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New Boston Globe analysis on Western Sahara quotes Jacob Mundy

Western Sahara: Why Africa’s last colony can’t break free
In global politics, playing by the rules doesn’t always help.
Jenn Abelson
June 16, 2013

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/06/15/western-sahara-why-africa-last-colony-can-break-free/87jACxXfU5bVUtqEe6uyrM/story.html

LAAYOUNE, WESTERN SAHARA — On a recent Saturday in May, as dusk shaded into night in this desert city, more than a thousand women, men, and children poured into the streets. They chanted slogans for independence; flashed the peace sign to show their support for the Polisario Front; and waved the illegal red, green, and black flag of a nation that may never exist.

For anyone who isn’t a geography buff, it’s likely that the Polisario Front, and perhaps even Western Sahara, are unfamiliar names. A former Spanish colony now annexed and ruled by neighboring Morocco, this territory has been waiting four decades for a shot at independence it was promised but never received. After a half-century of global decolonization that has produced about 80 new nations throughout the world, Western Sahara is now by far the largest piece of land remaining on the United Nations’ list of “non-self-governing territories,” places it considers to have an unfulfilled right to decide their own futures.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the push for independence in Western Sahara, a movement that for the last two decades has been largely peaceful. The Polisario Front—the formerly armed nationalist group that officially represents Western Saharans in their negotiations—signed a cease-fire with Morocco in 1991, and since that time protests have unfolded much like this recent one. Members of the indigenous Sahrawi ethnic group raised their fists in the air and honked car horns to show their displeasure with Moroccan rule; some brandished Polisario flags, which are banned by the government 800 miles away in Rabat. The evening ended with some rock-throwing and accusations of injury by both sides. No shots were fired.

In part because their campaign has been a civil one, it has unfolded almost totally outside the world’s sphere of attention. Elsewhere on the continent, civil war has split Sudan into two countries; self-immolation and riots have brought regime change across North Africa. Here, meanwhile, even though the UN, the United States, and most other powerful nations have never recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the area, the independence movement has been unable to make headway.

Today, the Sahrawis are becoming increasingly frustrated, and politics are making the prospects of independence more distant, if anything. The Moroccan government has shown no sign of loosening its grip. Officials worry about Islamic militants fomenting violence, given Polisario’s backing by rival Algeria; furthermore, Morocco relies on the territory’s fisheries and phosphate mines, and has begun exploring for oil. Its allies in the West, including the United States, prize Morocco as a stable ally in a volatile region, and aren’t moving to force its hand.

The stalemate here in Africa’s last remaining colony, and the willingness to let it simmer as the world focuses on deadlier conflicts in nearby Mali and Syria, raise the uncomfortable question of whether a peaceful breakup of nations is really possible—even when the process, officially speaking, enjoys the full support of the UN. Western Sahara is emerging as a case study on the limits of the international community’s power to help a people win self-determination when they choose not to be violent, but to follow the rules.

“It doesn’t make sense. Why are just the Sahrawis left behind? Why are we not being helped by the international community?” Lahbib Salhi, 63, a Sahrawi activist, said in a recent interview in Laayoune. “Most other countries got independence. Look at Namibia, Mozambique…look at Bosnia and Kosovo even South Sudan. But why are the Sahrawis left behind?”

***

Western Sahara is the last chapter of a story that began in the wake of World War II, when the world’s colonial empires started to break apart. In the decades after the war, France spun off about two dozen countries, including Morocco in 1956. The United Kingdom let go of roughly 40 territories. The sweep of decolonization, formalized in the UN’s 1960 “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,” rapidly redrew the map of the world.

Spain and Portugal were slower to unwind their dominions, but by 1975, in the face of growing international pressure and fierce fighting by the newly formed Polisario, Spain was ready to relinquish what was then called Spanish Sahara.

The colony was a 103,000-square-mile tract of Western Africa with roughly 75,000 Sahrawi inhabitants, people who trace their roots to nomadic tribes. Their right to self-determination was upheld by the International Court of Justice that year. But any chance at a quick, smooth transition to independence was derailed when neighbors Morocco and Mauritania each claimed the area.

That put Western Sahara into a small, unhappy group of territories where decolonization was botched in part because of attempted annexation by a neighboring state, says Jacob Mundy, a professor at Colgate University and the author of a 2010 book, “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution.”

The most notable of those, East Timor, suffered near genocidal violence when Indonesian forces took control from Portugal in 1975. After a bloody referendum in 1999, East Timor finally got its independence, but it remains impoverished and corrupt, largely because of this damaging process.

Western Sahara has seen violence, too. The Polisario, organized in 1973, at first waged a guerilla war against Spain. Then, in November 1975, the king of Morocco orchestrated what became known as “The Green March,” calling on 300,000 civilians to descend into Western Sahara to stake it as their own. Spain quickly relented and transferred authority to Morocco and Mauritania. Now the Polisario turned on these countries. As war escalated, Mauritania renounced its right to Western Sahara in 1979, leaving Morocco with sole control, but no recognized claim.

The fighting continued for another decade, and slowly reshaped the makeup of the territory. Sahrawi refugees fled for camps in Algeria, which backed the Polisario movement. Today more than 100,000 live in the camps, governed by the Polisario, which faces its own accusations of suppressing freedom of expression, torture, and embezzling aid. Waves of Moroccans, meanwhile, moved into Western Sahara, lured by strong economic incentives.

The Polisario Front laid down arms in 1991 in a UN-brokered deal that gave Western Saharans the right to vote on their own future, choosing independence or integration into Morocco. The referendum was supposed to be in 1992. But the effort broke down in arguments over the eligibility of tens of thousands of resettled Moroccans who now called the territory home. Subsequent political talks went nowhere, and more than 20 years later, the people of Western Sahara find themselves in suspended animation.

“There is an abiding disappointment in the UN as an institution, one that sometimes borders on cynicism,” said Jeffrey Smith, a professor of international law in Ottawa who served as counsel to the UN mission in East Timor during that country’s transition to independence.

Despite that disappointment, in a region known for militant revolution and guerilla warfare, the Sahrawis’ playbook has come to look more like a Western protest effort. They stage marches and organize human rights activist groups. Aminatou Haidar, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who was abducted and tortured in a secret prison in the 1980s, went on a hunger strike for 32 days at a Spanish airport in 2009.

Then, in 2010, activists set up a protest camp, Gdeim Izik, in an empty stretch of desert a few miles outside Laayoune. At least 10,000 people pitched tents as a way to demonstrate against occupation and get attention for their demands to end discrimination and the lack of job opportunities. It was illegal (Morocco has strong laws against freedom of assembly without permits), but not violent—familiar to anyone who saw the Occupy camps that swept across the United States a year later. There were workshops, a charity group to collect funds, and a dialogue committee responsible for running negotiations with the Moroccan government.

“The idea came in response to the oppression that’s been going on for decades. We want to come up with something new, something different, and get out of the city limits,” said El Idrissi Mohamed Lamine, 27, who was one of the protesters.

After 28 days, authorities put an end to the civil disobedience and brutally dismantled the camp, burning tents to the ground, beating protesters, and arresting others. Protesters fought back; several people were killed, including security officers, and hundreds were injured.

To activists, Gdeim Izik was a success; it broke through the media blockage and was covered by organizations that usually ignore them. The Sahrawis like to see it as the inspiration for the Arab Spring—Noam Chomsky has argued that the widespread political and economic grievances that resulted in that wave of popular uprisings started in Gdeim Izik.

***

Either way, it has not made much of a difference in Western Sahara itself. That’s in part due to two circumstances: the presence of natural resources and the region’s occupation by a nation that is a strong Western ally. The 714-mile-long coastline gives Morocco access to some of the world’s richest fisheries, while phosphate reserves are becoming only more valuable as the global demand for fertilizer grows.

Politically, Western Sahara is a unifying issue within Morocco; analysts worry that splitting it off could undermine the monarchy, and threaten a pillar of stability in a volatile region. Polisario’s socialist rhetoric and Algerian ties have not won them friends in the West, either. For the West, “the status quo is much more tolerable than the frightening futures that might result from prioritizing a solution over stability,” Mundy said.

Morocco’s own position on Western Sahara stresses this risk. It has proposed an autonomy plan that would give the Sahrawis limited self-government but not independence. Officials in Rabat insist this is for the best: An independent but weak new state, they say, would be vulnerable to extremists and jihadis.

“An independent state is not viable in Sahara. You have to be very clear for security reasons. Today what is happening in Mali is happening in the Sahara. It is threatening the security of the Sahara and everywhere,” said Youssef Armani, minister delegate of foreign affairs and cooperation of the Kingdom of Morocco, in a meeting with journalists in May. “There is no room for a failed state in the region.”

Independence-seekers respond that Morocco is inflating security threats and making false allegations about Al Qaeda infiltrating the refugee camps.

“It is propaganda,” said El Ghalia Djimi, vice president of the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations, who says the independence movement doesn’t have terrorist connections.
A spontaneous protest in favor of independence in Laayoune, Western Sahara.

Jenn Abelson/Globe Staff

A spontaneous protest in favor of independence in Laayoune, Western Sahara.

“We are a small people with big land and big natural resources and occupied by a power that has historical relationships with Western countries,” she said. “So this is why they let this ongoing conflict not get resolved.”

***

How do successful national breakups happen? In the time Western Sahara has waited for its chance at independence, dozens of new countries have been born. Many were smooth spinoffs of islands by distant colonizers.

But others, especially with contiguous territories and at least one unwilling party, were painful and bloody. Yugoslavia dissolved into separate populations, propelled by ethnic cleansing. Kosovo is still under UN protection, its declaration of independence from Serbia still unrecognized by Serbia itself. Most recently, South Sudan’s 2011 independence came only after decades of brutal civil war and pressure from Christian groups in the United States who had worked for decades on the issue. In nearly all of these conflicts, including East Timor, independence was finally achieved once these self-determination struggles had won substantive support from the United States, the United Kingdom, or other Western allies.

America has tried to keep a neutral position on Western Sahara: It does not recognize Moroccan sovereignty and helps fund the UN mission there, but hasn’t aided the independence movement. It considers Morocco’s autonomy proposal to be “serious, realistic, and credible,” according to a recent Congressional Research Service report by Alexis Arieff, an analyst in African affairs.

In April, for the first time, the United States drafted a proposal for the UN to monitor human rights in Western Sahara—an effort defeated after heavy lobbying from Morocco, which set off the protests here last month.

America’s premium on stability essentially boils down to support for Morocco—for now. President Obama, in a call to King Mohammed VI in May, discussed the “importance of continuing to deepen our bilateral cooperation, especially on regional security matters of mutual concern.”

In Western Sahara, activists still say they want to break up the “right” way. Even after a recent attack on Aminatou Haidar left her black Toyota Corolla smashed by rocks, the woman nicknamed “the Sahrawi Gandhi” says she is committed to peace as the path to independence.

But she added that there is growing frustration among younger Sahrawis, who have not seen progress in this protracted, seemingly forgotten struggle. Haidar acknowledged that they could be at risk of being radicalized on the issue, and of returning to a violent struggle.

She and other Sahrawis blame the international community for not pressing forward on what they see as a long-promised vote. Last week, the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization began its periodic discussions on the case of Western Sahara and other territories. On Tuesday in New York, Polisario Front Secretary-General Mohamed Abdelaziz expressed frustration at the impasse and pressed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to give more attention to the dispute.

Despite his plea, it is hard to see the door opening anytime soon. Charles Dunbar, a Boston University lecturer who spent fom 1997 to 1999 living in Laayoune as a UN diplomat and trying to move the referendum forward, said that if a vote had been held back then, the Sahrawis would have won their independence. He blames the long deadlock on UN inaction.

“The true blame lies with the UN Security Council. It is the unwillingness of the council to take decisive action that has caused this mission to be seemingly, permanently stalemated,” Dunbar said.

About the prospects for the Sahrawis to gain their own country today, he considers himself a pessimist. “The world,” he said, “just has other priorities.”

Jenn Abelson is an investigative reporter with the Globe’s Spotlight team. She traveled to Western Sahara and Morocco with the support of the International Women’s Media Foundation. E-mail abelson@globe.com.

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Stephen Zunes joins Jadaliyya roundtable on Western Sahara

The Last Colony: Beyond Dominant Narratives on the Western Sahara Roundtable
June 3, 2013
Stephen Zunes

This is one of seven pieces in Jadaliyya’s electronic roundtable on the Western Sahara. Moderated by Samia Errazzouki and Allison L. McManus, it features contributions from John P. Entelis, Stephen Zunes, Aboubakr Jamaï, Ali Anouzla, Allison L. McManus, Samia Errazzouki, and Andrew McConnell.

Western Sahara is a sparsely-populated territory about the size of Italy, located on the Atlantic coast in northwestern Africa, just south of Morocco. Traditionally inhabited by nomadic Arab tribes, collectively known as Sahrawis and famous for their long history of resistance to outside domination, the territory was occupied by Spain from the late 1800s through the mid-1970s. With Spain holding onto the territory well over a decade after most African countries had achieved their freedom from European colonialism, the nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed independence struggle against Spain in 1973. This—along with pressure from the United Nations—eventually forced Madrid to promise the people of what was then still known as the Spanish Sahara a referendum on the fate of the territory by the end of 1975. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard irredentist claims by Morocco and Mauritania and ruled in October of 1975 that—despite pledges of fealty to the Moroccan sultan back in the nineteenth century by some tribal leaders bordering the territory, and close ethnic ties between some Sahrawi and Mauritanian tribes—the right of self-determination was paramount. A special visiting mission from the United Nations engaged in an investigation of the situation in the territory that same year and reported that the vast majority of Sahrawis supported independence under the leadership of the Polisario, not integration with Morocco or Mauritania.

During this same period, Morocco was threatening war with Spain over the territory and assembled over three hundred thousand Moroccans to march into Western Sahara to claim it as theirs regardless of the wishes of the indigenous population whose dialect, dress, and culture was very different than that of the Moroccan Arabs to their north. Though the Spaniards had a much stronger military during that time, they were occupied with the terminal illness of their longtime dictator, General Francisco Franco. At the same time, Spain was facing increasing pressure from the United States, which wanted to back its Moroccan ally, King Hassan II, and did not want to see the leftist Polisario come to power. As a result, Spain reneged on its promise of self-determination and instead agreed in November 1975 to allow for Moroccan administration of the northern two thirds of the Western Sahara and for Mauritanian administration of the southern third.

As Moroccan forces moved into Western Sahara, nearly half of the population fled into neighboring Algeria, where they and their descendants remain in refugee camps to this day. Morocco and Mauritania rejected a series of unanimous United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces and recognition of the Sahrawis’ right of self-determination. The United States and France, meanwhile, despite voting in favor of these resolutions, blocked the United Nations from enforcing them. At the same time, the Polisario—which had been driven from the more heavily populated northern and western parts of the country—declared independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).

Thanks in part to the Algerians providing significant amounts of military equipment and economic support, Polisario guerrillas fought well against both occupying armies and defeated Mauritania by 1979, making them agree to turn their third of Western Sahara over to the Polisario. However, the Moroccans then annexed the remaining southern part of the country as well.

The Polisario then focused their armed struggle against Morocco and by 1982 had liberated nearly eighty-five percent of their country. Over the next four years, however, the tide of the war turned in Morocco’s favor thanks to the United States and France dramatically increasing their support for the Moroccan war effort, with US forces providing important training for the Moroccan army in counter-insurgency tactics. In addition, the Americans and French helped Morocco construct a 1200-kilometer “wall,” primarily consisting of two heavily fortified parallel sand berms, which eventually shut off more than three quarters of Western Sahara—including virtually all of the territory’s major towns and natural resources—from the Polisario.

Meanwhile, the Moroccan government, through generous housing subsidies and other benefits, successfully encouraged thousands of Moroccan settlers—some of whom were from southern Morocco and of ethnic Sahrawi background—to immigrate to Western Sahara. By the early 1990s, these Moroccan settlers outnumbered the remaining indigenous Sahrawis by a ratio of more than two to one.

While rarely able to penetrate into Moroccan-controlled territory, the Polisario continued regular assaults against Moroccan occupation forces stationed along the wall until 1991, when the United Nations ordered a cease-fire to be monitored by a United Nations peacekeeping force known as MINURSO (United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara). The agreement included provisions for the return of Sahrawi refugees to Western Sahara followed by a United Nations-supervised referendum on the fate of the territory, which would allow Sahrawis native to Western Sahara to vote either for independence or for integration with Morocco. Neither the repatriation nor the referendum took place, however, due to the Moroccan insistence on stacking the voter rolls with Moroccan settlers and other Moroccan citizens whom it claimed had tribal links to the Western Sahara. Secretary General Kofi Annan enlisted former US Secretary of State James Baker as his special representative to help resolve the impasse. Morocco, however, continued to ignore repeated demands from the United Nations that it cooperate with the referendum process, and French and American threats of a veto prevented the Security Council from enforcing its mandate.

The Stalled Peace Process

In 2000, the United States, under President Bill Clinton, successfully convinced Baker and Annan to give up on efforts to proceed with the referendum as originally agreed by the United Nations ten years earlier and instead, accept Moroccan demands that settlers be allowed to vote on the fate of the territory along with the indigenous Sahrawis. Eventually, Baker came up with a proposal whereby both the Sahrawis and the Moroccan settlers would be able to vote in the referendum, but the plebiscite would take place only after Western Sahara experienced significant autonomy under Sahrawi-elected leaders for a five-year period prior to the vote. Independence would be an option on the ballot for the referendum and the United Nations would oversee the vote and guarantee that advocates of integration and independence would both have the freedom to campaign openly. The United Nations Security Council approved the Baker plan in the summer of 2003.

Under considerable pressure, Algeria and, eventually, the Polisario, reluctantly accepted the new plan, but the Moroccans—unwilling to allow the territory to enjoy even a brief period of autonomy and risk the possibility that they would lose the plebiscite—rejected it. Once again, the United States and France blocked the United Nations from pressuring Morocco to comply with its international legal obligations and Baker resigned.

In what was widely interpreted as rewarding Morocco for its intransigence, the Bush administration subsequently designated Morocco as a “major non-NATO ally,” a coveted status then granted to only fifteen key nations, such as Japan, Israel, and Australia. The following month, the Senate ratified a free trade agreement with Morocco, making the kingdom one of only a half dozen countries outside of the Western hemisphere to enjoy such a close economic relationship with the United States, though—in a potentially significant precedent—Congress insisted that it not include products from the Western Sahara.

US aid to Morocco increased five-fold under the Bush administration, ostensibly as a reward for the kingdom undertaking a series of neoliberal “economic reforms” and to assist the Moroccan government in “combating terrorism.” While there has been some political liberalization within Morocco in recent years under the young King Mohammed VI, who succeeded to the throne following the death of his father in 1999, gross and systematic human rights violations in the occupied Western Sahara continue unabated, with public expressions of nationalist aspirations and organized protests against the occupation and human rights abuses routinely met with severe repression.

The Significance of the Struggle for Self-Determination

The Sahrawis have fought for their national rights primarily by legal and diplomatic means, not through violence. Even during their armed struggle against the occupation, a conflict that ended over twenty years ago, Polisario forces restricted their attacks exclusively to the Moroccan armed forces, never targeting civilians.

The lack of resolution to the Western Sahara conflict has important regional implications. It has encouraged an arms race between Morocco and Algeria and, on several occasions over the past three decades, has brought the two countries close to war. Perhaps even more significantly, it has been the single biggest obstacle to a fuller implementation of the goals of the Arab Maghreb Union—consisting of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Mauritania—to pursue economic integration and other initiatives that would increase the standard of living and political stability in the region. The lack of unity and greater coordination between these nations and their struggling economies has contributed to a dramatic upsurge in illegal immigration to Europe and the rise of radical Islamist movements.

Nearly half of the Sahrawi population lives in exile in the desert of western Algeria in refugee camps under Polisario administration. The one hundred fifty thousand Sahrawis living in these desert camps are largely self-governing. Demonstrations and strikes in the late 1980s forced the Polisario to democratize the governance of the camps, where they maintain a functional, if barely subsistent, economy. Though devoutly Muslim, Sahrawi women are unveiled and enjoy equal rights with men regarding divorce, inheritance, and other legal matters. Sahrawi women also hold major leadership positions in the Polisario and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), including posts as cabinet ministers. Some observers note the irony that while France and the United States claim to seek the establishment of such democratic governance throughout the Arab and Islamic world, they have contributed greatly to the failure of the Sahrawis to establish such a democratic system outside these refugee camps by supporting the occupation of their country by an autocratic monarchy.

Over the past three decades, the SADR has been recognized as an independent country by more than eighty governments, though some have subsequently withdrawn their recognition, mostly under French pressure. The SADR has been a full member state of the African Union (formerly the Organization for African Unity) since 1984. By contrast, with only a few exceptions, the Arab states—despite their outspoken opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land—have supported Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. The United Nations still formally recognizes Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory, making it Africa’s last colony

With Morocco’s rejection of the Baker Plan and threats of a French veto of any Security Council resolution that would push Morocco to compromise, a diplomatic settlement of the conflict looks highly unlikely. With Morocco’s powerful armed forces protected behind the separation wall and Algeria unwilling to support a resumption of guerrilla war, the Polisario appears to lack a military option as well.

Morocco’s “Autonomy” Plan

As an alternative to a referendum, Morocco proposed an autonomy plan for Western Sahara in 2006, for which it has been vigorously working to gain international support. The Polisario and most of the international community have rejected the proposal on the grounds that it is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco rather than an occupied territory, and that Morocco is somehow granting part of its sovereign territory a special status. To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the UN and the ratification of the UN Charter, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilizing precedent. Nevertheless, the Moroccan proposal was immediately endorsed by France, as well as the Bush administration, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and a bipartisan majority of the US Senate.

If the people of Western Sahara accepted an autonomy agreement over independence as a result of a free and fair referendum, it would constitute a legitimate act of self-determination. However, Morocco has explicitly stated that its autonomy proposal “rules out, by definition, the possibility for the independence option to be submitted” to the people of Western Sahara, the vast majority of whom favor outright independence.

International law aside, there are a number of practical concerns regarding the Moroccan proposal. For instance, centralized autocratic states have rarely respected the autonomy of regional jurisdictions, which has often led eventually to violent conflict, such as in Eritrea and Kosovo. Moreover, the Moroccan proposal contains no enforcement mechanisms. Morocco has often broken its promises to the international community, such as in its refusal to allow the UN-mandated referendum for Western Sahara to go forward. Indeed, a close reading of the proposal raises questions about how much autonomy Morocco is even initially offering, such as whether the Western Saharans will control the territory’s natural resources or law enforcement beyond local matters. In addition, the proposal appears to indicate that all powers not specifically vested in the autonomous region would remain with the kingdom. Indeed, since the king of Morocco is ultimately vested with absolute authority under Article 42 of the Moroccan Constitution, the autonomy proposal’s insistence that the Moroccan state “will keep its powers in the royal domains, especially with respect to defense, external relations, and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of His Majesty the King” appears to give the monarch considerable latitude in interpretation.

Civil Resistance in the Occupied Territory

As happened during the 1980s in both South Africa and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, the locus of the Western Sahara freedom struggle has shifted during the past decade from the military and diplomatic initiatives of an exiled armed movement to a largely unarmed popular resistance from within. Young activists in the occupied territory and even in Sahrawi-populated parts of southern Morocco have confronted Moroccan troops in street demonstrations and other forms of nonviolent action, despite the risk of shootings, mass arrests, and torture. Sahrawis from different sectors of society have engaged in protests, strikes, cultural celebrations, and other forms of civil resistance focused on such issues as educational policy, human rights, the release of political prisoners, and the right to self-determination. They also raised the cost of occupation for the Moroccan government and increased the visibility of the Sahrawi cause. Indeed, perhaps most significantly, civil resistance helped to build support for the Sahrawi movement among international NGOs, solidarity groups, and even sympathetic Moroccans.

Internet communication became a key element in the Saharawi movement, with public chat rooms evolving as vital centers for sending messages, as breaking news regarding the burgeoning resistance campaign reached those in the Sahrawi diaspora and international activists. Despite attempts by the Moroccans to disrupt these contacts, the diaspora has continued to provide financial and other support to the resistance. Though there have been complaints from inside the territory that support for their movement by the older generation of Polisario leaders was inadequate, the Polisario appears to have recognized that by having signed a cease-fire and then having had Morocco reject the diplomatic solution expected in return, it has essentially played all its cards. So there has been a growing recognition that the only real hope for independence has to come from within the occupied territory in combination with solidarity efforts from global civil society.

After the Moroccan authorities’ use of force to break up the large and prolonged demonstrations in 2005-2006, the resistance subsequently opted mainly for smaller protests, some of which were planned and some of which were spontaneous. A typical protest would begin on a street corner or a plaza where a Sahrawi flag would be unfurled, women would start ululating, and people would begin chanting pro-independence slogans. Within a few minutes, soldiers and police would arrive, and the crowd would quickly scatter. Other tactics have included leafleting, graffiti (including tagging the homes of collaborators), and cultural celebrations with political overtones. Such nonviolent actions, while broadly supported by the people, appear to have been less a part of coordinated resistance than a result of action by individuals. Still, the Moroccan government’s regular use of violent repression to subdue the Sahrawi-led nonviolent protests suggests that civil resistance is seen as a threat to Moroccan control. There have been some small victories, such as the successful campaign which led to Sahrawi nonviolent resistance leader Aminatou Haidar securing the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, as well as forcing Moroccan authorities to reverse their expulsion order in December 2009, which resulted in her near-fatal thirty-day hunger strike.

Furthermore, as inadequate as the Moroccan autonomy proposal may be, it nevertheless constitutes a reversal of Morocco’s historical insistence that Western Sahara is as much a part of Morocco as other provinces, by acknowledging that it is indeed a distinct entity. Protests in Western Sahara in recent years have begun to raise some awareness within Morocco, especially among intellectuals, human rights activists, pro-democracy groups, and some moderate Islamists – long suspicious of the government line in a number of areas – that not all Sahrawis see themselves as Moroccans, that it is not simply an Algerian plot, and that there exists a genuine indigenous opposition to Moroccan rule.

In the occupied territory, Moroccan colonists and collaborators are given preference for housing and employment and the indigenous people receive virtually no benefits from their country’s rich fisheries and phosphate deposits. In September 2010, in a precursor to the “Arab Spring,” Sahrawi activists erected a tent city about fifteen kilometers outside of Laayoune, the former colonial capital and largest city in the occupied territory. Since any protests calling for self-determination, independence, or enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions are brutally suppressed, the demonstrators pointedly avoided such provocative calls, instead simply demanding economic justice. Even this was too much for the Moroccan monarchy, which was determined to crush this nonviolent act of mass defiance. The Moroccans tightened the siege in early October, attacking vehicles bringing food, water, and medical supplies to the camp, resulting in scores of injuries and the death of a fourteen-year old boy. Finally, on 8 November, the Moroccans attacked the camp, driving protesters out with tear gas and hoses, beating those who did not flee fast enough, and killing as many as two dozen people. In response, violent anti-occupation rioting erupted, resulting in the first Moroccan fatalities at the hands of Sahrawis since the 1991 ceasefire. This then triggered the burning and pillaging of Sahrawi homes and shops and the shooting and arresting of suspected activists, some of whom were charged with treason and hauled before military courts.

One of the obstacles to the internal resistance is that Moroccan settlers outnumber the indigenous population by a ratio of more than three to one and by more in the major cities, making certain tactics used effectively in similar struggles more problematic. For example, although a general strike could be effective, the large number of Moroccan settlers, combined with the minority of indigenous Sahrawis who oppose independence, could likely fill the void resulting from the absence of much of the Sahrawi workforce. Although that might be alleviated by growing pro-independence sentiments among ethnic Sahrawi settlers from the southern part of Morocco, it still presents challenges that have not been faced by largely nonviolent struggles in other occupied lands–among them East Timor, Kosovo, and the Palestinian territories.

Earlier this month, the United States, for the first time, included renewing the mandate of MINURSO, a provision giving the UN peacekeepers the authority to monitor the human rights situation in both the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and the Polisario-administered refugee camps, in its draft of the biannual UN Security Council resolution. Currently, MINURSO is the only UN peacekeeping operation in the world without a human rights mandate. Under pressure from Morocco, France, and some pro-Moroccan sectors of the Obama administration and Congress, the United States dropped the human rights provisions in the resolution renewing MINURSO.

In response, recent weeks have witnessed some of the largest demonstrations in the history of the occupation, despite ongoing repression by Moroccan occupation forces.

Morocco has been able to persist in flouting its international legal obligations toward Western Sahara largely because France and the United States have continued to arm Moroccan occupation forces and block the enforcement of resolutions in the UN Security Council demanding that Morocco allow for self-determination or even simply allow human rights monitoring in the occupied country. So now, at least as important as nonviolent resistance by Sahrawis, is the potential of nonviolent action by the citizens of France, the United States, and other countries that enable Morocco to maintain its occupation. Such campaigns played a major role in forcing Australia, Great Britain, and the United States to end their support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, finally enabling the former Portuguese colony to become free. The only realistic hope to end the occupation of Western Sahara, resolve the conflict, and save the vitally important post-World War II principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which forbid any country from expanding its territory through military force, may be a similar campaign by global civil society.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11992/the-last-colony_beyond-dominant-narratives-on-the-

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Jacob Mundy quoted in USA Today piece on Western Sahara

Forgotten Western Sahara pines for autonomy
Portia Walker
USA Today
June 9, 2013

Royal regime of Morocco firmly in place because of reforms that made uprising, independence unlikely.

LAAYOUNE, Western Sahara — Sultana Khaya is covered in bruises. The deep purple welts run up her legs and across her arms — the result of one of many beatings she says she’s received from the police.

Her crime is calling for independence for Western Sahara, a Colorado-size territory in southwest Morocco, where many of the indigenous people have been fighting for self-determination for nearly four decades.

In 2011, the Arab Spring revolutions swept away many of the rulers in North Africa. But the royal regime of Morocco is firmly in place because of reforms that have made an uprising less likely and independence for the disputed desert people of Western Sahara even less so.

“We are protesting here for independence and the return of the refugees around the world in order to construct a country,” says the prominent Western Saharan human rights activist Mohammed Daddach.

Advocates for independence say the Arab Spring began not in Tunisia as is commonly reported but at the Gdeim Izik protest camp in Western Sahara in 2010 when thousands of pro-independence activists gathered to voice objections to discrimination, human rights abuses and poverty. Mass protests hit the rest of the country in February 2011.

The difference here is that the demonstrations failed to gain momentum.

Morocco is unlike the deposed rulers of those countries, whose regimes were foisted upon the people in recent history. The royal family of Morocco first came to power nearly 500 years ago and its past has much to do with Morocco’s present.

“The Moroccan monarchy has been around for hundreds of years and that goes a long way,” says Alexis Arieff, analyst in African affairs at the Library of Congress. “Many Moroccans fear that without the monarchy, Morocco would fall apart and be divided tribally and ethnically.”

Moroccans trace their lineages back to Arab invaders, Berber tribesman and indigenous Africans, all brought under the Alaouite Dynasty in the 17th century. Its Barbary pirates were feared the world over, and it was the first to recognize the United States as a nation independent from England.

The monarchy resisted colonization by the French and Spanish and in the 1950s won independence for the country. The current king, Mohammed VI, is thus part of a dynasty that has ruled Morocco since the 1600s and that traces its origins to the Islamic prophet Mohammed, meaning the king is not just head of state but an important religious leader.

Arab kingdoms such as Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have proved much more durable than republics, and Morocco’s combination of reform and credibility seems to have succeeded.

“The monarchy goes both ways: They can claim religious legitimacy and they can claim modernization legitimacy,” Arieff says.

Some experts credit the king’s deft handling of the first signs of dissent for his resilience. When protesters took the streets in February 2011, he drafted a new constitution and called elections. When the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party won the elections, the king appointed its leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, prime minister.

Moroccan officials say changes in response to the citizenry date back even further.

“We have started our reform process more than 10 years ago. Today we are consolidating,” explains Youssef Amrani, minister-delegate for foreign affairs. “We were listening to our people. We have political parties, we have trade unions, we have civil society. We have the leadership and the legitimacy — nobody was putting into question the role of the king.”

Geography also plays a part in the survival of the current system. Morocco is 12 miles from Spain and thousands of miles from the unrest of the Middle East. Dividing it from the revolutionary fervor of Libya and Egypt is Algeria, a closed and secretive nation that went through a grim and violent civil war in the 1990s and whose government appears to have crushed the revolutionary impulses in its society.

However, despite reforms, the Moroccan king still retains charge of the military and religious authorities, and dissent continues to be punished.

Seventy of the activists who protested against the regime during the 2011 demonstrations remain in prison and a popular rapper, “El Haqed,” recently spent a year in jail for penning a song about police corruption.

But there is comparatively little pressure on the regime to change, and even in volatile Western Sahara people are calling for independence not revolution.

Daddach says the people here don’t wish to sweep away the rulers as has happened in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt to their east.

“What we work for is peaceful demonstrations with no violence, no stone-throwing and with no words that would touch the dignity of the Moroccan sacred elements — God, the homeland and the king,” he says.

Some simply want better working conditions. One of the greatest grievances of the Western Saharan people, known as the Saharawi, is that their land’s resources such as ample fishing reserves and valuable phosphorus mines are exploited by the Moroccan state with little benefit for the native residents.

But there is little high-level international interest in pressing the Western Sahara issue.

“Morocco is a very close ally of France and the United States; Paris and Washington don’t want to jeopardize their excellent security and economic cooperation with Rabat, which could be the cost of forcing peace in Western Sahara,” says Jacob Mundy, assistant professor at Colgate University and author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution.

“It’s not going to be resolved until there is a crisis. Something major has to happen to shake things up.”

Sultana Khaya still refuses to give up hope.

“This will not slow me down,” she says. “I’m still determined to go on and to continue the struggle.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/09/western-sahara-independence/2394651/

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Interview with Jacob Mundy in “El Watan,” leading Algerian francophone daily

«Le Maroc semble incapable de gouverner sans la violence»
A la une International
Professeur Jacob Mundy. Spécialiste du Sahara occidental à Colgate University
le 21.05.13
Zine Cherfaoui

Le peuple sahraoui a célébré, hier, le 40e anniversaire du déclenchement de sa lutte armée contre l’occupation marocaine, après avoir commémoré, le 10 mai courant, la création du Front Polisario (10 mai 1973). Spécialiste du conflit, Jacob Mundy, actuellement professeur à Colgate University (New York), décrypte pour nous les enjeux de la dernière réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU consacrée au dossier sahraoui. Celui-ci (le Conseil de sécurité) a, rappelle-t-on, adopté le 25 avril dernier la résolution 2099 dans laquelle il a réitéré son appel à «une solution politique juste et durable acceptée par les deux parties et qui garantit le droit du peuple sahraoui à l’autodétermination».

-Comment expliquez-vous le regain d’intérêt du gouvernement américain pour le conflit du Sahara occidental ces derniers temps ?

Ce regain d’intérêt américain est probablement dû au nouveau secrétaire d’Etat américain, John Kerry. Ce dernier soutient le droit du peuple sahraoui à l’autodétermination depuis de nombreuses années. C’est son collègue, le regretté sénateur Edward Kennedy, qui l’a sensibilisé sur la question du Sahara occidental après qu’il soit lui-même devenu sénateur de l’Etat du Massachusetts. Kennedy a été l’un des premiers sénateurs à soutenir le droit du Sahara occidental à l’indépendance.

L’ancienne secrétaire d’Etat américaine, Hillary Clinton, comme chacun le sait, est plus complaisante à l’égard du Maroc pour des raisons personnelles et politiques. Sans Hillary Clinton, la représentante américaine aux Nations unies, Susan Rice, qui est également favorable à la lutte du Sahara occidental, aura désormais plus de liberté au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU pour faire pression afin d’obtenir l’élargissement à la surveillance des droits humains du mandat de la Mission des Nations unies pour l’organisation d’un référendum au Sahara occidental (Minurso).

-Quelle est exactement, aujourd’hui, la position des Etats-Unis sur le conflit au Sahara occidental et quels sont les éléments qui contribuent à la définir ?

Si les parties en conflit, c’est-à-dire le Maroc et le Polisario, s’entendent sur un projet d’autonomie, les Etats-Unis vont soutenir. Si celles-ci conviennent d’un référendum sur l’indépendance, Washington va également soutenir. Les Etats-Unis aimeraient voir le conflit du Sahara occidental connaître une solution juridique qui respecte l’autodétermination. Toutefois, l’autodétermination n’a jamais été la priorité de la Maison-Blanche. En revanche, un Maghreb stable constitue la priorité des Etats-Unis. Dans les conditions actuelles, toute solution au conflit du Sahara occidental doit être acceptée par tous du point de vue de Washington.

Les Etats-Unis feront toujours le choix du statu quo en premier dans le cas où une solution menacerait de déstabiliser la région. Ils ne soutiendront donc pas une solution imposée aux parties. L’ancien émissaire de l’ONU, James Baker, avait par exemple souhaité voir le Conseil de sécurité imposer sa solution au Maroc. La Maison-Blanche avait toutefois rejeté l’idée. Inversement, le Maroc, en 2007, voulait imposer sa proposition «d’autonomie» pour le Sahara occidental. La suite tout le monde la connaît : le gouvernement américain l’a rejetée et a choisi la voie des négociations en soutenant la nomination de l’ambassadeur actuel, Christopher Ross. Cette attitude (politique) est déterminée par un intérêt historique : celui de voir s’établir un gouvernement stable à l’embouchure de la Méditerranée. Comme avec l’Egypte, la priorité américaine au Maroc n’est pas le régime en tant que tel mais la stabilité que le régime offre. Toutes les autres considérations, y compris l’Algérie et ses ressources énergétiques, sont secondaires.

-Avant la dernière réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU sur le Sahara occidental (25 avril 2013), les Etats-Unis ont présenté un projet de résolution appelant à élargir le mandat de la Minurso à la surveillance des droits de l’homme dans les territoires sahraouis occupés. Washington a fini par se rétracter à la dernière minute. Qu’est-ce qui explique ce changement d’attitude ?

Les Etats-Unis ont voulu envoyer un signal au Maroc, mais pas au prix de perdre la présence de l’ONU au Sahara occidental. Un veto français aurait mis fin, en effet, à l’existence de la Minurso. Ce n’est dans l’intérêt de personne que cela se produise. Sur la question du Sahara occidental, le Conseil de sécurité utilise le consensus pour adopter des résolutions sur la Minurso. Il y a eu quelques exceptions à cette règle. La dernière en date remonte à février 2000, lorsque les Etats-Unis et la France ont abandonné le processus référendaire pour protéger le nouveau roi, Mohammed VI. Avec un vote, il n’aurait pas pu gagner. Cela fut une réunion du Conseil de sécurité très controversée.

-Pourquoi, d’après-vous, la France s’oppose à la surveillance des droits humains au Sahara occidental?

Si elles avaient obtenu l’élargissement des prérogatives de la Minurso, les Nations unies auraient eu largement la possibilité de documenter les violations quotidiennes des droits humains par le Maroc. C’est la raison pour laquelle la France s’oppose à la surveillance des droits humains au Sahara occidental. Le Maroc semble être incapable de gouverner le Sahara occidental sans l’usage de la violence, la peur et le contrôle de la société. Le suivi régulier des droits de l’homme conduirait nécessairement à une intervention plus importante de l’ONU (envoi par exemple de rapporteurs spéciaux sur la torture et les exécutions sommaires). Des poursuites de la CPI pourraient même être envisagées.
-Avant qu’elle ne change, la proposition américaine a donné des sueurs froides au Maroc. C’est probablement la première fois que les Etats-Unis mettent en difficulté leur allié traditionnel dans la région. Qu’est-ce qui explique la montée au créneau de Washington ? Les Etats-Unis sont-ils en train de revoir leur politique maghrébine ?

Non, il ne s’agit pas d’une révision radicale de la politique américaine à l’égard du Maghreb ou du Sahara occidental. Sous l’Administration Obama, les Etats-Unis n’ont cessé d’exercer des pressions sur le Conseil de sécurité pour qu’il élargisse le mandat de la Minurso à la surveillance des droits de l’homme. Les Etats-Unis ont souvent rappelé à l’ordre Rabat concernant les violations des droits de l’homme. Mais cela s’est toujours fait avec beaucoup de discrétion. En avril 2013, cela a changé. Depuis 2003 (plan Baker), c’est effectivement la première fois que les Etats-Unis s’opposent ouvertement au Maroc. Mais dans les deux cas, Washington tentait en réalité de pousser le Maroc à gagner les cœurs et les esprits des Sahraouis.

-A votre avis, pourquoi le Maroc ne veut pas entendre parler d’un référendum d’autodétermination au Sahara occidental ?

Du plus petit village du Haut-Atlas jusque dans les rues de Casablanca, il est difficile de trouver une divergence d’opinions sur la question du Sahara occidental. En privé, les Marocains remettent en question les «lignes rouges» traditionnelles de la société (la monarchie, l’islam, l’armée, etc.), mais pratiquement aucun ne remet en cause la question du Sahara occidental. C’est un accomplissement incroyable de l’idéologie nationaliste ! La plus grande victime de cette idéologie est le roi lui-même.

-Comment ça ?

Il est dit quelque part que les rois sont les pions de l’histoire. Personnellement, je pense que Mohammed VI est le pion d’une histoire qu’il n’a pas écrite. Il doit suivre l’histoire que son défunt père, le roi Hassan II, lui a léguée. Celle-ci ressemble beaucoup à la tragédie d’Hamlet. Mohammed VI subit. Il est gouverné par des fantômes. A l’inverse, Hassan II a été brutal mais respecté. Même les dirigeants du Polisario pourraient dire : nous aurions pu travailler avec Hassan II mais pas avec ce nouveau roi et son régime. La raison est que Hassan II a obtenu son trône en survivant à des moments très difficiles et en prenant le Sahara occidental de l’Espagne. En somme, seul Hassan II a pu prendre le Sahara occidental et donc lui seul aurait pu le rendre. Mohammed VI n’a pas pris le Sahara occidental. Il n’a donc pas le droit de le rendre. Plus de trois décennies après, le Sahara occidental est devenu la chasse gardée de puissants intérêts dans l’armée et le makhzen. Le fait aujourd’hui que la pêche et l’exploitation des phosphates soient très rentables n’incite pas le Maroc à abandonner ce territoire.

-Comment voyez-vous l’évolution du conflit ?

Dans mon livre et sur le site web de Foreign Policy (Politique étrangère), j’ai soutenu que Washington n’interviendra dans le conflit du Sahara occidental que s’il devient une crise majeure et menace de déstabiliser le Maroc. Si, aujourd’hui, le Timor oriental est indépendant c’est parce que Bill Clinton a été forcé de faire un choix : permettre qu’un second génocide s’y produise ou dire à l’Indonésie de se retirer. Moubarak est parti parce qu’Obama a été aussi forcé de faire un choix, en particulier lorsque les travailleurs ont menacé de bloquer le canal de Suez. La même logique s’applique au Sahara occidental. Jusqu’à ce que les Etats-Unis soient obligés de faire un choix au Sahara occidental, ils choisiront toujours de ne pas choisir.

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Stephen Zunes remembers George McGovern, author of the foreword to Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Resolution

McGovern’s Progressive Leadership on Middle East Policy
By Stephen Zunes
October 22, 2012

Though a supporter of Israel’s right to exist, George McGovern also became an outspoken opponent of its human rights abuses.

Though former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, who died Sunday at age 90, was best known for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his efforts in fighting world hunger, he also made a mark regarding U.S. Middle East policy.

Like many liberals of his generation, he had a strong attachment to Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people returning to the lands of their forefathers to escape centuries of oppression. It was only later in his Senate career, in 1975, when asked by Foreign Relationship chairman J. William Fulbright to chair the Middle East subcommittee, did he learn about the plight of the Palestinians. He became a strong supporter of a two-state solution at a time when the Democratic Party was on record opposing Palestinian statehood and emerged as an outspoken opponent of Israeli human rights abuses and other violations of international law while maintaining his steadfast support for Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.

He emphasized that, as a friend of Israel, he was obliged to do what a real friend must do when they see someone behaving in ways that are both immoral and threaten their own self-interest: tell them to stop.

His support for international law and self-determination was rooted in his taking part in the war on fascism. In his foreword to my most recent book, which analyzes the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, he noted how that experience helped teach him that the right of self-determination “is one of the most fundamental rights of all” and that “no government should get away with denying that right by invading, occupying and annexing another national and oppressing its people.” He faulted successive administrations of both parties for failing to uphold such fundamental principles of international law.

His interest in Middle Eastern affairs led him to become president of the Middle East Policy Council in 1991, a non-profit group based in Washington addressing political, economic and security issues in the region impacting the United States. In a 1993 interview I did with him for The Progressive magazine which took place while we were both visiting Damascus, he observed, “What I’m picking up now in my travels is a feeling that… a new form of imperialism is now operating in the Middle East. We may not have any colonies as did previous Western powers, but there is a belief that many of the ruling regimes are somehow tied in to the West in a way that does not enhance the well-being of the ordinary citizen. I think we’re headed for trouble if that perception prevails, particularly since there is a lot of truth behind it.”

He presciently added, “These Arab regimes are going to have to become more sensitive to the problems of their own people. This is what this Muslim extremism is all about: It’s a kind of desperate move by people who do not know how to get the attention of the ruling regimes any other way but to shake them up with extremist, radical, and sometimes violent methods.”

McGovern later became an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, comparing it to the tragedy of Vietnam. In 2006, he wrote Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, which helped a number of Democrats who had been too timid to speak out against the war previously to become bolder. In a Washington Post op-ed in January 2008, McGovern – arguing that “Nixon was bad [but] these guys are worse” – called for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice-president Cheney over their violations of the U.S. constitution and of national and international law, and their repeated lies to the American people. Speaker of the House and Democratic Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi, however, dismissed such calls for impeachment as “off the table.”

McGovern also expressed concern about the bipartisan threats of war against Iran and the hypocrisy in U.S. nonproliferation policy. In 2006, George and I wrote an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News criticizing the Bush administration for signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with India. We argued, “How can we have any credibility in trying to block Iran’s nuclear program, which is still many years away from weapons capability, when we are supporting the nuclear program of a neighboring country which has already developed a dangerous nuclear arsenal? Maintaining such flagrant double-standards regarding nuclear proliferation is simply not worthy of a country which asserts the right to global leadership.”

It is disappointing to see so many of today’s otherwise liberal Democrats taking belligerent stances towards Iran and allying with Israel’s right-wing government by defending its occupation policies and other violations of international humanitarian law.

It is important to realize that McGovern – despite representing an under-populated state in the Great Plains – became such a prominent voice in foreign policy not just because of his many qualities, but because there were movements that magnified that voice. Ultimately, then, it is up to us to make possible the emergence of political leaders who will challenge both the Republicans and the Democratic establishment on the Middle East, as McGovern did on Southeast Asia.

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The Reality of Western Sahara : A rebuttal on accusations concerning the Polisario and Moroccan occupation

SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this year, Global Post ran an article by Jordan Paul, executive director of the Moroccan American Center for Policy, a registered foreign agent for the Moroccan government, which funds, supervises, and coordinates the group’s activities. The article contained a series of demonstrably false claims attempting to rationalize for Morocco’s illegal occupation of its southern neighbor, the country of Western Sahara.

In 1975, the kingdom of Morocco conquered Western Sahara on the eve of its anticipated independence from Spain in defiance of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark 1975 decision by the International Court of Justice upholding the right of the country’s inhabitants to self-determination. With threats of a French and American veto at the UN preventing decisive action by the international community to stop the Moroccan invasion, the nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed struggle against the occupiers. The majority of the indigenous population, known as Sahrawis, went into exile, primarily in Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria.

Thanks to U.S. and French military support for the conquering Moroccan forces, Morocco was able to hold on to most of Western Sahara. Yet the Polisario achieved a series of diplomatic victories that generated widespread international support for self-determination and opposition to the Moroccan takeover. In 1991, the Polisario agreed to a ceasefire in return for a Moroccan promise to allow for an internationally supervised referendum on the fate of the territory. Morocco, however, recognizing they would almost certainly lose such a plebiscite, refused to allow the scheduled vote to move forward.

French and American support for the Moroccan government blocked the UN Security Council from providing the necessary diplomatic pressure to force Morocco to allow the promised referendum to take place. The Polisario, meanwhile, recognizing its inability to defeat the Moroccans by military means, decided against resuming the armed struggle. As a result, the struggle for self-determination shifted to within the Moroccan-occupied territory, where the Sahrawi population has launched a nonviolent resistance campaign against the occupation, which – despite widespread Moroccan repression – has sporadically continued.

In an effort to justify their ongoing defiance of the international community for their illegal occupation, the autocratic Moroccan monarchy has redoubled its efforts to discredit their opponents, such hiring people like Paul to write articles like those that appeared in the Global Post in March.

Among Paul’s more bizarre claims is that the Polisario Front has links to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM.)

In reality, though Sahrawis are virtually all Muslims, they historically practice a decidedly liberal interpretation of the faith. The Polisario has since its founding been a secular organization, based on the belief that religious faith is between the individual and God, not a government or other temporal organization. Women have taken prominent positions in leadership. Meanwhile, radical Islamists in Algeria have condemned them for their secular ideology and even attacked Polisario offices.

Even during the twenty years of armed struggle, the Polisario never engaged in terrorism or any kind of deliberate attacks against civilian targets. And there has been none since.

Furthermore, the autocratic Algerian regime controls security around the refugee camps, which are located in the heavily-militarized region of Tindouf. After surviving a bloody decade-long civil war against Islamist extremists, the idea that the Algerian government would allow any group collaborating the AQIM to operate in such a sensitive area is pure fantasy.

While there are some legitimate concerns regarding some of the practices of the Polisario leadership in the camps, no credible independent analysts have documented Paul’s claims that the Polisario has been involved in “arms and drug trafficking, armed incursions into Mali, fighting as Gaddafi mercenaries in Libya, and kidnappings for AQIM in the Sahel.”

Contrary to Paul’s claim, the Polisario Front is not a “separatist” group. It is the ruling party of the nation of Western Sahara – known officially as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – which has been recognized by over 80 countries and is a full member state of the African Union. Western Sahara is recognized by the United Nations and virtually the entire international community as a non-self-governing country under foreign belligerent occupation.

And, contrary to Paul, the Polisario does not “force” the refugees to live in the camps. As someone who has visited both the camps and Moroccan-occupied parts of Western Sahara, it is clear that they are there to escape Moroccan repression in their occupied homeland, repression that has been well-documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights groups.

As with Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and Iraq’s short-lived occupation of Kuwait, there are those who will try to justify illegitimate foreign occupations by making up such bizarre stories. However, it doesn’t mean they should be taken seriously.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/regions/africa/morocco/the-reality-western-sahara

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair or Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2010)

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Divesting from All Occupations

In response to ongoing violations of international law and basic human rights by the rightist Israeli government of Benyamin Netanyahu in the occupied West Bank and elsewhere, there has been a growing call for divestment of stocks in corporations supporting the occupation.

Modeled after the largely successful divestment campaign in the 1980s against corporations doing business in apartheid South Africa, the movement targets companies that support the Israeli occupation by providing weapons or other instruments of repression to Israeli occupation forces, investing in or trading with enterprises in illegal Israeli settlements, and in other ways. Although human rights activists recognize such tactics as a legitimate form of nonviolent international solidarity with an oppressed people, right-wing groups supporting the occupation as well as some more moderate organizations concerned about the strident anti-Israel tone of some divestment supporters have denounced the movement.

Still, the campaign has scored notable successes. One target of the campaign has been the Caterpillar company, which has provided Israeli occupation forces with bulldozers that have illegally demolished thousands of Palestinian homes. In recent months, TIAA/CREF— the leading provider of retirement benefits for those in the academic, research, medical, and cultural fields—has removed Caterpillar from its Social Choice Fund. The influential Morgan Stanley Capital International has delisted Caterpillar from its World Socially Responsible Index, and the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation has joined a growing list of groups which have divested stockholdings in the company. At the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, a resolution to divest from Caterpillar, along with Motorola and Hewlett Packard, for their complicity in the occupation was defeated by the narrowest of margins.
Opposing Occupation Everywhere

At the Presbyterian gathering and elsewhere, many opponents of the divestment resolution acknowledged that the Israeli government is engaged in serious human rights abuses in the occupied territories, but expressed concerned that the divestment resolution unfairly “singles out Israel.” Indeed, there are a number of governments in the world that engage in worse human rightsabuses than Israel, and violations of human rights should be opposed regardless if they take place within a country’s internationally-recognized borders or in an illegally occupied territory. Given that Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, there is understandably particular sensitivity if Israel alone is seen as being targeted, however serious the government’s transgressions.

However, there is a much stronger legal case for opposing human rights abuses in territories recognized as under foreign belligerent occupation. International law prohibits under most circumstances foreign companies from exploiting natural resources within such territories. Similarly, there are a host of legal issues regarding the export of weapons and other military resources to country’s that utilize them in suppressing the rights of those under occupation.

Indeed, these very issues were subjected to international debate during South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, and Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

Today, there are only three countries that are engaged in what the United Nations and the international community recognize as a foreign belligerent occupation: Israel, Morocco, and Armenia. (Although a moral case can be made for the independence of Tibet, Chechnya, and West Papua (as well as a number of other territories that aspire to become independent), the international community deems them as being within the internationally recognized borders of China, Russia and Indonesia respectively, and are therefore not recognized as occupied territories.)

Virtually no major international companies support Armenia’s current occupation of the small strip of Azerbaijan territory it controls. However, a number of companies support Morocco’s ongoing illegal occupation of the nation of Western Sahara.

U.S.-based Kosmos Energy is the only oil company in the world licensed for offshore oil exploration in the territorial waters of occupied Western Sahara. In 2002, a UN legal analysis determined that proceeding with such exploration activities would be in violation of international law. Similarly, two U.S. fertilizer companies – PCS and Mosaic – are major customers of Morocco’s illegal phosphate production in occupied Western Sahara. And, as is the case of the Israeli-occupied territories, U.S.-based arms manufacturers have supplied Moroccan occupation forces engaged in what independent human rights groups have described as gross and systematic human rights violations, including manufacturers of the teargas that has been used to break up peaceful demonstrations calling for the right of self-determination.
Expanding the Boycott

The Palestinian solidarity struggle would be considerably strengthened if, instead of calling for divestment specifically from companies supporting the Israeli occupation, the call was for divestment from companies supporting all foreign belligerent occupations.

Since it would effectively mean just one additional country and only a small number of companies, it would not take much attention away from the Israeli occupation and Western companies supporting the occupation. More importantly, it would help move the debate away from a divisive pro-Israel vs. anti-Israel dichotomy, where people often end up just talking past each other, to where the debate belongs: human rights and international law.

Morocco is a predominantly Arab Muslim country. By including Western Sahara along with Palestine, the movement would avoid the accusation that it is unfairly singling out Israel. After all, it would be targeting all illegal occupations, not just one.

Morocco, like Israel, is in violation of a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice regarding their occupation. Morocco, like Israel, has illegally moved tens of thousands of settlers into the occupied territory. Morocco, like Israel, engages in gross and systematic human rights abuses in the occupied territories. Morocco, like Israel, has illegally built a separation wall through the occupied territories. Morocco, like Israel, relies on the United States and other Western support to maintain the occupation by rendering the UN powerless to enforce international law. Morocco, like Israel, is able to maintain the occupation in part through the support of multinational corporations.

And just as Palestine is recognized by scores of countries and is a full member of the Arab League, Western Sahara is recognized by scores of countries and is a full member of the African Union, thereby insuring international support.

Not only would including all occupations in the divestment campaign help protect the movement from spurious charges of “anti-Semitism” and broaden its appeal, it would help bring attention to the little-known but important self-determination struggle of the Sahrawi people against the illegal and oppressive Moroccan occupation of their country, which was invaded by the U.S.-backed kingdom in 1975, eight years after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and other Arab territories. (For a summary of the Western Sahara struggle and its implications, see Western Sahara: The Other Occupation)

Given the intense polarization, harsh polemics, and suspicions regarding Israel and Palestine, a campaign based more on universal legal and moral principles against occupation, rather than targeting a particular country that has a strong and influential domestic constituency, would be far more effective. Given the suffering of the Palestinian (and Sahrawi) peoples and the complicity of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations in their oppression, they deserve nothing less.

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The Western Sahara Peace Process: Tragedy or Farce?

At the end of every April, a small drama plays out in the UN Security Council. This is when the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO, its French acronym) comes up for its annual renewal. Western Sahara — Africa’s last colony according to the United Nations — is largely ignored by the Security Council the other eleven months of the year. The Secretary-General has a Person Envoy working on the case, former US Ambassador Christopher Ross, one of the great Arabophone diplomats of his age.  The mandate given to Ambassador Ross, to achieve a mutually acceptable political solution that will afford Western Sahara its long denied right to self-determination, is a farce and everyone knows it.

Morocco, the country that has illegally occupied Western Sahara since 1976, has made it abundantly clear that self-determination (that is, a referendum on independence) is out of the question. Backing Morocco’s unilateral assertion of sovereignty over Western Sahara is a member of the Permanent Five, France. What the United States is to Israeli interests on the Council, France is to Morocco’s. Even when Morocco does not hold a seat on the Council (as it will for the next two years), Paris and Rabat are thick as thieves when it comes to protecting Morocco’s control over Western Sahara.

By now it is well known that there is no will from the other permanent members of the Council to challenge France and Morocco on this issue. So every April Western Sahara’s “group of friends” (France, Russia, United States, United Kingdom, and Spain, the de jure administering power) comfortably assume their well established roles in the well scripted dramaturgy called the Western Sahara peace process.

For the native people of Western Sahara, who call themselves Sahrawis, the peace process has become a tragedy. Dispossessed of their homeland by Spain in 1885 and then Morocco nearly a hundred years later, the Western Saharan nationalist movement has found strong support in neighboring Algeria (Morocco’s regional adversary) and the African Union. That support, however, has its limits. Unlike East Timor, Western Sahara’s Asian twin in the annals of botched UN decolonizations, the Sahrawis remains under foreign domination or in exile. This year half the native population “celebrated” their thirty-seventh year in refugee camps in the roughest corner of the southwestern Algerian Sahara.

Sahrawi nationalists have become used to the cheap promises of the international community. Spain first promised a referendum on independence in 1974, prompting Morocco to invade the territory in 1975 right as Franco lay on his deathbed. As Moroccan and Western Saharan nationalist forces led by the Polisario Front waged war for Africa’s most sparsely inhabited desert territory, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union, attempted to convince Morocco that a referendum was the only way out. After years of stalling by Rabat, the OAU decided to recognize Western Sahara as sovereign nation under the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic. The issue then moved to the UN Security Council where it lingers to this day.

First established in 1991, MINURSO was implemented to achieve one simple task: to organize a vote on independence (or integration with Morocco) for some 300,000 native Western Saharans. At the time, the King of Morocco, Hassan II, was nominally committed to a referendum on independence, so long as his “Sahrawis” were also allowed to vote. After eight years of painstaking technical negotiations and the tedious individual vetting of over 180,000 potential voters, MINURSO finally seemed ready to hold a referendum in the summer of 1999 — right when Hassan II died and the UN referendum in East Timor turned into a bloody fiasco. Morocco’s willingness to contemplate a referendum on independence died with Hassan II, as did the Security Council’s willingness to press the Moroccan regime towards a contentious and ambiguous end game without clear final status arrangements. This is when the language of a mutually acceptable political solution began to creep into the peace process.

At that time, James Baker, the former US Secretary of State, was in the driver’s seat of the negotiations. With the referendum on hold, Baker first attempted to work with Morocco to see what level of autonomy Rabat might be willing to grant Western Sahara. In principle, Morocco’s new leader, King Mohammed VI, was committed to devolving central authority to a quasi-independent Western Sahara, so long as ultimate sovereignty rested with him. In practice, the Moroccan negotiation team proved unwilling to consider even the most banal power-sharing arrangements.

Baker put forward a framework for discussion but his diplomatic blurring of the meaning of self-determination prompted a strong rejection from Polisario and Algeria. The Western Saharan independence movement has always insisted that any final status arrangement? be it integration, autonomy, or independence? had to be approved by the people of Western Sahara in a referendum. Algeria, thanks to its position in the global hydrocarbon market, wields enough influence to make sure that Polisario is listened to.  The Security Council surprisingly agreed with Polisario, urging Baker to find a mutually acceptable political solution that will provide for self-determination.

It is this language, which persists in UN Security Council resolutions on Western Sahara to date, that essentially gives both parties the ability to fire the person holding the position of the Secretary-General’s envoy. If Morocco feels that self-determination is being forced upon them, as they did when Baker put forward his final proposal in 2003, then they can stonewall in the name of a mutually agreed solution. If Polisario feels that self-determination is being undermined, then they can unilaterally declare no confidence in the Envoy and hope for a better hand next time. This is exactly what happened to Baker’s successor, Dutch diplomat Peter Van Walsum.

Not only is the Personal Envoy to Western Sahara expected to work miracles with an empty toolbox, the Secretariat has historically tolerated the parties’ unilateral rejection of the Envoy and members of the Security Council have failed to arm the Envoy with the means to get anything done.

This is the knife’s edge Ambassador Ross has walked since becoming the Personal Envoy in 2008. While Ross has managed to hold countless rounds of negotiations, there is apparently little to show for it. Polisario begrudgingly attends because they trust Ross, while Morocco’s “negotiating team” literally reads from a script prepared by the Palace from which they do not dare deviate from (thanks to the Interior Ministry minders watching over the Moroccan negotiators). For the past three years, both sides have mostly restated the positions they marked out in 2007: Morocco is willing to grant Western Sahara special regional status (an autonomy proposal that lacks all the legal hallmarks of genuine autonomy), while Polisario is willing to discuss post-referendum guarantees for a referendum that Morocco, and so too the Security Council, is unwilling to allow.

Today most of the debate surrounding the now routine renewal of the long moribund Western Sahara mission is not focused on MINURSO’s actual mandate (to hold a referendum). For several years, the major debate has been whether or not MINURSO should be allowed to monitor and report on human rights violations in the Moroccan occupied territory and the Polisario refugee camps in southwest Algeria. All other UN missions have this mandate, but morality and reason has its limits vis-à-vis French neocolonial interests. While the United States and United Kingdom (both ostensibly neutral in the dispute) favor the addition of human rights monitoring protocols to MINURSO’s mandate, their leverage over France is limited to one drastic threat: veto the renewal of MINURSO. As the presence of MINURSO — as is — is the key to maintaining a status quo Rabat and the Élysée see as beneficial, if sub-optimal; there appears to be some leverage to be gained from the veto (apart from any horse trading the Council members might do on other pet issues).

Last year the United States indeed is reported to have threatened to veto MINURSO to force Paris to acquiescence to human rights language in the April 2011 resolution. Washington got its way but with little to show for it. The 2012 draft report of the Secretary-General on Western Sahara (i.e., the initial draft written by MINURSO personnel in the territory) had little to say about human rights violations because Moroccan authorities systematically blocked the Mission from interacting with Sahrawis (as they have since blue helmets arrived in 1992).  In New York, Ban Ki-moon’s office and the peacekeeping department massaged these inconvenient truths out of the final public report that was released in April 2012 (as the Secretariat has done since 1992).

The warrant for including human rights language in the 2011 resolution came out of the first but largely forgotten uprising of the Arab Spring. In October and November 2010, thousands of Sahrawis attempted to re-occupy Western Sahara by setting up a protest camp outside of the territory’s largest city. A brutal Moroccan crackdown followed, resulting in several Sahrawian and Moroccan deaths. If mass violence is required for the Security Council to take a baby step towards expressing concern about human rights in Western Sahara, imagine what it will take for the Security Council to take MINURSO’s original mandate seriously.

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Jacob Mundy is an Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University. He is coauthor with Stephen Zunes of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press), which went into its second printing in 2011. His current research in Libya, Sudan, and Algeria focuses on the relationship between the international response to mass atrocities and the global locations/allocations of energy resources.

http://www.e-ir.info/2012/05/10/the-western-sahara-peace-process-tragedy-or-farce/

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Jacob Mundy quoted in BBC article on Sahrawi resistance in occupied Western Sahara

“Compared with the desperate efforts to give South Sudan independence, the French and the US are very comfortable,” says Jacob Mundy, a Western Sahara expert and assistant professor at Colgate University in the US. He says that for there to be a solution, “there would have to be a significant change in the basic dynamics of the conflict… whether it was the collapse of the Moroccan regime, the collapse of the Algerian regime or the collapse of the Polisario”.

Read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16186928