Western Sahara and the 'international community'

The UN, former Secretary of State James Baker, the African Union, the Arab League and many others have tried to resolve the fate of an unknown number of people with an obscure past living here, but all have so far failed to balance the competing Moroccan nationalism, Algerian ambitions, wider geopolitical interests and lingering Cold War rhetoric.

There are a few accepted facts regarding the territory. First, there has never been an organized state or administration throughout the territory's history until Spain established its colony there in 1884. Sporadically until then various tribes claimed allegiance to Moroccan sultans in Fez, and occasional Moroccan incursions to points further south passed by. According to the last (1974) census, the population of the territory was 74,000 before Spain's departure. Population estimates today vary between under 300,000 and 380,000; two thirds of the people live in the capital of El Aaiun, nearly half of them Moroccan settlers. In December 1999 the UN claimed to have identified 86,425 eligible voters for a projected referendum, while Polisario (Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia El-Hamra y Río de Oro), the self-proclaimed "national liberation" movement of the territory, claims that its Tindouf camps' population is 155,000 (it would not permit an independent census).

The population problem is the key to the entire Sahara issue - who is a "Sahrawi" and thus entitled to decide the fate of the territory. This issue is complex and has been used, in opposite ways, by both Morocco and Polisario and its supporters. The truth is that it is impossible to make any definitive determinations on this. It was for good reason that for centuries before the colonial period Moroccan and Algerian rulers trying to control this part of the Sahara have called the area that today makes large parts of Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Mali and the entire Western Sahara the bled es-Siba ("the land of dissidence"). The Arabized, Hassanyia-speaking Berber nomads never had or liked centralized authority or borders, nor do they today. The Reguibat tribe, the largest of Western Sahara, is still spread out over southwestern Algeria, Mauritania and Mali, its members going in and out of Tindouf, a province in western Algeria, as their needs require. The most important such needs are both economic - Tindouf's camps provide reliable international aid - and political: Polisario is led by Reguibat, whether they are technically Sahrawi, Mauritanian, Moroccan or Malian, and it has always relied on them to recruit its military force.

Viability

The territory has some iron and especially phosphate deposits at Bou Craa. The latter are important but often overestimated. Morocco's state-owned Office Cherifien des Phosphates/Royal Phosphates Office (OCP) is the world's largest producer and exporter of phosphate rock. It controls two-thirds of world reserves, but only 10 percent of that is from Western Sahara, and the sector is capital, rather than labor, intensive. Similarly, the rich fisheries off the coast provide income from concessions to foreign fleets but not many local jobs. Lack of water makes agriculture impossible, and there is no tourist attraction. Today the population is sustained mostly by huge Moroccan subsidies - just as the Tindouf camps are on international welfare, totally dependent on UN and Western (mostly Scandinavian) aid and Algerian political support.

Security Perspectives

By April 2007 the UN had implicitly recognized its inability to fix the Sahara problem and the failure of its envoy James Baker's second plan (2003), which proposed an interim 5-year Western Sahara Authority to be followed by a referendum. The Security Council asked Rabat and Polisario to engage in direct talks, in the presence of Peter Van Walsum, personal envoy for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general. Those talks started in Manhasset, New York, but so far (August 2007) the only result has been a joint decision to hold further talks. The main problem is that Morocco is prepared to talk about any issue other than independence, whereas Polisario's declared goal remains just that — whether immediate or later on, following some sort of temporary Moroccan sovereignty but also autonomy under UN supervision. Indeed, Khalihenna Ould Errachid, the chief adviser on Western Sahara to King Mohamed VI of Morocco, said there was a need for compromise and "a renunciation of extremist positions and demands," which in translation means rejection of Polisario's basic demand. (See Morocco and Polisario in new talks, Al Jazeera, 10 August, 2007. ) On the other hand, Morocco did radically change its position, from decades of treating Western Sahara as just another province of the kingdom to the acceptance of a separate, autonomous status. (See Bernabe Lopez García, Iniciativas de negociacion en el Sahara Occidental: historia de la busqueda de una 'solucion politica,' Real Instituto Elcano, ARI No. 85/2007, 23 July, 2007. ) That, however, is the maximum extent of Rabat's concessions, given the nationalist consensus regarding Morocco's ownership of the territory.

Meanwhile Madrid, longtime supporter of Polisario's position, changed policy and now supports the UN direct talks approach, while also proclaiming its support for "self determination," which is a disappointment for Polisario but has little impact ultimately. (See L. Ayllon, "El Gobierno dice que la resolucion de la ONU sobre el Sahara coincide con su posicion," ABC, 1 May 2007. ) The main obstacles for a permanent solution remain the same as they were at the beginning: primarily Algeria, but also the chorus of NGOs and their sponsors in the European Left (especially the Spanish communists and friends elsewhere in Europe), who are electorally weak at home but influential on the UN corridors and the media.

Ultimately, the solution is in Algeria's hands. If or when Algiers lifts its protection from Tindouf, and the UN stops subsidizing Polisario, a Western Sahara within the Kingdom of Morocco, with some political autonomy but still essentially part of Morocco and inevitably subsidized by Rabat, remains the only rational, and internationally safe solution. The question is how long Algeria, still threatened by Islamists (as Morocco increasingly is) and by now devoid of the old Soviet bloc and "non-aligned" diplomatic and political support, will continue to place its unattainable regional ambitions (such as access to the Atlantic) ahead of a more practical national security interest that requires cooperation with its Moroccan neighbor.

The rest is just lingering nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, when "anti- colonialism" and "anti-imperialism" were fashionable, regardless of common sense, or economic and security realities. The issue of Western Sahara, and Polisario itself, which is now increasingly weakened by internal divisions, are remnants of a passed era and should be buried, quietly if possible. Even if Washington didn't have long-standing and close security and political ties to the Kingdom of Morocco, for the United States in a post 9/11 world, the threat of another potential jihadist black hole in Africa (in addition to the Sahel or Somalia) is serious enough to warrant pressing for a permanent solution on Western Sahara. Washington's growing security and economic ties with Algiers should also help toward a solution.