Category: Open Democracy

Open Democracy

Mandela’s utilitarianism and the struggle for liberation

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Open Democracy December 13, 2013
Republished by Huffington Post, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Scoop Independent News New Zealand, and Dawson College Inspire Solutions Project
   While many western governments argued that the supposedly benevolent influence of western capital would lead to liberalization and an eventual end to South Africa’s apartheid system, and many on the left argued that liberation would come only through armed revolution, in fact it was largely unarmed resistance by the black majority and its supporters, both within South Africa and abroad, which proved decisive.

Ruthless regimes not impervious to civil resistance: A reply to Maged Mandour

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Open Democracy November 1, 2013
Republished by International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
   There is little systematic evidence to suggest that “ruthlessness” is, in and of itself, a critical variable. Maged Mandour’s article on openDemocracy, “Beyond Civil Resistance: The Case of Syria”, argues that civil resistance has been marginalized in the Syrian insurrection because it doesn’t work  against “ruthless” regimes. But history doesn’t support that conclusion…

The Maldives: a serial coup in progress?

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Open Democracy October 15, 2013
Should Britain, the United States and others who claim to be concerned, stand by and allow reactionary forces to stage-manage a phony election, this sends yet another inconsistent and disheartening message to those struggling for peaceful democratic change in the Islamic world and beyond. In the latest episode of what appears to be a serial coup in the Maldives, the country’s Supreme Court… threw out the results of the first round of presidential elections just hours before the scheduled date of the second round in which pro-democracy leader Mohamed Nasheed was expected to win handily…

On Syria, most thoughtful people are torn

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Open Democracy October 5, 2013
Indeed, with the exception of some neo-conservatives and other hawks who apparently have never seen an opportunity for western intervention they didn’t like and some on the far left who assume that any regime hostile to western imperialism must be progressive, I’ve generally been impressed with the maturity of the debate around Syria.  Most thoughtful people are torn on these questions, myself included. Once again, however, Hashemi misrepresents me…

Sudan’s protests become civil insurrection

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Open Democracy July 6, 2012 & CETRI Le Sud en mouvement (Belgium)
A growing anti-government movement consisting of nonviolent demonstrations as well as scattered rioting is beginning to threaten the Sudanese dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal, who has ruled this large North African nation for 23 years. Beginning as protests against strict austerity measures imposed three weeks ago, the chants of the protesters have escalated to “the people want to overthrow the regime,” the line heard in recent uprisings in other Arab countries, including Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria. Could Sudan be the next Arab country in which an autocratic government is brought down in a largely nonviolent civil insurrection?

Egypt’s pro-democracy movement: The struggle continues

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Open Democracy February 8, 2011
Despite the natural subsidence of dramatic demonstrations on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, as many protesters return to jobs and catch their breath, there is little question that the pro-democracy struggle in Egypt has achieved lasting momentum, barring unexpected repression. As with other kinds of civil struggles, a movement using nonviolent resistance can ebb and flow. There may have to be tactical retreats, times for regrouping or resetting of strategy, or a focus on negotiations with the regime before broader operations that capture the world’s attention resume. Those who were expecting a quick victory are no doubt disappointed, but successful People Power movements of recent decades have usually been protracted struggles…

Upsurge in repression challenges nonviolent resistance in Western Sahara

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Open Democracy November 17, 2010
On November 8, Moroccan occupation forces attacked a tent city of as many as 12,000 Western Saharans just outside of Al Aioun, in the culminating act of a months-long protest of discrimination against the indigenous Sahrawi population and worsening economic conditions. Not only was the scale of the crackdown unprecedented, so was the popular reaction: In a dramatic departure from the almost exclusively nonviolent protests of recent years, the local population turned on their occupiers, engaging in widespread rioting and arson. As of this writing, the details of these events are unclear, but they underscore the urgent need for global civil society to support those who have been struggling nonviolently for their right of self-determination and to challenge western governments which back the regime responsible for the repression…

More harm than good

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The failure of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front [8] to agree on the modalities of the long-planned United Nations-sponsored referendum on the fate of Western Sahara, combined with a growing nonviolent resistance campaign in the occupied territory against Morocco’s 31-year occupation, has led Morocco to propose [9] granting the former Spanish colony special autonomous status within the kingdom.Stephen Zunes [10] is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East / North Africa editor for Foreign Policy in Focus [11].

Friends in big places

The plan has received the enthusiastic support of the American and French governments as a reasonable compromise to the abiding conflict, which has caused enormous suffering to the Sahrawi people – over half of whom live in refugee camps [13] in neighboring Algeria – and has seriously crippled efforts to advance badly-needed economic and strategic cooperation between Morocco and Algeria as both face the challenges of struggling economies and rising Islamist militancy.

Morocco has failed to live up to the terms of the 1991 UN-supervised ceasefire agreement [14] with the Polisario – a secular nationalist movement that waged an armed struggle against Spanish colonialists and later against Moroccan occupiers – which called for a free and fair referendum on the fate of the territory. A series of resolutions by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as well as a landmark 1975 advisory ruling [15] by the International Court of Justice, have reaffirmed the right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination.

However, France and the United States have blocked the Security Council from enforcing its resolutions as part of their perceived need to strengthen the Moroccan monarchy, seen as a bulwark against Communism and radical Arab nationalism during the Cold War and, in more recent years, an important ally in the struggle against Islamist extremism.

Creating more problems than it solves

Unfortunately, the Moroccan plan for autonomy falls well short of what is required in bringing about a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Moreover, it seeks to set a dangerous precedent which threatens the very foundation of the post-World War II international legal system.

Recently on toD on self-determination and referenda:

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga – “Determining factors” [16], 13 July, 2007To begin with, the proposal is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco, a contention that has long been rejected [17] by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal opinion. To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the United Nations and the ratification of the UN Charter [18] more than sixty years ago, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilising precedent.

If the people of Western Sahara accepted an autonomy agreement over independence as a result of a free and fair referendum, it would constitute a legitimate act of self-determination. However, Morocco has explicitly stated that its autonomy proposal “rules out, by definition, the possibility for the independence option to be submitted” to the people of Western Sahara, the vast majority of whom – according to knowledgeable international observers – favour [19] outright independence.

A history of failure

Even if one takes a dismissive attitude toward international law, there are a number of practical concerns regarding the Moroccan proposal as well:

One is that the history of respect for regional autonomy on the part of centralised authoritarian states is quite poor, and has often led to violent conflict. In 1952, the United Nations granted the British protectorate (and former Italian colony) of Eritrea autonomous, federated status within Ethiopia. In 1961 [20], however, the Ethiopian emperor revoked Eritrea’s autonomous status, annexing it as his empire’s fourteenth province, resulting in a bloody 30-year struggle for independence and subsequent border wars between the two countries.

Similarly, the decision of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to revoke the autonomous status of Kosovo in 1989 [21] led to a decade of repression and resistance, culminating in the NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999.

Based upon Morocco’s habit of breaking its promises to the international community regarding the UN-mandated referendum for Western Sahara and related obligations based on the cease fire agreement sixteen years ago, there is little to inspire confidence that Morocco would live up to its promises to provide genuine autonomy for Western Sahara.

Pyrrhic autonomy

Indeed, a close reading of the proposal [9] raises questions as to how much autonomy is even being offered. Important matters such as control of Western Sahara’s natural resources and law enforcement (beyond local jurisdictions) remain ambiguous.

In addition, the proposal appears to indicate that all powers not specifically vested in the autonomous region would remain with the Kingdom. Indeed, since the king of Morocco is ultimately invested with absolute authority under Article 19 [22] of the Moroccan Constitution, the autonomy proposal’s insistence that the Moroccan state “will keep its powers in the royal domains, especially with respect to defense, external relations and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of His Majesty the King”, appears to afford the monarch considerable latitude of interpretation.

There appears to be a growing consensus within the international community that some sort of compromise, or “third way” between independence and integration, is necessary to resolve the conflict, and that a “winner take all” approach is unworkable.

While encouraging such compromise and trying to find a win/win situation is certainly the preferable way to pursue a lasting peaceful settlement regarding ethnic conflict and many international disputes, Western Sahara is a clear-cut case of self-determination for a people struggling against foreign military occupation. The Polisario Front has already offered guarantees to protect Moroccan strategic and economic interests if allowed full independence. To insist that the people of Western Sahara must give up their moral and legal right to genuine self-determination, then, is not a recipe for conflict resolution, but for far more serious conflict in the future.

As a result of the French and American veto threats, the UN Security Council has failed to place the Western Sahara issue under Chapter VII [23] of the UN Charter, which would give the international community the power to impose sanctions or other appropriate leverage to force the Moroccan regime to abide by the UN mandates it has up until now disregarded. Polisario’s unwillingness to compromise should not be seen as the major obstacle impeding the resolution of the conflict.

In the comparable case of East Timor, it was only after human rights organizations, church groups and other activists in the United States, Great Britain and Australia successfully pressured their governments to end their support for Indonesia’s occupation that the Jakarta regime was finally willing to offer a referendum which gave the East Timorese their right to self-determination. It may take similar grassroots campaigns [24] in Europe and North America to ensure that western powers live up to their international legal obligations and pressure Morocco to allow the people of Western Sahara to determine their own destiny.

Links:
[1] http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity
[2] http://www.opendemocracy.net/authors/stephen_zunes
[3] http://www.opendemocracy.net/copyright/creative-commons-normal
[4] http://www.opendemocracy.net/terrorism_opendemocracy_tags/rule_of_law
[5] http://www.opendemocracy.net/terrorism_opendemocracy_tags/insurgency
[6] http://www.opendemocracy.net/terrorism_opendemocracy_tags/non_violent_action
[7] http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2010/western-sahara.html
[8] http://www.wsahara.net/polisario.html
[9] http://w-sahara.blogspot.com/2007/04/moroccos-plan-full-text.html
[10] http://www.stephenzunes.org/
[11] http://www.fpif.org/
[12] http://www.amazon.com/Tinderbox-Stephen-Zunes/dp/1567512267
[13] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/264052.stm
[14] http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/minurso/background.html
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice_Advisory_Opinion_on_Western_Sahara
[16] http://www.opendemocracy.net/madrid11/philippines_130707
[17] http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol3/v3n42mor.html
[18] http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
[19] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n04/print/hard01_.html
[20] http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/echo/eritrea1961.htm
[21] http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/milosaid.html
[22] http://www.al-bab.com/maroc/gov/con96.htm
[23] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_VII_of_the_United_Nations_Charter
[24] http://www.etan.org/

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/more_harm_than_good