Category: Western Sahara/Morocco

Western Sahara/Morocco

Quoted: Why There’s a Call for Boycotting “The Odyssey”

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Institute for Public Accuracy News Release, July 20, 2026, quotes Zunes:
“In accepting generous subsidies from the Moroccan regime, the film’s producers have provided legitimacy to the illegal occupation. It would be the equivalent of filming in Israeli or Russian-occupied territories in collaboration with those governments.  Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights groups have ranked Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara as among the most politically repressed nations in the world. Since any protest within the occupied territory is not tolerated, it is imperative that global civil society mobilize against this injustice.” 

Has Senator Cruz been Misinformed About Western Sahara or What?

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Counterpunch, April 27, 2026: by Bill Fletcher Jr. – Stephen Zunes.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), along with Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott R-FL), have introduced a bill targeting what they call the “Iranian Regime’s Polisario Front,” designating that popular North African nationalist movement as a “terrorist organization”… Since the early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Frente Polisario) has led a fight initially for independence from Spain and subsequently for freedom from Morocco’s efforts to forcibly annex the territory.  The Polisario is a moderate secular movement whose leadership is democratically elected by refugees…

The Only Remaining Colony in Africa Continues its Struggle for Independence

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Inter Press Service, October 30, 2025, By Thalif Deen
[quoting Stephen Zunes; source link]
Described as a non-self-governing territory in northwestern Africa fighting for decolonization, Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence… A former Spanish colony, it was annexed by Morocco in 1975… On October 30, the UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on a draft resolution on the future of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

Bipartisan US Push Tries to Label Democratic African Government as “Terrorist”

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Truthout, August 2, 2025, By Stephen Zunes [podcast & source]
The UN treats the Polisario as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahara people. Washington’s designation of armed groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) has always been politicized, but it may now reach a new level of absurdity thanks to a bipartisan resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and Jimmy Panetta (D-California), targeting the Frente Polisario, the government of Western Sahara, officially known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Morocco, an important U.S. ally, invaded Western Sahara in 1975 on the eve of its independence from Spain and currently occupies nearly 80 percent of the territory…

Did Washington Post amplify Moroccan propaganda?

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African Digital Democracy Observatory
Disinfo.Africa quoted Zunes June 27, 2025:
Washington Post echoes disputed claims that Saharan mercenaries were captured in Aleppo:
On April 12, 2025, the Washington Post published a story describing the new Syrian government’s alleged efforts to dismantle illicit Iranian supply lines running through southern Syria… largely to aid Hezbollah in their war against Israel [and] implicated soldiers from an Algerian-based nationalist movement in the Iran-Hezbollah conspiracy. [But] this TruthAfrica investigation shows, the central pieces of evidence for these allegations appear to be a distortion of an Algerian ambassador’s statements and an inauthentic document… Steven Zunes told Truth Africa, “The Hezbollah/Iran connection is utter nonsense… The idea that [The Polisario Front] would be lying with this autocratic, reactionary Shia group,” he told us, “just seems quite absurd….”

Not only the fate of the people of Western Sahara is at stake.

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Emmaus Artikel 2, Stockholm May 2024
(Dr. Stephen Zunes is quoted extensively): The opposition to Trump’s rushed and unrighteous recognition of Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over Western Sahara prompts President Biden to correct this mistake… Biden could resend the U.S. recognition with the stroke of a pen, however, this has put him in something of a dilemma… More at Western-Sahara.org