Ahmed Salem Lebsir, battalion chief and director of the Polisario Front Military School, stands beside an installation marking Morocco’s invasion of the territory 50 years ago. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Nov 5 2025 (IPS)

Ehmudi Lebsir was 17 when he trudged more than 50 kilometres across the desert to stay alive. Half a century on, the Sahrawi refugee still has not gone home to what was then Spanish province of Western Sahara.

On 6 November 1975, six days after Moroccan troops pushed into the territory, hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians streamed south under military escort. Branded the “Green March”, it was, in effect, an invasion and the start of a military occupation of Sahrawi land.

The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decades

Dubbed “Africa’s last colony,” Western Sahara is roughly the size of the United Kingdom and remains the continent’s only territory still awaiting decolonisation. Yet on 31 October this year, that goal slipped further from reach.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Morocco’s incursion, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that, by endorsing Rabat’s autonomy plan, lent weight to Morocco’s sovereignty claim over the territory.

The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decades.

Lebsir speaks to IPS by videoconference from the Tindouf camps in western Algeria. Nearly 2,000 kilometres southwest of Algiers, this harsh desert where summer temperatures can touch 60C has been the closest thing to home the Sahrawi people have known for 50 years.

“We faced a choice: remain in Algeria as refugees, or build the machinery of a state, with its ministries and a parliament,” recalls Lebsir, now a senior representative of the Polisario Front. Founded in 1973, it is recognised by the United Nations as the “legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people”.

A man walks past a mural in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, where the Polisario Front has managed life in exile while building state institutions. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

On arriving in Tindouf in 1975, Lebsir was tasked with setting up schools in the camps. He later oversaw cohorts of Sahrawi students in Cuba, spent a decade in the Sahrawi Parliament and served in the SADR’s Ministries of Justice and Culture.

It was in that parliament that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed in February 1976.

“After a century of Spanish presence, we never imagined Madrid would leave and abandon us to our fate,” he says. “There’s no going back: either we have an independent state, or our people will be buried.”

After the Polisario declared independence in 1976, the UN reaffirmed the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination. But the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), created in 1991, has never delivered the vote it was set up to hold.

Tomás Bárbulo was also 17 when Moroccan forces moved in. The son of a Spanish soldier based in Laayoune —Western Sahara’s capital, 1,100 kilometres south of Rabat—, he had returned to Madrid three months before that 6 November.

“The Sahrawis have survived napalm and white phosphorus, persecution, exile, the systematic plunder of their natural resources, and attempts to erase their identity through the influx of hundreds of thousands of settlers,” the journalist and author tells IPS by phone from Madrid.

Bárbulo, whose La Historia Prohibida del Sahara Español (Destino, 2002) is a standard work on the conflict, lays the stalemate chiefly at the door of “Morocco’s unyielding position, often blessed by the Security Council’s major powers.” The UN, he says, “has capitulated to Rabat”.

Ironically, even the UN does not recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The occupied territory has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963. In legal terms, the decolonisation of Western Sahara remains “unfinished.”

Mohamed Dadach in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Released in 1999 after 24 years in prison, he is known as the “Sahrawi Nelson Mandela.” Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

‘Open-air prison’

The UNHCR estimates that between 170,000 and 200,000 Sahrawis live in Algeria’s desert camps. However, life inside the Moroccan-held territory itself is harder to gauge, since Rabat does not even acknowledge the Sahrawi people exist.

Understanding living conditions there is equally difficult. Senior observers such as Noam Chomsky have labelled the territory as a “vast open-air prison”.

In a report released last July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted that Morocco has blocked visits by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) since 2015.

“OHCHR continues to receive allegations of human rights violations, including intimidation, surveillance and discrimination against Sahrawi individuals, particularly those advocating for self-determination,” he wrote.

Despite restrictions, international rights groups continue to document abuses. Amnesty International’s 2024 report says Rabat curtails “dissent and the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly in Western Sahara” and “violently represses peaceful protests”.

Human Rights Watch denounced that courts hand down long sentences based “almost entirely” on activists’ confessions, without probing claims they were extracted under police torture.

At 36, Ahmed Ettanji is one of the most prominent Sahrawi activists in the occupied zone, something he has paid for with 18 arrests and repeated torture.

Speaking by phone from Laayoune, he says the visibility afforded by international NGOs is the only thing keeping him out of prison, or worse.

“We are marking fifty years of a harsh military blockade, extrajudicial killings and every kind of abuse,” he says. “There are thousands of disappeared and tens of thousands of arrests. The economic interests of world powers always trump human rights.”

After five decades, entire generations have been born in the Algerian desert, many families knowing each other only through video calls. Yet Ettanji insists not all is bleak.

“Born under occupation, people my age were expected to be the most assimilated, the most pro-Moroccan. That has not happened. The desire for self-determination is very much alive among the young.”

Sunset on a beach in occupied Western Sahara. In addition to a coastline rich in fishing resources, Sahrawis watch helplessly as Rabat exploits the rest of their natural wealth with the complicity of powers like the US, France, and Spain. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

‘Autonomous Region of the Sahara’

The autonomy plan that the UN has now effectively endorsed is Rabat’s sole political offer in five decades. First floated in 2007, it was backed by the Trump administration in 2020.

How this “Autonomous Region of the Sahara” would actually work is left largely undefined, beyond talk of local administrative, judicial and economic powers.

Polisario rejects the scheme, but rejection has not brought the Sahrawis any closer to deciding their own future.

For many Sahrawis, the timing of the Security Council’s move, on the very anniversary of Morocco’s 1975 incursion, felt less like coincidence than calculated cruelty.

People like Garazi Hach Embarek, daughter of a Basque nurse who treated the first displaced families half a century ago and a founding member of the Polisario Front. The 47-year-old has spent years taking the cause into classrooms, universities, town halls and any forum that will listen.

In an interview with IPS in Urretxu, 400 kilometres north of Madrid, Hach Embarek does not hide her dismay. “Active resistance is extremely difficult, and the Moroccan lobby remains highly influential,” laments the Sahrawi activist.

“We live in turbulent times, where anything seems to go, but this is neither just nor legal. Under the guise of peace, the real aim is simply to legitimise injustice,” she adds, before stressing the need “to forge new alliances.”

“Colonialism is far from over, and we’re merely the casualties of continued misgovernance in Africa’s last colony.”

Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 2025 (IPS)

The African continent has long been monopolized by European colonial rulers, with France having the largest number of colonies, ruling over 35 territories, followed by Britain with 32. A bygone era of colonial rule on the continent, “once carved up and ruled by European powers hungry for imperial glory,” has virtually ended—almost.

Currently, they are all members of the 55-nation African Union (AU).

Described as a non-self-governing territory in northwestern Africa fighting for decolonization, Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and dubbed “Africa’s last colony.”

With an estimated population of around 600,000 inhabitants, it is the most sparsely populated territory in Africa and the second most sparsely populated territory in the world, consisting mainly of desert flatlands.

A former Spanish colony, it was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then, it has been the subject of a long-running territorial dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the POLISARIO Front.

On October 30, the UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on a draft resolution on the future of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

According to a published report, the United States has circulated a draft resolution supporting Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan for Western Sahara as the basis for a mutually acceptable solution.

The draft, which supports extending the UN mission’s mandate, calls for negotiations to begin without preconditions based on Morocco’s proposal, framing it as the “most feasible solution” for a “genuine autonomy within the Moroccan state” and a lasting resolution.

Dr. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, told IPS the autonomy proposal is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco, a contention that has long been rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal opinion.

Western Sahara, he pointed out, is a full member state of the African Union, and the United Nations recognizes it as a non-self-governing territory.

“To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the United Nations and the ratification of the UN Charter eighty years ago, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilizing precedent, with serious implications for Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine as well as Israeli-occupied territories.”

If the people of Western Sahara accepted an autonomy agreement over independence, as a result of a free and fair referendum, he argued, it would constitute a legitimate act of self-determination.

However, Morocco has explicitly stated that its autonomy proposal “rules out, by definition, the possibility for the independence option to be submitted” to the people of Western Sahara, the vast majority of whom – according to knowledgeable international observers—favor outright independence.

On October 24, the Representative of the Frente POLISARIO at the United Nations and Coordinator with MINURSO, Dr Sidi Mohamed Omar, sent a letter to Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia of Russia, current President of the UN Security Council, in which he stressed the position of the Frente POLISARIO on the US draft resolution.

“The Frente POLISARIO underscores that the draft resolution, which reflects the national position of the penholder, is a very dangerous, unprecedented departure not only from the principles of international law underpinning Western Sahara as a question of decolonization but also from the basis upon which the Security Council has addressed Western Sahara.”

“It also contains elements that strike at the heart of the foundations of the UN peace process in Western Sahara and constitute a grave violation of the international status of the Territory.”

Acting under the relevant Chapters of the UN Charter, the Security Council has firmly and consensually established the basis of the solution and the process leading to it, namely negotiations under the auspices of the Secretary-General without preconditions and in good faith with a view to achieving a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara in the context of arrangements consistent with the principles and purposes of the UN Charter, the letter said.

As confirmed by the International Court of Justice, sovereignty over Western Sahara belongs exclusively to the Sahrawi people who have an inalienable, non-negotiable, and imprescriptible right to self-determination to be exercised freely and democratically under the UN auspices.

Therefore, any approach that sets a prefixed framework for the negotiations or predetermines their outcome, circumscribes the free exercise by the Sahrawi people of their right to self-determination, or imposes a solution against their will is utterly unacceptable to the Frente POLISARIO, the letter said.

According to a Security Council report, October 2025, an immediate issue for the Council is to renew the mandate of MINURSO and consider what changes to the mission’s mandate, if any, are necessary.

The underlying issue remains how to facilitate a viable and lasting resolution to the long-standing deadlock over the status of Western Sahara.

Two fundamentally diverging positions have made a resolution to the conflict difficult.

On the one hand, the Polisario Front’s demand for the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination, which has been recognized by the International Court of Justice in its 16 October 1975 advisory opinion and supported by several member states.

And numerous UN General Assembly resolutions, such as resolution A/RES/34/37, have affirmed the “inalienable right of the people of Western Sahara” to self-determination and independence. The Council has also called for a “just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution that will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.”

On the other hand, Morocco claims sovereignty over the territory, and its Autonomy Plan has received support from an increasing number of member states in recent years. In 2007, the Council adopted resolution 1754, which, in its preambular paragraphs, took note of Morocco’s proposal and welcomed Morocco’s efforts as serious and credible to move the process forward towards resolution.

Significant obstacles remain in the peace process. Hostilities have persisted at a low to medium intensity, falling short of large-scale confrontation. Moreover, Morocco controls over three-quarters of the Western Sahara territory and has made substantial investments in the region, including a $1.2 billion port project in Dakhla.

In addition, settlers of Moroccan origin account for nearly two-thirds of the approximately half-million residents of Western Sahara

Elaborating further, Dr Zunes said: “even if one takes a dismissive attitude toward international law, there are a number of practical concerns regarding the Moroccan proposal as well: One is that the history of respect for regional autonomy on the part of centralized authoritarian states is quite poor, as with Eritrea and Kosovo, which only gained independence after a long a bloody struggle, and more recently with Hong Kong.”

Based upon Morocco’s habit of breaking its promises to the international community regarding the UN-mandated referendum for Western Sahara and related obligations based on the ceasefire agreement in 1991, he said, there is little to inspire confidence that Morocco would live up to its promises to provide genuine autonomy for Western Sahara.

“A close reading of the proposal raises questions as to how much autonomy is even being offered. Important matters such as control of Western Sahara’s natural resources and law enforcement (beyond local jurisdictions) remain ambiguous.”

In addition, he pointed out, the proposal appears to indicate that all powers not specifically vested in the autonomous region would remain with the Kingdom.

Indeed, since the king of Morocco is ultimately invested with absolute authority under Article 19 of the Moroccan Constitution, the autonomy proposal’s insistence that the Moroccan state “will keep its powers in the royal domains, especially with respect to defense, external relations and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of His Majesty the King” appears to afford the autocratic monarch considerable latitude of interpretation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Moroccan security forces charge against a group of Sahrawi women in Laayoune, occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Courtesy of Equipe Media

By Karlos Zurutuza
LAAYOUNE, Occupied Western Sahara, Aug 23 2015 (IPS)

Ahmed Ettanji is looking for a flat in downtown Laayoune, a city 1,100 km south of Rabat. He only wants it for one day but it must have a rooftop terrace overlooking the square that will host the next pro-Sahrawi demonstration.

“Rooftop terraces are essential for us as they are the only places from which we can get a graphic testimony of the brutality we suffer from the Moroccan police,” Ettanji told IPS. This 26-year-old is one the leaders of the Equipe Media, a group of Sahrawi volunteers struggling to break the media blackout enforced by Rabat over the territory.

Ahmed Ettanji and a fellow Equipe Media activist edit video taken at a pro-independence demonstration in Laayoune, occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

“There are no news agencies based here and foreign journalists are denied access, and even deported if caught inside,” stressed Ettanji.

Spanish journalist Luís de Vega is one of several foreign journalists who can confirm the activist´s claim – he was expelled in 2010 after spending eight years based in Rabat and declared persona non grata by the Moroccan authorities.

“The Western Sahara issue is among the most sensitive issues for journalists in Morocco. Those of us who dare to tackle it inevitably face the consequences,” de Vega told IPS over the phone, adding that he was “fully convinced” that his was an exemplary punishment because he was the foreign correspondent who had spent more time in Morocco.

“The Western Sahara issue is among the most sensitive issues for journalists in Morocco. Those of us who dare to tackle it inevitably face the consequences” – Spanish journalist Luís de Vega
This year will mark four decades since this territory the size of Britain was annexed by Morocco after Spain pulled out from its last colony of Western Sahara.

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat has controlled almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast. The United Nations still labels Western Sahara as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation”.

Mohamed Mayara, also a member of Equipe Media, is helping Ettanji to find the rooftop terrace. Like most his colleagues, he acknowledges having been arrested and tortured several times. The constant harassment, however, has not prevented him from working enthusiastically, although he admits that there are other limitations than those dealing with any underground activity:

“We set up the first group in 2009 but a majority of us are working on pure instinct. We have no training in media so we are learning journalism on the spot,” said Mayara, a Sahrawi born in the year of the invasion who writes reports and press releases in English and French. His father disappeared in the hands of the Moroccan army two months after he was born, and he says he has known nothing about him ever since.

Sustained crackdown

Today the majority of the Sahrawis live in the refugee camps in Tindouf, in Western Algeria. The members of Equipe Media say they have a “fluid communication” with the Polisario authorities based there. Other than sharing all the material they gather, they also work side by side with Hayat Khatari, the only reporter currently working openly for SADR TV. SADR stands for ‘Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’.

Hayat Khatari, the only reporter currently working openly for SADR TV in Laayoune. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Khatari, a 24-year-old journalist, recalls that she started working in 2010, after the Gdeim Izzik protest camp incidents in Laayoune. Originally a peaceful protest camp, Gdeim Izzik resulted in riots that spread to other Sahrawi cities when it was forcefully dismantled after 28 days on Nov. 8.

Western analysts such as Noam Chomsky have argued that the so-called “Arab Spring” did not start in Tunisia as is commonly argued, but rather in Laayoune.

“We have to work really hard and risk a lot to be able to counterbalance the propaganda spread by Rabat about everything happening here,” Khatari told IPS. The young activist added that she was last arrested in December 2014 for covering a pro-independence demonstration in June 2014. Unlike Mahmood al Lhaissan, her predecessor in SADR TV, Khatari was released after a few days in prison.

In a report released in March, Reporters Without Borders records al Lhaissan´s case. The activist was released provisionally on Feb. 25, eight months after his arrest in Laayoune, but he is still facing trial on charges of participating in an “armed gathering,” obstructing a public thoroughfare, attacking officials while they were on duty, and damaging public property.

In the same report, Reporters Without Borders also denounces the deportation in February of French journalists Jean-Louis Perez and Pierre Chautard, who were reporting for France 3 on the economic and social situation in Morocco.

Before seizing their video recordings and putting them on a flight to Paris, the authorities arrested them at the headquarters of Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH), one of the country’s leading human rights NGOs, which the interior ministry has accused of “undermining the actions of the security forces”.

Likewise, other major organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly denounced human rights abuses suffered by the Sahrawi people at the hands of Morocco over the last decades.

Despite several phone calls and e-mails, the Moroccan authorities did not respond to IPS’s requests for comments on these and other human rights violations allegedly committed in Western Sahara.

Back in downtown Laayoune, Equipe Media activists seemed to have found what they were looking for. The owner of the central apartment is a Sahrawi family. It could have not been otherwise.

“We would never ask a Moroccan such a thing,” said Ettanji from the rooftop terrace overlooking the spot where the upcoming protest would take place.

Edited by Phil Harris   

(From left to right) Fatima, Aza and Rabab, three Sahrawi women activists, pose from an undisclosed location in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
LAAYOUNE, Occupied Western Sahara, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Ten women are gathered to discuss how to transmit Sahrawi culture and tradition to the younger generations. As usual, it´s a secret meeting. There is no other way in the capital of Western Sahara.

Rabab Lamin chose the place and the date for this latest meeting of the Forum for the Future of Sahrawi Women, an underground organisation yet seemingly far from being disorganised.

“We set up the committee in 2009 and today we rely on 60 active members, an executive committee of 16 and hundreds of collaborators,” Lamin, the mother of a political prisoner, tells IPS.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own" – Aza Amidan, sister of a Sahrawi political prisoner
“Our goal is to fight for the fundamental rights of the Sahrawi people through peaceful struggle,” adds the 54 year-old woman, before noting that she was born “when the Spaniards were here.”

This year will mark four decades since Spain pulled out of Western Sahara, its last colony, leaving the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. While Rabat claims that this vast swathe of land – the size of Britain – is its southernmost province, the United Nations labels it as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation.”

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat controls almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast.

Only a tiny desert strip on the other side of the wall built by Morocco remains under Sahrawi control. That´s where the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was announced in 1976, a political entity today recognised by 82 countries.

The most immediate consequence of Sahara´s frozen conflict was the displacement of almost the entire Sahrawi people to the desert of Algeria. Those who dared to stay still suffer the consequences of their decision:

“Since the Moroccans took over our land we have only faced brutality,” laments Aza Amidan, the sister of a political prisoner. “We are constantly harassed and beaten; they raid our houses, they arrest our men and women, even kids under 15.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own,” says Amidan. The 34-year-old activist stresses that the founder and current leader of the Forum, Zukeine Ijdelu, spent 12 years in prison.

Sahrawi women activists who have taken to the streets in Laayoune, capital of occupied Western Sahara, are often forcibly dispersed. Credit: Mohamed Salem

In a report issued two months ago, Amnesty International labels the practice of torture in Morocco as “endemic” while underlining that Sahrawi political dissidents are among the main targets. The NGO also accused the Moroccan government of “protecting the torturers, and not the tortured.”

Sahrawi activists claim that one of the main tasks of this women´s organisation is to support, “both morally and economically”, those who have suffered prison or their relatives. Amidan gives the details:

“We gather money among the community for those women as they are always the ones who suffer most. Whether it´s them who are arrested or their husbands, it´s them who have to sustain their families.”

Despite several phone calls and e-mails, the Moroccan authorities refused to speak to IPS on these and other human rights violations allegedly committed in Western Sahara.

Assimilation

At 62, Fatima Hamimid is one of the senior veteran activists of the Forum. She says torture is “something that can one can cope with.” But there are other grievances that are seemingly “irreparable”.

“Today’s workshop sought to raise awareness among the new generations over the cultural assimilation we´re being subjected to at the hands of Rabat. Morocco seeks to deny our mere existence by either erasing our history or including it into their own.”

The most eloquent proof of such policies may be the total absence of Hassaniya –the Arabic dialect spoken by Sahrawis – in the education system or the administration.

However, Hamimid also points to other issues such the explicit ban over the Sahrawi traditional tent, the harassment  women wearing their distinctively colourful garb often have to face, or the prohibition of giving names that recall historical Sahrawi dissidents to their children.

“This is yet another reason that drags us to the streets to organise and take part in demonstrations,” notes Hamimid. Peaceful protests, she adds, are another important axis of action of this group.

But it is neither easy nor free of risks. In its World Report 2015, Human Rights Watch denounces that Rabat has “prohibited all public gatherings deemed hostile to Morocco’s contested rule.”

The New York-based NGO also points to the “large numbers of police who blocked access to demonstration venues and often forcibly dispersed Sahrawis seeking to assemble.”

Under such circumstances, Takbar Haddi chose to conduct a hunger strike for 36 days in front of the Moroccan consulate in Gran Canaria (Spain), which ended with her hospitalisation in June.

Haddi is still asking the Moroccan authorities to deliver the body of her son, Mohamed Lamin Haidala, stabbed in February in Laayoune, and that both the circumstances of the crime and the alleged lack of an adequate health assistance be investigated.

The activist´s close relatives in Laayoune told IPS that the family had rejected an economic compensation from Rabat in exchange for their silence.

“Some people think that being free is just not languishing in prison, or not suffering torture,” explains Hamimid, while she serves the last of the three cups of tea marking Sahrawi tradition. “We, Sahrawi women, understand freedom in its full meaning.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Advocacy groups like the Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) contest the legality of foreign businesses, like Kosmos, working with the Moroccan government to exploit Western Saharan resources. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

Even as U.S. and Moroccan executives meet to discuss strengthening private sector ties between the two countries, advocacy groups are raising concerns about plans by a U.S. energy firm to explore for oil in the contested territory known as Western Sahara. 

Government and business leaders from the United States and Morocco are gathering in Rabat this week for the second annual Morocco-U.S. Business Development Conference. The Moroccan government hopes to capitalise on its 2006 free trade agreement with the United States and encourage U.S. investment in the country by presenting it as a gateway to European, Middle Eastern and African markets. “Morocco is not willing to allow the people the right to self-determination today, and the oil industry is becoming an obstacle in terms of putting pressure in Morocco to accept that right.” -- Erik Hagen

“There’s a lot going on in Morocco, and the question is how can it leverage what it has to attract American investments to Morocco that can then be directed to a European market or south to the African markets,” Jean AbiNader, the executive director of the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Centre, a non-profit established by Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, told IPS.

Morocco has placed a high emphasis on oil and gas exploration in its energy policy. At this week’s conference, participating energy companies, such as Dow Chemical, were given the option to attend sessions on Morocco’s energy sector, highlighting the potential for both renewable and carbon-based investment in the kingdom.

While international investors in renewable energy have long favoured Morocco, enabling the construction of solar plants and wind farms, U.S. and European corporations are also rushing to take advantage of concessions for possible oil reserves, some of which are potentially located in the Western Sahara, which many people view as under Moroccan occupation.

One such firm is the Texas-based Kosmos Energy, which has already begun offshore hydrocarbon exploration in three blocks of Morocco’s AgadirBasin. More controversially, Kosmos now intends to start oil exploration in an area off the Western Saharan coast, known as Cap Boujdour, in October.

Advocacy groups like the Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) contest the legality of foreign businesses, like Kosmos, working with the Moroccan government to exploit Western Saharan resources.

“Morocco is not willing to allow the people the right to self-determination today, and the oil industry is becoming an obstacle in terms of putting pressure in Morocco to accept that right,” Erik Hagen, WSRW’s chair, told IPS.

“Sahrawis [indigenous Western Saharans] are standing on the sidelines of this project, waving their arms and telling companies to stop doing this on behalf of the Moroccan government. [These companies] are working with an occupying government.”

Corell opinion

After calling for Western Saharan independence from Spain, Morocco took control of the territory, which it calls the Southern Provinces, in 1976 after the Spanish withdrew. Following years of armed conflict between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, the international community established the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) in 1991.

MINURSO intended the referendum to determine whether the Western Sahara would become an independent state or part of Morocco, but the vote was never able to be implemented due to disagreements over who was eligible to take part. Unlike Morocco, the Polisario Front did not want to allow Moroccan settlers in the Western Sahara to participate in the referendum.

To date, no other state recognises Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which is on the United Nations list of Non Self-Governing Territories.

In 2002, Morocco awarded contracts for oil exploration in the Western Sahara to a U.S.-based company, Kerr McGee, and the French-based Total S.A. In response, the United Nations issued what is known as the Corell Opinion regarding the legality of resource extraction in Western Sahara.

Since then, however, both multinational energy firms and Western Saharan advocacy groups have construed the U.N. opinion to favour their respective stances.

The Corell Opinion recognises Morocco as the de facto administrative power of Western Sahara. But it also states that “while the specific contracts … are not in themselves illegal, if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.”

AbiNader, with the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Centre, believes that Morocco’s resource-extraction activities are creating net economic benefits for the local Sahrawi population, as stipulated in the Corell Opinion.

OCP, Morocco’s state-owned phosphates company, “has done a really strenuous job,” he said. “They brought PricewaterhouseCoopers [an American consulting firm] in and did a two-year study of who’s accruing benefits from the Bou Craa mine in Western Sahara. Very clearly it’s not really contributing to their bottom line but it is creating jobs – it’s creating value added to the people in the community.”

Also citing the Corell Opinion, Kosmos Energy maintains that because Morocco purports to equitably and fairly distribute resources extracted from the Western Sahara with the native Sahrawi population, oil exploration and potential extraction in the territory will meet the international community’s standards for legality.

In a position statement, Kosmos highlights a 2013 report from King Mohammed VI’s Economic, Social, and Environmental Council (SCEC). The report declares that “the aim of the Council is to contribute to the collective effort required to rise to the challenge of achieving social cohesion, prosperity and equitable benefit from the resources” of Western Sahara.

However, WSRW’s Hagen said he doubts the intentions of the Moroccan government to adequately share the wealth with Sahrawis. Instead, he argues that the Sahrawis do not want the Moroccan government and multinational corporations exploiting their resources – which, he says, renders Kosmos’ activities illegal under the Corell Opinion.

Hagen also points to routine human rights abuses in both the Western Sahara and Morocco proper.

“The [U.N.] Special Rapporteur on Torture’s report from 2013 is very illustrative of how people are abused or tortured while in police custody, and that is frequent,” Hagen said. “Every week we hear reports of Sahrawis taken in by the police for a couple of days or a couple of hours and then released again.”

WSRW is not only calling on Kosmos to abandon its plans to explore in Western Sahara, but is also urging a U.S.-based drilling firm, Atwood Oceanics, not to provide Kosmos with the rig it has ordered for use in Cap Boujdour.

Neither Kosmos nor Atwood responded to IPS’s inquiries by deadline.

The Western Saharwi football team. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
RABUNI CAMP, Western Algeria, Jun 25 2012 (IPS)

The football teams are back in their refugee camps in Algeria, and no, FIFA has taken no note of this tournament. And the television cameras are all at the Euro cup.

These boys played well enough, even if nobody was around to watch. “They would slip in the first matches but this is understandable because they had never ever played football on grass before,” Mohamed Sid Ahmed Bugleida, sports director of the Sahrawi ministry of youth and sports tells IPS. Few know of this ministry in the Western Sahara, let alone of the tournament.

The Western Sahara football team he manages has just returned from Iraqi Kurdistan after taking part in the fourth tournament of the Nouvelle Fédération-Board (NFB). Also known unofficially as the Non-FIFA-Board, this is a football association established in December 2003.

It is made up of teams that represent nations, dependencies, minorities, unrecognised states, stateless peoples, regions and ‘micronations’ not affiliated to FIFA. But it does seek to work with FIFA to acquire membership for its teams eventually.

The politics of dispossession hangs over this Cup. Western Sahara became victim of a decolonisation process interrupted in 1976 when Spain – its former colonial power – left the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. Morocco now controls almost all the territory, larger than the size of Britain, except for the largely uninhabited and economically useless desert portion.

Today, the vast majority of the Sahrawi population – of between 200,000-250,000 according to UN sources – lives in refugee camps in the Tinduf region in Western Algeria in the Sahara.

“We faced several problems in displaying our flag due to Moroccan pressure on the Kurdish regional government. We were at loggerheads with the local authorities but the Kurdish audience openly expressed their solidarity and warmth,” adds Bugleida from his office in the building of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in Rabuni refugee camp in Western Algeria. At its entrance, a plaque thanks the town of Granadilla (Tenerife, Spain) for its “generous aid”.

In a room nearby, the 20 players from the Saharawi squad in their green tracksuits with the initials SADR (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) on their backs, are celebrating with Algerian biscuits and instant coffee after their return from the tournament earlier this month.

Player Cori Maaruf, 26, cannot hide his joy. “I am proud to have written a page in the history of our people,” he tells IPS. “It’s the first time we attended such a tournament but we achieved fourth place among a total of nine teams.

“And take into account that we only trained for five days before the tournament, and always on sand. There are no proper football grounds here in the refugee camps.”

Salah Ahmed, with three goals to his credit, is the top scorer in the local squad. He scored against other non-nations: two against Darfur and one against Occitania, a culturally homogeneous region in southern Europe across France and Italy.

“Whether one day we can play on behalf of a fully recognised sovereign state depends only on god’s will,” says this 24-year-old born in the Dajla refugee camp 170 kilometres southeast of Rabuni. Until then, he says he will carry the Saharawi national flag with pride wherever he goes.

“Much more important than any sport result is to show the world that we exist, that there is nation called Western Sahara that struggles to survive after decades of unfair and brutal occupation,” says Said Saleh, a 21-year-old footballer after his second trip outside the refugee camps.

The first, he says, was to Spain after he was invited by a family in Madrid. After the abduction of three aid workers – two Spaniards and one Italian – in the Western Sahara seven months ago, and the financial crisis in the Eurozone, the number of summer visits to Spain have declined, together with international aid to the refugees.

These young players have only recently started to represent their people in football stadiums. But the Polisario Front, outlawed in the Morocco-controlled part of Western Sahara, is recognised by the UN as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahrawis since 1979. Polisario officials expressed concern to IPS over diminishing aid over in the last few months.

Mohamed Molud, minister of youth and sports, stresses the strong encouragement the squad brings to the young in a difficult environment. “It’s far from easy to generate any enthusiasm towards sports in this environment and with a total lack of resources.”

Renting a proper football ground from the Algerian government, and organising matches against local teams, or even neighbouring countries such as Mauritania, are some of the proposals being considered.

For the time being, both staff and players look forward to the next NFB tournament in 2014. There were no surprises in the 2012 tournament: the cup stayed in Kurdistan – four of their players also play for the Iraqi national team.

(END)

Polisario Front on patrol in the Sahara liberated territories. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
BIR LEHLU, Sahara Liberated Territories, Jun 20 2012 (IPS)

The road vanishes under the sand just after the border crossing at Tindouf, western Algeria. Another 20 kilometres into the desert, a billboard welcomes us into the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

From a house surrounded by shell cases, a man in camouflage checks our passports without stamping them.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) may be recognised by 82 countries but the United Nations still considers it a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation.”

Western Sahara was the victim of a decolonisation process interrupted in 1976, when Spain – its former colonial power since the late 19th century – left that barren, sparsely populated land in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania.

After a ceasefire agreement in 1991, most of the SADR territory, including the entire Atlantic coastline, has been under Morocco’s control. A small, largely uninhabited and economically useless desert portion, known as the “liberated territories”, remains under the rule of the Polisario Front, which is outlawed in Morocco-controlled Sahara but strongly backed by Algeria and recognised by the U.N. as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people.

However, almost all of the roughly 250,000 Sahrawi people live today in Algerian refugee camps in Tindouf, 1,465 kilometres southwest of Algiers.

The Polisario Front’s humble governmental buildings stand out amid a sea of mud houses and corrugated iron under the scorching sun of the Algerian desert. Fully dependent on foreign aid, none of the Sahrawi refugees expected their situation to last this long – 37 years and counting.

As a result, the Polisario Front has strong support among the desert residents, many of who are itching to break the ceasefire and take up arms to fight for long-awaited independence.

Despite hardships at the refugee camps in Algeria, the living standards are significantly higher there than in the so-called “Sahara liberated territories”; a geopolitical no-man’s land where Polisario’s is the one and only rule. Here there is hardly any water, no electricity, no telephones and no hospitals of any kind.

It is an inhospitable place inhabited only by nomads and, of course, by the soldiers of the Polisario Front.

At the headquarters of the Second Battalion in Bir-Lehlu, the administrative capital, 400 kilometres west of Tindouf, a soldier scans the horizon atop one of the few tiny trees in the area.

At the order of his commander, he jumps to the ground and immediately vanishes into a hole in the ground. A minute later he pops out of another one, 50 metres away.

“In case there’s an air strike by Moroccan forces, there’s nowhere to go but underground, like those black and orange lizards you may have seen all over the place,” jokes Sidi Mohamed Baaya, one of the battalion´s senior officials. He adds that “maintaining and expanding the network of underground galleries is among the highest priorities” of the military organisation.

Inside a barrack that looks more like a museum of the Polisario Front’s history, Sidi Baaya briefs IPS on the largest “infrastructure” ever built in the Western Sahara’s territories.

The “wall”, a French-designed structure erected in the 80s, is over 2,500 kilometres long, criss-crossing Western Sahara from north to south, an intricate network of fences, trenches and barbed wire cordoning off the most economically useful parts of the land.

“We train our men to sneak across the wall and attack the Moroccan forces from their rear,” the Polisario official explains. Until the ceasefire in 1991, night missions across the wall were commonplace during a war that started in 1975 and lasted 16 years.

Patrolling infinite space

Born in the refugee camps in Tindouf, 23-year old Mohamed Murad is a member of a motorised unit that controls the section along the Mauritanian border.

“Since the abduction of three aid workers – two Spaniards and one Italian – seven months ago, we are on constant patrol, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We suspect that the terrorists will soon (attack) journalists and foreign aid workers,” explains the young conscript Murad, while he looks through his binoculars towards a plain and empty horizon.

The three aid workers were abducted in Tindouf by members of an alleged offshoot of Al-Qaeda in October 2011. The incident has put the Saharans’ main life support – foreign aid – at risk.

To avoid new attacks, the Polisario patrols the area in Japanese-made pickup trucks fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and mounted on the rear.

“The Polisario was the first to mount heavy artillery on these light vehicles, much earlier than Somalia or Libya,” recalls Salama Abdallahi from the driver´s seat.

Well over 60 years of age, Abdallahi joined the movement in 1974, a year before Spain’s withdrawal from the territory, and is now one of the many veterans who chose to stay.

Abdallahi was born in Bojador, a coastal town in the south of the Saharan territory under Moroccan control. Besides sharing his military experience with his younger fellow soldiers, he also gives them first hand testimony of the land his comrades’ parents left behind after the occupation.

Tradition and Loyalty

At a hundred kilometres northeast of Bir Lehlu, one could come across images of men armed with bows hunting gazelle and antelope, or even fishing. These ancient rock carvings date back 5,000 years according to the few archaeologists who have ventured into this area.

In moments of respite from the frequent sandstorms, it is not difficult to spot nomadic settlements scattered across the vast desert.

Like the many camels dotting this barren landscape, Nuna Bumra Mohamed’s tent also seems to pop out in the middle of nowhere. She sits in the middle of the 30-square-metre room; her green melfa, a Saharan female garment, stands out amid pristine red carpets and blankets neatly piled up next to an old wooden wardrobe.

Were it not for the huge Sahrawi flag – green, white and black stripes with a red star and a crescent in the middle – presiding over the house, the scene could be a picture unchanged from a thousand years ago.

“We have heard about terrorists sneaking from Mali and Mauritania, but we feel safe under the protection of the Polisario,” Bumra explains after offering her visitors a bowl of fresh goat milk.

“Other than terrorist attacks, our greatest concern is still the lack of water,” she adds.

Nuna confirms that the only inhabitants of the region are Bedouins like herself, nomadic families that survive on their herds of goats and camels, living in the wild. Despite the evidently harsh living conditions, this proud Sahrawi swears she has never even considered moving to the refugee camps across the border.

“I wouldn´t be able to live in a foreign country. Besides, how could we possibly abandon the only part of our land under our control?”

(END)