, an offshoot of AQIM.

A senior Moroccan intelligence source, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said that the government has “concrete evidence” that as many as 100 members of the Polisario are working with Mujao, an offshoot of AQIM, in their lucrative drug trafficking business that generates some $1 billion annually. In 2011, the government blamed AQIM for a bombing at a café in the Moroccan city of Marrakech that killed 17 people, mostly European tourists.

Refugees who have left the camps say that young men, granted permission to leave to attend university, increasingly return preaching “backwards ideas,” as longtime refugee Ahmed Rabbanni, 48, described it. “Many of them end up building a network of contacts, in places like Mali and Niger, who continue to feed them those ideas even after they return to the camps,” he said.

Discontent is seething outside the camps as well. Southern Algeria has recently been the scene of significant protests by those pointing to an uneven distribution of wealth from the country’s enormous gas and oil reserves, much of which are found in the Sahara. While most of the leading figures with al Qaeda’s Algeria branch hail from the north, one of the main figures of the Al Amenas crisis was Mohamed Lamine Bencheneb, part of the southern Sons of Sahara armed Islamic group.

Moroccan authorities refer to the refugees as “captives” or “hostages,” suggesting that there would be a mass exodus back to Morocco were they allowed to leave the camps. However, in a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, the organization noted that the Polisario “does not prevent camp residents from leaving the camps on trips of limited duration or to settle elsewhere permanently,” though it adds that the people returning to Western Sahara “concealed their ultimate destination, fearing that the Polisario would block their departure if it became known” that they were returning to the Moroccan Sahara.

With modern communication tools available to the refugees, “there is no mystery anymore about what goes on in the camps, and what goes on in the disputed territory,” said Jacob Mundy, an assistant professor at Colgate University and co-author of Western Sahara: War Nationalism & Conflict Irresolution. “The fact that so many people choose to stay in the camps probably speaks more to Morocco’s failure to win the hearts and minds of the Sahrawi people.”

The Polisario estimates that as many as 150,000 people live on their four major camps in Tindouf, Algeria; for years, the group received international aid to accommodate such a large number of exiles. However, the U.N. lowered its estimate in 2005 to 90,000 after conducting an assessment of the size of the camps via satellite imagery. Moroccan officials insist that the number may be as low as 40,000, and that Polisario officials are profiting from sales of the extra food and supplies—something the Polisario staunchly denies.

However, former refugees note terrible abuses behind the scenes for those who undermine the Polisario’s authority or fail to support the fight for Western Saharan independence. Accusations of spying for Morocco are reportedly rampant and punishment is allegedly severe, with numerous refugees telling The Daily Beast that they endured torture and years of imprisonment and solitary confinement at the hands of the Polisario. Cherif Mohamed, a former diplomat and member of the Polisario military, said he spent a year in solitary confinement as part of a seven-year sentence for treason, a crime he says he didn’t commit. “They dug a lot of individual holes in the ground and in these holes is where prisoners were kept,” he explained.

“Sometimes they attach you by your hands to the ceiling. Sometimes they attach you hanging from your ankles. Sometimes they cover your head and pour water over your face until it drives you crazy. Sometimes they tie you to a pole in the ground and throw cold water on you all night. Sometimes they tie you to a table, spread eagle, and people put their cigarettes out on your body–my body is covered in scars.”

Several other former refugees shared similar stories, but the Polisario claims that the Moroccan government pays people to spread negative stories in an effort to weaken the battle for self-determination.

Further complicating matters are Morocco’s sour relations with Algeria, which it has repeatedly accused of supporting the Polisario logistically and otherwise. To this day, the border between the two North African nations, once a bustling trade route, remains closed after Morocco suggested that the Marrakech bombers received support from Algeria. However, chilly relations between the two neighbors date back to the days following Algeria’s War of Independence in the 1960s, when Rabat attempted to claim part of modern-day Algeria as “Greater Morocco.” The attempt sparked a bloody battle along the border region, and relations have been rocky ever since. “Algeria also for obvious reasons doesn’t want a bigger Morocco,” said Arezki Daoud, publisher of the North Africa Journal. “There’s also possible mineral wealth in that area so obviously Algeria wants a piece of the pie.”

But Morocco stands firmly on claims that it has historic links to the Western Sahara dating back many centuries. This, the Polisario insists, is merely the government’s way of monopolizing Western Saharan resources, like fisheries and phosphate mines. Rabat has reportedly begun oil exploration there as well. The Moroccan government is spending some $2 billion on infrastructure, schools, and hospitals to develop the once-neglected territory and win hearts and minds.

In Laayoune, dubbed the capital of the disputed territory, the former shantytown is now a bustling center of some 300,000 residents. Many of the Sahrawi people who have chosen to return to Western Sahara often do so with the understanding that they concede to Moroccan rule. Challenging Moroccan authority anywhere in the country often comes at a price and protests, while not illegal, are frowned upon. In late 2010, just before cries of discontent began brewing in nearby Tunisia, Laayoune was scene to some of the most violent protests in years, with Sahrawi protesters briefly taking over the streets in parts of the city, display the illegal red, green, and black flag of their imagined nation and setting fire to police cars and government buildings. Many Moroccan loyalists retaliated, looting and pillaging Sahrawi neighborhoods. Sahrawi activist say that hundreds of their people remain imprisoned in Morocco, many of whom have never been prosecuted.

Residents of Western Sahara have long complained of neglect by the government in Rabat, which until recently had focused its resources on developing the north. While Rabat may be looking to appeal to local residents with the recent boost in investments, its critics say that it is only inflaming tensions further since many deem this as Morocco’s move to plant its flag deep into Western Sahara soil.

The Polisario officially laid down arms in 1991 following a U.N.-brokered ceasefire, which paved the way for a referendum, allowing Sahrawis the right to vote for independence or permanent integration with Morocco. But talks broke down over who is eligible to vote, and a referendum has never taken place.” The U.N. didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be to identify who has the right to vote in a referendum since the population has moved around so much,” said Chabar.

All the while, the future of those tens of thousands of people in the camps is the ultimate dilemma. And while a large segment of that population has never stepped foot on Western Saharan soil, the dream of independence remains vibrant. “Do people change their religion because they don’t see God?” said Khalili Elhabib, a Sahrawi human rights lawyer who spent 16 years in a secret Moroccan prison. “The desire to live in a free Western Sahara does not come from seeing the land. It’s an idea that is inside of these people that is as strong as their faith.”

© 2013 The Daily Beast Company LLC

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Guardian Weekly: Role of women in Western Sahara conflict

Women on frontline in struggle for Western Sahara
Unusually for a Muslim country, Sahrawi women are leading the disputed territory’s fight for independence from Moroccan rule
Loveday Morris
Guardian Weekly
Tuesday 16 July 2013

As dusk enveloped the salmon-pink houses of Laayoune, the brightly coloured robes of women stood out in a mass of protesters in the centre of the capital of Western Sahara chanting for independence from Morocco.

While other African colonies threw off occupiers one by one, this desert expanse on the continent’s north-western coast remains a disputed territory controlled primarily by next-door Morocco and locked in a nearly 40–year struggle for the right to choose its fate. Unusually for a Muslim society, women play a prominent role in Western Sahara’s independence movement.

Their involvement has spanned a guerrilla war and, for the past two decades, a mostly peaceful protest movement. Female activists in the former Spanish colony attribute this to a combination of the Sahrawi population’s moderate interpretation of Islam and the freedom they derived from their nomadic roots – but also to the prevalence of traditional gender roles, which they say give women the time to demonstrate.

“This is a pride for us, that this is led by women,” said Arminatou Haidar, a Nobel peace prize nominee and the most recognisable face of Western Sahara’s nationalist movement.

But as its duration shows, the campaign is an uphill battle that has so far been won by Morocco, which annexed most of Western Sahara after the Spanish withdrawal in 1976. Morocco argues that Western Sahara with its rich fishing grounds, lucrative phosphate mines and offshore oil – is an integral part of its territory and that separatists represent a fraction of the population of about 500,000.

That is now probably the case, because Moroccan citizens – whom the Moroccan government entices to the area with tax breaks – are now believed to outnumber the 150,000 or so Sahrawis inside the territory by at least two to

Most nations, including the US, do not recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, but calls by the Sahrawi people for a referendum on independence have made little traction. Experts say that is due to a combination of Moroccan lobbying against the proposal, lack of international will to upset one of the region’s most stable countries and arguments between Morocco and the Sahrawis’ rebel movement-turned-government-in-exile, the Polisario Front, over who should vote.

one. Moroccan officials argue that an independent Western Sahara is not viable and that its longtime enemy Algeria is backing the cause to stir problems.

“There is no room for a failed state in the region,” Moroccan deputy foreign minister Saadeddine Othmani told reporters in May. “It will fall into the hands of extremists.”

Despite regular protests, victories are small. Still, it appears to have brought about a shift in Moroccan policy, which now supports making Western Sahara an autonomous region within the Moroccan state.

“Even if I don’t reach that day when the Sahara is independent, I am completely convinced that the next generation is going to live the day of independence,” Haidar said.

Instead of the dozens of people that most protests draw, the May march drew well over 1,000, hundreds of them women. Some activists described it as the largest in the history of the independence movement, and they attributed the crowd in part to anger over a recent UN security council decision not to approve a US proposal to grant the UN peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara a mandate to monitor human rights. The United States later abandoned the proposal after strong opposition from Morocco, which cancelled a joint military exercise between the two countries in protest.

The role of women can be partially attributed to the Sahrawis’ nomadic background, said Djmi El Ghalia, a prominent activist. While men travelled, women controlled household finances and ran the community. That legacy was consolidated in the refugee camps in Algeria, home to the Polisario Front and an estimated 165,000 Sahrawis who fled during the 16-year war with Morocco, which ended in 1991. Women are responsible for much of the administration of the camps.

“Compared to the status and role of women in the Islamic societies along the Mediterranean coast, Arabia . . . women in Western Sahara enjoy significant advantages,” said Jacob Mundy, an assistant professor at Colgate University and co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution.

“The war gave women in the camps more opportunities to become involved in the daily operations of the independence struggle and the effort to build a state in exile,” he said, while across the border in the territory, female activists play a “huge role”.

Sahrawi female activists say they generally have freedom to express their political views, and women divorce without stigma.

Female empowerment spans both ends of the political spectrum, and some women work in support of the Moroccan government. Malainin Oum El Fadl is among them. She heads Espace Associatif Laayoune, a women’s collective that gives grants to small businesses and was established after thousands of Sahrawis set up a protest camp near the capital in 2010, which was later dismantled by Moroccan authorities.

“We wanted to absorb that tension,” El Fadl said. “We are not concerned with politics . . . To us, bread comes before politics.”

And not all is positive for women in the Algerian camps, where there have been reports of women being imprisoned for adultery and they remain excluded from the highest political posts. In Western Sahara, too, while traditional gender roles have freed women to push for independence, those norms also often mean they do not pursue careers.

“It’s about the space provided,” El Ghalia said. “Women stay at home and get more involved; at the same time, men don’t want to lose their jobs.”

Women have paid a high price for their role in the struggle. Both El Ghalia and Haidar spent years in detention centres in the late 1980s, when forced disappearances of Sahrawis were widespread.

Sitting in a traditional tent erected on the rooftop of her Laayoune home, El Ghalia pulled back her headscarf to show her scarred scalp, which she said was doused in chemicals while in detention. She said she spent most of nearly four years blindfolded and was often stripped naked and subjected to torture. “I still have the scars from the dogs biting my flesh,” she said.

Though the darkest abuses are over, they still go on. Last month, Human Rights Watch reported that Moroccan courts have convicted Western Saharan activists on the basis of confessions obtained through torture or falsified by police.

In a hotel in Laayoune, another activist, Sultana Khaya, recalled a 2007 protest during which she said a policeman beat her face, causing her to lose one eye. She showed bruises from a recent run-in with police.

“This is just small testament compared to the testaments of other Sahrawi women since 1975,” said Khaya, 32. “The Sahrawi woman is very great; she’s very powerful. I don’t even think about getting married until the Sahrawi women become independent.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/16/women-western-sahara-independence-morroco

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Washington Post

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Washington Post article and video discusses role of women, political impasse in Western Sahara

“In Western Sahara, women play large role in forgotten struggle for independence”
Washington Post
Loveday Morris
July 7, 2013

LAAYOUNE, Western Sahara — As dusk enveloped the salmon-pink houses of this capital city, the brightly colored robes of women stood out in a mass of protesters chanting for independence from Moroccan rule.

While other colonies in Africa threw off occupiers one by one, this rocky desert expanse on the continent’s northwestern coast remains a disputed territory controlled primarily by next-door Morocco and locked in a nearly 40-year-old forgotten struggle for the right to choose its fate. And in a Muslim-majority region where women are often marginalized from politics, women have taken an unusually prominent role in Western Sahara’s independence movement.

Their involvement has spanned a guerrilla war with Morocco and, for the past two decades, a mostly peaceful protest movement. Female activists in the former Spanish colony attribute the phenomenon to a combination of the indigenous Sahrawi population’s moderate interpretation of Islam and the freedom they derived from their nomadic roots — but also, perhaps counterintuitively, to the prevalence of traditional gender roles, which they say give women the time to demonstrate.

“This is a pride for us, that this is led by women,” said Aminatou Haidar, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the most recognizable face of Western Sahara’s nationalist movement.

But as its duration shows, the campaign is an uphill battle that has so far been won by Morocco, which annexed most of Western Sahara after the Spanish withdrawal in 1976. Morocco argues that Western Sahara — home to abundant fishing grounds, lucrative phosphate mines and offshore oil — is an integral part of its territory and that separatists represent just a fraction of the population of about 500,000.

That is now probably the case, because Moroccan citizens — whom the Moroccan government entices to the area with tax breaks — are thought to outnumber the remaining 150,000 or so Sahrawis inside the territory by at least two to one.

The United States, like most nations, does not recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, but calls by the Sahrawi people for a referendum on independence have made little headway. Experts attribute that to a combination of Moroccan lobbying against the proposal, lack of international will to upset one of the region’s most stable countries and arguments between Morocco and the Sahrawis’ rebel-movement-turned-government-in-exile, the Polisario Front, over who should vote.

Moroccan officials argue that an independent Western Sahara is not viable and that longtime enemy Algeria is backing the cause to stir problems.

“There is no room for a failed state in the region,” Moroccan Deputy Foreign Minister Youssef Amrani told reporters in May. “It will fall into the hands of extremists.”

Despite the independence movement’s regular protests, the victories are small. Still, it appears to have brought about a shift in Moroccan government policy, which now officially supports making Western Sahara an autonomous region within the Moroccan state.

“Even if I don’t reach that day when the Sahara is independent, I am completely convinced that the next generation is going to live the day of independence,” Haidar said.