The endless conflict between the Sahara and Morocco has been experiencing an escalation of tension in recent weeks. The constant violation of international legality and Morocco's blockade of a definitive and peaceful solution to the conflict have once again brought the situation to the precipice of war. The Polisario Front has renounced the ceasefire in force since 1991. Meanwhile, thousands of Sahrawis continue to live forcibly away from their homes. Nobody seems to want to give an alternative to the Sahara beyond submission to Morocco. Nobody except the Sahrawis themselves.
On October 21, and for the following two weeks, a group of Sahrawis blocked the Guerguerat highway, south of the Sahara.. This step is extremely relevant for commercial communications between Morocco and Mauritania. The Moroccan Army entered on Friday, November 13 to expel the Sahrawi civilians who were blocking the road. The Polisario Front intervened and both forces exchanged fire, although no injuries were reported.. In the following days, the Front claimed to have attacked various Moroccan military bases and caused fatalities. The Polisario has broken the ceasefire and declared a state of war.
The Polisario Front demands the holding of the referendum that has been blocked for more than forty years, as well as reproaching the UN for its inactivity in the dispute, by allowing Morocco to maintain and increase its commercial transactions in a disputed territory. The permissiveness exercised with respect to Morocco translates into a plundering of the resources of the Sahrawi territory, which is illegally occupied by the kingdom of Morocco. The abysmal asymmetry of forces between the Sahara and Morocco has ended up generating a situation of stagnation of the conflict that benefits Moroccan interests since, de facto, the illegal occupation of a territory is allowed. This is a conflict that from its beginning involved the “accepted” violation of International Law and it seems that, today, no one is willing to enforce it.
Western Sahara remains on the UN list of territories to be decolonized. This being so, this territory in North Africa should be guaranteed the right to exercise their own self-determination as a people, collected in UN Security Council Resolution No. 1514. In it, the parameters were established according to which the vast colonial empires forged by the European powers from the Modern Age to the Second World War should be dismantled. International society was thus provided with a tool so that the peoples of the colonies could decide on their political future and get rid of the relations of (effective) domination by the metropolis States. Thus begins the innumerable list of independences and the conflicts that arose from them around the world. Not all colonial powers welcomed this change in the perception of the countries and their borders with the same impetus, but the determined support of the decolonization process by the leaders of the incipient hegemonic blocs made it unstoppable.
There are many decolonizing episodes that ended up turning into armed conflicts; some of them even festered for decades. One of the longest-lived is that of Western Sahara. Western Sahara has been on the list of non-self-governing territories of the United Nations since 1963, following the transmission of information about the Spanish Sahara by Spain, in accordance with section e) of Article 73 of the Charter of the United Nations. Spain was urged in 1973 by the UN Decolonization Committee to definitively liquidate its last colonial enclaves. That same year, the armed group Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front) would be born to demand the independence of Western Sahara. Spain, which had been delaying the effective decolonization of Western Sahara for years, had committed in 1974 to holding a self-determination referendum on the territory.
Both Morocco and Mauritania had been trying to claim legitimacy over that territory for decades, alleging relations and legal links between the Sahara, Morocco and the Mauritanian whole. Said contentious about the condition of terra niullis or not of the Sahara when it was colonized by Spain was resolved by the International Court of The Hague, which rejected the existence of legal links that modified the application of resolution 1.514 (XV) of the General Assembly, referring to decolonization < >. However, “certain tribal obligations of obedience to the sultan” were recognized; a fact that will be, according to the Moroccan interpretation of the ruling, more than enough reason to continue claiming the territory of the former Spanish colony as its own.. Thus, the ruling, far from ending the territorial conflict, precipitated it.
The king of Morocco called the famous Green March, a mobilization of 350.000 civilians flying Moroccan flags, carrying portraits of their king, Hasan II, and brandishing the Koran as their only 'weapon'. It was November 6, 1975; The dictator Francisco Franco would die on the 20th of the same month. Moroccan pressure on Spain was increasing, and the Franco regime was in a moment of extreme delicacy. Juan Carlos I, future king and successor of the dictator, was acting as interim head of state. In fact, the monarch mediated with King Hassan II and the United States what would end up being the future transfer of Western Sahara to Morocco.. The Green March meant the staging of pressure, a magnificent cover for a regime that thus found an excuse to hand over the Sahara and the Sahrawis. Spain's escape from the Sahara was carried out in an ignominious manner, without facing its international responsibility.
The Madrid Tripartite Agreement, agreed between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania, it consolidated Spain's definitive departure from its colony and emphasized its willingness to avoid any type of obligation with respect to the Sahrawi people.. In addition to setting a date for Spain's departure from Western Sahara, the agreement indicated the institution of “a temporary Administration in the territory, in which Morocco and Mauritania will participate in collaboration with the Yemaá and to which the responsibilities and powers would be transmitted” that Madrid held as an administrative power. Beyond the possible violation of Spanish law itself in the way it is processed and published, the Madrid Agreements represent an express violation of international law. Spain, as an administrative power, could only consider two options to get rid of its international responsibility: proceed with decolonization by holding a self-determination referendum or not decolonize, but transfer the administration of the territory to the Trusteeship Council, in accordance with the article 77.1.c of the Charter of the United Nations. Spain, by not proceeding under any of these assumptions, incurred a double international illegality.
In addition to the regulatory negligence attributed to it, the tripartite arrangement has been the subject of speculation regarding secret agreements annexed to it. These agreements would have agreed on the transfer by Spain of all the facilities for the exploitation and export of phosphates, as well as 65% of the shares of the company Fos Bu Craa, which exploited the precious mineral. In return, Morocco would allow an agreed number of Spanish vessels to continue fishing under the conditions of 1975. Likewise, these secret agreements would speak of the delimitation of Spanish waters in the western Atlantic and would establish Rabat's renunciation of its claim over Ceuta and Melilla.
What was agreed in Madrid is presented to us, therefore, as a flagrant attack against the very dignity of the Sahrawi people and as the beginning of the constant violations of international legality, a tone that from now on will characterize the status of the conflict between Western Sahara and Morocco. Likewise, we have evidence that, beyond the historical connection or not of Western Sahara with one political structure or another, the natural resources available to said territory are, in addition to being precious, numerous. The factor of the potential economic profitability of the exploitation of the natural resources of a certain territory, is once again, in the case of the conflict at hand, a substantial element in the development of the litigation and the positioning of the various international actors.
The mortgage that Spain contracted with Morocco in the Madrid Agreements has played a central role in bilateral relations on both sides of the Strait. The relations between both countries are, without a doubt, central to their respective foreign policies. The need to ensure good harmony with Morocco has led Spain to have to negotiate key aspects of security and even sovereignty. The predisposition to agreement is therefore understood, given mutual interdependence. Now, it is also worth considering to what extent this desire for understanding should have a place when systematic violations have been taking place for decades on a territory and a population that not so long ago possessed Spanish nationality. The brief, if not non-existent, involvement of Spain in the attempts to resolve the conflict speaks to us of a self-imposed loss of Spanish legitimacy. The eventful end of its occupation and the lack of political will to enforce the UN mandate have placed Spain in a position of irrelevance in the litigation. Likewise, Spanish inactivity represents implicit support for Moroccan demands and consequently another abandonment for the Sahrawi people.
To date, when consulting the status of Western Sahara as a non-autonomous territory, the UN Decolonization Committee does not refer to the administering Power in charge of the pending decolonization process; Instead we find a call that clarifies us below:
On February 26, 1976, the Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations informed the Secretary General that “the Spanish Government, as of today, definitively terminates its presence in the Territory of the Sahara and considers it necessary to record what following: … a) Spain is henceforth considered exempt from all international responsibility in relation to the administration of said Territory, taking into account the cessation of its participation in the temporary administration established for it...” (A/31/56-S/11997).
The Polisario Front, after the departure of Spanish troops from the territory, proclaimed itself the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1976 and went to war with Morocco and Mauritania.. The main allies of the Polisario Front were Algeria, South Africa and Cuba. It is worth mentioning the constant support of the US to the kingdom of Morocco, as well as the sympathy that the Alawite monarchy has enjoyed from France and Spain. Before the outbreak of the armed conflict, tens of thousands of Sahrawis went into exile in camps near the Algerian town of Tindouf, in the middle of the desert. This situation of absolute precariousness continues today. The Polisario Front signed peace with Mauritania in 1979. But with Morocco it plunged into a war from which it took 16 years to emerge, until the ceasefire of 1991, the date on which the United Nations Mission for the referendum in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO. This Mission has recently demonstrated ample inability to fulfill its main mission: holding the referendum.
One of the biggest controversies that have structured the conflict between Morocco and Western Sahara has been the holding of the self-determination referendum; specifically the census that should be used in it. Both the UN and the Polisario Front referred to the census carried out by Spain in 1974 as valid, while Morocco requested an update of it so that the Moroccan population displaced to Western Sahara could be counted. This divergence regarding how to count the population susceptible to consultation has stagnated the conflict for decades while Morocco has been preparing the illegal occupation of what it considers its “southern provinces”. It currently administers and controls 80% of the territory.
After MINURSO made the census public in 2000, Morocco announced that it would never accept a self-determination referendum, after accusing the UN of bias. The subsequent attempts to resolve the conflict through a “third way” that would allow the holding of a self-determination referendum, but that, at the same time, would somehow guarantee Moroccan victory in it, led in particular by the former Secretary of State for The US, despite clearly favoring Moroccan interests, failed due to the intransigence of this State, which did not want to run any “risk of losing” the territory. Since then, negotiations have been at a standstill. Security Council resolutions have since called on “the parties to resume negotiations under the auspices of the Secretary-General without preconditions and in good faith,” ignoring that the only reason why the conflict is not resolved definitively is the rejection of one of the parties, Morocco, and the unconditional support of the necessary accomplice, France, which vetoes the possibility of the Security Council imposing to the parties the application of the 1991 plan.
In fact, Morocco has made various proposals for the integration of Western Sahara under the form of an autonomous entity within the Moroccan kingdom. The conflict has been stuck for too long and the Polisario Front has lost its ability to act. Neither the UN nor international society as a whole have been able to find a solution to the problem, but with the passage of time what has ended up being imposed is the blurring of the origins of the conflict.. Morocco, as a State with an infinitely greater capacity for influence and visibility in multilateral spaces, has managed to forget the underlying issue of this whole matter: the failure to hold a self-determination referendum for the Sahrawi people under unaltered conditions. and with guarantees. The UN has not commented on the referendum eternally postponed since 2005.
The Polisario Front has never managed to get MINUSRO to examine the issue of human rights in Western Sahara. Among the 16 UN peacekeeping missions, only the one in Western Sahara lacks the powers to evaluate this situation. In 2018, the Polisario Front managed to get the Luxembourg Court to rule that the fishing agreement between the European Union and Morocco should not apply to Western Sahara because that territory “is not part of Morocco.” Despite this, in 2019 the European Parliament approved the fishing agreement with Morocco that includes Western Sahara.. The European Union should consider the international illegality it has incurred with the conclusion of said agreement with Morocco.
The legitimate claims of the Sahara have been cornered and forgotten by the Moroccan diplomatic machinery and that of its partners, especially France. Thus, given the continuous abandonment of the international community, the impunity of violations of international legality and the plundering of its resources, we should not be surprised in any way that the Sahrawis do not trust either the United Nations or the possibility of a peaceful way to resolve the conflict. The cessation of the ceasefire is, make no mistake, the responsibility of Morocco, the UN and all of us who have been looking the other way for too many years.
Graduated in International Relations and expert in foreign action of the European Union. Putting in the center what is far from the focus. Stopping to think about the hows and whys. Rediscovering the local in the international. Here we go!
