Here is an extract from the report by the: EUROPEAN STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY CENTER
The three parties in question, Morocco, Algeria (which shelters and supports the Polisario Front) and the Polisario Front are entrenched in their positions.
Although the independence ofWestern Sahara is as ever unacceptable for the Rabat government and for Moroccan society, the Polisario Front, for its part, wants to hear of no other solution. For regional geostrategic reasons, it is sustained in its intransigence by the Algerian government. This support, together with strong diplomatic pressures, has led a few dozen States to recognize a Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which is purely fictitious. One can only wonder, furthermore, about the viability of “Micro States” in this globalization era.
Morocco, on its side, seems ready to find a political solution that would involve broad Saharawi independence within the Moroccan national territory. It is clear moreover that, despite its intransigence, the Polisario Front represents only a fraction of the “Saharawi people”.
As the United Nations and Europe have shown themselves to be incapable of solving the conflict, many eyes are now turning to the United States which, in the context of the “war against terrorism” and their plan to democratize the Arabo-Muslim world, has every interest in stabilizing the Maghreb, but which must, at the same time, reconcile the interests of its two allies within the region, Algeria and Morocco.
The Polisario Front embarked last summer upon a vast diplomatic operation by finally releasing (following the intervention of top-level American personalities) several hundreds of Moroccan prisoners of war, some of whom had been detained for more than thirty years and who would seem to have suffered, in addition to a detention period that is unjustifiable in international law, massive and repeated maltreatment. The Front undoubtedly intended thus to reclaim its virginity and to bury the various charges that have often been levied against it in the last twenty years.
It still remains that the treatment undergone by these prisoners of war (and by Moroccan civilian detainees) should be brought before the international authorities.
Furthermore, the Polisario, led by the same group for three decades, has remained in deficit of internal democracy. It is accused of keeping, against their will, thousands of Saharawis in the camps of Tindouf, in Algeria, with the complicity of the Algiers authorities. In the past, many charges of ill treatment of these Saharawi populations have been made against the leadership of the Polisario Front. The same leadership has been regularly accused of diverting the humanitarian aid intended for refugees.
Today, the way the Polisario is evolving is giving rise to new fears: those of seeing some of its combatants and leaders turn to terrorism, radical Islamism or international crime. This development would threaten the stability of the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa and therefore the security of several African states and, in the long run, of Europe as well.
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Tags: Morocco, Polisario, Western Sahara, Terrorism,
2 comments:
As I have brought up on Hale’s blog, the ESISC report is fatally flawed in several respects:
1) As Rabat has done since the moment it came out, the ESISC insists on interpreting the International Court of Justice ruling of 1975 as justifying Morocco’s invasion, when in fact the ruling clearly shoots down Morocco’s claims of sovereignty over the WS before colonization. The ICJ ruled that the Western Sahara did indeed have the right to self-determination and a referendum.
2) The ESISC report spends a large amount of space criticizing the Polisario for not being a perfect functioning democracy without once mentioning that Morocco is hardly a bastion of democracy. They have the incredible nerve to call Abdelaziz “totalitarian” because he has been in power so long when Hassan II was in power far longer and the Morocco is basically stuck with their rulers for life.
3) Likewise, on the prisoners of war, the ESISC attacks the Polisario for violating the Geneva Conventions without a mention of Hassan II’s refusal to take prisoners back before 1990 and Rabat’s refusal to release Saharawi prisoners or to come clean on the numerous Saharawi disappeared (many of which it now appears were slaughtered).
4) The ESISC’s relies on interviews with a small group of Polisario defectors to make much of its case against the Polisario. The credibility of these defectors is questionable given their ties to Rabat and the likelihood that they are being well-compensated to say n’importe quoi.
5) There is very little substantiation to the many charges made by the ESISC about the conditions in the camps such as “forced procreation,” “forced labour,” “forced to prostitute themselves,” and “diversion of NGO and international organization aid. In particular, the accusation that the Saharawi children sent to study in Cuba are victims of forced labor and sexual exploitation just doesn’t hold up against the testimony of the many Saharawi who have returned from Cuba with good experiences. It is typical of the ESISC methods that they should spend much of a page of their report making these accusations on Cuba only to conclude that “it is impossible to quantify this practice [of sexual and economic exploitation].
6) The ESISC makes no attempt at all to interview members of the Polisario, refugees in the camps, or non-Polisario Saharawi in the territories. They are clearly not interested in hearing anything that contradicts their total pro-Moroccan bias.
7) The ESISC claim that the Polisario “represents only a fraction of the ‘Saharawi people,” is just silly given Morocco’s refusal to hold the referendum and the Polisario’s acceptance of the Baker 2 Plan. If the ESISC and Morocco really believed that, they would be begging the Polisario to hold a referendum.
8) The conclusions the ESISC draws form all this pseudo research are predictably lame. Take this for instance: The ESISC in its section titled “Is the Polisario Threatened by an Islamist Drift?” states that “Certain observers have believed that they could discern, over the last two years, an ‘Islamist’ drift of the Polisario and especially of a fringe of its youth.” They find so little evidence to substantiate this Islamist Drift, that they finally admit that “the trend would probably remain marginal.” The section titled ‘Is a terrorist Drift of the Polisario Possible?” is similarly non-conclusive.
In reading this report it becomes blatantly clear by the end what the ESISC is up to. First demonize the Polisario with innuendo, faulty history, bad facts, and a total pro-Moroccan bias. Then accuse them of a “drift” (I love their choice of this word) towards Islamism and terrorism to feed into the current obsession and fears in the West with these things. Finally, conclude that the Polisario is the problem and the only solution is one “within the Moroccan context.” This is a disgraceful hatchet job in almost all respects and should be conidemned as such.
Salam Chasli,
Thank you for taking the time to provide your point of view. I follow this debate with great interest.
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