Tag: MINURSO

The Future of Western Sahara

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Morocco’s ongoing refusal to allow for the long-planned UN-sponsored referendum on the fate of Western Sahara to move forward, combined with a growing nonviolent resistance campaign in the occupied territory against Moroccan occupation authorities, has led Morocco to propose granting the former Spanish colony special autonomous status within the kingdom.

The kingdom of Morocco, generously supplied with American-made weapons, invaded the largely desert nation – then known as Spanish Sahara – more than three decades ago. It has controlled much of the territory ever since. More then 75 nations have recognized the government-in-exile of Western Sahara, led by the nationalist Polisario Front, and it is a full member state of the African Union.

A series of resolutions by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as well as a landmark 1975 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice, have recognized the right of self-determination by the people of Western Sahara. However, France and the United States have blocked the Security Council from enforcing its resolutions. Both countries have perceived a need to strengthen the Moroccan monarchy as a bulwark against Communism and radical Arab nationalism during the Cold War and, in more recent years, as an important ally in the struggle against Islamist extremism.

The ongoing conflict between Morocco and the Western Sahara nationalists, led by the Polisario Front, has resulted in enormous suffering by the Western Saharan people, over half of whom live in refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. It has seriously crippled efforts to advance badly needed economic and strategic cooperation between the states of the Maghreb region facing challenges from struggling economies and rising Islamist militancy.

The Bush administration and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders have enthusiastically supported the Moroccan autonomy plan as a means of ending the conflict. But Morocco’s plan for autonomy falls well short of what is necessary to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It also poses a dangerous precedent that threatens the very foundation of the post-World War II international legal system.

Morocco’s “Autonomy” Plan

The autonomy plan is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco, a contention that the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union, and a broad consensus of international legal opinion have long rejected. To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the UN and the ratification of the UN Charter more the 60 years ago, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilizing 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 – favor outright independence.

International law aside, there are a number of practical concerns regarding the Moroccan proposal. For instance, centralized autocratic states have rarely respected the autonomy of regional jurisdictions, which has often led to violent conflict. In 1952, the UN granted the British protectorate (and former Italian colony) of Eritrea autonomous status federated with Ethiopia. In 1961, however, the Ethiopian emperor revoked Eritrea’s autonomous status, annexing it as his empire’s 14th province. The result was a bloody 30-year struggle for independence and subsequent border wars between the two the countries. Similarly, the decision of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to revoke the autonomous status of Kosovo in 1989 led to a decade of repression and resistance, culminating in the NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999.

Moreover, there are no enforcement mechanisms included in the proposal, and Morocco has a history of breaking its promises to the international community regarding the UN-mandated referendum for Western Sahara and related obligations based on the ceasefire agreement 16 years ago. Indeed, a close reading of the proposal raises questions as to how much autonomy is even being offered initially, such as control of Western Sahara’s natural resources and law enforcement (beyond local matters). 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 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 give the monarch considerable latitude in interpretation.

In any case, the people of Western Sahara will not likely accept autonomy rather than independence. For years, they have engaged in pro-independence protests only to be subjected to mass arrests, beatings, torture, and extra-judicial killings. There is little reason to expect that the Moroccan authorities would change their ways under “autonomy.”

U.S. Defends the Moroccan Proposal

Despite all these serious problems with the Moroccan proposal, both the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties have rushed to try to legitimize what amounts to an illegal annexation of one country by another. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicolas Burns called it “a serious and credible proposal to provide real autonomy for the Western Sahara,” a point underscored before the House International Relations Committee by assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs David Welch. Although the well-organized refugee camps are largely demilitarized and, even during the 16 years of armed struggle against Morocco, the Polisario never engaged in acts of terrorism, Welch warned in the course of his testimony that the camps present “a potentially attractive safe haven for terrorist planning or activity.”

Congressional leaders of both parties appear to be allying themselves with administration hard-liners. Congressman Tom Lantos of California, whom the Democrats have chosen to chair the House International Relations Committee, referred to the Moroccan proposal as “reasonable and realistic” and called on the Polisario to accept it. He was joined by 172 other members of the House, who signed a letter declaring it “a breakthrough opportunity” and a “realistic framework for a political solution.” Given the widespread opposition in the international community to legitimizing Morocco’s act of aggression, the letter concludes by urging President Bush to “embrace this promising Moroccan initiative so that it receives the consideration necessary to achieve international acceptance.”

The letter was drafted and circulated by Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York, whom the Democrats have chosen to chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East. Other Democratic leaders joining their foreign policy leadership in supporting Morocco’s right of conquest included Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel. Prominent Republicans signing the letter included Minority Leader John Boehner, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Indeed, more than 80 of the signers are either committee chairmen or ranking members of key committees, subcommittees and elected leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, yet another indication in this post-Cold War era of a growing bipartisan effort to undermine the longstanding principle of the right of self-determination.

Former Clinton administration officials have also weighed in to support the contention that the people of Western Sahara should give up on their widely acknowledged claim to independence and instead accept the suzerainty of the autocratic Moroccan monarchy. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in an open letter to President Bush, also encouraged him to back the Moroccan plan, which she claimed gave “the people of the Western Sahara a true voice in their future through the full benefits of autonomy as presented by Morocco, a credible political solution can be achieved.” The letter was signed by a host of other prominent Democrats.

Distorting the Facts

Prominent Democrats have joined the Bush administration in distorting the facts of the conflict. For example, UN monitors report that the Polisario has scrupulously honored its 1991 ceasefire agreement with Morocco despite the Moroccans’ refusal to honor their reciprocal commitment to allow the holding a referendum on independence to take place. Nevertheless, Lantos has insisted that “peace has been summarily rejected by the rebel Polisario Front in favor of . . .guerrilla ambushes.” The House Democrats’ chief foreign policy spokesman also blames the Polisario for forcing most of the Western Saharan population to live in “arid refugee camps,” ignoring that they are living in these camps as a direct result of Moroccan repression.

Despite well-documented reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights groups monitoring the situation in the occupied territory that public expressions in support for self-determination are routinely suppressed, Lantos has also expressed his confidence that “Morocco will do nothing to stifle debate among the people of Western Sahara.”

In a prominent op-ed column in The New York Times this past March backing Morocco’s autonomy plan, President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Morocco Frederick Vreeland falsely claimed that the Polisario Front, which has led Western Sahara’s independence movement since the territory was under Spanish control, was a creation of Algeria in order to advance its own irredentist claims. In reality, the Polisario grew out of earlier anti-colonial movements that long pre-dated the establishment of the independent Algerian state and only began receiving substantial Algerian assistance after the Moroccan conquest in 1975.

Vreeland also claimed that the Polisario-administered refugee camps in Algeria are potential recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists. In reality, the Polisario Front is a secular nationalist organization, the Western Saharans tend to observe a relatively liberal interpretation of Islam, and the Algerian government – which has only recently emerged from a hard-fought war against Islamist insurgents – would certainly crack down decisively at even a hint of such extremist activities within its territory. Indeed, there have been no credible reports of any radical Islamist activities by the many hundreds of UN officials, scholars and relief workers – including those from U.S. evangelical Christian groups – who have spent time in the camps.

Nor would an independent Western Sahara, endowed with generous natural resources and governed by the Polisario Front’s increasingly pro-Western leadership, constitute “a weak independent state” that “would likely morph into a terrorist-controlled one” as Ambassador Vreeland ominously predicted in his article.

Interestingly, The New York Times refused to run any of the op-eds submitted in subsequent weeks by a number of reputable North African scholars refuting Vreeland’s claims or raising objections about Morocco’s autonomy plan. Nor did the newspaper of record bother to mention that Ambassador Vreeland now serves as chairman of an energy company with contracts with the Moroccan government to develop energy resources in occupied Western Sahara.

Other former officials have had to be more open about their affiliations. Former Connecticut Congressman Toby Moffet, who has lobbied his fellow Democrats to back the Moroccan plan by raising the specter of a growing al-Qaeda threat in North Africa if it’s not accepted, has had to register as an agent of a foreign government for his services on behalf of the Moroccan monarchy. On the Republican side, former Florida Republican Party chairman Alberto Cardenas, who co-chaired 2004 re-election campaign, in that state, has also been hired by the Moroccans.

Implications of U.S. Support

Support for Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara is indicative of a growing bipartisan rejection of the international legal norms that have governed international relations since the end of the Second World War. At that time, when the victorious allies agreed to never again allow invading armies to conquer other peoples without a collective response. While some have tried to blame the bipartisan congressional support for Israel’s efforts to annex East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and parts of the West Bank as a consequence of the alleged power of “the Jewish Lobby,” the strong bipartisan Congressional support for the annexation of Western Sahara by the Arab kingdom of Morocco demonstrates that members of Congress are nowadays quite willing to support the illegal conquests by U.S. allies of their weaker neighbors even without pressure from a well-organized ethnic minority.

Ironically, the majority of House members who were in Congress in 1991 and have gone on record seeking to legitimize Morocco’s aggression against Western Sahara voted to authorize the Gulf War on the grounds that Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait was so egregious that it justified a massive military response.

Most supporters of Morocco’s autonomy plan deny that they are legitimizing aggression. They argue that some sort of compromise, or “third way” between Western Saharan independence and integration with Morocco, is necessary to resolve the conflict and that a “winner take all” approach is unworkable. Encouraging such compromise and trying to find a win/win situation is certainly the preferable way to pursue a lasting peaceful settlement regarding most ethnic conflicts and many international disputes. However, 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.

The irresolution to the conflict is not a result of the Polisario’s unwillingness to compromise. Rather, it represents the failure of the UN Security Council – as a result of the French and American veto threats – to place the Western Sahara issue under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Such an action would give the international community the power to impose sanctions or whatever appropriate leverage is required to force the Moroccan regime to abide by the UN mandates it has up until now been able to disregard thanks to its friends in Paris and Washington.

In the comparable case of East Timor, only after human rights organizations, church groups, and other activists forced the U.S. government to end its support for Indonesia’s occupation did the Jakarta regime finally offer a referendum that gave the East Timorese their right to self-determination. It may take similar grassroots campaigns to ensure that the United States lives up to its international legal obligations and pressures Morocco to allow the people of Western Sahara to determine their own destiny.

Stephen Zunes (www.stephenzunes.org) is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and the forthcoming book, co-authored by Jacob Mundy, Western Sahara: Nationalist and Conflict Irresolution in Northwest Africa (Syracuse University Press.)

Recommended Citation: Stephen Zunes, “The Future of Western Sahara” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 20, 2007)

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_future_of_western_sahara

Self Determination Struggle in the Western Sahara Continues to Challenge the UN

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Ian Williams contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs. Stephen Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He serves as an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.

After much wrangling from the French, the UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1495 right on the July 31st deadline for the rollover of the MINURSO peacekeeping operation in Western Sahara. In the best diplomatic tradition, the resolution affirmed the commitment to provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, even while it seriously compromised on it by supporting a peace plan that would allow the Moroccan settlers in the territory to vote on independence in five years. As with Israeli settlers on the West Bank, these Moroccan colonists are there in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits countries from transfering their civilian population onto territories seized by military force.

The Security Council had fought off a similar plan last year, but this time former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative, adjusted the plan to provide for a genuine Sahrawi autonomy in the five years before the proposed referendum. This was an ominous sign for the increasingly autocratic rule of King Mohammed in Morocco itself, not to mention leading to uncertainty about the result of the referendum: one fixed principle of Rabat’s policy has been never to allow a vote that its principals cannot control.

The Polisario Front and its principal ally Algeria had surprised everyone two weeks earlier by supporting the new plan. It may even be that they supported the plan precisely because they knew Rabat would oppose it. For weaker states, it is sound diplomatic strategy to maneuver your opponents into defying the United States and the rest of the world.

In the longer term, it looks as if Polisario and Algeria have scored a significant diplomatic victory by playing along with Baker’s peace proposals and the resolution that was moved by the United States. Morocco’s one small victory was that the resolution cited Chapter VI of the UN Charter dealing with the peaceful settlement of disputes, rather than Chapter VII which would have implied mandatory implementation of UN decisions.

Disturbing Principles

In the run up to the vote, France alleged a novel and disturbing principle: the Security Council cannot impose its decisions on parties if they disagree. They claimed there was a tradition of using consensus on Western Sahara, which was a bit like the apocryphal prisoner who had killed his parents and then asked for the court’s sympathy because he was an orphan. Any such “tradition” developed in response to constant French and American attempts to railroad a pro-Moroccan position past the other Security Council members in defiance of all previous decisions.

French foreign minister Dominique De Villepin may have made an eloquent case against the legality of the Iraq war, but there is nothing Cartesian about Paris’s uncritical support for the King of Morocco. Late last year, France had joined with the United States and Great Britain in attempting to disregard all previous decisions and force through Baker’s first draft, which would in effect have legalized the Moroccan occupation against the wishes of the Sahrawi people. As a sort of Solomonic approach, Baker also suggested partition, which the Algerians toyed with, but which all sides eventually rejected–for the time being.

As an Irish diplomat on the Council at the time said,”The original draft was utterly one-sided in its approach: it was in violation of international legal principles, and had already been rejected by one party to the dispute. It was also clear that the movers could not muster more than six or seven votes in the Council, so they could not get a majority for it.” He added, “We don’t mind if the Western Sahara becomes part of Morocco–as long as that’s what the Sahrawis want.” In the end, the doubters withstood American, French, and British pressure and stopped adoption of the plan.

This July, Baker returned with a revised version, which was on the face of it, very similar, but he added some crucial safeguards that won Polisario and Algerian support. The degree of autonomy for the five-year interim stage was much stronger, with better international guarantees against Moroccan interference. Only Sahrawis would vote for the interim authority, even if all residents would vote in the final referendum.

The Moroccans did not like these restrictions, and were apparently not even sure that they could count on the settlers to vote with them. So, for the last weeks of July, French diplomats worked hard to avert the revised peace plan, and the King himself called everyone from Tony Blair to George W Bush. Jaccques Chirac himself hit the telephones on behalf of his client. However, it did not help much. The King was upset at the reference to self-determination as a ballot option, which was of course absurd. The whole ten-year peace process has been predicated on a vote for or against independence.

Having briefly enlisted Bulgaria, the isolated French delegation eventually compromised and accepted some minor concessions from the Americans in resolution1495 which “supported strongly” the peace plan put forward by James Baker rather than “endorsed” it as the original wording had it. In fairly typical fashion, Morocco reacted peremptorily to the resolution by saying “We rejected the Baker plan, and are still rejecting it.”

It is easy to wonder what the fuss is all about with the endless acres of sand and sparse population of Western Sahara. However, like East Timor, a problem that also first hit the UN agenda three decades ago, it involves major issues of international law, self-determination, and respect for UN decisions. It has also cost the UN over half a billion dollars to maintain a force whose job is to supervise a referendum on self determination that Morocco has delayed for more than a dozen years.

History

In the fall of 1975, in the face of a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice rejecting Moroccan claims to Western Sahara and categorically ruling that the Sahrawis were entitled toself-determination, Morocco invaded the territory on the verge of its scheduled independence from Spain. Most of the Sahrawi population was forced into refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. While not formally recognizing Morocco’s annexation, the United Statees had actively encouraged the Spaniards and Moroccans to deny independence to the Sahrawis, who strongly supported the left-leaning independence movement known as the Polisario Front.

In response to the Moroccan invasion, the UN Security Council passed resolutions 379 and 380, which explicitly and unconditionally called on Morocco to withdraw from Western Sahara. However, the French and Americans blocked the Security Council from enforcing these resolutions. According to then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”

By 1982, after seven years of war, the Algerian-backed Polisario was on the verge of liberating their country from Moroccan occupation. Howeover, large-scale U.S. and French military aid, including counterinsurgency equipment and training, reversed the tide of the war. Morocco’s allies also helped its occupation forces construct a wall, which eventually separated most of the territory from the exiled Sahrawi population.

With the war at a stalemate, the Moroccans and the Polisario agreed to a cease-fire in 1990, followed by a UN-supervised referendum. The UN set up a peacekeeping operation known as MINURSO to oversee the plebiscite, where eligible voters among the refugees and the minority of Sahrawis that had stayed in the territory would be determined based on a 1974 Spanish census. However, the Moroccans insisted that anyone who could trace their ancestry to tribal groups with links to the territory should be added to the voter rolls, with the result that twice as many Moroccans as Sahrawis would be allowed to vote. The Polisario understandably rejected such Moroccan demands and the United States and France blocked the Security Council from forcing Morocco to go along with the original plan. As a result, the referendum was never held.

Now, faced with the prospect of being forced to accept a referendum where Moroccan settlers–who now outnumber the indigenous Sahrawis–would be allowed to vote, the Polisario have stolen a march on Morocco by aligning themselves with the United States on the latest resolution. Polisario’s UN representative Ahmed Boukhari candidly admitted that the new offer “was not paradise: it’s a very risky proposal for us,” but it was a pragmatic recognition that the cards were stacked. “We are in the weakest position, so of course, they always want us to compromise, regardless of the law.”

The issue resurfaces again in October, by which time Baker will have done more work, the various parties will do more maneuvering, and more Sahrawis will be born and die in the bleak wastes around their headquarters in the deserts of western Algeria wondering if they will even be given the right of self-determination promised for so long by the international community.

Why the U.S. and France Support the Moroccan Takeover

There are some striking similarities between Morocco’s takeover of Western Sahara and Indonesia’s takeover of East Timor that same year, giving some hope that–as with East Timor–international law and basic principles of justice might win out over realpolitik. Indeed, the Polisario has had far more diplomatic support than the Fretilin ever did, with their Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic being formally recognized by 75 countries and the SADR sitting as a full member state in the Organization of African Unity.

However, there are two factors working against Sahrawi independence. One is that despite their impressive efforts at building well-functioning democratic institutions in the self-governed refugee camps where the majority of their people live, the Sahrawis have never had the degree of international grassroots solidarity that the East Timorese were able to develop, which eventually eroded support of the Indonesian occupation by Western powers. Secondly, the Moroccan monarchy from the beginning has used its conquest of what it calls “the Sahara provinces” as a means of maintaining its nationalist credentials and popular support despite its autocratic and corrupt rule and the nation’s struggling economy.

The United States has long seen the Moroccan monarchy as a linchpin in advancing Western interests in the region, first as a bulwark against Communist influence and more recently against radical Islam. If Morocco lost the referendum for Western Sahara after pouring in such a tremendous amount of financial resources and lives for the sake of controling the territory, it could lead to enormous instability and perhaps even the monarchy’s overthrow.

In addition, there is the economic interest in the mineral-rich territory: The Moroccans have just given an exploration contract in the territory to an American oil company, Kerr McGee, which has strong links to Vice President Dick Cheney and the Texas oil gang in the administration, which includes Baker. Of course, one would, in the best spirit of Casablanca, be shocked, shocked, to think that this had anything to do with his or the administration’s public espousal of the Moroccan position. The granting of a concession to TotalFinaElf naturally helped make France’s already strong support even more fervent.

However, Morocco’s case was hindered rather than helped by the contracts. In response, the Security Council asked for a legal opinion from UN Under Secretary General for Legal Affairs, Hans Corell. His low-key report was nevertheless devastating for the Moroccan legal position, reminding council members that Morocco’s occupation was in defiance of rulings by both the International Court of Justice and the Security Council itself, since no valid act of self-determination has yet to take place.

In Kerr McGee’s favor, Corell did determine that exploration contracts were legal–but that exploitation contracts would not be without the support of the people of Western Sahara. There have been successful moves to disinvest from the companies involved. This raises interesting questions for the United States, which is indeed eager for alternative sources of oil outside the Middle East.

After alienating much of the international community for undermining the United Nations’ authority and running roughshod over international legal principles in regard to Israel/Palestine and Iraq, the Bush administration may be reluctant to push its luck too far in making it possible for its Moroccan ally to get away with such an illegitimate territorial aggrandizement. Such moderation in U.S. foreign policy, however, may be possible only if the international community and the American public make it politically difficult for the Bush administration to do otherwise.

UN Betrayal of Western Sahara Appears Imminent

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When a country violates fundamental principles of international law and when the UN Security Council demands that it cease its illegal behavior, one might expect that the world body would impose sanctions or other measures to foster compliance. This has been the case with Iraq, Libya, and other international outlaws in recent years.

One would not expect for the United Nations to respond to such violations by passing a series of new and weaker resolutions that essentially allow for the transgressions to stand.

However, this is exactly what appears to be taking place in the case of Morocco and its 25-year occupation of Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), better known as Western Sahara. Soon after the International Court of Justice ruled against Morocco’s claims to the territory and the right of the Sahrawis for self-determination, Morocco invaded Western Sahara in November 1975. At that time the UN passed UN Security Council Resolution 380 calling for Morocco to withdraw immediately from the territory. The U.S. and France not only blocked the UN from imposing sanctions and otherwise enforcing its resolution, but they also sent military advisers and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms in subsequent years to support Morocco’s conquest. As a result, the majority of the country’s population was forced into exile in neighboring Algeria.

By 1991 the UN had dropped its insistence insisting that Moroccan forces withdraw unilaterally. Instead it called for a UN-sponsored plebiscite involving the Saharis themselves on the fate of the territory. UN Security Council Resolution 690 outlined the process for registering voters and proceeding with the plebiscite. Recognizing that the Sahrawis would likely vote for independence, Morocco stacked the voter rolls with Moroccan citizens who had immigrated into the occupied territory or otherwise claimed had ancestral ties to the area. Using their power on the Security Council, the United States and France repeatedly blocked the UN from enforcing its mandate for a Sahrawi plebiscite.

In September 1997, the diplomatic stalemate appeared to be broken through the efforts of UN Special Envoy and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that appeared to have worked out the registration process obstacles, which included some further concessions to the Moroccans. This was endorsed in UN Security Council Resolution 1133. Still fearing it would lose, however, Morocco has refused to implement this agreement as well.

With the diplomatic umbrella of France and the United States protecting the monarchy from its international obligations, it now appears that Baker will soon be recommending that the UN drop the idea for a plebiscite and replace it with a settlement providing Western Sahara with limited autonomy for an interim period while recognizing its annexation to Morocco.

The Western Saharan government-in-exile has rightly dismissed this proposal as a fundamental violation of right of Sahrawi self-determination, the UN charter, and basic principles of international law. Indeed, it has threatened to go to war, possibly with the support of Algeria, rather than have Morocco’s conquest stand uncontested. The SADR has been recognized by more than 75 countries and is a full member state of the Organization of African Unity. There is likely to be strong resistance against a Western-led effort to legitimize what most African states see as an act of colonialism.

Should Baker’s proposal be accepted, it could not only provoke a regional war but would also set a dangerous precedent of rewarding the conquest of territory by force and likely embolden potential aggressors around the world. As with the analogous case of East Timor, it may take a mass mobilization by human rights activists around the world to force the major powers to allow the UN to enforce its obligations and allow an oppressed people their right to self-determination.
Recommended Citation:

Stephen Zunes, “UN Betrayal of Western Sahara Appears Imminent” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, June 1, 2001)