MOROCCO
A Will, A Way
Cross the southwestern border of Morocco – it’s a dotted line on most maps – and it’s thousands of miles of open desert: A few towns and few people and an occasional camel and windmill break the endless expanse of the Western Sahara.
Oh yeah, and then there is the military – thousands and thousands of soldiers are stationed here, and checkpoints for drivers are frequent.
There’s a reason for this overwhelming military presence, the most in Morocco.
More than 40 years ago, Morocco and a political movement representing the indigenous Sahrawi people first came to blows over Western Sahara, sparking a 16-year guerrilla war that ended in a UN-brokered stalemate.
Now diplomats are giving talks another go in hopes of resolving a conflict with the potential to upset power dynamics across the region.
The conflict stems from Spain’s withdrawal from its former colony of Spanish Sahara on Morocco’s southern border in the 1970s. Morocco laid claim to the territory, despite the international community’s calls for its decolonization and self-determination for the Sahrawi, the BBC reported.
The Polisario Front, the political force representing the Sahrawi from exile in Algeria, declared its own state in the territory. Fighting began – and lasted for more than a decade. Morocco annexed two-thirds of the territory and controversially colonized much of the area it controls.
In the current stalemate, Morocco is adamant on retaining Western Sahara as an autonomous region, and the government is unwilling to allow a referendum on the matter. For its part, the Polisario Front is vying for full-on independence.
This month, however, there’s been newfound impetus to end the conflict.
Since his appointment in 2017, the UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Western Sahara, former German President Horst Köhler, has ping-ponged across the greater Maghreb region to restartnegotiations.
After a series of successful meetings, Köhler this month called on all parties involved to make compromises for a lasting political solution to the conflict, Morocco World News reported. The African Union also lent its support to the UN’s new efforts, signaling a united front in finally bringing an end to the conflict.
But old conflicts die hard.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI announced his country’s willingness to “confidently and responsibly” engage with the UN to find an acceptable solution, but said he wouldn’t do so without the involvement of neighboring Algeria.
The two nations are longtime rivals, with Algeria having politically and militarily supported the Polisario Front throughout the conflict. Without Algeria, the negotiations will be a “waste of time,” Omar Hilale, Morocco’s permanent UN representative, told Moroccan media.
Surprise, surprise: Algeria isn’t willing to get involved, despite nudges from partners like Russia and others.
Morocco hopes Algeria’s stubbornness on the issue will draw more sympathy from the international community to its argument for holding on to Western Sahara.
If left to its own devices, Morocco says, the territory of just over 500,000 people will either become an Iranian-Algerian proxy state bent on destabilizing the region, or a failed state serving as a hotbed for terrorist activity, the Jamestown Foundation wrote in an analysis.
Iran has denied such motives, though Morocco says it has proof of “continuous training from Hezbollah in tunnels, dug under the Moroccan defense wall,” wrote the Algeria Times.
Despite the quagmire of accusations and motives, the Polisario Front at least indicated that it’s willing to once again discuss the matter with Morocco.
But with so many conflicting political narratives, the will for peace doesn’t mean there will be a way.
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