The case for Western Saharan independence | Western Sahara Update

Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony, is perhaps the most clear-cut case for independence in the world today. It is unfortunately also one of the lesser known conflicts. Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975, when a weakened Spain, anxious to avoid military confrontation, had secretly relinquished Western Sahara to Morocco (and Mauritania, who left its part of Western Sahara to Morocco in 1979) in exchange for mining and fishing concessions. As an illegal occupying force, Morocco has no right to the territory of Western Sahara, and nor has it the right to sell Western Sahara’s natural resources or violate the human rights of its citizens, but must instead work towards the a referendum on the status of Western Sahara. So international law fully supports the Saharawis’ claim to independence for Western Sahara.

No country accepts Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara, on the other hand, but over 80 countries recognise Western Sahara’s exile government, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The SADR government is a member of the African Union and has a President, a Prime Minister, a judiciary, and ministerial departments and a parliament, just as any other country in the world, although because of Morocco’s occupation of most of Western Saharan territory, SADR is administrated from a refugee camp in the middle of the dessert in Western Algeria.

The Saharawi people and SADR seem to be coping remarkably well in these circumstances, although they would obviously be coping significantly better if they had access to the bulk of their resources and land that is presently colonised by Morocco. The educational level in the camps, for instance, is surprisingly high, mainly because the SADR government has made education a priority. About 90% of the population are literate, against a regional average of about 50%, a dramatic rise from the 10% literacy when the Saharawis arrived in the camps in 1975. Saharawian women are also seen as some of the most liberated in the Arab and Muslim world. And as the president of the American Defence Forum Foundation, Suzanne Scholte, concluded recently, “Western Sahara has the greatest potential of any Arab country to become a pro-Western democracy.” So why hasn’t Western Sahara been granted its independence?

There is both a purely legal and a moral case for Western Saharan independence, as well as a real-political reason that Western Sahara is still colonised by Morocco.

The legal case

There is a multitude of international court opinions, legal opinions, legal charters and UN-resolutions that support the claim of the Saharawis to Western Sahara.

The International Court of Justice rejected Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara in October 1975, a month before Morocco invaded, its opinion concluding, “that the materials and information presented to it do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco.” Self-determination for Western Sahara (defined as the right of a people to a free choice) constituted a “basic assumption of the questions put to the court”, and even a positive finding of ties of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and Morocco would therefore not have overrided the self-determination process.

The illegality of Morocco’s presence in Western Sahara has been maintained by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly in over 100 resolutions, especially General Assembly resolution 1514 that states that “all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” and that “immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or colour, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.” Resolution 1514 was declared applicable to the case of Western Sahara by UN General Assembly Resolution 2229.

The Charter of the United Nations (article 3) also clearly states that those nations who are “responsible” for non-self-governing states, such as Western Sahara, must “ensure … their just treatment, and their protection against abuses,” “take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples,” “promote constructive measures of development,” and “transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes,” none of which Morocco can be said to be doing presently.

Morocco’s instigation of the “Green March” in late 1975, where over 300.000 civilian Moroccans marched into Western Sahara was clearly in breach of the 4^th Geneva Convention’s article 49 that states that “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Self-determination of nations such as Western Sahara, including their natural resources, was recognised as a principle in article 1, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, that reads “All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources … based upon the principle of … international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.” Regarding Western Sahara’s resources, former Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs, Hans Correll’s UN Opinion from 2002 concluded that the selling of Western Sahara’s resources was only legal if the population of Western Sahara agrees to and benefits from it, something a European Parliament Legal Opinion from 2009 and numerous statements from Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Western Sahara’s government in exile, conclude they do not. Correll has recently reiterated this conclusion, saying, “if the [fisheries] agreement is not signed with the interest of the people of Western Sahara, or after consultation with them, and the benefits do not go to the people of the territory, then it would be in violation of international law. I am afraid we have this situation in this case now.” Morocco’s selling of Western Sahara’s huge deposits of phosphate, and the Fisheries Partnership Agreement that Morocco has agreed with the European Union, where the EU pays Morocco 36.1 million Euros annually to allow EU vessels to fish in its waters, is therefore illegal.

Several UN-resolutions have also specifically called for Morocco to grant Western Sahara its independence. UN General Assembly Resolution 34/37, 1979, paragraph 5, for instance, “deeply deplores the aggravation of the situation resulting from the continued occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco”, while paragraph 6 specifically calls upon Morocco to “… terminate the occupation of the territory of Western Sahara”

The moral case

Apart from the purely legal argument for Western Saharan independence there is also an equally strong moral argument, especially in regard to the way the Moroccan regime treats the Saharawis.

The Human Rights situation in occupied Western Sahara is highly reprehensible, something that many Human Rights organisations have accounted for in numerous reports and other publications. Human Rights Watch speaks of Moroccan authorities acting with “impunity” and the ”evidence of torture and serious mistreatment” against the indigenous population of Westerns Sahara, the Saharawis; International Crisis Group speaks of the Moroccan regime’s “disproportionate use of force” and it  “frequently resorting to torture and arbitrary arrests;” and Amnesty International speaks of Saharawis being “subjected to forms of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment – including rape.”

Morocco has brutally clamped down on anyone within occupied Western Sahara who dares dispute its rule, however peacefully. One of the more recent and widely publicised examples of this was the Moroccan clamp down on the Saharawi Gdaim Izik protest camp in occupied Western Sahara in November 2010. Shortly hereafter, the European Parliament passed a resolution that “expresses its greatest concern about the significant deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara and strongly condemns the violent incidents which occurred in Gdaim Izyk camp while it was being dismantled and in the town of Laâyoun”. The resolution also “deplores the loss of human life” during Morocco’s brutal raid on the peaceful protest camp of Gdeim Izik, and insisted that the parliament is generally “concerned” about the human rights situation in Western Sahara.

The situation of the over 150.000 Saharawis that have lived in refugee camps outside Western Sahara since 1975 is equally reprehensible. A Moroccan-built wall, “Berm” or “wall of shame” as the Saharawis call it to, spans the entire length of Western Sahara, dividing the resource-rich occupied part from the SADR-controlled part. It is manned by thousands of soldiers and is heavily mined with around six million mines. The wall was and is an attempt by Morocco to protect the resources that they illegally extract from occupied Western Sahara. What it means for the Saharawis, apart from being a symbol of the occupation of their land, is that the families living in the refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria have been unable to visit their families in occupied Western Sahara for years on end as crossing from one part to the other is virtually impossible.

There are four large Saharawi refugee camps, as well as smaller satellite camps. The camps have a total population of around 165.000 according to UNHCR, although this number is disputed by Morocco for political reasons. The camps lie near Tindouf, Algeria, in an area known as “the devil’s garden” where temperatures in summer reach 50 degrees. The area has little vegetation and experiences frequent sand storms. Drinking water has to be brought in by lorry and many of those living there experience nutritional deficiencies.

The reality of realpolitik

So why has it taken so long for Western Sahara to gain its independence, when all other African countries have already gained theirs?

One obvious reason for this is that the UN Security Council is currently blocking any UN-sanctioned solution to the Western Sahara conflict. Especially the USA and France, both permanent UN Security Council members, have strategic and financial interests that have caused them to veto any UN action on Western Sahara. The USA, France and Spain, in particular, are not interested in changing a status quo that they believe they benefit from both strategically and financially. Furthermore, they are not pressured to act because Western Sahara is a low-intensity conflict and therefore doesn’t get much coverage in the press, although an increasingly vocal international civil society and increasing effective activism is beginning to draw attention to the Western Saharan conflict.

The governments and companies of the European Union, including Western Sahara’s former colonial power, Spain (Western Sahara’s de jure administrative power according to international law) in particular, benefit financially from the status quo. Amongst other things because of the huge but illegal presence of mostly Spanish fishing vessels in the waters of occupied Western Sahara and the illegal selling of other Western Saharan resources such as phosphates. The selling of these resources play an important part in enabling Morocco to continue to fund its colonisation of Western Sahara.

The USA and France have more strategic interests. The USA often publicly praises Morocco’s alleged reform efforts and France rarely publicly criticizes Morocco’s poor human rights record and openly supported its autonomy plan for Western Sahara, an attempt to make Western Sahara a permanent region within Morocco where Morocco retains power over defence, external relations and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of the Moroccan King. Morocco was one of the USA’s closest allies in their fight against communism and is one of its main allies in its fight against terrorism. Morocco was the first country to recognize the independent United States, and the two nations also signed a treaty of friendship as long ago as in 1777 (renegotiated in 1836 and still in effect). France and the USA both provide Morocco with financial aid to back up their support.

It is also obvious that independence for Western Sahara demands some sort of change within Morocco itself, as the current Moroccan regime has issues of both self-preservation and finance at stake with regards to Western Sahara. In plain language, the present Moroccan regime and its army use Western Sahara as both a diversion from its internal problems and the dissatisfaction within the Moroccan population with the regime, and as a source of considerable income.

An outstretched hand to the Moroccan people

The Saharawis apparently understand this fact. Even though Western Sahara’s national liberation movement, the Polisario Front, were at war with Morocco between 1975 and 1991, their grudge seems to be more with the undemocratic Moroccan regime, controlled by King Mohammed, than with the Moroccan people. As SADR President, and Polisario Secretary General, Mohamed Abdelaziz said in his speech on 27 February 2011 at the 35^thanniversary celebrations of SADR in Tifariti in SADR-controlled Western Sahara, “we would also like to salute the Moroccan brotherly people and to assure them that the Saharawi people are their partner in the struggle for freedom, justice and the respect for human and peoples’ rights and in their common endeavour to build a united Maghreb, based on cooperation, integration, mutual respect and neighbourly relations between its peoples and countries … both Saharawi and Moroccan peoples are victims of the expansionism of the Moroccan Government that persists in curbing democracy and violating human rights”.

And no, I don’t think the conflict is doomed, although it might initially seem a little that way. The same insolvability seemed to apply to apartheid South Africa, where internal and external pressure broke the regime over the period of some years, and the North African regimes (specifically Tunisia and Egypt), where it was more internal pressure that broke the regimes (and where the outcome is obviously more unclear at present). All of these three countries looked nowhere near democratisation, from the outside at least, before it actually happened.

Peter Kenworthy is a Master of Social Science from Roskilde University. Peter has visited both the Tindouf refugee camps and in SADR-controlled Western Sahara, and has written a multitude of articles on the issue of Western Sahara.

“No other choice” than self-determination for Western Sahara| Western Sahara Update

“There is no other choice but self-determination,” says a lady interviewed in a new documentary about Western Sahara made by 31-year-old English independent film-maker and journalist, Dominic Brown. She is the wife of one of the many activists belonging to Western Sahara’s indigenous population, the Saharawis, who have been imprisoned and tortured for campaigning for independence for Africa’s last colony.

According to the documentary, called La Badil  (literally “no other choice”),  the Saharawis have been discriminated and systematically robbed of their resources by Morocco since a Moroccan invasion of Western Sahara in 1975 that was carried out in agreement with the colonial power Spain. Because, as a speak over in the documentary says, “Western Sahara’s abundance of natural resources provides vital revenue to the Moroccan state.”

La Badil is a documentary about the daily life of the indigenous population – the Saharawis – in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. The film focuses on both Gdeim Izik, where Moroccan troops attacked a peaceful protest camp in October 2010, killing several people and detaining and torturing many more, and on the daily lives of the Saharawis.

Through footage filmed undercover from the major towns in occupied Western Sahara, as well as through interviews, the documentary portrays the Saharawis as being virtually under siege in their own country by Moroccan troops, as being beaten up and tortured for even daring to show the Saharawi flag in public, and as being discriminated against by the Moroccan authorities, companies and Moroccan settlers.

“They [the Moroccans] are reaping all the benefits from our country’s riches. The Saharawis get nothing,” as one person says in the film. “They [Moroccan police] storm our houses and kidnap our children. We are really suffering here,” says another.

But while conflicts elsewhere are more or less regularly covered in the Western media, the Western Sahara conflict is all but forgotten. “The media were almost silent when the [Gdeim Izik] uprisings occurred compared to in Libya and Tunisia, because of the blockade the Moroccan authorities imposed” as a young activist points out in the documentary. This media blockade has meant that the Saharawis have begun uploading mobile phone footage to YouTube to try and bring attention to their situation.

And this is exactly the reason why the film was made, Dominic Brown tells me. “I decided to make the film because the situation in Western Sahara is one that very rarely gets the media coverage that it deserves. Especially here in the UK, most people have no idea about what is happening there. More and more people are taking cheap flights on Easyjet to Morocco, but they don’t realise they are contributing in some way to the oppression of the Sahrawi.”

But as the documentary also points out, powerful countries such as the USA and France – and the EU as a whole – are by no means neutral. On the contrary, they are aiding and abetting Morocco in its exploitation of Western Sahara’s population and their resources by e.g. accepting Morocco’s proposal to have Western Sahara remain a Moroccan province, by denying the UN the ability to monitor the human rights situation in Western Sahara, by supplying arms to Morocco, and by illegally dealing in goods and fishing quotas from the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

“I hope that the film will open more peoples eyes to the plight of the Sahrawi, and also show how there are many vested interests involved (eg. France and their trade deals with Morocco), that are preventing the people there getting justice,” says Dominic Brown.

The message from those interviewed in the documentary to the populations and governments in the West is certainly clear: help us achieve independence from Morocco. “We just demand freedom like all people around the world,” says one lady. “We are asking for organisations in Europe to help us, both government and non-government,” pleaded another.

Dominic Brown has previously made an undercover documentary about the independence struggle in West Papua called ‘Forgotten Bird of Paradise’ that was shown on the BBC as well as screened at film festivals in 10 countries. He will be entering La Badil into film festivals as well as approaching broadcasters. In the meantime the film can be purchased here or seen here.

Learn more:

Three interviews with Saharawi Human Rights activist Bouamoud Mohamed

The Reality of Western Sahara | GlobalPost | Western Sahara Update

Commentary: A rebuttal on accusations concerning the Polisario and Moroccan occupation.

Stephen ZunesAugust 2, 2012 06:13

The wreckage of a Morrocan tank is pictured near the Western Sahara village of Tifariti. Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony which was annexed in 1975 by Morocco. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, wants independence for the territory on the west African coast. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this year, Global Post ran an article by Jordan Paul, executive director of the Moroccan American Center for Policy, a registered foreign agent for the Moroccan government, which funds, supervises, and coordinates the group’s activities. The article contained a series of demonstrably false claims attempting to rationalize for Morocco’s illegal occupation of its southern neighbor, the country of Western Sahara.

In 1975, the kingdom of Morocco conquered Western Sahara on the eve of its anticipated independence from Spain in defiance of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark 1975 decision by the International Court of Justice upholding the right of the country's inhabitants to self-determination. With threats of a French and American veto at the UN preventing decisive action by the international community to stop the Moroccan invasion, the nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed struggle against the occupiers. The majority of the indigenous population, known as Sahrawis, went into exile, primarily in Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria.

Thanks to U.S. and French military support for the conquering Moroccan forces, Morocco was able to hold on to most of Western Sahara. Yet the Polisario achieved a series of diplomatic victories that generated widespread international support for self-determination and opposition to the Moroccan takeover. In 1991, the Polisario agreed to a ceasefire in return for a Moroccan promise to allow for an internationally supervised referendum on the fate of the territory. Morocco, however, recognizing they would almost certainly lose such a plebiscite, refused to allow the scheduled vote to move forward.

French and American support for the Moroccan government blocked the UN Security Council from providing the necessary diplomatic pressure to force Morocco to allow the promised referendum to take place. The Polisario, meanwhile, recognizing its inability to defeat the Moroccans by military means, decided against resuming the armed struggle. As a result, the struggle for self-determination shifted to within the Moroccan-occupied territory, where the Sahrawi population has launched a nonviolent resistance campaign against the occupation, which – despite widespread Moroccan repression – has sporadically continued.

More from GlobalPost: Western Sahara in geopolitical state

In an effort to justify their ongoing defiance of the international community for their illegal occupation, the autocratic Moroccan monarchy has redoubled its efforts to discredit their opponents, such hiring people like Paul to write articles like those that appeared in the Global Post in March.

Among Paul’s more bizarre claims is that the Polisario Front has links to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM.)

In reality, though Sahrawis are virtually all Muslims, they historically practice a decidedly liberal interpretation of the faith. The Polisario has since its founding been a secular organization, based on the belief that religious faith is between the individual and God, not a government or other temporal organization. Women have taken prominent positions in leadership. Meanwhile, radical Islamists in Algeria have condemned them for their secular ideology and even attacked Polisario offices.

Even during the twenty years of armed struggle, the Polisario never engaged in terrorism or any kind of deliberate attacks against civilian targets. And there has been none since.

Furthermore, the autocratic Algerian regime controls security around the refugee camps, which are located in the heavily-militarized region of Tindouf. After surviving a bloody decade-long civil war against Islamist extremists, the idea that the Algerian government would allow any group collaborating the AQIM to operate in such a sensitive area is pure fantasy.

While there are some legitimate concerns regarding some of the practices of the Polisario leadership in the camps, no credible independent analysts have documented Paul’s claims that the Polisario has been involved in “arms and drug trafficking, armed incursions into Mali, fighting as Gaddafi mercenaries in Libya, and kidnappings for AQIM in the Sahel.”

Contrary to Paul’s claim, the Polisario Front is not a “separatist” group. It is the ruling party of the nation of Western Sahara – known officially as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – which has been recognized by over 80 countries and is a full member state of the African Union. Western Sahara is recognized by the United Nations and virtually the entire international community as a non-self-governing country under foreign belligerent occupation.

And, contrary to Paul, the Polisario does not “force” the refugees to live in the camps. As someone who has visited both the camps and Moroccan-occupied parts of Western Sahara, it is clear that they are there to escape Moroccan repression in their occupied homeland, repression that has been well-documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights groups.

As with Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and Iraq’s short-lived occupation of Kuwait, there are those who will try to justify illegitimate foreign occupations by making up such bizarre stories. However, it doesn’t mean they should be taken seriously.

More from GlobalPost: Lesbians in Morocco: Should we stay or should we go?

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair or Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2010)