Booksmart Breakdown

In case you didn’t read my first post, I’ll recap a bit: Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the Northwestern African coast right underneath Morocco. It also borders Algeria to the east and Mauritania to the south. It has 690 miles (1,110 km) of coastline, and the vast majority of the territory is desert.

According to the World Population Review, the population of Western Sahara is 611,561 as of June 23^rd, 2021. Think about that for a second, an entire country roughly the size of Colorado (or half of Great Britain) has fewer people living there than the whole city of Denver. So, when you think about my next statistic, that an estimated 173,600 Sahrawi refugees are living across five camps right over the Algerian border, it is a highly significant number. Unfortunately, there is no consistent tracking for refugees living outside the camps or in other countries like Mauritania, so that exact number is unclear.

Key Players

Before I throw a lot of facts, stats, and unfamiliar names at you, I think it’ll be helpful to look at the leading players of a conflict without digging through paragraphs of history and opinions. Below is a breakdown of all the main players and a little bit about them.

• Polisario Front– The front is the central movement representing the Sahrawis, the region’s indigenous people.
  • First developed in 1973 to force Spain out of Western Sahara
  • Actual Name: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro
• Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) – Government of Western Sahara
  • Declared in 1976 after Spain left
  • Holds roughly 20% of Western Sahara on the east side of the Berm (the wall Morocco built)
  • Leadership is based out of Algeria
• Moroccan Government
  • It holds roughly 80% of Western Sahara on the west side of the Berm
  • They claim Western Sahara as its own because of the previous empire’s control over the land
  • Calls Western Sahara “Morocco’s southern provinces” or “Moroccan Sahara.”
• Algeria
  • Supports and hosts SADR and thousands of Sahrawi refugees
• Mauritania
  • Claimed parts of Western Sahara after Spain left entirely in 1976
  • 1979 Mauritania reached a peace deal with the SADR and left Western Sahara; however, Morocco quickly claimed the land
• African Union (AU)
  • The AU recognizes SADR
• United Nations
  • MINURSO: United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara
  • The current mandate will expire on October 31st, 2021 but has been reestablished every time since 1991

This list is by no means complete. In my research, I discovered numerous other countries and entities involved in various ways. For example, many countries provided diplomatic recognition (or withheld it), which also played a role in this conflict.

Map of Western Sahara

It should be reiterated that the dark green line in the map above is a wall that Morocco built. SADR and the Polisario Front claim the entire territory of Western Sahara, but most of it is controlled by Morocco – including much of the fishing and port development. The European Union has an active agreement with Morocco to fish in Moroccan coastal waters, and the deal includes parts of Western Sahara’s coastal waters. Just a point to ponder.

On July 28th, 2021, during a daily UN press briefing, one of the reporters asked about Moroccan plans to construct a massive port in the city of Dakhla, located in Western Sahara close to the Mauritanian border – Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General had no answer but promised to talk with MINURSO.

Declaration of War

Every couple of years, the dispute in Western Sahara makes headlines. At the end of 2020, Sahrawi protesters started a series of actions to alter the status quo and arguably bring attention back to the plight of their people. Peaceful protesters blockaded a major Moroccan-built road for three weeks, resulting in the artery being shut down. Trade between Morocco and Mauritania was interrupted, and traffic was backed up for miles. The road was considered by the protesters to have been built illegally.

Something I found interesting about the target of the blockade was on January 13, 2020, Morocco and Mauritania signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which promised to increase “trade, industry, tourism, and investment in the region.” Now, I say that’s interesting because back in 2018, Mauritania agreed with Algeria about the right of Western Sahara to be self-determined, not autonomous like Morocco wants. Mauritania is Western Sahara’s most extensive shared border, and they are a central piece to any negotiation or peace deal. While they have maintained cordial diplomatic relations with Morocco, this agreement signaled significant warming.  

After three weeks of protest, the Moroccan military finally forcibly disbursed the protesters triggering protests in favor of the Sahrawi plight across Western Sahara, Spain, and New Zealand. Moroccan forces had to cross into a demilitarized buffer zone (located beside the wall Morocco built) in the south to get to the protesters. Years of mounting frustration within the Sahrawi communities and the Polisario Front meant this violent dispersion by Moroccan forces was the last straw in the sometimes tenuous 30-year-long ceasefire. This was not the first time Moroccan troops had forcibly intervened to stop a large protest. In 2010 Gdeim Izik was the site of a massive Sahrawi protest against Moroccan discrimination and economic inequality. Thousands showed up and pitched tents in protest (tents are a significant part of the history and culture of the nomadic Sahrawi). Moroccan troops stormed the camps, dismantled the tents, killed an estimated 11 people, and injured hundreds. Morocco lost eight soldiers in the raid. Noam Chomsky called this protest the start of the Arab Spring.

In response to Moroccan aggression in dismantling another peaceful protest, the Polisario Front declared they would no longer recognize the 1991 ceasefire and declared war on Morocco on November 14th, 2020. Morocco maintained that they were still beholden to the 1991 cease-fire agreement and that, from their perspective, nothing had changed. Small firefights have occurred around Moroccan-controlled borders since then.

On March 1st, 2021, a UN daily brief explained that MINURSO was getting unconfirmed reports of shots being fired around the Berm. After that, information about the conflict starts to get sketchy. On June 9th, 2021, Edward (Ned) Prince, the spokesman for the US State Department, said that the department is “consulting privately with the parties about how best to halt the violence and achieve a lasting settlement.” To me, this implies that fighting is ongoing; however, finding credible news sources to back that claim is difficult. Various briefings from the Security Council, UN, and US State Department support the fact that there is still ongoing fighting at a “low-intensity level.”

Brief History of the Dispute: Mounting Anger and Unfulfilled Promises

As the title suggests, this section will provide a brief history of the disputed territory. To have a nice clean line in the sand (which I realize never exists), I will start at the point when the Spanish left back in 1975-1976.

Formerly called the “Spanish Sahara,” Spanish troops left the colony on January 12^th, 1976, giving administrative control to Mauritania and Morocco as per an agreement signed late in 1975. One month later, Morocco claimed sovereignty over the entire territory after Spain finally withdrew from the rising conflict.  

After these agreements, Morocco started moving thousands of “settlers” into Western Sahara to “take back what was theirs.” Some 350,000 Moroccans migrated south in what is now called the “Green March.” Keep that in mind because it becomes important when we get to the 1991 referendum promise and ceasefire agreement.

At the same time, the Polisario Front, an insurgency formed in 1973 to oust Spanish rule, proclaimed that the then Spanish Sahara be renamed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Mauritania and Morocco, feeling like they had historical claims to the land, divided it among themselves, with roughly the top 2/3rds going to Morocco and the bottom 1/3rd going to Mauritania. 

Fighting quickly commenced, which culminated in a 16-year war. Not surprisingly, after declaring independence from Spain, the Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front, were willing to fight Mauritania and Morocco to keep it. Due to internal demands and the high cost of the war, Mauritania signed a peace deal with Western Sahara in 1979 and renounced any claims they had to the land. Morocco quickly claimed that ground as well. Over those 16 years, roughly 200,000 people from Western Sahara were displaced, and about 10,000 were killed.

This Washington Post article from 1976 does a fantastic job of highlighting why the Western Sahara was considered so valuable in the 1970s. Besides phosphates which Morocco continues to mine in Western Sahara to this day, Western Sahara was believed to have vast uranium, iron, and shale oil reserves. Combine those historical reasonings with Western Sahara’s large phosphate mines (in 2019, it was estimated that Morocco and Western Sahara combined produce 36 million tons of fertilizer from phosphate rock, second only to China), potential for offshore drilling, and massive fishing opportunities off its coast; it becomes an attractive acquisition. It should also be noted that phosphates don’t just make an excellent fertilizer. In the 1980’s phosphates were increasingly being processed to create uranium, specifically yellowcake uranium – you know, the stuff Iraq supposedly had enough of to go to war over. By the 1990s, this process was no longer profitable, yet there are still several plants around the world that process it, and there is one plant in Belgium that specifically processes Moroccan phosphoric acid to generate uranium. Moroccan and Western Saharan reserves of uranium in phosphate rock are the largest in the world – holding about 72% of the global total.

After years of failed peace negations, all sides finally agreed to a cease-fire in 1991. The big ticket item of the cease-fire was the promise of a referendum where the people of Western Sahara could vote for themselves if they wanted to be an autonomous territory under Morocco or govern themselves and become a country. A main sticking point for the next ten years, however, had to do with those Moroccans who migrated in the ’70s and ’80s, specifically, could Moroccans who moved into Western Sahara after 1975 vote? After 1999 when Mohammed VI took the throne, he made it clear that he was no longer willing to discuss independence. He did not see a reason to let go of a piece of land his ancestors had claimed for thousands of years, and he also had some internal and international pressure to move away from his father Hassan II’s previous agreements. It was unclear how Morocco would fair if they were to lose something many felt was historically theirs with an unproven, untested leader on the throne.

I’ve wondered if, by the 2000’s it had just been so long since many of the Moroccans had marched down to Western Sahara that some of them may want independence too. The conflict was fading from people’s memories, a new generation was born on Western Saharan land, and people’s lives changed. If that were the case, there would have been real fear that the people of Western Sahara, both the Sahrawi people and some of the Moroccans, would choose independence – however, that is purely conjecture.

For those who are curious, this is a great timeline from 1973-2020. It provides an excellent look at how little has happened regarding the referendum, autonomy, or negotiations. It\’s also a good look at some of the human rights abuses Morocco has been accused of over the years. Thirty years have passed since the 1991 cease-fire, and the stalemate persists, with the exception of the declaration of war in 2020. But even then, actual reports of fighting are scarce, so it is unclear how heavy the fighting is now that the ceasefire has apparently ended.

One final bit of information for you: in December 2020, the United States was the first country in the UN to recognize Morocco’s claims over Western Sahara. It is believed that Trump brokered the deal to get Morocco to recognize Israel. On July 1st, 2021, Edward (Ned) Prince, the spokesman for the US State Department, confirmed that the Biden administration does not plan to reverse former President Trump’s recognition of Moroccan claims over Western Sahara. 

Human Rights Abuses?

The Sahrawi people, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have accused Morocco of numerous human rights violations. As the UN has no human rights component to its mandate, accusations of human rights abuses are not tracked by MINURSO. Morocco has even gone so far as to say that it does not want a human rights component.

I’m not going to give a detailed account of each accusation because 1) many are unproven accusations (this is NOT to say they did not happen, they might have, we just lack many avenues to fact-check because of limited information coming out of the region) and 2) I feel other people describe what happened much better than I can. So the following is a list with a brief description of the accusation and a hyperlink to an article or documentary about it.

Exile of Activists, Actors, Poets – More information can be found in the documentary “Life Is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara” (2015). And here is a list of those interviewed or talked about in the documentary.

Media Blackouts Imposed by Morocco. Another good look at the media blackout allegations is this Democracy Now Documentary (2016) about four days that they spent in the territory.

Torture After 2010 Gdeim Izik Protest

Illegal Detentions and Torture After Gdeim Izik Camp Protest

“The Disappeared” – Roughly 300 people have been missing since the 1960s, and 300 more were captured and then killed or released in 1991.

Napalm – Used During the War in the 1970s

While I mentioned it in the first article of my series, it is worth mentioning again here. Western Sahara is home to the longest minefield in the world. To me, that is a human rights issue that has been proven and needs to be discussed. It prevents freedom of movement and separates families and friends from each other. Thousands of people cannot leave Moroccan-controlled areas easily, and thousands more cannot get in. The refugee camps in Algeria are named after major cities in the Moroccan-controlled regions to remember where they came from since many cannot see them in real life.

Nonviolent Protests

No, I will not bore you with a list of every protest that Moroccans or Sahrawis have done. But I did want to take a moment to talk about some exciting forms of protest that, in my opinion, have not gotten the attention that they deserve. Sadly it does not seem like some of the below are still happening, or if they are, information about them is limited. Still, they are creative, imaginative, and worth highlighting.

• ARTIFARITI: International Art Encounters in Western Sahara liberated territories. They see art as a tool to be welded and cultivated as a means of non-violent protest and bringing awareness and to forge a common ground.
• Singing/Dance/Rap – I’ve linked to them before and probably will again before this series is completed. Some fantastic people were interviewed for the “Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara” documentary. The link I provided will take you to their bios, where you can read about the amazing things being done to spread awareness of their cause.
• One of those mentioned in the link was Mouloud Yeslem (this is in Spanish, but here you can see pictures of how many flowers have been planted). He is part of an organization called Por Cada Mina Una Flor (For Each Landmine a Flower). They are trying to plant one flower for every land mine they find or know about. No, these are not real flowers, but the time it takes to make them, the different styles, and the beauty of each adds something more and sends a message of peace and hope. 

If you enjoyed this article, please repost it or follow Booksmart Breakdown on social media. If there are any topics that you feel are impacting Colorado and you would like to have international solutions explored, please reach out to booksmart.breakdown@gmail.com.