Western Sahara is the last undecolonized territory in Africa. Spain and the UN condone its occupation and exploitation by Morocco.
Africa’s last colony is at war again. Since Nov. 13, the Western Sahara liberation movement, the Frente Polisario, has repeatedly attacked positions held by the Moroccan occupiers along a 2,700-kilometer sand wall that separates the occupied territories from those under the control of the Sahrawi government-in-exile. The noise of weapons is bringing renewed attention to a forgotten conflict.
Western Sahara is the last territory in Africa that was never properly decolonized. The former Spanish colony – a swath of land slightly larger than the old Federal Republic on Africa’s west coast opposite the Canary Islands – was ceded to Morocco and Mauritania by Spain’s dictator Franco in 1975. The Polisario liberation movement, which had first fought against the Spanish, took up the war of liberation against the new occupiers. The Polisario defeated Mauritania in 1979, and Morocco moved into the southern territories. In 1991, the United Nations brokered a cease-fire that has now ended.
The new acts of war are a reaction by the Polisario to provocations by Morocco. The occupiers cleared a peaceful demonstration at the border crossing with Mauritania on November 13. Although this area is not part of the Moroccan zone according to the agreement and is considered demilitarized, Morocco has established a border crossing here. This violates the cease-fire, which only allows border crossings that already existed in 1991. Nevertheless, the UN watched as Morocco paved a road and sent border troops into the area.
The referendum on Western Saharan independence stipulated in the cease-fire agreement never took place. Morocco pushed to include tribes from outside the territory on the voters’ list. The Polisario refused. The process finally came to a halt in the early 2000s.
The UN has long since resigned. For years, there has been no talk of a referendum at the United Nations. Instead, both parties to the conflict are to find a solution in direct negotiations. Morocco wants an autonomy statute for Western Sahara, but the Polisario rejects this. The occupation by Morocco is thus perpetuated year after year. The UN blue helmet mission Minurso only monitors this unjust status quo. 170,000 Sahrawis live forgotten by the world in refugee camps in the Algerian desert not far from the garrison town of Tindouf as well as in the liberated areas beyond the Sand Wall, and less than 100,000 in the occupied territories. Morocco benefits from the failure of the UN. Hundreds of thousands of Moroccans have been resettled in the occupied territories of Western Sahara as a matter of fact. Many enjoy social benefits not otherwise available in Morocco. They are given jobs and permits to open businesses, while the local population suffers a kind of apartheid. The Sahrawis, who speak Hassani, an Arabic more similar to that spoken in Mauritania than in Morocco, are marginalized and live under constant surveillance by the police, the army and the Moroccan population. Every protest is nipped in the bud with brutal repression. International observers are hardly allowed in.
Morocco is deliberately plundering Western Sahara. State-owned companies are mining phosphate. European companies, including Siemens, are building wind farms in the north to supply the electricity. Sand from Western Sahara is processed in cement factories in Spain. The government in Rabat negotiated several fishing agreements with the EU. The beneficiaries of the fishing rights are largely vessels from Spain – from the country that, under international law, continues to have “administrative sovereignty” over the territory.
Morocco is one of the biggest buyers of Spanish weapons and an important partner for monitoring the EU’s southern border. Rabat knows this and opens the borders every time there is a political disagreement: Refugee boats are allowed to set course for Spain and the Canary Islands from the coast of Morocco and Western Sahara. More boats are arriving again these days.
While the small coalition partner in the Spanish government, the left-wing alternative Unidas Podemos, is calling for a referendum, the Socialist-led Foreign Ministry wants to support the UN “in its efforts,” knowing that it is doing nothing. The resort to arms is a desperate attempt by the Polisario to use force to put its cause back on the agenda of world politics. (reuters)
by Basit Abbasi
