Showdown in the Western Sahara

by Khaled Abu Toameh
November 15, 2020 at 7:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16763/western-sahara-showdown

Translations of this item:

Hebrew

Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create "facts on the ground" outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.
International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

A member of the United Nations peace mission MINURSO at a UN base in Bir-Lahlou, in the Western Sahara, on March 5, 2016. (Photo by Farouk Batiche/AFP via Getty Images)

While much of the world was looking the other way, distracted by China's coronavirus and its economic aftermath, a separatist militia group backed by Algeria, the Polisario Front, have been militarily exploiting the crisis.

For weeks, the Polisario Front have blocked the only road leading southward from Morocco to Mauritania in the buffer zone of Guerguerat. Currently, around 200 trucks find themselves stranded there, while UN peacekeepers (MINURSO), on whom Morocco relies to enforce the tense 30-year ceasefire, apparently feel overwhelmed.

Ever since Spain withdrew from its former colony in the Western Sahara in 1975, the Polisario Front have been trying to claim the territory, rich with phosphates and fishing rights, as an independent state for themselves. Since that time, however, Morocco has served as the sole sovereign, offering the Western Sahara autonomy but not independence.

Last week, on Thursday night, Morocco finally responded to the Polisario Front's roadblock at Guerguerat by creating a security cordon and promising to "restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic" between Morocco and Mauritania -- an act that the Polisario Front called a "provocation."

The Polisario Front had announced the Monday before that any movement of troops by Morocco to the buffer zone area "will be considered as a flagrant aggression to which the Sahrawi [Polisario] side will respond vigorously in self-defence and to defend its national sovereignty. This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region."

"The Sahrawi government," they warned, "also holds the United Nations and the Security Council in particular responsible for the safety and security of Sahrawi civilians."

Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create "facts on the ground" outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.

As a result of the Polisario Front's blockade, and in a move likely intended as a blow to Morocco, all traffic has been prevented from transporting goods not only to Mauritania, but to all of sub-Saharan Africa. Morocco, especially since it joined the African Union, has enjoyed warm, strong relations with other countries on the continent.

Until now, Morocco has avoided conflict by relying on UN Security Council and its MINURSO. The Polisario Front nonetheless on Friday claimed that Morocco had broken the ceasefire and "ignited war." Morocco, for its part, insists that there have been no armed clashes and that the ceasefire still stands.

The UN Security also recently strengthened Morocco's stance by not only demanding that the Polisario Front honor the terms of its ceasefire, but the UN also designated Algeria as a stakeholder in the dispute. On Friday, Saudi Arabia as well openly supported Morocco's refusal to have its territory seized by force.

An open conflict at this time would be immensely damaging for all the parties involved as well as for Europe -- particularly France, always deeply immersed in African policy. International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

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Comment on this item

4 Reader Comments

Michael • Nov 15, 2020 at 21:52

France and Spain waged war against the legitimate but not cohesive government of Morocco in the 1920s and maintained a colonial dictatorship there until the 1960s. When Spain abandoned Western Sahara, Morocco was the logical beneficiary of that withdrawal and no-one else.

Subsequently the Polisario was created out of nothing to try and grab a piece of the pie but the leaders are just a bunch of opportunistic thugs who are the ones who stand to benefit the most. I was on the Green March to liberate Spanish Sahara and have visited the Polisario camp in Tindouf. The pics I took then looked identical to how it looks today and all of the aid money poured into it has disappeared.

This is the redundant miracle of socialists at the UN who think that any bunch of poor Muslims, living in a desert, with no water, no crops, no resources should have a state of their own, supported forever by your aid money.

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Micha'el Bloch • Nov 15, 2020 at 15:47

Very strange that the whole world deems it necessary for the terrorist Palestinians to have a right to sovereignty in Israeli territory but other groups whose land was indeed invaded and conquered like the Polisario of Morocco who are another ethnic group (to my knowledge) viz Berbers; and the Kurds - are not supported in their VALID demands whereas the Palestinian demands are indeed invalid- pure hypocrisy !

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Geoffrey L Rogg • Nov 15, 2020 at 09:36

I think I must be one of a very few of your readers who was managing contracted construction work in the Western Sahara when the Spanish INI (Instituto Nacional de la Industria), together with Klockner, Humbolt, Deutz and Krupp, were initiating the startup of operations at the Phosphate mine in Bucraa and processing plant in El Ayun. We were working under the protection of the Spanish Foreign Legion who were then keeping a sharp lookout for armed incursions by the Polisario Front. This is an old tribal dispute in which neither Morocco nor Algeria can unilaterally claim sovereignty even with the support of the UN Security Council. It is in Polisario tribal lands and their rights must equally be respected.

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Michael

Geoffrey L Rogg • Nov 15, 2020 at 21:41

You are incorrect. The Polisario was a construct out of nothing backed by Algeria to tweak Morocco over a border dispute and if Algeria did not provide them with sanctuary they would not exist. To even imagine that a few thousand wandering nomads, ranging with their goats over a desert about 2/3 the size of France and have rights to create a nation is absurd. It is the thugs who benefit financially who have created that idea out of thin air.

These thugs siphon off a cut of every aid dollar, revel in being entertained by the socialists in the UN and they have every motive to keep on pecking away at liberals who think every bunch of poor Muslims should have a state of their own.

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