Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Frank Rudy on Washington Times Newspaper
Letter to The Editor
October 11, 2009
The Washington Times
Deja Vu All Over Again
The United Nations just fired Peter Galbraith, the top American in the UN
mission in Afghanistan. Galbraith's offense: He blew the whistle on the
country's August 20 elections. Writing to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon,
Galbraith said that he was not for or against any candidate, but he could not
overlook the election fraud without compromising the mission's neutrality. His
boss, Norwegian diplomat, Kai Eide, had other ideas, blocking Galbraith from
stopping the fraud and ordering him and other staffers not even to discuss it.
Eide even went so far, Galbraith said, as telling President Karzai after the
election:"I am biased in your favor," meaning, according to Eide, not biased in
a bad way, but in a good way. In an interview with the BBC, Galbraith said his
removal sends "a terrible signal to the world" about the UN. For many of us,
it's deja vu all over again.
Not so long ago, the State Department named me to run a referendum in Western
Sahara, in a UN Peacekeeping mission called MINURSO. Western Sahara is not
Afghanistan, and most people couldn't find it on a map. The referendum was to
allow the Saharawis, the people of Western Sahara, a country the size of
Colorado, to decide whether to be independent or part of Morocco, its northern
neighbor that had invaded it in 1976.
When I arrived in Western Sahara, the Moroccans were still occupying the country
and controlling everything, including who among the Saharawis got to register to
vote. Only Saharawis with Moroccan escorts could approach the registration site,
and once registered, those same Moroccan escorts often confiscated their
registration certificates, their license to vote.
It got worse. The KIng of Morocco was running the referendum through a
high-ranking thug from their Security Services, a Captain Segura type who
closely resembled that character from OUR MAN IN HAVANA. He would show various
visitors around the UN registration center which he described as chez moi. He
was quite right.
Morocco benefited by delaying the referendum, forever, if possible, because
their brutal treatment of the Saharawis would sink them at the polls. Watching
the Moroccans terrify the locals was like watching the Mafia work the
waterfront. Saharawis would buttonhole us quietly and ask us to keep an eye on
them in case the Moroccans "disappeared" them. It was like being back in South
Africa, listening to South African blacks, during apartheid, talking, in the
security of the US Embassy, about the brutality of the Special Branch.
Morocco stopped the registration for a week disputing an adverb used in a
MINURSO schedule. Absurd, of course, but at the cost to the UN of $100,000 a
day. Morocco bugged MINURSO's phones and regularly searched the UN's hotel
rooms. Captain Segura ordered all UN insignias removed from the UN's buildings,
and MINURSO's director obliged reflexively. People calling themselves TV
journalists videotaped every Saharawi who came to be registered, but the
journalists turned out to be Moroccan State Security keeping tabs on the locals.
Not a second appeared on television.
All these things were open and notorious, and towards the end of my assignment I
was reporting simultaneously to the MINURSO mission director and Captain Segura.
Not even the pretense of UN partiality remained. I could not continue in such a
mission and left at the end of a year. I did send a note to Kofi Annan. then
head of UN Peacekeeping, outlining what I had seen and offering to brief him.
His response: My complaints were "not serious."
I testified under oath about all this before a House committee the following
year, and the New York Times, The Economist, Human Rights Watch, et al. backed
up what I said. It didn't make a difference. The Moroccans kept the referendum
from happening, and efforts to revive it go nowhere.
Peter Galbraith is a lot more important than I, and working in a more important
place. But some things don't change. The UN's still stifling the truth and
muzzling those who try to do the right thing.
Frank Ruddy
U.S. Ambassador (retired)
October 11, 2009
The Washington Times
Deja Vu All Over Again
The United Nations just fired Peter Galbraith, the top American in the UN
mission in Afghanistan. Galbraith's offense: He blew the whistle on the
country's August 20 elections. Writing to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon,
Galbraith said that he was not for or against any candidate, but he could not
overlook the election fraud without compromising the mission's neutrality. His
boss, Norwegian diplomat, Kai Eide, had other ideas, blocking Galbraith from
stopping the fraud and ordering him and other staffers not even to discuss it.
Eide even went so far, Galbraith said, as telling President Karzai after the
election:"I am biased in your favor," meaning, according to Eide, not biased in
a bad way, but in a good way. In an interview with the BBC, Galbraith said his
removal sends "a terrible signal to the world" about the UN. For many of us,
it's deja vu all over again.
Not so long ago, the State Department named me to run a referendum in Western
Sahara, in a UN Peacekeeping mission called MINURSO. Western Sahara is not
Afghanistan, and most people couldn't find it on a map. The referendum was to
allow the Saharawis, the people of Western Sahara, a country the size of
Colorado, to decide whether to be independent or part of Morocco, its northern
neighbor that had invaded it in 1976.
When I arrived in Western Sahara, the Moroccans were still occupying the country
and controlling everything, including who among the Saharawis got to register to
vote. Only Saharawis with Moroccan escorts could approach the registration site,
and once registered, those same Moroccan escorts often confiscated their
registration certificates, their license to vote.
It got worse. The KIng of Morocco was running the referendum through a
high-ranking thug from their Security Services, a Captain Segura type who
closely resembled that character from OUR MAN IN HAVANA. He would show various
visitors around the UN registration center which he described as chez moi. He
was quite right.
Morocco benefited by delaying the referendum, forever, if possible, because
their brutal treatment of the Saharawis would sink them at the polls. Watching
the Moroccans terrify the locals was like watching the Mafia work the
waterfront. Saharawis would buttonhole us quietly and ask us to keep an eye on
them in case the Moroccans "disappeared" them. It was like being back in South
Africa, listening to South African blacks, during apartheid, talking, in the
security of the US Embassy, about the brutality of the Special Branch.
Morocco stopped the registration for a week disputing an adverb used in a
MINURSO schedule. Absurd, of course, but at the cost to the UN of $100,000 a
day. Morocco bugged MINURSO's phones and regularly searched the UN's hotel
rooms. Captain Segura ordered all UN insignias removed from the UN's buildings,
and MINURSO's director obliged reflexively. People calling themselves TV
journalists videotaped every Saharawi who came to be registered, but the
journalists turned out to be Moroccan State Security keeping tabs on the locals.
Not a second appeared on television.
All these things were open and notorious, and towards the end of my assignment I
was reporting simultaneously to the MINURSO mission director and Captain Segura.
Not even the pretense of UN partiality remained. I could not continue in such a
mission and left at the end of a year. I did send a note to Kofi Annan. then
head of UN Peacekeeping, outlining what I had seen and offering to brief him.
His response: My complaints were "not serious."
I testified under oath about all this before a House committee the following
year, and the New York Times, The Economist, Human Rights Watch, et al. backed
up what I said. It didn't make a difference. The Moroccans kept the referendum
from happening, and efforts to revive it go nowhere.
Peter Galbraith is a lot more important than I, and working in a more important
place. But some things don't change. The UN's still stifling the truth and
muzzling those who try to do the right thing.
Frank Ruddy
U.S. Ambassador (retired)
Friday, September 18, 2009
"Stolen": Stolen Truth??
I am an Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Western Ontario, I have been conducting research in the Sahrawi camps since 2002. My research involved several visits to the camps during which time I lived with Sahrawi families. The last time I was there was May and June 2009.
As some of you might know, anthropological research involves participating in the daily life and activities of ordinary people. I have done that many times and have lived with numerous families: I slept in their tents, ate their food, helped in cleaning, shopping, etc. I joined members of the family when they visited other families, or travelled to other camps. We talked and discussed life in general, political issues, social and cultural life, past and present, and of course personal matters. In other words, families were hospitable and adopted me as one of them for the period I was there.
Surely, if there was any form of slavery, I would have observed that by now, that is seven years of work among the Sahrawis. I have talked to and interviewed so many Sahrawis, young and old, men and women of all backgrounds, would it not be almost impossible for anyone, let alone an observant anthropologist to note there was "slavery"?
I have written several articles on Western Sahara refugees, mostly about the success of the Polisario in acting as a catalyst in building a new society, based on popular participation and democratic principles. In fact, a central principle in the Polisario's Program of National Action was the prohibition of slavery, or any forms of exploitation and oppression (see the Sahrawi Constitution, ch. 26/27, since the early seventies). It also played a significant role in advancing and supporting Sahrawi women's struggle for equality.
Anyone who knows even a little about the Sahrawi struggle for independence, is sure to realize that "Stolen" is a cheap piece of propaganda and baseless allegations. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the realities on the ground. It is appalling that the film-makers, like vultures, have instrumentalized and abused the suffering of the Sahrawis, and worse their hospitality to produce falsehoods. I am certain, however, that the facts will be exposed and the film will be forgotten as an unsuccessful attempt at distorting the Sahrawi history and reality.
Randa Farah,Ph.D.
University of Western Ontario,
Anthropology Department
London, Ontario, Canada
As some of you might know, anthropological research involves participating in the daily life and activities of ordinary people. I have done that many times and have lived with numerous families: I slept in their tents, ate their food, helped in cleaning, shopping, etc. I joined members of the family when they visited other families, or travelled to other camps. We talked and discussed life in general, political issues, social and cultural life, past and present, and of course personal matters. In other words, families were hospitable and adopted me as one of them for the period I was there.
Surely, if there was any form of slavery, I would have observed that by now, that is seven years of work among the Sahrawis. I have talked to and interviewed so many Sahrawis, young and old, men and women of all backgrounds, would it not be almost impossible for anyone, let alone an observant anthropologist to note there was "slavery"?
I have written several articles on Western Sahara refugees, mostly about the success of the Polisario in acting as a catalyst in building a new society, based on popular participation and democratic principles. In fact, a central principle in the Polisario's Program of National Action was the prohibition of slavery, or any forms of exploitation and oppression (see the Sahrawi Constitution, ch. 26/27, since the early seventies). It also played a significant role in advancing and supporting Sahrawi women's struggle for equality.
Anyone who knows even a little about the Sahrawi struggle for independence, is sure to realize that "Stolen" is a cheap piece of propaganda and baseless allegations. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the realities on the ground. It is appalling that the film-makers, like vultures, have instrumentalized and abused the suffering of the Sahrawis, and worse their hospitality to produce falsehoods. I am certain, however, that the facts will be exposed and the film will be forgotten as an unsuccessful attempt at distorting the Sahrawi history and reality.
Randa Farah,Ph.D.
University of Western Ontario,
Anthropology Department
London, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Real Ugly Truth about the Movie :" Stolen"
Stolen has been discredited and many queries about the bona fides of the film remain unanswered including false translation, no legal releases, paid interviewees, protesting interviewees, blurred maps, history and countries, the Moroccan involvement and many other issues. After its screening in Sydney in June this year Stolen was modified and shown during the Melbourne International Film Festival in July. The reasons for the changes made to the film are due to serious problems related to its production.
Due to serious copyright infringements, like illegally using interviews shot by other film makers, the film has been changed since its Sydney screening. However, the mistranslation, invented subtitles and scenes remain in the film. A disclaimer was added to the film since its screening in Sydney which states that the content of the film does not reflect the views of Screen Australia or the Australian Government.
However, the mistranslation, invented subtitles and scenes remain in the film.
The film purports to be an expose of slavery in the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, where thousands of Saharawis, displaced by the Moroccan invasion of the Western Sahara, currently live. The film, alleging that so
me of these refugees are sla
ves has already caused great personal distress and sadness to the very refugees it purports to be helping. One of them, a key figure in the film Fetim Sellami, flew to Sydney and denounced the film when it was shown.
Fetim Sellami and other Saharawis included in the film did not give their informed consent to the film Stolen. Fetim has been destitute in the refugee camps all her adult life. Therefore, she is a powerless victim to the manipulation and deception of those behind Stolen.
A senior UN official, Ursula Abouchar, who appeared in the Sydney version has denounced the filmmakers for falsely using her interview and abusing what she said by editing and she has not given consent to her interview as the release the filmmakers gave her to sign is still with her.
In the film, there are inaccurate subtitles as well as distorted scenes with invented sub-titles. The translator, Oumar Sy, who the filmmakers claimed certified the translations for the subtitles, has denounced the filmmakers as falsifying what he said. The issue of translation in subtitles is very important since it reveals the essence of the allegations [of slavery] to be completely false.
Locations are muddled so that the film indicates, for example, that what occurs in Mauritania, another country, also occurs in the Saharawi refugee camps near Tindouf- Algeria.
The filmmakers, with these unfounded allegations, have abuse
d the human di
gnity of fine people already living in difficult circumstances, causing great distress to families and children.
For anyone interested in the film they can check a document a prepared by the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA). It is a detailed report and critique of Stolen, investigating the questionable methods and unethical practices from pre to post production used in the making of the film: http://awsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/critique-of-stolen-ii.pdf and (www.awsa.org.au)
These are interesting links:
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/06/15/2598994.htm (This is an interesting program on ABC TV 7.30 Report)
-http://media.smh.com.au/entertainment/red-carpet/sahara-slavery-fiercely
-denied-582354.html (people talking about the cash for comment)
-http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/timors-link-to-a-saharan-struggle-20090
721-dryz.html (Article by HE Jose Ramos Horta)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/5289343/diary.thtml (Recent article in the Spectator).
Annex:
This is a summary of a document prepared by the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA). It is a detailed report and critique of a STOLEN, investigating the questionable methods and unethical practices from pre to post production used in the making of the film. The document can be accessed here: http://awsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/critique-of-stolen-ii.pdf
u INACCURATE SUBTITLES & VOICE OV
ER : the translation of the dialogue (which is roughly one third Spanish and two thirds Hassaniya, the local dialect of Arabic) is seriously misleading in places, seemingly invented to suit the plot.
u CONSENT : the main subject Fetim Sellami, the alleged slave, realised that she and her family were being manipulated to speak on camera about slavery and their words were mistranslated and taken out of context. Feeling insulted and greatly hurt by the allegation, she withdrew all interviews with her and her family from the film. This was not done. None of the participants has ever signed a release form.
u REWARDS : the filmmakers deny that people interviewed were paid with money, however, generous gifts were given by the filmmakers to the subjects, (eg Matala and friends received a 2nd hand car). Violeta Ayala, one of the directors of the film admitted giving money to the Saharawis who came to Mauritania. Three young men, who travelled to Mauritania on a second visit, say they were paid 4000 euros .
u MISUSE OF MATERIAL Instances include: using copyright material without permission, use of interviews without consent, misuse of an interview with a United Nations High Commission for Refugees staff member, misuse of the US-based translator’s certificate. These are serious professional concerns.
Oumar Sy, Mauritanian translator in New York, asked by the film-makers to certify the translations in20the film, wrote on 9 July 2009:
“I would like to reaffirm that I did not certify that the translations, from Hassaniya into English of the final version of the film called “”Stolen” directed by Ms. Violeta Ayala and Mr. Dan Fallshaw and the produced by Mr. Tom Zubrycki, are correct.”
HE Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, President of Timor Leste, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, when asked about Stolen in Melbourne 23 July 2009 said:
“I was in the camps and I am not naïve - I am always a very curious person… and at the Sahara camp I went visiting people in tents and talked with so many people……this is the first time I heard of it in the camps. It is totally an absurdity and made up, I guarantee you.
The Polisario is one of the most genuine liberation movements and very humanitarian.
I know when someone is deceiving me. I know how to ask questions and I would never, never turn a blind eye if I knew of any abuses in the Saharawi camps because I would be an accomplice by supporting a movement that I knew was committing these barbarities so it is totally unheard of. My experience being there – the experience of the UNHCR, International Red Cross, numerous NGOs, European parliamentarians, US Congressmen – was that no one was ever told about this.”
0AMr. Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees in a letter to the President of the Saharawi Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, 22 June 2009:
“We regret that in the film of Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw, the comments of an official of the HCR have been presented out of their context. In the complete interview, of about 90 minutes long, with Mrs. Aboubacar, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Bureau, the latter reiterated strongly that if certain residual practices of slavery could still prevail in the sub-region of West Africa, she had no knowledge of such practices in the refugee camps of Tindouf.
The HCR has not seen the film before its release, and has not approved its content or conclusions either. The film does not reproduce faithfully the opinions of the HCR.
As you are aware, the HCR has established for a long time a presence in the refugee camps of Tindouf. It does not have any information that practices similar to slavery have taken place in the camps. In fact, no occurrence of this practice has been brought to the attention of the HCR. Had that been the case, I can assure you that the HCR would have raised the matter with the authorities concerned.”
Ms. Ursula Aboubakar, UNHCR, Deputy Director, Bureau for Middle East and North Africa, wrote to the filmmakers on 21 Jun 2009:
“I understood that despite my writte
n request to you for my formal clearance to use my voice=2
0or face in your documentary in the Tindouf camps you went ahead without my clearance, which I formally want to protest about. The release form you gave me for my signature is still with me.
Although I did not see the final version as shown in the Australia film festival, I had the opportunity through other channels to view the one you showed to our colleagues in the NY office which also may have ended up being the final version.
I strongly protest about the way you manipulated my one hour (or longer) interview in your film and the short compilation of sentences (in 2 minutes) of what I said.”
www.awsa.org.au
Due to serious copyright infringements, like illegally using interviews shot by other film makers, the film has been changed since its Sydney screening. However, the mistranslation, invented subtitles and scenes remain in the film. A disclaimer was added to the film since its screening in Sydney which states that the content of the film does not reflect the views of Screen Australia or the Australian Government.
However, the mistranslation, invented subtitles and scenes remain in the film.
The film purports to be an expose of slavery in the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, where thousands of Saharawis, displaced by the Moroccan invasion of the Western Sahara, currently live. The film, alleging that so
me of these refugees are sla
ves has already caused great personal distress and sadness to the very refugees it purports to be helping. One of them, a key figure in the film Fetim Sellami, flew to Sydney and denounced the film when it was shown.
Fetim Sellami and other Saharawis included in the film did not give their informed consent to the film Stolen. Fetim has been destitute in the refugee camps all her adult life. Therefore, she is a powerless victim to the manipulation and deception of those behind Stolen.
A senior UN official, Ursula Abouchar, who appeared in the Sydney version has denounced the filmmakers for falsely using her interview and abusing what she said by editing and she has not given consent to her interview as the release the filmmakers gave her to sign is still with her.
In the film, there are inaccurate subtitles as well as distorted scenes with invented sub-titles. The translator, Oumar Sy, who the filmmakers claimed certified the translations for the subtitles, has denounced the filmmakers as falsifying what he said. The issue of translation in subtitles is very important since it reveals the essence of the allegations [of slavery] to be completely false.
Locations are muddled so that the film indicates, for example, that what occurs in Mauritania, another country, also occurs in the Saharawi refugee camps near Tindouf- Algeria.
The filmmakers, with these unfounded allegations, have abuse
d the human di
gnity of fine people already living in difficult circumstances, causing great distress to families and children.
For anyone interested in the film they can check a document a prepared by the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA). It is a detailed report and critique of Stolen, investigating the questionable methods and unethical practices from pre to post production used in the making of the film: http://awsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/critique-of-stolen-ii.pdf and (www.awsa.org.au)
These are interesting links:
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/06/15/2598994.htm
-http://media.smh.com.au/entertainment/red-carpet/sahara-slavery-fiercely
-denied-582354.html (people talking about the cash for comment)
-http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/timors-link-to-a-saharan-struggle-20090
721-dryz.html (Article by HE Jose Ramos Horta)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/5289343/diary.thtml (Recent article in the Spectator).
Annex:
This is a summary of a document prepared by the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA). It is a detailed report and critique of a STOLEN, investigating the questionable methods and unethical practices from pre to post production used in the making of the film. The document can be accessed here: http://awsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/critique-of-stolen-ii.pdf
u INACCURATE SUBTITLES & VOICE OV
ER : the translation of the dialogue (which is roughly one third Spanish and two thirds Hassaniya, the local dialect of Arabic) is seriously misleading in places, seemingly invented to suit the plot.
u CONSENT : the main subject Fetim Sellami, the alleged slave, realised that she and her family were being manipulated to speak on camera about slavery and their words were mistranslated and taken out of context. Feeling insulted and greatly hurt by the allegation, she withdrew all interviews with her and her family from the film. This was not done. None of the participants has ever signed a release form.
u REWARDS : the filmmakers deny that people interviewed were paid with money, however, generous gifts were given by the filmmakers to the subjects, (eg Matala and friends received a 2nd hand car). Violeta Ayala, one of the directors of the film admitted giving money to the Saharawis who came to Mauritania. Three young men, who travelled to Mauritania on a second visit, say they were paid 4000 euros .
u MISUSE OF MATERIAL Instances include: using copyright material without permission, use of interviews without consent, misuse of an interview with a United Nations High Commission for Refugees staff member, misuse of the US-based translator’s certificate. These are serious professional concerns.
Oumar Sy, Mauritanian translator in New York, asked by the film-makers to certify the translations in20the film, wrote on 9 July 2009:
“I would like to reaffirm that I did not certify that the translations, from Hassaniya into English of the final version of the film called “”Stolen” directed by Ms. Violeta Ayala and Mr. Dan Fallshaw and the produced by Mr. Tom Zubrycki, are correct.”
HE Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, President of Timor Leste, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, when asked about Stolen in Melbourne 23 July 2009 said:
“I was in the camps and I am not naïve - I am always a very curious person… and at the Sahara camp I went visiting people in tents and talked with so many people……this is the first time I heard of it in the camps. It is totally an absurdity and made up, I guarantee you.
The Polisario is one of the most genuine liberation movements and very humanitarian.
I know when someone is deceiving me. I know how to ask questions and I would never, never turn a blind eye if I knew of any abuses in the Saharawi camps because I would be an accomplice by supporting a movement that I knew was committing these barbarities so it is totally unheard of. My experience being there – the experience of the UNHCR, International Red Cross, numerous NGOs, European parliamentarians, US Congressmen – was that no one was ever told about this.”
0AMr. Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees in a letter to the President of the Saharawi Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, 22 June 2009:
“We regret that in the film of Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw, the comments of an official of the HCR have been presented out of their context. In the complete interview, of about 90 minutes long, with Mrs. Aboubacar, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Bureau, the latter reiterated strongly that if certain residual practices of slavery could still prevail in the sub-region of West Africa, she had no knowledge of such practices in the refugee camps of Tindouf.
The HCR has not seen the film before its release, and has not approved its content or conclusions either. The film does not reproduce faithfully the opinions of the HCR.
As you are aware, the HCR has established for a long time a presence in the refugee camps of Tindouf. It does not have any information that practices similar to slavery have taken place in the camps. In fact, no occurrence of this practice has been brought to the attention of the HCR. Had that been the case, I can assure you that the HCR would have raised the matter with the authorities concerned.”
Ms. Ursula Aboubakar, UNHCR, Deputy Director, Bureau for Middle East and North Africa, wrote to the filmmakers on 21 Jun 2009:
“I understood that despite my writte
n request to you for my formal clearance to use my voice=2
0or face in your documentary in the Tindouf camps you went ahead without my clearance, which I formally want to protest about. The release form you gave me for my signature is still with me.
Although I did not see the final version as shown in the Australia film festival, I had the opportunity through other channels to view the one you showed to our colleagues in the NY office which also may have ended up being the final version.
I strongly protest about the way you manipulated my one hour (or longer) interview in your film and the short compilation of sentences (in 2 minutes) of what I said.”
www.awsa.org.au
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Ted Kennedy awarded the UNHCR Nansen Award Refugee Award
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced today that its annual Nansen
Refugee Award will be awarded to the late Senator Edward Kennedy for his
achievements as an unparalleled champion of refugee protection and assistance.
For years Kennedy fought for the rights of the Saharawi people and refugees
around the world. Press release, 15 Sept 2009. Published: 15.09 - 2009
13:32Printer version Press release, Norwegian Support Committee for
Western Sahara15 September 2009
"Ted Kennedy was a steadfast defender of the Saharawi people’s right to
determine its own future, in line with UN resolutions and international law. We
are very pleased that the UN High Commissioner honors Kennedy’s effort for
refugees around the world", said Ronny Hansen in The Norwegian Support Committee
for Western Sahara.
Some of Kennedy's Western Sahara statements
"Due to serious violations of the peace plan by the Government of Morocco, the
[MINURSO] observers have been prevented from fostering an atmosphere of
confidence and stability conducive to holding a free and fair
referendum"Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Africa Subcommittee, 1
Oct 1992.
"The ongoing crisis in the Western Sahara raises serious questions regarding the
Government of Morocco's willingness to honor its international commitment to a
free and fair referendum in the Western Sahara."Statement, January 1994
"The International Court of Justice, the Organization of African Unity, the
United States, and many nations throughout the world have not recognized
Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara, but the Moroccan occupation
continues."Statement, June 1999
"Morocco gained the respect of the international community when it agreed in
1991 and again in 1997 to allow a referendum on the future of the Western
Sahara. These actions demonstrated an impressive commitment to the right of
self-determination for the people of the Western Sahara. The referendum is an
important part of the peace process, and I hope that it will take place as soon
as possible."Press release after meeting between Kennedy and King Mohammed VI,
22 June 2002.
See also statement from 2000, in which Kennedy demands that US Secretary of
State submits report to the Senate on progress of referendum.Time and again over
several decades, Edward Kennedy championed the Western Sahara cause in the US
Senate and the White House. He repeatedly criticized the US for not doing enough
to pressure Morocco and strengthen the UN effort.
In 2000 he debated the issue directly with the Moroccan King, Mohammed VI. “The
referendum is an important part of the peace process, and I hope that it will
take place as soon as possible”, Kennedy said in a statement after the meeting.
In announcing the 2009 Nansen award, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António
Guterres said: "Senator Kennedy stood out as a forceful advocate for those who
suddenly found themselves with no voice and no rights. Year after year, conflict
after conflict, he put the plight of refugees on the agenda and drove through
policies that saved and shaped countless lives."
The Nansen Refugee Award is given annually to an individual or organization for
outstanding work on behalf of refugees. Funded by Norway and Switzerland it was
created in 1954 in honor of Fridtjof Nansen, the legendary Norwegian polar
explorer and scientist, and the first High Commissioner for Refugees. In this
role, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.
Kennedy made an enormous effort to put the Western Sahara issue on the political
agenda. In 2008 he helped award the Saharawi human rights activist Aminatou
Haidar the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
"We have lost a loud and clear voice for the Saharawi people, but rejoice today
in celebration of his life and service", said Hansen.
See UNHCR statement here: http://www.unhcr.org/4aaf5d4b6.html Contact: Ronny
Hansen President, The Norwegian Support Committee for Western
Sahararonnyha@gmail.com Phone: +47 94 25 02 70
The Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara is a membership based NGO
that works to promote the Sahrawi population’s right of self-determination and a
free Western Sahara. For more information, visit: www.vest-sahara.no
“As US. citizens, we are fortunate to live in a country founded on human rights
principles and the right to a government of our own choosing. Our democratic
ideals have inspired peoples in all hemispheres around the world. Elections
during the past twelve months in Russia, Burundi, Cambodia, Paraguay, and Yemen
are examples of the world-wide trend away from authoritarianism and toward
representative government. Sadly, this trend has not yet reached all regions of
the world. The indigenous Saharawi people in the Western Sahara have waited more
than 18 years to regain their right to self-determination. Hopefully, that right
will soon be restored to them. Since Morocco's invasion of the Western Sahara in
1975, King Hassan II has staged a long and costly war against the Saharawi
people to obtain permanent access to that territory's valuable natural
resources.” Ted Kennedy in the US Senate, January 1994.
Refugee Award will be awarded to the late Senator Edward Kennedy for his
achievements as an unparalleled champion of refugee protection and assistance.
For years Kennedy fought for the rights of the Saharawi people and refugees
around the world. Press release, 15 Sept 2009. Published: 15.09 - 2009
13:32Printer version Press release, Norwegian Support Committee for
Western Sahara15 September 2009
"Ted Kennedy was a steadfast defender of the Saharawi people’s right to
determine its own future, in line with UN resolutions and international law. We
are very pleased that the UN High Commissioner honors Kennedy’s effort for
refugees around the world", said Ronny Hansen in The Norwegian Support Committee
for Western Sahara.
Some of Kennedy's Western Sahara statements
"Due to serious violations of the peace plan by the Government of Morocco, the
[MINURSO] observers have been prevented from fostering an atmosphere of
confidence and stability conducive to holding a free and fair
referendum"Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Africa Subcommittee, 1
Oct 1992.
"The ongoing crisis in the Western Sahara raises serious questions regarding the
Government of Morocco's willingness to honor its international commitment to a
free and fair referendum in the Western Sahara."Statement, January 1994
"The International Court of Justice, the Organization of African Unity, the
United States, and many nations throughout the world have not recognized
Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara, but the Moroccan occupation
continues."Statement, June 1999
"Morocco gained the respect of the international community when it agreed in
1991 and again in 1997 to allow a referendum on the future of the Western
Sahara. These actions demonstrated an impressive commitment to the right of
self-determination for the people of the Western Sahara. The referendum is an
important part of the peace process, and I hope that it will take place as soon
as possible."Press release after meeting between Kennedy and King Mohammed VI,
22 June 2002.
See also statement from 2000, in which Kennedy demands that US Secretary of
State submits report to the Senate on progress of referendum.Time and again over
several decades, Edward Kennedy championed the Western Sahara cause in the US
Senate and the White House. He repeatedly criticized the US for not doing enough
to pressure Morocco and strengthen the UN effort.
In 2000 he debated the issue directly with the Moroccan King, Mohammed VI. “The
referendum is an important part of the peace process, and I hope that it will
take place as soon as possible”, Kennedy said in a statement after the meeting.
In announcing the 2009 Nansen award, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António
Guterres said: "Senator Kennedy stood out as a forceful advocate for those who
suddenly found themselves with no voice and no rights. Year after year, conflict
after conflict, he put the plight of refugees on the agenda and drove through
policies that saved and shaped countless lives."
The Nansen Refugee Award is given annually to an individual or organization for
outstanding work on behalf of refugees. Funded by Norway and Switzerland it was
created in 1954 in honor of Fridtjof Nansen, the legendary Norwegian polar
explorer and scientist, and the first High Commissioner for Refugees. In this
role, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.
Kennedy made an enormous effort to put the Western Sahara issue on the political
agenda. In 2008 he helped award the Saharawi human rights activist Aminatou
Haidar the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
"We have lost a loud and clear voice for the Saharawi people, but rejoice today
in celebration of his life and service", said Hansen.
See UNHCR statement here: http://www.unhcr.org/4aaf5d4b6.html Contact: Ronny
Hansen President, The Norwegian Support Committee for Western
Sahararonnyha@gmail.com Phone: +47 94 25 02 70
The Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara is a membership based NGO
that works to promote the Sahrawi population’s right of self-determination and a
free Western Sahara. For more information, visit: www.vest-sahara.no
“As US. citizens, we are fortunate to live in a country founded on human rights
principles and the right to a government of our own choosing. Our democratic
ideals have inspired peoples in all hemispheres around the world. Elections
during the past twelve months in Russia, Burundi, Cambodia, Paraguay, and Yemen
are examples of the world-wide trend away from authoritarianism and toward
representative government. Sadly, this trend has not yet reached all regions of
the world. The indigenous Saharawi people in the Western Sahara have waited more
than 18 years to regain their right to self-determination. Hopefully, that right
will soon be restored to them. Since Morocco's invasion of the Western Sahara in
1975, King Hassan II has staged a long and costly war against the Saharawi
people to obtain permanent access to that territory's valuable natural
resources.” Ted Kennedy in the US Senate, January 1994.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Ngiya El Hawassi's Testimony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbhrEgF4mLI
My name is nguia el hawasi
I was arrested several times, and the latest abduction was conducted on August 27th, 2009. Last Thursday, I was on a visit to Hasanna Aliya, saharawi activist, who was tortured by Moroccan police in the city of Tantan
After I left the house along with my friends Hayat Rguibi and Sadani Aliya. After getting out of the house, a police car stoppd nearby and was a Landrover model 110.Tthe officeron-board was Aziz Anouch and his colleague officer Khalid Barakat forced me into the car, and then drove me to the bank river of Sakia El Hamra near the middle school Allal ben abdalla .
They handed me over to other police officers in plain clothes who joined us soon after my abduction. They blindfolded my eyes, and began to beat me brutally while using verbal abusive, cursing.
Many other police agents joined the existing police gang namely agents belonging to DAG, DST Moroccan secret services .
I did not see them, but I distinguished their voices and they asked my many questions such as:
What are the dialogues that take place amongst the Sahrawis on the return of the saharawi weld swilam From the refugee camps?
I told him I was not in the city of Laayoune at this time. I was in the city of Agadir .
Then they asked to me: What do you think regarding this subject of defectors?
I told him that the Polisario was very democratic, and they do not know any form of dictatorship, and that Polisario gives everyone the right to go wherever they like and not like you you Moroccans who Prevent us from traveling to Britain, and kept us at the airport in el Masira in Agadir,. We were going to join a program to talk together on behalf of the young Sahrawi generations in the occupied Territory, and you the Moroccans, you showed the world that you are dictators. You did not let us travel, and traveling is a human right. After I told them these Answers, they went mad..
They said that the Saharawi human rights activists who Incites us to engage in peaceful Demonstrations, and they are the ones who support us and who
give us national flags to raise during the demonstrations.
I replied that nobody does Incites us, and we do all this only for the defense of our cause and our right and we simply express our views. It is spontaneous.
Then they asked me about the peaceful Demonstrations that I supposedly organized in the neighborhood of Matallah district in Laayoune and who was in it. The officers beat more in an attempt to tell them the names of persons involved.
I told him that the Saharawi people all take part in the uprisings, and I do not know any one of them. There young people, children and women and I was there to express my opinion and I had my flag Like all the Sahrawi.
He told me now we will record a video, and we need you to say that the Sahrawi human rights activists who Incites you in these Demonstrations are just a group of separatists.
After refusing to say these lies, I was asked to strip off my clothes and I refused. They took me down from the car and torn down my clothes leaving me naked in front of their ferocious eyes. All this was done while they were video-taping everything. They beat me in every part of my body. Under the psychological and physical torture and agreed to what was asked to say.
They gave only me my malhfa( Sahrawi Cloth) , and put the folding on my eyes again and more torture followed.
When they filming me , there was a man who asked me all these questions while hiding his face, and they called him by his alias name so that I could not identify him, I am sure he was a VIP government servant. They say that they were filming me to show the world that they maintain security. They threatened me to publish it on the net and expose my body to all the world to scandalize me.
We call upon international organizations to intervene to stop violations that occur daily in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, where the Moroccan authorities have also a former political prisoner Loumadi Abd Salam, Who was arrested just two days before me plus what they did to Hayat Rguibi and Hasanna Aliya just recently, and Naama lasfari. Morocco has violated human rights in many ways, where the Moroccan forces filmed sessions of Sahrawi citizens under torture and pressure. We do not bear all this and we are being watched in every place and our houses are besieged and controlled. We can not tolerate this situation anymore. The Minurso are there but doing nothing at all to help us. They do not do anything to stop the ongoing violations of human rights, and we urge the United Nations to intervene to stop the torture exerted on our people. We need international monitoring and protection. The International community is doing nothing so far to stop this drama. We ask all civil societies in the world and all defenders of human rights to help us and to stop the mass violations committed by the Moroccan occupation forces towards the people of Western Sahara.
My name is nguia el hawasi
I was arrested several times, and the latest abduction was conducted on August 27th, 2009. Last Thursday, I was on a visit to Hasanna Aliya, saharawi activist, who was tortured by Moroccan police in the city of Tantan
After I left the house along with my friends Hayat Rguibi and Sadani Aliya. After getting out of the house, a police car stoppd nearby and was a Landrover model 110.Tthe officeron-board was Aziz Anouch and his colleague officer Khalid Barakat forced me into the car, and then drove me to the bank river of Sakia El Hamra near the middle school Allal ben abdalla .
They handed me over to other police officers in plain clothes who joined us soon after my abduction. They blindfolded my eyes, and began to beat me brutally while using verbal abusive, cursing.
Many other police agents joined the existing police gang namely agents belonging to DAG, DST Moroccan secret services .
I did not see them, but I distinguished their voices and they asked my many questions such as:
What are the dialogues that take place amongst the Sahrawis on the return of the saharawi weld swilam From the refugee camps?
I told him I was not in the city of Laayoune at this time. I was in the city of Agadir .
Then they asked to me: What do you think regarding this subject of defectors?
I told him that the Polisario was very democratic, and they do not know any form of dictatorship, and that Polisario gives everyone the right to go wherever they like and not like you you Moroccans who Prevent us from traveling to Britain, and kept us at the airport in el Masira in Agadir,. We were going to join a program to talk together on behalf of the young Sahrawi generations in the occupied Territory, and you the Moroccans, you showed the world that you are dictators. You did not let us travel, and traveling is a human right. After I told them these Answers, they went mad..
They said that the Saharawi human rights activists who Incites us to engage in peaceful Demonstrations, and they are the ones who support us and who
give us national flags to raise during the demonstrations.
I replied that nobody does Incites us, and we do all this only for the defense of our cause and our right and we simply express our views. It is spontaneous.
Then they asked me about the peaceful Demonstrations that I supposedly organized in the neighborhood of Matallah district in Laayoune and who was in it. The officers beat more in an attempt to tell them the names of persons involved.
I told him that the Saharawi people all take part in the uprisings, and I do not know any one of them. There young people, children and women and I was there to express my opinion and I had my flag Like all the Sahrawi.
He told me now we will record a video, and we need you to say that the Sahrawi human rights activists who Incites you in these Demonstrations are just a group of separatists.
After refusing to say these lies, I was asked to strip off my clothes and I refused. They took me down from the car and torn down my clothes leaving me naked in front of their ferocious eyes. All this was done while they were video-taping everything. They beat me in every part of my body. Under the psychological and physical torture and agreed to what was asked to say.
They gave only me my malhfa( Sahrawi Cloth) , and put the folding on my eyes again and more torture followed.
When they filming me , there was a man who asked me all these questions while hiding his face, and they called him by his alias name so that I could not identify him, I am sure he was a VIP government servant. They say that they were filming me to show the world that they maintain security. They threatened me to publish it on the net and expose my body to all the world to scandalize me.
We call upon international organizations to intervene to stop violations that occur daily in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, where the Moroccan authorities have also a former political prisoner Loumadi Abd Salam, Who was arrested just two days before me plus what they did to Hayat Rguibi and Hasanna Aliya just recently, and Naama lasfari. Morocco has violated human rights in many ways, where the Moroccan forces filmed sessions of Sahrawi citizens under torture and pressure. We do not bear all this and we are being watched in every place and our houses are besieged and controlled. We can not tolerate this situation anymore. The Minurso are there but doing nothing at all to help us. They do not do anything to stop the ongoing violations of human rights, and we urge the United Nations to intervene to stop the torture exerted on our people. We need international monitoring and protection. The International community is doing nothing so far to stop this drama. We ask all civil societies in the world and all defenders of human rights to help us and to stop the mass violations committed by the Moroccan occupation forces towards the people of Western Sahara.
Friday, August 28, 2009
A Sahrawi Minor Abducted and tortured in the outskirts of Laayoune, Western Sahara
A Sahrawi Minor Abducted and tortured in the outskirts of Laayoune, Western Sahara
Last Night August 27th,2009 at 9.00 p.m, Ms. Hawassi Ngiya, a Human Rights activist and a student in high school in Laayoune, was abducted last night at around 9.00 pm by Police Officers: Khalid and Aziz Anouch when she walking down the street in Maatallah District,Laayoune, Western Sahara. They took her blind-folded to the outskirts of Laayoune city in the area of Sakia Al Hamra. They endured lots of torture both physically and psychologically. Many other Morrocans security agents joind them later on and started interrogating her about her views while stripping her of all her colthes. she was asked about her affiliations and her political views as well regarding the conflict. All this was done while some of them were video-taping the whole operation. She was threatened to be exposed naked on the internet if she would tell anyone about what happened and if she does not cease her activities. One of the high rakned officers belonging to DIAG Moroccan Secret Services) threatened to kill her next time they would catch her.
At 2.00 a.m, she was left behind naked in the outskirts of Laayoune in the darkness. She managed to reach a dwelling where a sahrawi family gave her clothes and helped her reach her relatives.
A Sahrawi Minor Abducted and tortured in the outskirts of Laayoune, Western Sahara
في أبشع انتهاك لحقوق الأنسان وخاصة حقوق القاصرين ،تم ليلة البارحة 27/08/2009 علي الساعة 09 مساءا اختطاف الطفلة الصحراوية القاصر :انكية الحواصي الناشطة في مجال حقوق الانسان والتلميذة في الاعدادية في مدينة العيون ،عندما كانت تتجول في شارع حي معط الله ، وقد اشرفت قوة امنية يقودها الجلاد المغربي المعروف عزيز أنوش وضابط الامن خالد رفقة مجموعة أمنية ،على اختطاف الطفلة انكية الحواصي وتعصيب عينها ونقلها إلي واد الساقية خارج المجال الحضري لمدينة العيون الصحراء الغربية ،بدأ بعدها مسلس من التعذيب الجسدي والنفسي علي حد سواء فتم نزع ملابسها حيث أصبحت عارية ،وبعد فترة من الوقت أنضم مجموعة من رجال الامن حيثوا بداو التحقيق معها عن علاقتها بالنشطاء الحقوقيين والوقفات التي تطالب بحق تقرير المصير لشعب الصحراء الغربية ،كما سألوه عن آرائها السياسية وعن علاقاتها مع بعض الافراد والجمعيات الحقوقية وكانت تتم عملية التسجيل بالفيديو لعملية التحقيق في الصحراء ويتم تصويرها وهي عارية وبعد خمس ساعات من التحقيق والتعذيب أكدوا لها بعدها أنه في المرة المقبلة ستتم تصفيتها جسديا وأن الفيديو الذي لم تم تصويره لها والذي تظهر فيه عارية سوف يتم نشره عبر الانترنت وأكد لها احد ضباط الدياج المغربية أنه في المرة المقبلة سوف يشرف على قتلها وعند الساعة الثانية ليلا تركوها عارية في الظلام دون رحمة أو شفقة لحالها لتنتقل بعدها سيرا علي الاقدام عارية من ملابسها إلي أحد منازل الصحراويين القريبة منها ليتم نقلها إلي العيون
يذكر أن أنكية الحواصي كانت من ضمن مجموعة الشباب الستة الذين تم منعهم من السفر إلي بريطانيا للمشاركة في برنامج دولي يتحدث عن حل النزاعات كذالك هي أحد الشابات المساهمات في انتفاضة الاستقلال التي انطلقت في 2005
Friday, August 21, 2009
Urgent Need for Archeologs to work in a Project in Western Sahara
Very Urgent Action:
Archeologs without Experience needed for a project in Western Sahara.
for more information, please visit the following Web site.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/WS/WSahara.htm
Western Sahara Project: Environmental and Social Change in Arid Northwest Africa
The Western Sahara Project is an interdisciplinary research project that aims to improve our understanding of past environmental, social and cultural change in northwest Africa. The main focus of the research is on human-environment interaction over the past 10,000 years (the Holocene period), with an emphasis on the transition from humid to arid conditions in the Middle to Late Holocene.The Project is led by the University of East Anglia, and involves specialists in a wide range of subjects from a number of institutions.
Fieldwork is conducted in the eastern and southern areas of the disputed, non self-governing territory of Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara). These areas are under the control of the Polisario independence movement, the remainder of the territory being occupied by Morocco.
For more information on the Project, its findings, and its wider context, navigate this site using the links on the left. The Project's findings are described in Project publications and field reports. For reports and further details of the Project's work, see Field Seasons.
Anyone can VOLUNTEER to take part in the Project. No experience of archaeology or scientific fieldwork is required.
Archeologs without Experience needed for a project in Western Sahara.
for more information, please visit the following Web site.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/WS/WSahara.htm
Western Sahara Project: Environmental and Social Change in Arid Northwest Africa
The Western Sahara Project is an interdisciplinary research project that aims to improve our understanding of past environmental, social and cultural change in northwest Africa. The main focus of the research is on human-environment interaction over the past 10,000 years (the Holocene period), with an emphasis on the transition from humid to arid conditions in the Middle to Late Holocene.The Project is led by the University of East Anglia, and involves specialists in a wide range of subjects from a number of institutions.
Fieldwork is conducted in the eastern and southern areas of the disputed, non self-governing territory of Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara). These areas are under the control of the Polisario independence movement, the remainder of the territory being occupied by Morocco.
For more information on the Project, its findings, and its wider context, navigate this site using the links on the left. The Project's findings are described in Project publications and field reports. For reports and further details of the Project's work, see Field Seasons.
Anyone can VOLUNTEER to take part in the Project. No experience of archaeology or scientific fieldwork is required.
Monday, August 10, 2009
We seek no revenge – only peace: Mohamed Kheddad
We seek no revenge – only peace
11/08/2009
By: Mhamed Khadad
The people of Western Sahara stand prepared to engage with Morocco and to enter open discussions about our joint future.
A new round of talks between the kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front of Western Sahara are under way in Vienna, Austria. These talks, characterised as informal by the personal envoy of the UN secretary general, Christopher Ross, are the latest attempt to bring peace and security to Western Sahara and to the wider Maghreb region. We enter them with an unwavering and genuine commitment to finding a just, mutually acceptable and democratic solution. Will our Moroccan counterparts adopt the same approach?
In every circumstance, peace comes at a cost. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a compromise and someone, generally everyone, must be prepared to search for common ground and to yield to the higher ideals found there. For the people of Western Sahara, the price of peace is high. We have been occupied for over three decades, following an illegal annexation by the Moroccan kingdom. We have seen our natural resources become unethical trade boons to the Moroccan economy while our people languish in refugee camps, unable, or too afraid, to return home.
Yet, rather than seek to exercise a sense of revenge or frustration, we stand prepared to engage with Morocco and to enter open discussions about our joint future. This is long-established policy. In our statement to the UN security council in 2007, we stated we would guarantee "the rights and obligations of the Moroccan population in Western Sahara". We also put on the public record that our readiness "to participate with Morocco and the countries of the region in the maintenance of peace, stability and security for the whole region."
The people of Western Sahara remain committed to the self-determination process initiated by the UN nearly 50 years ago, and have backed ever since via various resolutions and statements. For instance, we recall the security council resolved in 2002 to express "its readiness to consider any approach which provides for self-determination". It is not clear how or where Morocco’s proposal for autonomy within the Moroccan state fits in with this basic agenda. A unilateral solution to a three-decade-long conflict, as is proposed by Morocco, is not only farcical, it is an option the community of democratic nations cannot countenance.
The people of Western Sahara have been clear that we are willing to work with the Moroccan monarchy and will act without recrimination in relation to Moroccans now living in Western Sahara. We are aware we do not choose our neighbours and so we are destined to share a border. This is a form of realpolitik that makes sense at all levels. We do not seek any victories over Morocco, we only seek parity. We aim to co-operate in economic and security matters, as any decent neighbour would be expected to do.
For Morocco, the benefits of good relations with a free and democratic Western Sahara are immense. The massive costs of its military occupation have been estimated at 3% of Morocco’s GDP. Analysts suggest the military costs in keeping some 150,000 troops in the occupied territories alone is over $153bn (£92.3bn) since 1975, or around $12m (£7.2m) for every day it has occupied Western Sahara. As a result of this extraordinary outlay, Morocco has the world’s fifth highest proportional spend on its military. Moreover, the long-touted Maghreb union, which has faltered for decades on the back of the Western Saharan dispute, would at last be free of this considerable obstacle to better relations.
Quite apart from the damaging moral position Morocco maintains in Western Sahara, ending this money drain must surely be a priority for Rabat and its often impoverished people, as must the prospect of awakening the sleeping giant of North African economic unity. The UN’s way is the only way forward. A referendum on self-determination, a fundamental mechanism for all UN-mandated colonies – as Western Sahara is – is the only viable means of engendering anything like a sustainable common ground. The future of the Sahrawi people must be in their own hands, not in any institution and it is certainly not the right of an invading power, maintaining an illegal and unjust regime.
As we enter these talks we favour the open-palm approach of US president Barack Obama. We are willing to pay the price of peace as an investment in our future. That is our stated agenda going into the Vienna talks. The people of Western Sahara deserve nothing less from us, for it is peace and freedom we crave most of all.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
US Senate and Western Sahara
''الشيوخ الأمريكي'' يضغط على المغرب لمصلحة البوليساريو!
كشف مصدر مطلع أن لجنة المخصصات المالية بمجلس الشيوخ أوصت بأن ''تقدم لها وزارة الخارجية في أجل لا يتجاوز 45 يوما بعد المصادقة على ميزانية العمليات الخارجية الأمريكية للسنة المالية ,''2010 تقريرا عن ''الخطوات التي قام بها المغرب في الإثنى عشر شهرا الماضية من أجل ''مواصلة تحقيق تقدم حقوق الإنسان في الصحراء''، وهل ''تسمح لكل الأشخاص بالمطالبة بحرية عن آرائهم بخصوص وضع ومستقبل الصحراء''، وذلك عبر حقهم في التعبير السلمي والجماعي، كما نصت التوصية على حق هؤلاء الأشخاص في توثيق انتهاكات حقوق الإنسان في المنطقة بدون تحرش''.
وجاءت هذه التوصية الصادرة عن لجنة يرأسها السيناتور الديموقراطي ''باتريك ليهي'' المعروف بتأييده لمواقف البوليساريو لتكشف بحسب المصدر نفسه عن مدى نفوذ اللوبي المؤيد للبولساريو، والذي تمكن للمرة الثالثة من تمرير توصية مضادة للمغرب، وتستجيب لتوفير حماية للهيئات الحقوقية المطالبة باستفتاء لتقرير المصير، والمشتغلة ضمن الخط الاستراتيجي لجبهة البوليساريو، خاصة وأن التوصية تجاهلت كليا ما تعرفه مخيمات تندوف من انتهاكات لحقوق الإنسان، وذكر المصدر نفسه أن ميزانية العمليات الخارجية لسنة 2009 عرفت صدور توصية من نفس النوع، أما في ميزانية 2008 فقد تمكن هذا اللوبي من إجازة فقرة في ميزانية العمليات الخارجية تنص على رهن مليون دولار ميزانية المساعدات العسكرية، والتي لا تتجاوز 3^6 مليون دولار حتى يتم تقديم نفس التقرير المشار إليه في توصية هذه السنة.
والمثير بحسب مصادر مطلع أن المغرب الذي تمكن من تعبئة نسبة محترمة من أعضاء الكونغريس للدفاع عن أطروحة المغرب في رسالة وجهت في أبريل الماضي إلى الرئيس الأمريكي أوباما ووقع عليها 299 عضوا منه، لم يتمكن من مواجهة هذا التحرك المناهض للمغرب بمجلس الشيوخ، والذي كشف عن حالة التقدم المسجلة في استغلال ورقة حقوق الإنسان ضده، وذلك بالرغم من التحسن المسجل، أو على الأقل الدفع في توصيات متوازنة.
وللعلم فإن آخر تقرير لوزارة العدل الأمريكية عن نفقات شركات اللوبي المؤجرة من قبل دول العالم ومنها المغرب، فإن النفقات المخصصة لذلك ارتفعت بشكل كبير دون أن يظهر أثرها الواضح في مواقف الإدارة الأمريكية أو الكونغريس، باستثناء توجيه رسائل تفتقد للقيمة التشريعية، لاسيما وأن تحرك اللوبي المؤيد للبوليساريو في مجلس الشيوخ ليس جديدا، ونجاحه في تمرير هذه التوصية ليس هو الأول من نوعه، مما يطرح تساؤلات عن القدرة الاستباقية لمواجهة مثل هذه الضغوط، إلا أن ثلاث مؤسسات من شركات اللوبي أخذت ما يفوق 3 ملايين دولار لستة أشهر الأولى من سنة 2008 بحسب تقرير وزارة العدل.
كشف مصدر مطلع أن لجنة المخصصات المالية بمجلس الشيوخ أوصت بأن ''تقدم لها وزارة الخارجية في أجل لا يتجاوز 45 يوما بعد المصادقة على ميزانية العمليات الخارجية الأمريكية للسنة المالية ,''2010 تقريرا عن ''الخطوات التي قام بها المغرب في الإثنى عشر شهرا الماضية من أجل ''مواصلة تحقيق تقدم حقوق الإنسان في الصحراء''، وهل ''تسمح لكل الأشخاص بالمطالبة بحرية عن آرائهم بخصوص وضع ومستقبل الصحراء''، وذلك عبر حقهم في التعبير السلمي والجماعي، كما نصت التوصية على حق هؤلاء الأشخاص في توثيق انتهاكات حقوق الإنسان في المنطقة بدون تحرش''.
وجاءت هذه التوصية الصادرة عن لجنة يرأسها السيناتور الديموقراطي ''باتريك ليهي'' المعروف بتأييده لمواقف البوليساريو لتكشف بحسب المصدر نفسه عن مدى نفوذ اللوبي المؤيد للبولساريو، والذي تمكن للمرة الثالثة من تمرير توصية مضادة للمغرب، وتستجيب لتوفير حماية للهيئات الحقوقية المطالبة باستفتاء لتقرير المصير، والمشتغلة ضمن الخط الاستراتيجي لجبهة البوليساريو، خاصة وأن التوصية تجاهلت كليا ما تعرفه مخيمات تندوف من انتهاكات لحقوق الإنسان، وذكر المصدر نفسه أن ميزانية العمليات الخارجية لسنة 2009 عرفت صدور توصية من نفس النوع، أما في ميزانية 2008 فقد تمكن هذا اللوبي من إجازة فقرة في ميزانية العمليات الخارجية تنص على رهن مليون دولار ميزانية المساعدات العسكرية، والتي لا تتجاوز 3^6 مليون دولار حتى يتم تقديم نفس التقرير المشار إليه في توصية هذه السنة.
والمثير بحسب مصادر مطلع أن المغرب الذي تمكن من تعبئة نسبة محترمة من أعضاء الكونغريس للدفاع عن أطروحة المغرب في رسالة وجهت في أبريل الماضي إلى الرئيس الأمريكي أوباما ووقع عليها 299 عضوا منه، لم يتمكن من مواجهة هذا التحرك المناهض للمغرب بمجلس الشيوخ، والذي كشف عن حالة التقدم المسجلة في استغلال ورقة حقوق الإنسان ضده، وذلك بالرغم من التحسن المسجل، أو على الأقل الدفع في توصيات متوازنة.
وللعلم فإن آخر تقرير لوزارة العدل الأمريكية عن نفقات شركات اللوبي المؤجرة من قبل دول العالم ومنها المغرب، فإن النفقات المخصصة لذلك ارتفعت بشكل كبير دون أن يظهر أثرها الواضح في مواقف الإدارة الأمريكية أو الكونغريس، باستثناء توجيه رسائل تفتقد للقيمة التشريعية، لاسيما وأن تحرك اللوبي المؤيد للبوليساريو في مجلس الشيوخ ليس جديدا، ونجاحه في تمرير هذه التوصية ليس هو الأول من نوعه، مما يطرح تساؤلات عن القدرة الاستباقية لمواجهة مثل هذه الضغوط، إلا أن ثلاث مؤسسات من شركات اللوبي أخذت ما يفوق 3 ملايين دولار لستة أشهر الأولى من سنة 2008 بحسب تقرير وزارة العدل.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Obama and Western Sahara and his Recent Letter to Morocco
WorldTribune.com
breaking..
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Obama reverses Bush-backed Morocco plan in favor of Polisario state
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has backed a Polisario state, ending U.S.
support for a Moroccan plan to establish autonomy for Western Sahara. Morocco
has warned the West that such a state could become a haven for Al Qaida and
other terror organizations.
Diplomatic sources said the Obama administration has disassociated itself from a
Moroccan plan for autonomy for the disputed Western Sahara. They said the White
House no longer sees itself as committed to the endorsement by then-President
George Bush of Western Sahara autonomy.
"The United States no longer supports or endorses the Moroccan autonomy plan," a
diplomatic source said. "Instead, the administration has returned to the
pre-Bush position that there could be an independent Polisario state in Western
Sahara."
"The Moroccans have become highly concerned by the U.S. reversal," the source
said. "It calls into question whether Obama sees himself as committed to
anything agreed to by his predecessors, which is a key factor in diplomacy."
In 2007, Rabat launched its plan to end the 35-year-old dispute with the
Algerian-backed Polisario by offering autonomy to Western Sahara, 80 percent of
which has been under Moroccan control.
At the time, Morocco persuaded such allies as France and the United States that
a Polisario-dominated state would become a haven for Islamic insurgency groups,
including Al Qaida.
But the sources said the administration dropped U.S. support for Western Sahara
autonomy in June 2009. They said the White House ordered the State Department to
interpret the United Nations mediation effort between Morocco and Polisario as
including the option of statehood. In 2008, a Security Council report determined
that Polisario's demand for independence for Western Sahara was unfeasible.
Obama reversed U.S. policy on Western Sahara in a letter to Morocco's King
Mohammed in June, the sources said. The letter, which focused on a U.S. request
for Morocco's help to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process, ended with a
reference to UN-sponsored talks on Western Sahara.
"I share your commitment to the UN-led negotiations as the appropriate forum to
achieve a mutually agreed solution," Obama wrote. "My government will work with
yours and others in the region to achieve an outcome that meets the people's
need for transparent governance, confidence in the rule of law, and equal
administration of justice."
Unlike Bush, Obama did not reiterate support for Morocco's autonomy plan for
Western Sahara. Several days after the Obama letter, the sources said, U.S.
envoy Christopher Ross arrived in Rabat and pressed for unilateral Moroccan
concessions to Polisario, which has threatened to renew war with the North
African kingdom.
The sources said Ross urged Morocco to accept Polisario's demand to ease
security measures in Western Sahara as a condition for resuming negotiations.
They said the U.S. appeal violated a resolution by the UN Security Council in
April 2009 that called for direct and unconditional negotiations.
breaking..
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Obama reverses Bush-backed Morocco plan in favor of Polisario state
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has backed a Polisario state, ending U.S.
support for a Moroccan plan to establish autonomy for Western Sahara. Morocco
has warned the West that such a state could become a haven for Al Qaida and
other terror organizations.
Diplomatic sources said the Obama administration has disassociated itself from a
Moroccan plan for autonomy for the disputed Western Sahara. They said the White
House no longer sees itself as committed to the endorsement by then-President
George Bush of Western Sahara autonomy.
"The United States no longer supports or endorses the Moroccan autonomy plan," a
diplomatic source said. "Instead, the administration has returned to the
pre-Bush position that there could be an independent Polisario state in Western
Sahara."
"The Moroccans have become highly concerned by the U.S. reversal," the source
said. "It calls into question whether Obama sees himself as committed to
anything agreed to by his predecessors, which is a key factor in diplomacy."
In 2007, Rabat launched its plan to end the 35-year-old dispute with the
Algerian-backed Polisario by offering autonomy to Western Sahara, 80 percent of
which has been under Moroccan control.
At the time, Morocco persuaded such allies as France and the United States that
a Polisario-dominated state would become a haven for Islamic insurgency groups,
including Al Qaida.
But the sources said the administration dropped U.S. support for Western Sahara
autonomy in June 2009. They said the White House ordered the State Department to
interpret the United Nations mediation effort between Morocco and Polisario as
including the option of statehood. In 2008, a Security Council report determined
that Polisario's demand for independence for Western Sahara was unfeasible.
Obama reversed U.S. policy on Western Sahara in a letter to Morocco's King
Mohammed in June, the sources said. The letter, which focused on a U.S. request
for Morocco's help to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process, ended with a
reference to UN-sponsored talks on Western Sahara.
"I share your commitment to the UN-led negotiations as the appropriate forum to
achieve a mutually agreed solution," Obama wrote. "My government will work with
yours and others in the region to achieve an outcome that meets the people's
need for transparent governance, confidence in the rule of law, and equal
administration of justice."
Unlike Bush, Obama did not reiterate support for Morocco's autonomy plan for
Western Sahara. Several days after the Obama letter, the sources said, U.S.
envoy Christopher Ross arrived in Rabat and pressed for unilateral Moroccan
concessions to Polisario, which has threatened to renew war with the North
African kingdom.
The sources said Ross urged Morocco to accept Polisario's demand to ease
security measures in Western Sahara as a condition for resuming negotiations.
They said the U.S. appeal violated a resolution by the UN Security Council in
April 2009 that called for direct and unconditional negotiations.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Slavery Controversy
Robbed of truth?
Bob Ellis
In Stolen a camel is chosen, dragged bellowing toward a truck, seen travelling many miles with a quirky expression on its likeable, nose-wriggling face, then later by moonlight, shrieking and hooting, its throat cut, gushes its blood towards Mecca in accordance with the provisions of the Law. After this we see dancing and ululating veiled black women at a reunion party in which the camel, drained of its blood, is roasted and eaten in the first such feast in the village in 30 years.
This sequence was made possible by Violeta Ayala, the co-director, giving the hungry villagers the price of the camel, something they otherwise could never have afforded, and suggesting they enact for the cameras this ugly, disturbing, highly cinematic ritual.
Why do we see this? The film is supposedly about the persistence of slavery in the refugee camps of the Saharawi people in sand-swept Algeria. Why show this? We do not usually see headless, flapping, blood-spurting turkeys before Thanksgiving dinners in Hollywood films. Why do this? Why show it? Why cause it to happen, as the director in her narration admits she did?
I got into a loud fight with her and her co-director, saw in video interviews what the film's subjects thought of it, interviewed one of them myself (with, admittedly the help of a Polizari lawyer, Kamal Fadel, who is also the attache for East Timor), and became pretty depressed that this film exists, and has been premiered, and I'll tell you why.
It's because we see and are told almost nothing of this culture that slaughters a camel once in 30 years and practises, allegedly, slavery. We do not know how they feed themselves or school themselves, what creed they practise, what church or mosque they attend, how their economy works, who they marry, how many spouses they have, what age they marry, if girls can choose their spouse, how often they pray, how their economy works, what sort of health care they get (good, I later learned, and totally free), if they can vote in elections, if they are semi-fascist or semi-communist or communitarian, and so on.
We are not even told that the central character, Fetim, has a husband, Baba, who works in Spain, has an engineering degree from Cuba and sends her money from Spain. She is presented as a single mother and (it is rumoured) a slave.
Baba and Fetim attended the film's world premiere and showed their passports to the audience and said the whole family holiday frequently together in Spain unharassed by the Polizario, and how can this be?
Slaves with passports? What is this? Slaves flying Qantas and staying unpoliced with Meredith Burgmann, the former President of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, in Glebe?
"There's no reason slaves can't fly overseas", said Dan Fallshaw, the co-auteur. "Slavery is a state of mind."
"Slavery can be mental", Violeta Ayala said. "I never said Fetim is a slave", Dan said. "Other people in the film do."
A slave with a husband travelling Qantas and lodged with an eminent Labor politician? "I never said she was a slave", Dan said. "The film shows us the facts. The audience can make up its mind."
But no-one is shown shackled in the film. No-one is shown being spoken to harshly. No-one is shown being humiliated in any way. The only person (and he is treated as a person) who is humiliated in the film is the camel, whom the directors paid the villagers to humiliate and murder in front of the camera.
Murder is my word; I withdraw it; murder is unfair.
Why did they do this? Was it to show they were bad people, capable of not only ritually killing a camel but even, possibly, slavery?
In the Nazi film The Eternal Jew laughing rabbis cut a cow's throat and the blood gushes copiously and they laugh some more - gaily, wickedly, unpleasantly. Is this the same propaganda trick? I doubt it.
The young Bondi couple that made this film seem too naïve, too unprepared for the great world for that.
For if indeed the people they show on screen are slaves, they have endangered their lives - by showing their faces and alleging they collude in a monstrous illegality that could see their owners gaoled or incite them persecutors into honour-killing them for letting it out.
If they are not slaves they will have brought shame on their community with this blood-libel, this heinous falsehood and their community will shun them hereafter. Or am I wrong?
But the on-screen Saharawi are saying in interview after interview that they did not say this, they did not say they were slaves, and their words were manipulated or falsified. And their words in the film are being deciphered by a man from Al-Jazeera and a man from the UN to see if they match the subtitles.
If the spoken and printed word do not conform (one apparently says not 'Fetim is a slave' but 'Violeta wants us to say Fetim is a slave'), a lot of slander will have occurred, and the publishers of it, whoever they are, will be liable, I imagine, for a good deal of negotiated retribution. And so will the forgers of the subtitles, whoever they are.
Will Dan and Violeta go to jail? Probably not. Should they? I'm not sure.
If they had made a film saying cannibalism persisted in certain Maori encampments in New Zealand, and this published rumour was false, they would have committed (I think) no less grave a crime. And I'm not sure any apology would have allayed it.
There may be other explanations for what has thus far occurred at this Sydney Film Festival (the organisers refused to screen Fetim's friends' and allies' 15-minute rebuttal though they had 30 hours before the festival finished to check it out and do so), a film about slavery in which no slavery is seen.
But none of them will recover, I fear, the $230,000 or so (which could I imagine buy back a whole lot of slaves) of government money spent thus far on this ill-informed, ill-evidenced and arguably addled rumination.
Or am I wrong
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Treading a mined path to freedom
TINDOUF, Algeria // Hot with anger and clutching a stone, Brahim Labid abandoned caution and charged straight into a minefield towards the defences of the Moroccan army.
John Thorne, Foreign correspondent
“When I got close I tried to throw the stone and at that moment the explosion happened,” said Mr Labid, 19, a refugee from Western Sahara.
The accident happened in April, when Mr Labid joined a protest march beneath a security barrier that seals most of the desert territory annexed by neighbouring Morocco in 1975 as Spanish colonisers departed following the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.
The march ended in disaster when an anti-personnel mine blew off most of Mr Labid’s right foot.
“I knew there were mines,” he said from a hospital bed in the nearby city of Tindouf, Algeria. “But when you see the berm up close you just lose your patience.”
For more than three decades, Morocco has vied for control of Western Sahara’s destiny with the Polisario Front, an indigenous liberation movement backed by Algeria. The conflict has displaced thousands of people and paralysed regional integration, costing a generation of North Africans countless opportunities for development and growth.
After years of fruitless diplomacy, the United Nations is now trying again to coax a solution out of either side.
The battle line is a fortified berm running some 2,500 kilometres through Western Sahara, manned by about 160,000 Moroccan soldiers. To the east are thousands of Polisario fighters based in camps outside Tindouf, where about 125,000 Saharawi refugees live.
The surrounding plains are littered with mines, cluster bombs and unexploded ordnance left over from 16 years of fighting that ended in 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire.
“That makes Western Sahara one of the most dangerous places in the world,” said Ahmed Sidi Ali, a refugee and the programme manager for Landmine Action, a British non-governmental group that is de-mining the territory’s Polisario-held areas.
Mr Sidi Ali’s team has identified 36 minefields and 136 cluster bomb strikes. But the group is not authorised by the UN to work inside the five-kilometre buffer zone along the berm, where most of the minefields are.
In the place where Mr Labid lost his foot, the berm rises in a golden wall above a plain of black pebbles concealing untold numbers of mines and other explosive debris.
Occasionally there are accidents. Most happen in spring, when rain brushes the desert and many refugees shepherd their goats and camels from the camps in Algeria into Western Sahara in search of pastures.
“They depend on grazing land and water holes,” Mr Sidi Ali said. “It’s their main business and their society is based on it.”
Saharawis descend from Arab nomads who migrated from Yemen to North Africa in the 14th century and mingled with the local Berber tribes.
Their daily quest was documented by James Riley, an American sailor shipwrecked on the Saharan coast in 1815, who wrote, “Nearly all parts of this vast desert are inhabited by different tribes of Arabs, who live entirely on the milk of their camels and wander from valley to valley, travelling nearly every day for the sake of finding food for their camels, and consequently food for themselves.”
The Saharawis herded livestock, dabbled in commerce and plundered the caravans passing between Mediterranean ports and sub-Saharan kingdoms. Their dialect, Hassaniya, has strayed little from classical Arabic, preserved by the remoteness of the desert.
The Spanish colonised the Saharan shore in the 19th century, attracted by fishing banks and later phosphates. When they left Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania moved in, claiming historical ties.
Many Saharawis fled to Algeria, which supported the Polisario Front’s armed struggle. Mauritania dropped its claim while Morocco took control of most of Western Sahara. The 1991 ceasefire was meant to allow an independence referendum, but disagreement over voter lists has kept a poll from taking place.
The stalemate has disrupted traditional life, left refugees in political limbo and cut them off from family who remain in Western Sahara.
“There’s a lot of green grass inside the berm, but the land is divided now,” said Ali al Mayli, 21, camped with his family in a stand of gnarled acacia trees. “We have family on the other side and I’ve never even seen them.”
Every spring after the rain, Mr al Mayli’s father, Mohammed-Salem, a weathered patriarch in a blue robe, leads the family into the desert to fatten their goats for sale in the refugee camps.
The floor of their tent is covered with rugs and blankets, and in the corner hangs a goatskin bladder called a shikwa, where milk is left to curdle and shaken to make butter.
Outside, black-and-white goats are skipping about on a vast dun plain undulating to the horizon. The wind blows fiercely and Mr al Mayli fires up a charcoal brazier to brew tiny glasses of sweet green tea.
“We worry about the mines, but the greatest difficulty is living on land that is not ours,” said Mr al Mayli’s brother, Bilal, 25. “We have no resources, nothing in our hand. Nothing is certain.”
The same goes for the Western Sahara peace process. Talks that began in 2007 ended inconclusively. Last year the UN tapped Christopher Ross, a veteran US diplomat in the Arab world, to lead renewed efforts on the territory.
Last month, Morocco and the Polisario agreed to Mr Ross’s proposal of informal meetings aimed at progressing to formal talks on the future of Western Sahara, but no date has yet been set.
The Polisario wants a referendum with independence as an option. Morocco rules that out, proposing autonomy for the territory under Moroccan sovereignty.
Breaking the deadlock will require the UN to show greater will than in the past, said Jacob Mundy, an expert on Western Sahara with the Washington, DC-based Middle East Research and Information Project.
“There’s no incentive for the Polisario to talk about the nitty-gritty of power-sharing, and no incentive for Morocco to agree to any sort of referendum,” he said. “Without those kinds of guarantees, neither party is going to open up.”
Morocco argues that autonomy addresses the Polisario’s demand that Saharawis be allowed to exercise self-determination.
“It’s a serious solution that takes into consideration the positions of both parties,” said Khalid Naciri, Morocco’s communications minister. “Apart from the creation of an independent state, anything is possible.”
According to a report last month by TelQuel, an independent Moroccan magazine, the country spends three per cent of its GDP on infrastructure and subsidies aimed at enticing Moroccans to live in Western Sahara, and on maintaining its army there.
Establishing autonomy in the territory could strengthen democracy in Morocco by setting a precedent for devolution, said Mustapha Naimi, a sociology professor at the University Institute of Scientific Research in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, and a member of King Mohammed VI’s advisory council on Saharan affairs. “The Sahara gives Morocco the chance to reconstitute itself.”
But to Saharawi refugees like the Al Mayli family, autonomy is a hard sell.
“We want independence,” said the patriarch, Mohammed-Salem. “The land is our land, we’ve lost martyrs, we’ve waited 34 years, and in the end we accept autonomy? Impossible.”
The return of refugees to a non-independent Western Sahara would be “a recipe for disaster unless you have some kind of understanding between Morocco and Polisario”, said Mr Mundy, from the Middle East Research and Information Project.
“We’d like to give the UN a chance to solve the problem,” said Mohammed-Salem. “But if they can’t, we want to return to war.”
Saharawis increasingly share Mr al Mayli’s bellicosity, said Mohammed Abdelaziz, the secretary general of the Polisario and president of the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, an exile government that administers the refugee camps.
“Young people want war and we’re under a lot of pressure from our military wing to defend our rights by force of arms. War is still on the table, but we prefer a political solution.”
Meanwhile, life grinds on for the estimated 125,000 refugees. The four camps are clean and well-organised, with clinics, schools and clean drinking water. But they lie isolated on a bleak gravel plain, with freezing winters and burning summers.
The refugees live in canvas tents and mud-brick houses. Some have cars and most use solar panels to charge car batteries that power a few appliances. They subsist mainly on foreign aid and malnourishment is common.
A few have become merchants as money trickles into the camps from friends and relatives abroad.
“I buy stuff from Mauritania,” said Mohammed Laroussi, a thin man with a bristly moustache and fine birdlike features. “You meet people, go through friends and bit by bit you build up relationships.”
Bolts of cloth hang from the walls of Mr Laroussi’s shop in Smara camp. Rolled-up rugs lean in a corner. On shelves at the back are aluminium cooking pots, bottles of perfume, sacks of rice, camouflage trousers and piles of leather sandals.
The ramshackle market area slumbers under an afternoon sun. At one corner, a group of elderly men sit in the shade of a building, playing dominoes. Other men recline on mats to drink tea.
At dusk, women and groups of girls begin drifting through the market. Most wear mlhafas, gauzy robes with bright florid patterns that are draped over the body like an Indian sari. They stand out against the sand and pale stucco like inkblots on a page.
The Polisario flag, which has similarities to the Palestinian one, is daubed on the walls alongside revolutionary slogans – “No alternative but independence!” The refugees conduct business in doros, a theoretical Saharan currency with an agreed exchange rate of 20 doros to 1 Algerian dinar.
Grocers sell fruit and vegetables from northern Algeria and butchers sell the meat of camels and goats – relative luxuries that liven up the rations provided monthly by the UN’s World Food Programme.
“But it seems like they’re always sending less,” said Darifa, 19, who joined dozens of other women and girls one afternoon at a ration centre to stock up on lentils, dried peas and tins of vegetable oil. “And as each year there are more people, this doesn’t work.”
Men unload bags and crates of food from a flatbed lorry and the women open them, chatting amiably. Darifa helps them measure rations of lentils.
“I was planning to study medicine in Spain with a scholarship, but my father lost his leg in the war and I can’t leave my mother alone,” she said. “War should be a last resort.”
Far to the north, other young North Africans have problems of their own.
Morocco and Tunisia have enjoyed economic growth in recent years, while Algeria and Libya have benefitted from oil prices that reached US$147 (Dh514) per barrel last summer. Yet unemployment remains high across the region and is worst among young people. Many still set off in flimsy boats across the Mediterranean to seek jobs in Europe.
In 1989, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya tried to address the economic problems by forming the Arab Maghreb Union, intended as a North African trading bloc and forum for political and economic co-operation. But so far it has failed to function, thanks largely to the between Morocco and Algeria.
“There are long-standing mistrust and difficulties between the two regimes,” said Michael Willis, professor of Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies at Oxford University’s Middle East Centre. “If Western Sahara is solved it won’t clean the slate, but the major problem will be gone.”
Until that happens, “it’s difficult to take seriously any initiative for regional co-operation or integration”, said Mr Mundy, with the Middle East Research and Information Project.
While Morocco has existed for centuries as an independent kingdom, Algeria was never a political entity until France wrested its territory from a declining Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. But the French never bothered to clearly delineate a Moroccan-Algerian border, viewed as superfluous after France took control of Morocco as well in 1912.
In 1963, rival claims over parts of the Sahara led Morocco to launch incursions along the border, repelled by Algeria. In 1975, Algeria struck back, arming the Polisario and supporting its quest for an independent Western Sahara.
Sour relations have also led Algeria to slam shut its land border with Morocco, which has remained closed since 1994. Morocco has called repeatedly on Algeria to reopen it, but Algeria says a solution for Western Sahara must come first.
“Algeria is trying to signal the seriousness with which it takes the issue of Western Sahara,” said Mr Mundy. “One also has to take into account a history of Moroccan aggression in the region – Algeria would like to see that kept in check.”
Meanwhile, North Africa’s inability to integrate carries a heavy cost.
“Africa pays a high economic price for political fragmentation,” said Paul Collier, the head of Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of African Economies. “Banning movement is opposing the trend of the last 50 years, which has been to try and reduce the economic costs of borders.”
North African integration would open the door to a free-trade agreement with the European Union and allow countries to bargain collectively. According to a 2006 study by the World Bank covering Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, that would dramatically boost North Africa’s exports and foreign investment, and roughly double projected per-capita GDP growth by 2015.
For now, the region is losing up to $9 billion (Dh33bn) yearly in potential external trade, according to a study last year by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit economic research centre in Washington, DC
“Investment leads to more high-skilled jobs and more room for educated people to get them,” said Claire Brunel, a researcher at the Peterson Institute who co-edited the study. “And integration helps spread the cost of improving infrastructure around the region.”
Streamlining is becoming increasingly urgent as global financial turmoil bites into North Africa’s tourism industry, foreign investment and remittances from expatriates in Europe.
“Being small and isolated, you’re very vulnerable to crises of confidence and being specialised, you’re vulnerable to shocks,” Prof Collier said. “The more you can integrate into a diversified economy, the more robust you become.”
Back in the desert near Tindouf, the Al Mayli family’s concerns are closer to home. Six months ago Mohammed-Salem’s daughter, Jemha, 27, became a mother with the birth of her son, Khatri.
“I want him to live a peaceful life, to be a doctor or a journalist,” she said.
The family watched for a moment as Khatri crawled over the tumbled blankets on the floor to investigate a bowl of dates and butter.
“We want him not to suffer like us,” Mohammed-Salem said. “We want him to go back to his land, free to work there in peace and comfort.”
In his hospital room in Tindouf, Brahim Labid is weighing similar dreams against his new predicament. He sits up in bed, drawing the stump of his right leg close to him.
“Before the accident I was learning carpentry, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that anymore.” He moves to get up, reaching for the pair of crutches leaned against the wall.
“I want to go back to our land and create a good life, just like anyone anywhere.”
jthorne@thenational.ae
John Thorne, Foreign correspondent
“When I got close I tried to throw the stone and at that moment the explosion happened,” said Mr Labid, 19, a refugee from Western Sahara.
The accident happened in April, when Mr Labid joined a protest march beneath a security barrier that seals most of the desert territory annexed by neighbouring Morocco in 1975 as Spanish colonisers departed following the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.
The march ended in disaster when an anti-personnel mine blew off most of Mr Labid’s right foot.
“I knew there were mines,” he said from a hospital bed in the nearby city of Tindouf, Algeria. “But when you see the berm up close you just lose your patience.”
For more than three decades, Morocco has vied for control of Western Sahara’s destiny with the Polisario Front, an indigenous liberation movement backed by Algeria. The conflict has displaced thousands of people and paralysed regional integration, costing a generation of North Africans countless opportunities for development and growth.
After years of fruitless diplomacy, the United Nations is now trying again to coax a solution out of either side.
The battle line is a fortified berm running some 2,500 kilometres through Western Sahara, manned by about 160,000 Moroccan soldiers. To the east are thousands of Polisario fighters based in camps outside Tindouf, where about 125,000 Saharawi refugees live.
The surrounding plains are littered with mines, cluster bombs and unexploded ordnance left over from 16 years of fighting that ended in 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire.
“That makes Western Sahara one of the most dangerous places in the world,” said Ahmed Sidi Ali, a refugee and the programme manager for Landmine Action, a British non-governmental group that is de-mining the territory’s Polisario-held areas.
Mr Sidi Ali’s team has identified 36 minefields and 136 cluster bomb strikes. But the group is not authorised by the UN to work inside the five-kilometre buffer zone along the berm, where most of the minefields are.
In the place where Mr Labid lost his foot, the berm rises in a golden wall above a plain of black pebbles concealing untold numbers of mines and other explosive debris.
Occasionally there are accidents. Most happen in spring, when rain brushes the desert and many refugees shepherd their goats and camels from the camps in Algeria into Western Sahara in search of pastures.
“They depend on grazing land and water holes,” Mr Sidi Ali said. “It’s their main business and their society is based on it.”
Saharawis descend from Arab nomads who migrated from Yemen to North Africa in the 14th century and mingled with the local Berber tribes.
Their daily quest was documented by James Riley, an American sailor shipwrecked on the Saharan coast in 1815, who wrote, “Nearly all parts of this vast desert are inhabited by different tribes of Arabs, who live entirely on the milk of their camels and wander from valley to valley, travelling nearly every day for the sake of finding food for their camels, and consequently food for themselves.”
The Saharawis herded livestock, dabbled in commerce and plundered the caravans passing between Mediterranean ports and sub-Saharan kingdoms. Their dialect, Hassaniya, has strayed little from classical Arabic, preserved by the remoteness of the desert.
The Spanish colonised the Saharan shore in the 19th century, attracted by fishing banks and later phosphates. When they left Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania moved in, claiming historical ties.
Many Saharawis fled to Algeria, which supported the Polisario Front’s armed struggle. Mauritania dropped its claim while Morocco took control of most of Western Sahara. The 1991 ceasefire was meant to allow an independence referendum, but disagreement over voter lists has kept a poll from taking place.
The stalemate has disrupted traditional life, left refugees in political limbo and cut them off from family who remain in Western Sahara.
“There’s a lot of green grass inside the berm, but the land is divided now,” said Ali al Mayli, 21, camped with his family in a stand of gnarled acacia trees. “We have family on the other side and I’ve never even seen them.”
Every spring after the rain, Mr al Mayli’s father, Mohammed-Salem, a weathered patriarch in a blue robe, leads the family into the desert to fatten their goats for sale in the refugee camps.
The floor of their tent is covered with rugs and blankets, and in the corner hangs a goatskin bladder called a shikwa, where milk is left to curdle and shaken to make butter.
Outside, black-and-white goats are skipping about on a vast dun plain undulating to the horizon. The wind blows fiercely and Mr al Mayli fires up a charcoal brazier to brew tiny glasses of sweet green tea.
“We worry about the mines, but the greatest difficulty is living on land that is not ours,” said Mr al Mayli’s brother, Bilal, 25. “We have no resources, nothing in our hand. Nothing is certain.”
The same goes for the Western Sahara peace process. Talks that began in 2007 ended inconclusively. Last year the UN tapped Christopher Ross, a veteran US diplomat in the Arab world, to lead renewed efforts on the territory.
Last month, Morocco and the Polisario agreed to Mr Ross’s proposal of informal meetings aimed at progressing to formal talks on the future of Western Sahara, but no date has yet been set.
The Polisario wants a referendum with independence as an option. Morocco rules that out, proposing autonomy for the territory under Moroccan sovereignty.
Breaking the deadlock will require the UN to show greater will than in the past, said Jacob Mundy, an expert on Western Sahara with the Washington, DC-based Middle East Research and Information Project.
“There’s no incentive for the Polisario to talk about the nitty-gritty of power-sharing, and no incentive for Morocco to agree to any sort of referendum,” he said. “Without those kinds of guarantees, neither party is going to open up.”
Morocco argues that autonomy addresses the Polisario’s demand that Saharawis be allowed to exercise self-determination.
“It’s a serious solution that takes into consideration the positions of both parties,” said Khalid Naciri, Morocco’s communications minister. “Apart from the creation of an independent state, anything is possible.”
According to a report last month by TelQuel, an independent Moroccan magazine, the country spends three per cent of its GDP on infrastructure and subsidies aimed at enticing Moroccans to live in Western Sahara, and on maintaining its army there.
Establishing autonomy in the territory could strengthen democracy in Morocco by setting a precedent for devolution, said Mustapha Naimi, a sociology professor at the University Institute of Scientific Research in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, and a member of King Mohammed VI’s advisory council on Saharan affairs. “The Sahara gives Morocco the chance to reconstitute itself.”
But to Saharawi refugees like the Al Mayli family, autonomy is a hard sell.
“We want independence,” said the patriarch, Mohammed-Salem. “The land is our land, we’ve lost martyrs, we’ve waited 34 years, and in the end we accept autonomy? Impossible.”
The return of refugees to a non-independent Western Sahara would be “a recipe for disaster unless you have some kind of understanding between Morocco and Polisario”, said Mr Mundy, from the Middle East Research and Information Project.
“We’d like to give the UN a chance to solve the problem,” said Mohammed-Salem. “But if they can’t, we want to return to war.”
Saharawis increasingly share Mr al Mayli’s bellicosity, said Mohammed Abdelaziz, the secretary general of the Polisario and president of the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, an exile government that administers the refugee camps.
“Young people want war and we’re under a lot of pressure from our military wing to defend our rights by force of arms. War is still on the table, but we prefer a political solution.”
Meanwhile, life grinds on for the estimated 125,000 refugees. The four camps are clean and well-organised, with clinics, schools and clean drinking water. But they lie isolated on a bleak gravel plain, with freezing winters and burning summers.
The refugees live in canvas tents and mud-brick houses. Some have cars and most use solar panels to charge car batteries that power a few appliances. They subsist mainly on foreign aid and malnourishment is common.
A few have become merchants as money trickles into the camps from friends and relatives abroad.
“I buy stuff from Mauritania,” said Mohammed Laroussi, a thin man with a bristly moustache and fine birdlike features. “You meet people, go through friends and bit by bit you build up relationships.”
Bolts of cloth hang from the walls of Mr Laroussi’s shop in Smara camp. Rolled-up rugs lean in a corner. On shelves at the back are aluminium cooking pots, bottles of perfume, sacks of rice, camouflage trousers and piles of leather sandals.
The ramshackle market area slumbers under an afternoon sun. At one corner, a group of elderly men sit in the shade of a building, playing dominoes. Other men recline on mats to drink tea.
At dusk, women and groups of girls begin drifting through the market. Most wear mlhafas, gauzy robes with bright florid patterns that are draped over the body like an Indian sari. They stand out against the sand and pale stucco like inkblots on a page.
The Polisario flag, which has similarities to the Palestinian one, is daubed on the walls alongside revolutionary slogans – “No alternative but independence!” The refugees conduct business in doros, a theoretical Saharan currency with an agreed exchange rate of 20 doros to 1 Algerian dinar.
Grocers sell fruit and vegetables from northern Algeria and butchers sell the meat of camels and goats – relative luxuries that liven up the rations provided monthly by the UN’s World Food Programme.
“But it seems like they’re always sending less,” said Darifa, 19, who joined dozens of other women and girls one afternoon at a ration centre to stock up on lentils, dried peas and tins of vegetable oil. “And as each year there are more people, this doesn’t work.”
Men unload bags and crates of food from a flatbed lorry and the women open them, chatting amiably. Darifa helps them measure rations of lentils.
“I was planning to study medicine in Spain with a scholarship, but my father lost his leg in the war and I can’t leave my mother alone,” she said. “War should be a last resort.”
Far to the north, other young North Africans have problems of their own.
Morocco and Tunisia have enjoyed economic growth in recent years, while Algeria and Libya have benefitted from oil prices that reached US$147 (Dh514) per barrel last summer. Yet unemployment remains high across the region and is worst among young people. Many still set off in flimsy boats across the Mediterranean to seek jobs in Europe.
In 1989, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya tried to address the economic problems by forming the Arab Maghreb Union, intended as a North African trading bloc and forum for political and economic co-operation. But so far it has failed to function, thanks largely to the between Morocco and Algeria.
“There are long-standing mistrust and difficulties between the two regimes,” said Michael Willis, professor of Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies at Oxford University’s Middle East Centre. “If Western Sahara is solved it won’t clean the slate, but the major problem will be gone.”
Until that happens, “it’s difficult to take seriously any initiative for regional co-operation or integration”, said Mr Mundy, with the Middle East Research and Information Project.
While Morocco has existed for centuries as an independent kingdom, Algeria was never a political entity until France wrested its territory from a declining Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. But the French never bothered to clearly delineate a Moroccan-Algerian border, viewed as superfluous after France took control of Morocco as well in 1912.
In 1963, rival claims over parts of the Sahara led Morocco to launch incursions along the border, repelled by Algeria. In 1975, Algeria struck back, arming the Polisario and supporting its quest for an independent Western Sahara.
Sour relations have also led Algeria to slam shut its land border with Morocco, which has remained closed since 1994. Morocco has called repeatedly on Algeria to reopen it, but Algeria says a solution for Western Sahara must come first.
“Algeria is trying to signal the seriousness with which it takes the issue of Western Sahara,” said Mr Mundy. “One also has to take into account a history of Moroccan aggression in the region – Algeria would like to see that kept in check.”
Meanwhile, North Africa’s inability to integrate carries a heavy cost.
“Africa pays a high economic price for political fragmentation,” said Paul Collier, the head of Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of African Economies. “Banning movement is opposing the trend of the last 50 years, which has been to try and reduce the economic costs of borders.”
North African integration would open the door to a free-trade agreement with the European Union and allow countries to bargain collectively. According to a 2006 study by the World Bank covering Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, that would dramatically boost North Africa’s exports and foreign investment, and roughly double projected per-capita GDP growth by 2015.
For now, the region is losing up to $9 billion (Dh33bn) yearly in potential external trade, according to a study last year by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit economic research centre in Washington, DC
“Investment leads to more high-skilled jobs and more room for educated people to get them,” said Claire Brunel, a researcher at the Peterson Institute who co-edited the study. “And integration helps spread the cost of improving infrastructure around the region.”
Streamlining is becoming increasingly urgent as global financial turmoil bites into North Africa’s tourism industry, foreign investment and remittances from expatriates in Europe.
“Being small and isolated, you’re very vulnerable to crises of confidence and being specialised, you’re vulnerable to shocks,” Prof Collier said. “The more you can integrate into a diversified economy, the more robust you become.”
Back in the desert near Tindouf, the Al Mayli family’s concerns are closer to home. Six months ago Mohammed-Salem’s daughter, Jemha, 27, became a mother with the birth of her son, Khatri.
“I want him to live a peaceful life, to be a doctor or a journalist,” she said.
The family watched for a moment as Khatri crawled over the tumbled blankets on the floor to investigate a bowl of dates and butter.
“We want him not to suffer like us,” Mohammed-Salem said. “We want him to go back to his land, free to work there in peace and comfort.”
In his hospital room in Tindouf, Brahim Labid is weighing similar dreams against his new predicament. He sits up in bed, drawing the stump of his right leg close to him.
“Before the accident I was learning carpentry, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that anymore.” He moves to get up, reaching for the pair of crutches leaned against the wall.
“I want to go back to our land and create a good life, just like anyone anywhere.”
jthorne@thenational.ae
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
An appeal:Say No to Moroccan elections in Western Sahara:
نداء الضمير
أيها المواطنون الصحراويون :
- لا.. للإنتخاب قبل استفتاء تقرير المصير.
- لا.. للمشاركة السياسية في ظل الإحتلال.
- لا.. للمزيد من التفرقة و العنصرية و القبلية.
أيها المواطنون الصحراويون :
- لا.. لتكريس شرعية الإستعمار المغربي.
- لا.. لإستمرار نهب الخيرات و الثروات الصحراوية
- لا.. للمساهمة في التوطين و الإستطان.
أيها المواطنون الصحراويون :
• أصواتكم.. أثمن من الإدلاء بها في صناديق النظام الغازي
• أصواتكم..ذخيرة حية.. إدخارها واجب من أجل المستقبل
• أصواتكم..الرافضة للإنتخابات دعامة أساسية للمقاومة المدنية في الصحراء الغربية
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Jacob Mundy: Fallacies in SAIS Report
The Potomac-SAIS report on North Africa: Paid Analysis, Partisan Fear Mongering, Bad Policy
15/04/2009
By Jacob Mundy
Machiavelli by the Checkbook
At the end of March, a relatively obscure Washington, D.C., think tank called the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies published a report — in conjunction with the conflict management program of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University — arguing largely in support of Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal to solve the Western Sahara dispute. Framed in terms of US policy towards North Africa (Why the Maghreb Matters (PDF)), the report is a thinly veiled effort to provide academic and political legitimacy to a one-sided view of the Western Sahara issue. It precipitated a detailed response from the Western Saharan Union of Writers and Journalists.
The Potomac-SAIS ‘task force’ was likely an initiative organized by the Moroccan-American Center for Policy (MACP), a registered agent of the Kingdom of Morocco. Though MACP’s fingerprints are nowhere to be found in the report, it is an open secret in Washington that this project, culminating in the Potomac-SAIS report, has been in the works for several months. And little surprise, then, that the report’s recommendations attempt to equate US interests with those of the Moroccan Monarchy. Paying for policy is quite normal in Washington.
The Potomac-SAIS report boasts that it is ‘the result of an independent task force on an issue of critical importance to US foreign policy, where it seems that a group diverse in backgrounds and perspectives may nonetheless be able to reach a meaningful consensus’. On the other hand, ‘Task force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation’. So while they all apparently agree, we cannot necessarily hold each individual signatory responsible for the content of the report.
Apart from Dr. I William Zartman — Professor Emeritus at SAIS, whose pro-Moroccan views are well known — there is no other recognized expert on the task force who has an extensive scholarly publishing record on the Western Sahara conflict. The effects of Zartman’s partisan bias are quite clear in the report. Yet the arguments suffer from a debilitating series of misrepresentation, fallacies and contradictions. If translated into actual policy, they would prove counter productive at best, disastrous at worst.
Two other names attached to the Potomac-SAIS report, however, suggest the real agenda behind it: General Wesley Clark and Madeline Albright, two leading figures in the Democratic Party. While Morocco’s autonomy initiate played very well with the previous Republican controlled White House, the Obama administration has yet to outline a clear policy towards the dispute. On the same day that the Potomac-SAIS report was published, Edward Kennedy urged his good friend Obama to uphold Western Sahara’s right to self-determination under international law, which Morocco staunchly opposes. With names like Clark and Albright, the Moroccan lobby is obviously seeking to make inroads into the Democratic establishment.
Background
Before examining the shortfalls of the Potomac-SAIS report, it is necessary to background some of the salient historical realities of Western Sahara. The conflict dates back to November 1975, when a Moroccan threat to invade what was then a Spanish colony drove out Madrid lest it face a ‘colonial war’. The native people of Western Sahara had already developed a nationalist conscience and, according to a 1975 UN report, rallied behind the pro-independence Polisario Front, founded in 1973. Since the early 1960s, the United Nations has called for Western Sahara’s self-determination, including independence, and the UN still considers the Western Sahara a Non-Self-Governing Territory — a colony. For this reason, no country in the world yet recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a clear indication of the international census backing self-determination. And given the fact that Morocco refuses to hold a referendum on independence, it is easy enough to deduce the fact that most Western Saharans would likely opt for independence.
Algeria has supported Western Sahara for ideological reasons (self-determination) and regional security interests (keeping Moroccan ambitions in check). Morocco, of course, denies the existence of an authentic Western Saharan nationalism and sees an independent Western Sahara only as an expansion of Algeria’s regional hegemony. France and the United States have traditionally supported Morocco because Morocco furthers Franco-American interests in the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East, and because a referendum on independence in Western Sahara could destabilize Morocco by de-legitimizing the Monarchy. Still, a UN mission arrived in 1991, putting an end to the Morocco-Polisario war so that a referendum on independence could finally be held. Morocco’s previous King, Hassan II, had committed to a referendum in 1981, but when he died in 1999, the new King, Mohamed VI, dropped that commitment. In 2007, Morocco proposed a final status solution based on autonomy for Western Sahara within Moroccan sovereignty while Polisario put forward a series of bridging proposals to allow for a referendum. Four rounds of negotiations in 2007 and 2008 produced zero progress towards a solution. In early 2009, a new UN envoy to Western Sahara, former US ambassador Christopher Ross, made his first tour of North Africa. He will report to the Security Council at the end of April.
Sovereignty versus Self-Determination or Sovereignty and Self-Determination?
The Potomac-SAIS report makes the case that the Obama administration should take more interest in North Africa. The primary reason is predictable: terrorism. The broader Northwest Africa region, especially the Sahara-Sahel, the report argues, faces significant security challenges. One of the best ways to achieve security in North Africa is to help create the conditions for regional cooperation. And so resolving the Western Sahara conflict, which prevents inter-regional cooperation, especially between Morocco and Algeria, is key.
The Potomac-SAIS report supports a solution to the Western Sahara conflict based upon ‘autonomy within Moroccan sovereignty’, as proposed by Morocco in 2007. There are two positive reasons put forward for endorsing Morocco’s initiative. One, its alleged status as the ‘only current proposal for a compromise’ (a partisan dismissal of Polisario’s 2007 bridging proposals); two, if implemented, it would rid Morocco and Algeria of a major point of contention, paving the way for renewal of the Arab Maghrib Union (UMA) trading bloc. The latter point is addressed later.
The Potomac-SAIS report also provides some cautionary reasons to support Morocco’s autonomy initiative. An independent Western Sahara ‘likely would remain a source of acrimony and tension between Morocco and Algeria as well as the other bordering states’. The report furthermore alleges that Western Sahara would not constitute a viable independent state on the grounds of its low population and limited natural resources. While the report’s authors are pessimistic for a near term solution given alleged Algerian and Russian obstruction, they claim that U.S. support for Morocco’s autonomy initiative will help build a new consensus for peace.
As we can see, the best arguments in favor of Morocco’s autonomy proposal are, in fact, merely arguments against self-determination for Western Sahara. To say that autonomy is good because independence is bad is not only fallacious, it seeks to posit a false opposition between self-determination and power sharing that would preemptively bind the imagination of mediators. The three decades old impasse in Western Sahara demonstrates that mediators need to get beyond the old dichotomy of sovereignty versus self-determination.
To suggest that an independent Western Sahara will become a failed state or a terrorist safe haven falls back on Bush-style fear mongering and does very little to get the parties to the table where this issue will eventually have to be sorted out. Demonizing and alienating one of the parties to the conflict (i.e., Polisario) is not a recipe for creating trust and mutual respect, it is a recipe for further stagnation. It is surprising that conflict resolution expert such as Chester Crocker would put his good name to these counter productive, highly biased proposals.
Western fears of a failed state in Western Sahara can be easily allayed if the focus of the peace process turns away from highly speculative, distant outcomes. Instead, the focus needs to be on realistic, achievable processes in the here and now. Too much time has been wasted in Western Sahara developing final status solutions and not enough time developing a framework for negotiations that will (1) get the parties to the table and (2) produce substantive talks bridging both of their red-lines: sovereignty and self-determination. Choosing one side in this framework — Moroccan sovereignty — will not make the United States and honest broker; it will only further exacerbate the status quo the Potomac-SAIS report finds so intolerable. The report is as self-contradictory to its own aims as it is partisan.
The current Security Council mandate for Western Sahara seeks ‘achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara’. A non-partisan approach would simply require that the parties commit to this mandate. Polisario would commit to negotiating a power sharing agreement with Morocco and Morocco would commit to putting any agreement to a referendum including the option of independence. Morocco’s autonomy proposal certainly constitutes a serious and credible starting point for negotiations towards a comprehensive power sharing agreement, but Polisario will never discuss it openly unless the Security Council secures Morocco’s commitment to a referendum.
Algeria and Autonomy
The Potomac-SAIS report describes the Western Sahara conflict as a dispute primarily pitting Moroccan and Algerian interests, rather than the UN description, which holds that the two parties to the dispute are Morocco, the de facto administering power, and the people of Western Sahara, represented by Polisario. The report attempts to place some doubt over Polisario’s credibility, not only as a partner for peace, but also as the legitimate representative of Western Sahara. Regarding the latter, one need only answer this question: If Polisario does not represent the interests of the Western Saharan people, then why is Morocco so afraid to hold a referendum on independence? Morocco claims widespread support among native Western Saharans for its forced annexation, yet Morocco is unwilling to put it to a vote. A referendum, not autonomy, would literally end the conflict tomorrow as far as the international community is concerned.
The problem is that Morocco would not win the referendum, so it wants to have the Security Council impose autonomy at the maximum parameters for negotiations on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Rather than Polisario, the Potomac-SAIS report attempts to portray Algeria as the bad guy in the conflict, a view consistent with a Moroccan perspective and Zartman’s scholarship [1]. Yet Algeria did not even get seriously involved in the conflict until after Morocco invaded Spanish/Western Sahara in 1975. This was six years after the first Western Saharan independence movement came into being and nearly a decade after the UN first started calling for Western Sahara’s independence from Madrid. For Algeria, it was Morocco’s unilateral attempt to redraw the map of North Africa in 1975 by annexing Western Sahara — just as Morocco had attempted to annex parts of Algeria in 1963 — that precipitated Algerian support for Polisario. From Algeria’s point of view, its regional security interests dictate that Morocco’s demonstrated history of aggressive irredentism must be kept in check. To adopt a Moroccan reading of the conflict, as the Potomac-SAIS report does, produces poor analysis and impoverishes diplomatic objectivity.
Even if we assume, as the Potomac-SAIS report does, that Algeria has a dog in the fight, how are Algeria’s interests served by an autonomous Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty? Algeria’s regional and geo-strategic interests are not addressed by Morocco’s autonomy proposal, nor does it provide any room for Algeria to save face given Algiers’ longstanding support for Western Sahara’s right to a vote on independence. Without first going through an internationally sanctioned act of self-determination, an autonomous Western Sahara would, logically, become just as much ‘a source of acrimony and tension between Morocco and Algeria’.
The political and intellectual defenders of Morocco’s autonomy proposal continuously trumpet its virtues as a non-zero-sum or win-win solution. Because it is a compromise, they argue, it contains incentives to make peace. Yet from Algeria’s point of view (as described in the Potomac-SAIS report), autonomy is very much a zero-sum, win-lose outcome. If Algeria is so important to the Western Sahara deadlock, as suggested by the Potomac/SAIS report, why then support a solution that does not respect Algeria’s interests but rather boldly defies them? Zartman’s own ground breaking work in the fields of conflict resolution and game theory should tell him this, yet he defends a solution that his own theories would reject.
It is also bizarre to claim that an independent Western Sahara is Algeria’s idea but then to claim that Algeria would allow an independent Western Sahara to become a failed state. Why would Algeria back Polisario’s cause for over thirty years, only to see Western Sahara become a ‘Somalia on the Atlantic coast of North Africa’? Let’s be clear: preventing a failed state in Western Sahara is everyone’s interests. Morocco and the United States do not monopolize this concern. If anyone has a vested interest in a viable Western Sahara, it is, first and foremost, the Western Saharans, followed by Algeria, who has championed their cause. Mauritania, sharing the longest border with Western Sahara and undergoing its own bouts with political instability, is likely a close third ahead of Morocco.
To claim that Algeria is so cynically motivated as to see Western Sahara only as a means to destabilize Morocco — in its current form as a haphazard occupation or in a possible form as a failed state — is unjustified by the record. Not only does Algeria, sadly, have more direct experience with political instability and armed violence than Morocco, it has been intensively engaged in recent efforts to contain unrest in the northern areas of Niger and Mali on Algeria’s southern flank in the Sahara. Likewise, Algeria offered the United States significant cooperation during the early years after 11 September. Relations only cooled after the George W. Bush administration double-crossed Algeria on Western Sahara. In early 2003, the White House asked Algeria to pressure Polisario to accept the 2003 plan, devised by none other than James Baker. Bush also promised Algeria that Washington would press Morocco to accept it too. Though Algeria delivered Polisario, Washington refused to put pressure on Rabat to accept the plan. The Bush administration then went on to support Morocco’s autonomy initiative, which showed further disrespect to Algeria’s interests and dignity.
Algeria and Polisario are well aware of Western fears of a failed state in an independent Western Sahara, one that could become a safe haven for trans-national terrorist groups. For that reason, Polisario put forward its own set of compromise proposals in April 2007, when Morocco also put its autonomy plan on the table. Polisario has offered Morocco significant economic, political and security guarantees should a referendum result in independence. These included the option of allowing Moroccan settlers to remain in Western Sahara. In 2003, Polisario made the significant concession of allowing Moroccan settlers to vote in a referendum on independence. Polisario is also willing to have Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal placed on any referendum ballot so long as it includes independence. Morocco and its supporters have never even attempted to explain why this democratic solution is not viable. Polisario’s leadership is acutely aware of the fact that broad regional cooperation with Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria will be a necessity for a sustainable peace, security and prosperity. Like the Potomac/SAIS report, they often speak of the day when the Arab Maghrib Union will dissolve all the old colonial boundaries and unite North Africa.
Whether out of ignorance or deliberate deception, the Potomac-SAIS report also underestimates the economic viability of Western Sahara. As an independent state, Polisario is willing to maintain the Moroccan settler population, which will boost the population and create natural, social, economic, political and security ties with Morocco. Its main resources, phosphates and fish, are precious dwindling commodities world wide; last summer actually saw phosphate prices increase six-fold over its historic price. Additionally, since 2001, Morocco has engaged several companies to search for hydrocarbon and mineral resources in Western Sahara, suggesting other sources of revenue for an independent Western Sahara. In terms of security, Polisario has proven highly cooperative with the UN mission, foreign governments and, as a full member of the African Union, has participated in joint security exercises with other African states.
What is the way forward?
Contrary to what Morocco and its intellectual supporters say, there is no contradiction between the Security Council taking a strong stance in favor of both power sharing and self-determination. Instead of endorsing a particular final status, the Security Council should endorse a specific framework for negotiations based upon mutual respect for each side. Indeed, recent Security Council resolutions have said as much in their calls for a political solution that respects the right of Western Sahara to self-determination. But the Council needs to make this clearer to the parties. To Morocco, the Council needs to state firmly that its claim on Western Sahara will never be legitimated unless it first passes through a referendum. To Polisario, the Council needs to state clearly that it will never get its referendum unless it is willing to discuss power-sharing with Morocco. Substantive negotiations should be seen as the means to, not the result of, self-determination. This approach has the advantage of addressing the interests of Morocco, Polisario and Algeria without prejudice or favor. Peace in Western Sahara will never be achieved until the parties build the necessary confidence in each other and the Security Council. That trust and respect has to be built at the negotiating table, not through imposed solutions. The Obama administration should choose peace not partisanship.
Notes
1. In a recent article, Zartman described the two ‘interested parties’ as Morocco and Algeria. See Zartman, I.W., 2007, Time for a Solution in the Western Sahara Conflict, Middle East Policy, 14, p.181.
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SOURCE: http://concernedafricascholars.org/the-potomac-sais-report-on-north-africa/
15/04/2009
By Jacob Mundy
Machiavelli by the Checkbook
At the end of March, a relatively obscure Washington, D.C., think tank called the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies published a report — in conjunction with the conflict management program of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University — arguing largely in support of Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal to solve the Western Sahara dispute. Framed in terms of US policy towards North Africa (Why the Maghreb Matters (PDF)), the report is a thinly veiled effort to provide academic and political legitimacy to a one-sided view of the Western Sahara issue. It precipitated a detailed response from the Western Saharan Union of Writers and Journalists.
The Potomac-SAIS ‘task force’ was likely an initiative organized by the Moroccan-American Center for Policy (MACP), a registered agent of the Kingdom of Morocco. Though MACP’s fingerprints are nowhere to be found in the report, it is an open secret in Washington that this project, culminating in the Potomac-SAIS report, has been in the works for several months. And little surprise, then, that the report’s recommendations attempt to equate US interests with those of the Moroccan Monarchy. Paying for policy is quite normal in Washington.
The Potomac-SAIS report boasts that it is ‘the result of an independent task force on an issue of critical importance to US foreign policy, where it seems that a group diverse in backgrounds and perspectives may nonetheless be able to reach a meaningful consensus’. On the other hand, ‘Task force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation’. So while they all apparently agree, we cannot necessarily hold each individual signatory responsible for the content of the report.
Apart from Dr. I William Zartman — Professor Emeritus at SAIS, whose pro-Moroccan views are well known — there is no other recognized expert on the task force who has an extensive scholarly publishing record on the Western Sahara conflict. The effects of Zartman’s partisan bias are quite clear in the report. Yet the arguments suffer from a debilitating series of misrepresentation, fallacies and contradictions. If translated into actual policy, they would prove counter productive at best, disastrous at worst.
Two other names attached to the Potomac-SAIS report, however, suggest the real agenda behind it: General Wesley Clark and Madeline Albright, two leading figures in the Democratic Party. While Morocco’s autonomy initiate played very well with the previous Republican controlled White House, the Obama administration has yet to outline a clear policy towards the dispute. On the same day that the Potomac-SAIS report was published, Edward Kennedy urged his good friend Obama to uphold Western Sahara’s right to self-determination under international law, which Morocco staunchly opposes. With names like Clark and Albright, the Moroccan lobby is obviously seeking to make inroads into the Democratic establishment.
Background
Before examining the shortfalls of the Potomac-SAIS report, it is necessary to background some of the salient historical realities of Western Sahara. The conflict dates back to November 1975, when a Moroccan threat to invade what was then a Spanish colony drove out Madrid lest it face a ‘colonial war’. The native people of Western Sahara had already developed a nationalist conscience and, according to a 1975 UN report, rallied behind the pro-independence Polisario Front, founded in 1973. Since the early 1960s, the United Nations has called for Western Sahara’s self-determination, including independence, and the UN still considers the Western Sahara a Non-Self-Governing Territory — a colony. For this reason, no country in the world yet recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a clear indication of the international census backing self-determination. And given the fact that Morocco refuses to hold a referendum on independence, it is easy enough to deduce the fact that most Western Saharans would likely opt for independence.
Algeria has supported Western Sahara for ideological reasons (self-determination) and regional security interests (keeping Moroccan ambitions in check). Morocco, of course, denies the existence of an authentic Western Saharan nationalism and sees an independent Western Sahara only as an expansion of Algeria’s regional hegemony. France and the United States have traditionally supported Morocco because Morocco furthers Franco-American interests in the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East, and because a referendum on independence in Western Sahara could destabilize Morocco by de-legitimizing the Monarchy. Still, a UN mission arrived in 1991, putting an end to the Morocco-Polisario war so that a referendum on independence could finally be held. Morocco’s previous King, Hassan II, had committed to a referendum in 1981, but when he died in 1999, the new King, Mohamed VI, dropped that commitment. In 2007, Morocco proposed a final status solution based on autonomy for Western Sahara within Moroccan sovereignty while Polisario put forward a series of bridging proposals to allow for a referendum. Four rounds of negotiations in 2007 and 2008 produced zero progress towards a solution. In early 2009, a new UN envoy to Western Sahara, former US ambassador Christopher Ross, made his first tour of North Africa. He will report to the Security Council at the end of April.
Sovereignty versus Self-Determination or Sovereignty and Self-Determination?
The Potomac-SAIS report makes the case that the Obama administration should take more interest in North Africa. The primary reason is predictable: terrorism. The broader Northwest Africa region, especially the Sahara-Sahel, the report argues, faces significant security challenges. One of the best ways to achieve security in North Africa is to help create the conditions for regional cooperation. And so resolving the Western Sahara conflict, which prevents inter-regional cooperation, especially between Morocco and Algeria, is key.
The Potomac-SAIS report supports a solution to the Western Sahara conflict based upon ‘autonomy within Moroccan sovereignty’, as proposed by Morocco in 2007. There are two positive reasons put forward for endorsing Morocco’s initiative. One, its alleged status as the ‘only current proposal for a compromise’ (a partisan dismissal of Polisario’s 2007 bridging proposals); two, if implemented, it would rid Morocco and Algeria of a major point of contention, paving the way for renewal of the Arab Maghrib Union (UMA) trading bloc. The latter point is addressed later.
The Potomac-SAIS report also provides some cautionary reasons to support Morocco’s autonomy initiative. An independent Western Sahara ‘likely would remain a source of acrimony and tension between Morocco and Algeria as well as the other bordering states’. The report furthermore alleges that Western Sahara would not constitute a viable independent state on the grounds of its low population and limited natural resources. While the report’s authors are pessimistic for a near term solution given alleged Algerian and Russian obstruction, they claim that U.S. support for Morocco’s autonomy initiative will help build a new consensus for peace.
As we can see, the best arguments in favor of Morocco’s autonomy proposal are, in fact, merely arguments against self-determination for Western Sahara. To say that autonomy is good because independence is bad is not only fallacious, it seeks to posit a false opposition between self-determination and power sharing that would preemptively bind the imagination of mediators. The three decades old impasse in Western Sahara demonstrates that mediators need to get beyond the old dichotomy of sovereignty versus self-determination.
To suggest that an independent Western Sahara will become a failed state or a terrorist safe haven falls back on Bush-style fear mongering and does very little to get the parties to the table where this issue will eventually have to be sorted out. Demonizing and alienating one of the parties to the conflict (i.e., Polisario) is not a recipe for creating trust and mutual respect, it is a recipe for further stagnation. It is surprising that conflict resolution expert such as Chester Crocker would put his good name to these counter productive, highly biased proposals.
Western fears of a failed state in Western Sahara can be easily allayed if the focus of the peace process turns away from highly speculative, distant outcomes. Instead, the focus needs to be on realistic, achievable processes in the here and now. Too much time has been wasted in Western Sahara developing final status solutions and not enough time developing a framework for negotiations that will (1) get the parties to the table and (2) produce substantive talks bridging both of their red-lines: sovereignty and self-determination. Choosing one side in this framework — Moroccan sovereignty — will not make the United States and honest broker; it will only further exacerbate the status quo the Potomac-SAIS report finds so intolerable. The report is as self-contradictory to its own aims as it is partisan.
The current Security Council mandate for Western Sahara seeks ‘achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara’. A non-partisan approach would simply require that the parties commit to this mandate. Polisario would commit to negotiating a power sharing agreement with Morocco and Morocco would commit to putting any agreement to a referendum including the option of independence. Morocco’s autonomy proposal certainly constitutes a serious and credible starting point for negotiations towards a comprehensive power sharing agreement, but Polisario will never discuss it openly unless the Security Council secures Morocco’s commitment to a referendum.
Algeria and Autonomy
The Potomac-SAIS report describes the Western Sahara conflict as a dispute primarily pitting Moroccan and Algerian interests, rather than the UN description, which holds that the two parties to the dispute are Morocco, the de facto administering power, and the people of Western Sahara, represented by Polisario. The report attempts to place some doubt over Polisario’s credibility, not only as a partner for peace, but also as the legitimate representative of Western Sahara. Regarding the latter, one need only answer this question: If Polisario does not represent the interests of the Western Saharan people, then why is Morocco so afraid to hold a referendum on independence? Morocco claims widespread support among native Western Saharans for its forced annexation, yet Morocco is unwilling to put it to a vote. A referendum, not autonomy, would literally end the conflict tomorrow as far as the international community is concerned.
The problem is that Morocco would not win the referendum, so it wants to have the Security Council impose autonomy at the maximum parameters for negotiations on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Rather than Polisario, the Potomac-SAIS report attempts to portray Algeria as the bad guy in the conflict, a view consistent with a Moroccan perspective and Zartman’s scholarship [1]. Yet Algeria did not even get seriously involved in the conflict until after Morocco invaded Spanish/Western Sahara in 1975. This was six years after the first Western Saharan independence movement came into being and nearly a decade after the UN first started calling for Western Sahara’s independence from Madrid. For Algeria, it was Morocco’s unilateral attempt to redraw the map of North Africa in 1975 by annexing Western Sahara — just as Morocco had attempted to annex parts of Algeria in 1963 — that precipitated Algerian support for Polisario. From Algeria’s point of view, its regional security interests dictate that Morocco’s demonstrated history of aggressive irredentism must be kept in check. To adopt a Moroccan reading of the conflict, as the Potomac-SAIS report does, produces poor analysis and impoverishes diplomatic objectivity.
Even if we assume, as the Potomac-SAIS report does, that Algeria has a dog in the fight, how are Algeria’s interests served by an autonomous Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty? Algeria’s regional and geo-strategic interests are not addressed by Morocco’s autonomy proposal, nor does it provide any room for Algeria to save face given Algiers’ longstanding support for Western Sahara’s right to a vote on independence. Without first going through an internationally sanctioned act of self-determination, an autonomous Western Sahara would, logically, become just as much ‘a source of acrimony and tension between Morocco and Algeria’.
The political and intellectual defenders of Morocco’s autonomy proposal continuously trumpet its virtues as a non-zero-sum or win-win solution. Because it is a compromise, they argue, it contains incentives to make peace. Yet from Algeria’s point of view (as described in the Potomac-SAIS report), autonomy is very much a zero-sum, win-lose outcome. If Algeria is so important to the Western Sahara deadlock, as suggested by the Potomac/SAIS report, why then support a solution that does not respect Algeria’s interests but rather boldly defies them? Zartman’s own ground breaking work in the fields of conflict resolution and game theory should tell him this, yet he defends a solution that his own theories would reject.
It is also bizarre to claim that an independent Western Sahara is Algeria’s idea but then to claim that Algeria would allow an independent Western Sahara to become a failed state. Why would Algeria back Polisario’s cause for over thirty years, only to see Western Sahara become a ‘Somalia on the Atlantic coast of North Africa’? Let’s be clear: preventing a failed state in Western Sahara is everyone’s interests. Morocco and the United States do not monopolize this concern. If anyone has a vested interest in a viable Western Sahara, it is, first and foremost, the Western Saharans, followed by Algeria, who has championed their cause. Mauritania, sharing the longest border with Western Sahara and undergoing its own bouts with political instability, is likely a close third ahead of Morocco.
To claim that Algeria is so cynically motivated as to see Western Sahara only as a means to destabilize Morocco — in its current form as a haphazard occupation or in a possible form as a failed state — is unjustified by the record. Not only does Algeria, sadly, have more direct experience with political instability and armed violence than Morocco, it has been intensively engaged in recent efforts to contain unrest in the northern areas of Niger and Mali on Algeria’s southern flank in the Sahara. Likewise, Algeria offered the United States significant cooperation during the early years after 11 September. Relations only cooled after the George W. Bush administration double-crossed Algeria on Western Sahara. In early 2003, the White House asked Algeria to pressure Polisario to accept the 2003 plan, devised by none other than James Baker. Bush also promised Algeria that Washington would press Morocco to accept it too. Though Algeria delivered Polisario, Washington refused to put pressure on Rabat to accept the plan. The Bush administration then went on to support Morocco’s autonomy initiative, which showed further disrespect to Algeria’s interests and dignity.
Algeria and Polisario are well aware of Western fears of a failed state in an independent Western Sahara, one that could become a safe haven for trans-national terrorist groups. For that reason, Polisario put forward its own set of compromise proposals in April 2007, when Morocco also put its autonomy plan on the table. Polisario has offered Morocco significant economic, political and security guarantees should a referendum result in independence. These included the option of allowing Moroccan settlers to remain in Western Sahara. In 2003, Polisario made the significant concession of allowing Moroccan settlers to vote in a referendum on independence. Polisario is also willing to have Morocco’s 2007 autonomy proposal placed on any referendum ballot so long as it includes independence. Morocco and its supporters have never even attempted to explain why this democratic solution is not viable. Polisario’s leadership is acutely aware of the fact that broad regional cooperation with Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria will be a necessity for a sustainable peace, security and prosperity. Like the Potomac/SAIS report, they often speak of the day when the Arab Maghrib Union will dissolve all the old colonial boundaries and unite North Africa.
Whether out of ignorance or deliberate deception, the Potomac-SAIS report also underestimates the economic viability of Western Sahara. As an independent state, Polisario is willing to maintain the Moroccan settler population, which will boost the population and create natural, social, economic, political and security ties with Morocco. Its main resources, phosphates and fish, are precious dwindling commodities world wide; last summer actually saw phosphate prices increase six-fold over its historic price. Additionally, since 2001, Morocco has engaged several companies to search for hydrocarbon and mineral resources in Western Sahara, suggesting other sources of revenue for an independent Western Sahara. In terms of security, Polisario has proven highly cooperative with the UN mission, foreign governments and, as a full member of the African Union, has participated in joint security exercises with other African states.
What is the way forward?
Contrary to what Morocco and its intellectual supporters say, there is no contradiction between the Security Council taking a strong stance in favor of both power sharing and self-determination. Instead of endorsing a particular final status, the Security Council should endorse a specific framework for negotiations based upon mutual respect for each side. Indeed, recent Security Council resolutions have said as much in their calls for a political solution that respects the right of Western Sahara to self-determination. But the Council needs to make this clearer to the parties. To Morocco, the Council needs to state firmly that its claim on Western Sahara will never be legitimated unless it first passes through a referendum. To Polisario, the Council needs to state clearly that it will never get its referendum unless it is willing to discuss power-sharing with Morocco. Substantive negotiations should be seen as the means to, not the result of, self-determination. This approach has the advantage of addressing the interests of Morocco, Polisario and Algeria without prejudice or favor. Peace in Western Sahara will never be achieved until the parties build the necessary confidence in each other and the Security Council. That trust and respect has to be built at the negotiating table, not through imposed solutions. The Obama administration should choose peace not partisanship.
Notes
1. In a recent article, Zartman described the two ‘interested parties’ as Morocco and Algeria. See Zartman, I.W., 2007, Time for a Solution in the Western Sahara Conflict, Middle East Policy, 14, p.181.
-------------
SOURCE: http://concernedafricascholars.org/the-potomac-sais-report-on-north-africa/
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