The land, which borders the Atlantic Ocean, has been occupied by Morocco ever since the previous colonial power, Spain, withdrew from the colony in the mid 1970s. The long-term plan was to grant independence to the native Sahwari people; almost 40 years later, the Sahwari not only lack their own nation, they have been driven out, walled off, and had their resources plundered by Morocco and both European and American corporations.
The Sahrawis are growing understandably impatient with the supposed “peace process” that was mandated by the UN decades ago.
Sahrawi journalist Embarka Elmehdi Said recently told Green Left Weekly, an Australian paper, “No one will give us our freedom — we must take it!” A child when her family fled the Moroccan invasion of Western Sahara in 1975, Said has spent most of her life in a refugee camp on the Algerian border run by Polisario (the organization recognized by the United Nations as the official representative of the Sahrawi people.) Said’s two sons, aged 12 and three, have spent all their lives in refugee camps.
As with the Tuareg further south, the Sahrawi are enduring the standard forms of marginalization by their colonizers:
It is a pattern that has been used against indigenous people around the globe, including Native American Tribes, Gaelic-speaking Celts, blacks under apartheid in the "old" South Africa, the East Timorese in Indonesia, Palestinians, Kurds, and indigenous people in Mexico.
Some history:
The Western Sahara was colonized by Spain in the 1800s. Most European powers granted independence to their African colonies in the mid 1900s, but Spain appeared to be dragging its feet. In 1965, the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on the Western Sahara, asking Spain to decolonize the territory. In 1966, the UN again addressed the issue, requesting that Spain conduct a referendum on self-determination. No referendum was held.
In 1975, the International Court of Justice declared that the population of Western Sahara possessed the right of self-determination. During the week of October 31 - November 6, 1975, Moroccan troops invaded the Western Sahara, followed by 350,000 new Moroccan occupiers. Within three months Spain relinquished control of the territory to neighboring Morocco and Mauritania, and soon those two nations found themselves at war over the territory.
The Sahrawi people countered by forming the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement (Polisario) to demand independence. Polisario proclaimed the land the “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR) and established a government-in-exile in nearby Tindouf, Algeria, creating a three-way battle for the land The Polisario forced Mauritania to withdraw in 1979, but Morocco then overran and secured control of almost the entire territory, including all major cities and natural resources. Foreshadowing a tool that Israel would utilize against Palestinians, Morocco then built an extensive sand berm in the desert, known as the Border Wall or Moroccan Wall, to contain and exclude the Sahrawi and protect their own occupation.
The Wall left the Sahrawis with control of less than 20% of their nation, and no access to cities, ocean ports, or national resources. This area now has only a small population of about 30,000 Sahrawi nomads. The Moroccan government views it as a no-man's land patrolled by UN troops; Polisario, whose troops also patrol the area, have proclaimed a village in the area, Bir Lehlou, as SADR's provisional capital.
Open hostilities between Morocco and Polisario generally ended in a 1991 cease-fire overseen by a UN peacekeeping mission with a transition plan. In the intervening years a new king has been crowned in Morocco, Mohammed VI, son of previous King Hassan II. He opposes any referendum on independence, and has said Morocco will never agree to one: "We shall not give up one inch of our beloved Sahara, not a grain of its sand".
In the years since the conflict began, there have been serious human rights abuses, most notably the displacement of tens of thousands of Sahrawi civilians from their own country. A little over a year ago, Moroccan troops violently dismantled the Gdeim Izik refugee camp near Laayoune. In a November 26, 2010 report, Human Rights Watch said that Moroccan security forces used excessive force, and engaged in “retaliatory” attacks on ethnic Sahrawi citizens. Among the casualties at Gdeim Izik was 14-year-old Nayem Elgarhi, shot by Moroccan security forces near the camp.
Morocco has been repeatedly criticized for its actions in Western Sahara by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, World Organization Against Torture, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Derechos Human Rights, Defend International, Front Line, the International Federation of Human Rights, the Society for Threatened Peoples, and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
While the political situation remains in limbo, Morocco and western nations have turned to resource extraction from the territory with Morocco’s blessing. In February, German engineering firm Siemens secured its first wind turbine orders on Morocco-occupied lands.
Last year, a fishing rights agreement signed by the European Union and Morocco granted fishing rights to Europe off of the entire coast of the Western Sahara. On January 25, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed that monster fishing vessels were sucking the oceans dry of small pelagic fish species off the Western Saharan coast. The eight country investigation showed that the world’s largest fish factory vessel, The Lafayette (which is the size of two football fields), accompanied by a fleet of trawlers, was actively harvesting fish populations off of the Western Sahara coast. The Moroccan state-owned oil company ONHYM continues to promote the uranium potential of occupied Western Sahara; only last month, due to international pressure, did US-owned Kerr McGee cease exploratory oil operations. (Source)
And throughout, the Sahrawi people have waited for a referendum on self-determination for their plundered lands that was guaranteed under the peace settlement with Morocco almost 21 years ago. The UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara mandate has been extended 39 times without being fulfilled, largely due to international disinterest and the interference of Moroccan authorities.
The mission has drawn increased criticism over its failure to make headway, including from its former deputy chairperson Frank Ruddy. In 2005 he said: “Morocco dictated the where and when of the voting registration, controlled entry to the UN registration facilities, and even decided which Western Saharans got to register … Morocco’s abuse of the people of Western Sahara and its manipulation of the UN mission in Western Sahara was open and notorious.”
Learosi Abdalahi Salec, a volunteer at Afapredesa (a human rights organization based in the Rabuni refugee camp), said he could also see anger in the younger refugees. “They say this situation is unacceptable, especially for us … they told the leaders if you didn’t want to [return to] war, you can go away … we want new leaders, who take us to war.”
When asked why they want war, many around the camps point to the poverty, purposelessness and boredom that pervade their lives. Some young men sleep until midday, waking only to perform a few menial tasks. Others whittle away days on end just making tea. “Some say it’s better to die than live this life.”
Last October, three aid workers were kidnapped from the Rabuni camp by al Qaeda, a group, incidentally strongly opposed by Polisario. But immediately following the kidnapping, some western reports suggested that the Sahrawi people support al Qaeda.
That is, of course, entirely untrue. At the current time.
But the longer a people live a marginalized, impoverished existence...and the longer the west is indifferent to their pleas for freedom...and the longer their lands are plundered...the more likely a group a frustrated young people will turn to warfare to achieve their ends. And the more likely they will be branded, incorrectly and ignorantly, as mere terrorists.
Like the Tuareg in the Agadez, the Sahrawi must have their right to self-determination realized, and it must be sooner rather than later.
If the United States is serious about combatting terrorism, then instead of sending in US troops to endlessly occupy culturally dissimilar nations; instead of only being concerned with oil-producing giants and military-industrial work contracts; instead of engaging in and supporting state-sponsored torture and branding all poor freedom fighters as terrorists; we could do far better by helping indigenous peoples realize their aspirations for independence and govern nations of their own.
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