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El Watan (Algiers) : « Le Maroc est la cause de l’impasse actuelle »

«Le Maroc est la cause de l’impasse actuelle»
A la une International
Jacob Mundy. Spécialiste des conflits et enseignant à l’université Colgate (Etats-Unis)

le 14.04.16

Inscrit depuis 1966 sur la liste des territoires non autonomes — et donc éligible à l’application de la résolution 1514 de l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU portant déclaration sur l’octroi de l’indépendance aux pays et peuples coloniaux —, le Sahara occidental est la dernière colonie en Afrique, occupé depuis 1975 par le Maroc qui est soutenu par la France. Jacob Mundy, enseignant à l’université Colgate de New York, explique les raisons des récentes attaques dirigées par le Maroc contre le secrétaire général de l’ONU.

– Les relations entre le Maroc et les Nations unies se sont considérablement détériorées depuis la visite, en mars, de Ban Ki-moon dans les camps de réfugiés sahraouis. Vous attendiez-vous à une telle situation ?

J’ai été surpris de voir le secrétaire général de l’ONU afficher ouvertement une pareille hostilité à l’égard du Maroc. La source de cette hostilité est bien connue. Durant des années, le Maroc a refusé de travailler avec son envoyé personnel pour le Sahara occidental, l’ambassadeur Christopher Ross. Dans le passé, le secrétariat a montré certains signes de frustration, mais cela est resté discret et gardé sous silence.

Quand le Maroc a décidé de bloquer la visite de Ban Ki-moon dans les territoires (cela inclut aussi le refus d’accorder à son avion l’autorisation d’atterrir à El Ayoun), ce fut la goutte de trop… le coup final. En affichant sa frustration publiquement, le secrétaire général de l’ONU a créé un précédent. De Waldheim à Annan, les secrétaires généraux de l’ONU ont généralement été plus favorables au Maroc qu’au Front Polisario.

– Que pensez-vous des raisons invoquées par le Maroc pour essayer de disqualifier Ban Ki-moon et l’approche de l’ONU du conflit ?

Les Marocains n’aiment pas entendre la vérité à propos du Sahara occidental. La vérité est que le Sahara occidental est le dernier territoire non autonome d’Afrique. De plus : selon les documents de l’ONU, l’Espagne est officiellement la puissance administrante. Donc, si l’Espagne est la puissance administrante et que le Sahara occidental est non autonome, alors quel est le statut légal du Maroc dans ce territoire ? Cela ne peut être autre chose qu’une occupation.

Ban Ki-moon a dit la vérité quand il a défini la situation comme une occupation. L’Assemblée générale de l’ONU a aussi qualifié la situation d’occupation. L’avis légal émis en 2002 par les Nations unies sur la question est aussi clair. En fait, quand Ban Ki-moon a qualifié le Sahara occidental de «territoire occupé», il a parlé simplement d’un fait reconnu comme tel par la loi internationale.

– Comment décryptez-vous la décision du Maroc d’expulser les membres de la composante politique de la Minurso ? Quel message le roi Mohammed VI a-t-il voulu délivrer ?

Le Maroc a toujours eu une relation inconfortable avec la Minurso. Tout d’abord, le nom de la mission onusienne reconnaît que sa vocation est d’organiser un référendum d’autodétermination. Le cessez-le-feu n’était pas le but principal de cette mission. Il ne s’agissait là que d’une étape dans le processus devant mener à l’organisation d’un référendum sur l’indépendance.

Le Maroc s’en est quand même accommodé. Le cessez-le-feu et les observateurs militaires onusiens le long de la berme sont devenus très utiles pour Rabat. Le Maroc sait que beaucoup de Sahraouis veulent que le Polisario reprenne la guerre. Rabat utilise donc les forces de maintien de la paix de la Minurso pour garder un œil sur le Polisario et dissuader les Sahraouis de se lancer dans une nouvelle lutte armée.

Cependant, l’administration civile de la Minurso est un problème pour le Maroc vu la pression internationale grandissante en faveur de la surveillance des droits de l’homme dans les territoires occupés, surtout que la demande est soutenue par les gouvernements américain et britannique.

Si la Minurso est mandatée pour surveiller les droits de l’homme, ce sera forcément ses administrateurs civils qui se chargeront d’accomplir la mission. A certains égards, la Minurso a déjà surveillé les droits de l’homme de façon informelle. Le Maroc a donc fait une action préventive destinée à empêcher la Minurso de surveiller les droits de l’homme.

– Le Conseil de paix et de sécurité (CPS) de l’Union africaine (UA) vient de se dire «inquiet» au sujet de la situation dans la région. Pour l’UA, la décision du Maroc d’expulser les membres de la composante politique de la Minurso «menace la sécurité régionale». Partagez-vous la même inquiétude ? Pensez-vous que la situation pourrait un jour dégénérer si rien n’est fait pour résoudre ce vieux conflit ?

Je partage les préoccupations de l’UA. Les tensions ne cessent d’augmenter au Sahara occidental. Néanmoins, il est peu probable que le Front Polisario se lance, dans un avenir proche, dans une guerre et cela par respect pour l’Algérie qui se débat avec la question de l’«après-Bouteflika». Le Maroc, quant à lui, attend tout simplement l’élection d’un nouveau président aux Etats-Unis. Il espère une deuxième Administration Clinton qui signifiera probablement le soutien total des Etats-Unis pour «l’autonomie».

Mais si le Maroc et le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies continuent à fermer toutes les issues qui conduisent concrètement vers un référendum, il est difficile d’imaginer qu’il n’y aura pas de manifestations du conflit. Cela sous une forme ou une autre. Après, AQMI et Daech pourraient tirer profit d’une telle situation, comme ils l’ont déjà fait au Mali.

– Pourquoi le Conseil de sécurité n’a pas condamné l’attitude agressive du Maroc envers le secrétaire général de l’ONU, comme cela a été demandé par Ban Ki-moon lui-même ? Comment le Maroc peut-il se permettre de défier ainsi la communauté internationale ?

La réponse est simple : c’est la France. Le gouvernement français a toujours soutenu le Maroc au sein du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. La France est au Maroc ce que les Etats-Unis sont à Israël. Quand il y avait un consensus total sur le plan Baker en 2003 — qui aurait pu résoudre ce conflit en 2010 —, la France avait sonné la charge et s’y était opposée. Depuis lors, le Maroc ne cesse de se sentir conforté et renforcé dans son attitude. Ban Ki-moon est également sur le point de terminer son mandat. En France et aux Etats-Unis, le Maroc est plus important qu’un secrétaire général sortant.

– Qu’est-ce qui empêche concrètement le règlement du conflit du Sahara occidental, conformément aux résolutions pertinentes des Nations unies ?

Les résolutions du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU appellent actuellement une solution politique négociée qui permettra un référendum d’autodétermination au Sahara occidental. Le Polisario est prêt à discuter de l’autonomie dans le contexte d’une solution politique qui équivaudrait au final au vote d’un statut définitif. Cependant, le Maroc estime que sa proposition d’autonomie avancée en 2007 est la solution optimale, même si elle ne prévoit pas de référendum d’autodétermination.

C’est le Maroc qui a généré l’impasse. Mais le Conseil de sécurité ne veut pas mettre de pression sur le Maroc. Et cela, même pas au plan du discours. Comme nous l’avons vu durant les derniers événements, le Maroc est prêt à tout pour parvenir à ses fins, y compris exploiter comme il l’a fait un événement sans conséquence (visite de Ban Ki-moon) ou créer une crise régionale.

– A votre avis, que devons-nous attendre de la prochaine réunion du Conseil de sécurité sur le conflit du Sahara occidental ?

Le rapport du secrétaire général de l’ONU a été retardé. Il semble donc qu’il y ait actuellement des tractations et un intense travail de coulisses. Il n’en sortira probablement pas grand-chose. La dernière fois que nous avons assisté à une levée de boucliers du Maroc concernant la surveillance des droits de l’homme dans les territoires sahraouis occupés, le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU avait fini par trouver le moyen de le calmer. Un processus similaire est probablement en cours.

Bio express

Spécialiste du Maghreb, Jacob Mundy anime actuellement un cours sur la paix et les conflits à l’université Colgate de New York. Il a particulièrement travaillé sur les conflits armés et les interventions humanitaires en Afrique du Nord, une région où il a séjourné de nombreuses fois.

Jacob Mundy a publié des articles très fouillés sur le conflit sahraoui dans plusieurs revues spécialisées. Le dernier remonte à 2014 et est intitulé «Sahara occidental : La résistance non violente comme dernier recours». Il a été coécrit avec Stephen Zune. Jacob Mundy est diplômé des universités d’Exeter et de Seattle.

Zine Cherfaoui

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Washington Post article and video on struggle of Western Sahara’s refugees

Could war come back to Western Sahara? Some of Algeria’s Sahrawi refugees think so
By Whitney Shefte
December 31, 2014

Tumana Ahmed is tired of dreaming of a homeland she has never seen.

The 28-year-old was born in the desolate desert of western Algeria, in a refugee camp that was supposed to be temporary. Only there has been nothing temporary about her situation, or that of about 150,000 of her current neighbors.

Ahmed’s family and thousands of others fled their homeland of Western Sahara, a territory bordering Algeria that is about the size of New Zealand, after Morocco annexed the territory in 1975. Nearly 40 years later, the families still have not returned.

Morocco and Western Sahara engaged in armed conflict until 1991, when the United Nations brokered a cease-fire. As part of the deal, Morocco was supposed to conduct a referendum for Sahrawis to decide whether they wanted to be part of an independent nation or remain under Moroccan rule. But that referendum still hasn’t happened. Many Sahrawis worry that without a return to armed conflict, the referendum may never happen.

“For me, I think there is only two solutions,” Ahmed said. “We go to the borders, fight, make war, which is not the best solution. And the other solution, which is self-determination, this is the best one. Just let us vote. Is Morocco afraid of something?”

Tumana Ahmed, right, a Sahrawi refugee living in camps in Algeria, speaks with a fellow refugee after prayers on Oct. 8, 2013. Ahmed was born in the camps, which are in the western part of the country near the city of Tindouf, and she has never traveled to Western Sahara. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

Leaders of the Sahrawi resistance movement who govern the camps encourage Sahrawi youths to be patient.

“We’re still believing in peace, and we’re still believing that United Nations is able to do something,” said M’hamed Khadad, the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) coordinator for the Polisario Front, the resistance movement. “But they are in need really to push this thing hard because you cannot really control the feeling and the sentiment of people.” He noted that 60 percent of the people in the camp are youths, many of them born after the cease-fire.

MINURSO workers in Western Sahara spend their time monitoring the cease-fire. There have been efforts from time to time to hold a referendum, but the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front cannot agree on who should be considered eligible to vote. And some Sahrawis want to remain under Moroccan rule.

“It’s problematic,” said Hajbouha Zoubir, a Sahrawi who works for the Moroccan Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs.

In October 2013, Sahrawis in the Dakhla refugee camp reenacted the 2010 Gdeim Izik protest that took place outside Laayoune, Western Sahara. During the Gdeim Izik protest, thousands of Sahrawis erected tents in the desert in protest of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara and a lack of jobs and limited freedom of speech in the territory. The camp was violently dismantled, with Moroccan police and protesters clashing. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

After Morocco invaded Western Sahara, the kingdom offered thousands of Moroccans tax breaks to move into the territory. It’s thought that Moroccans now outnumber Sahrawis by at least 2 to 1 in Western Sahara, which has a population of about 500,000. And Morocco argues that Algerians have populated the Polisario-run refugee camps. Representatives of the Polisario — which is backed by Algeria — deny this.

Morocco also claims that Western Sahara, which is rich in fisheries and phosphate mines, was part of Morocco long before the Spanish ruled the territory from 1884 until 1975 and that Morocco thus has a right to the land. In fact, Berber tribes mostly populated the region before Spanish rule, at one point forming the Almoravid dynasty, whose rule included both Morocco and Western Sahara. The International Court of Justice ruled that indigenous Sahrawis have sovereignty over Western Sahara – not Morocco.

“Mainly it’s become part of the national ideology in Morocco that Western Sahara is part of the territory,” said Jacob Mundy, assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University. “It’s viewed as being historically part of Morocco, and today the nation obviously benefits from the occupation in terms of certain mineral wealth and other sorts of things.” For the current Moroccan government, he said, “one of the pillars of its legitimacy is the continued control over Western Sahara and the hope for the eventual legal annexation in the international community’s eyes.”

Most nations, including the United States, do not recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. But France — a member of the U.N. Security Council — has defended Morocco.

“Conflicts like this where the big boys are involved — the big boys being the permanent five members of the Security Council — can be incredibly difficult to resolve,” Mundy said. “So while there is overwhelming international consensus that Western Sahara is owed some act of self-determination … there’s no will from the Security Council to really push this conflict in any direction that would otherwise upset what is a real, kind of delicate balance of interest.”

This reality is something that Ahmed has come to understand, which is why she says a return to war may be the only way she’ll ever see her family’s homeland.

Learn more about the conflict between Western Sahara and Morocco by watching this video.

This story was made possible with support from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

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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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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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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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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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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.

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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WikiLeaks Cables on Western Sahara Show Role of Ideology in State Department

Over the years, as part of my academic research, I have spent many hours at the National Archives poring over diplomatic cables of the kind recently released by WikiLeaks. The only difference is that rather than being released after a 30+ year waiting period — when the principals involved are presumably dead or in retirement and the countries in question have very different governments in power — the WikiLeaks are a lot more recent, more relevant and, in some cases, more embarrassing as a result.

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Upsurge in repression challenges nonviolent resistance in Western Sahara

Sahrawis 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 have also raised the cost of occupation for the Moroccan government and increased the visibility of the Sahrawi cause.

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US leadership, not partisanship, desperately needed for peace in Western Sahara

[The following, coauthored with Anna Theofilopoulou, was sent to Foreign Policy magazine’s Middle East Channel blog in November 2010. It was written in response to a MEC posting by two lobbyists for Morocco (see below for links) who were responding to two earlier MEC posts by Theofilopoulou and me. MEC did not publish the response below nor did they respond to our subsequent emails. At roughly the same time, MEC did publish a response from Carne Ross, who lobbies for Polisario, the Western Sahara independence movement. – JM]

The past three days of violent confrontations between Moroccan security forces and Sahrawi protesters in the disputed Western Sahara clearly demonstrate the urgent need for the Security Council to take the issue more seriously before it spirals out of control. Initiative from the United States will be key to make this happen.

Recently we made the case for a more active US role in the Western Sahara peace process, prompting a constructive response from former US diplomats Ambassador Edward Gabriel and Mr Robert Holley, who now work as lobbyists for the Kingdom of Morocco. In their posting, Gabriel and Holley agree that a strong US role is needed but they claim that we are proposing a solution based on a referendum with independence as an option. Nowhere in our recent article or even the previous one posted in the Middle East Channel did we suggest such a thing.

Polisario and its supporters are quite capable of making the case for the independence option themselves.

There is a major point of difference between our approach and that of Gabriel and Holley: they back a partisan negotiation framework based upon Morocco’s 2007 autonomy solution. We, on the other hand, are advocating for a non-partisan approach, one that does not predetermine the meaning of sovereignty or self-determination before the parties get to the table. Essentially, we are saying that all the ingredients for a solution — final status, a referendum, power sharing, refugee repatriation, the role of Moroccan settlers, etc. — must be negotiated. With the guidance of the UN envoy, a more active US role, well-timed pressure from the UN Security Council and more imagination from the international community, we believe that Morocco and Polisario can piece together a comprehensive settlement that bridges their notions of sovereignty and self-determination.

Gabriel and Holley also present a questionable narrative of the peace process. They claim that the shift away from the integration/independence approach of the original 1991 UN Settlement Plan was initiated by the Clinton Administration and “was backed” by former Secretary of State James Baker, Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General to Western Sahara from 1997 to 2004. Those of us intimately involved with Baker’s work and internal happenings in the Western Sahara file at the United Nations beg to differ.

After watching the Western Sahara peace process stagnate for four years, the Clinton administration was more than happy to take a hands-off approach and let Baker do the heavy lifting. The Clinton White House fully backed his effort to implement the original Settlement Plan under the 1997 Houston Accords, which Baker had quickly negotiated between Morocco and Polisario. It was not until September 2000, in a meeting organized by Baker between the parties in Berlin, that the negotiations began to discuss other options besides the two choices of independence or integration. The impetus for this new direction, as everyone involved knows, was the fact that it had become abundantly clear that the referendum electorate would not favour integration with Morocco.

In Berlin, Baker asked Morocco if it would support a solution based upon some devolution of its governmental authority in Western Sahara. Though Morocco seemed willing, Rabat refused to discuss the issue of power sharing in a concrete or serious manner. This was especially the case after Baker proposed his own plan, at the prior request of the Security Council, in January 2003, a plan that included the option of independence. The US government then led effort in the UN Security Council to build support for Baker’s proposals in the summer of 2003. Only when it became clear that Morocco would no longer work with Baker did the George W. Bush administration, following the advice of Elliott Abrams, work with France and Spain to water down the Security Council’s support for the Baker Plan in April 2004.

After much coaxing, Morocco finally presented its autonomy proposal in 2007, which the Bush administration immediately deemed “serious and credible.” However, as an actual peace offer, its credibility and seriousness have to be reconciled against some hard facts that Polisario is well aware of. Morocco put it on the table because Abrams had suggested that formal US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara would then be forthcoming. The State Department wisely derailed Abrams’ ambitions and helped run down the clock until the next administration. Now that Morocco is stuck with its autonomy proposal, Rabat has argued that Polisario must accept it on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Those of us with some historical memory can’t help but see this demand as a bit hypocritical. In 2003 and 2004, Morocco and its supporters in Washington and in the Security Council were working overtime to convince everyone that Baker could not force a solution to Western Sahara on either party — peace had to be the result of dialogue. Now Morocco wants the Security Council to force its 2007 autonomy solution, which precludes the option of independence, on Polisario.

To suggest that the negotiations over Western Sahara require such preconditions is neither true in theory nor in practice. As demonstrated in the parties’ rejections of the previous UN envoys (Morocco’s refusal to work with Baker, Polisario’s staunch refusal to accept Peter van Walsum), the neutrality of the UN Secretariat must be maintained. And since 2007, at the request of the Security Council the parties have been negotiating without any concrete preconditions. The paucity of results owes to the conflict’s apparent lack of urgency (prior to the events of the past two weeks). Western Sahara’s low strategic risk profile and negligible body count allows the UN to punt the issue every April when the UN mission comes up for renewal, passing vague and self-contradictory resolutions open to different interpretations by each party.

Just as there is a political stalemate in Western Sahara, there is also an intellectual stalemate. For too long, self-determination and sovereignty have been framed by the parties, their backers and, unfortunately, key mediators as diametrically opposed absolutes. This need not be the case. An honest broker will not accept the parties’ red lines as given but will attempt to find ways to transcend them.

In practice, self-determination and sovereignty can be seen as much more flexible than the discourse on Western Sahara often indicates. Very few countries have all of the attributes associated with claims of sovereignty; any state that has signed a treaty or entered into an agreement has already compromised its sovereignty. The realization of Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal would only prove the point.

In very few cases of decolonization were subject populations actually consulted in a formal referendum giving them the option of independence. By default rather than mandate, the international community has passively accepted independence as sufficient to achieve self-determination. It need not, however, been seen as necessary for self-determination. All that matters is whether or not the people of Western Sahara have the ultimate say when it comes to the final status of the territory.

About the authors

Anna Theofilopoulou covered Western Sahara and North Africa in the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations from 1994 to 2006. She worked closely with former U.S. Secretary of State, James A. Baker, III throughout his appointment as Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General on Western Sahara.

Jacob Mundy holds a PhD from the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. He is coauthor of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press).