Morocco's Occupation of the Saharawi People and Lands Must End

In my last blog article, I attempted to explain the half-century-long fight of the Tuareg people to preserve their homelands and traditional ways. (Tuareg Right to Self-Determination) Today, I turn my attention to a similar situation in northern Africa: the Western Sahara, which has the distinction of being the last “colony” on the African continent.

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:

Military occupation of their lands; prohibition of their speech and lifestyle (their flag is outlawed in Morocco-occupied Western Sahara); the literal building of walls to prevent their return; impoundment in refugee camps or reservations; ethnic discrimination; the branding of those yearning for freedom as “terrorists;” the intimidation and impoverishment of the people; plundering of national resources and destruction of property; and torture of captives (justified because they are “terrorists.”)

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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Tuareg Right to Self-Determination: Western Support Long Overdue

The Pattern is the same around the world: Wealthy nations colonize a native people, redrawing the existing political lines and importing ‘settlers’; Native people are marginalized and forced by government decree to conform and assimilate; and those who seek to preserve their own lifestyle and homeland are branded as “insurgents,” “guerillas,” and “terrorists.”

Recent news reports concerning the coup in Mali two days ago reflect the western journalistic trend to lightly – and ignorantly – brand native peoples as terrorists – especially if some government merely asserts it is so. For those of you who missed the news, a military coup took place in the western African nation of Mali two days ago. The coup was staged by army members who thought the government was too ‘soft’ in fighting Tuareg separatists in the northern parts of the country. And, as the pattern mentioned above suggests, those responsible for the coup have wasted no time in branding the Tuaregs as terrorists and in league with al Qaeda, in an effort to garner western support. And, true to form, much of the mainstream media have simply repeated what has been asserted without any sense of history of the area or context.

And so, a bit of that history is in order.

The Tuareg are a nomadic people, made famous by their indigo-colored clothing which often stains their skin, earning them the name “the Blue Men of the Sahara” by 20th Century writers. Numbering between 5 and 6 million, they inhabit the interior and most inhospitable parts of the Sahara Desert, traditionally serving as caravan guides and security, trading in salt and supplies across the Sahara between the Mediterranean north and the ‘greener and wetter’ lands to the south, and herding goats. Ethnically they are Berbers, not Arabs, and, though nominally Muslim, their religion is a syncretistic combination of Islam, animist and even Christian elements. As is necessary to their survival in the Saharan environment, they are a pragmatic rather than a theologically-driven people.

The Tuareg are well-known for their highly elaborate silver crosses which have become fairly common as western jewelry in recent years; the men, not the women, wear the traditional veil in this society. And Tuareg women own the family tents, the most prized form of property in the society.

When European powers carved up Africa, France took control of much of their homelands, calling the territory “French West Africa.” When this territory was carved up into the nations that make up the modern map of Africa in the 1960s, the Tuareg found their traditional homeland – “the Agadez” - divided between Mali, Niger, and Algeria. A smaller number of Tuareg were drawn into Libya as well.

The Tuareg opposed this political division, as it established international political borders across their historic and traditional nomadic routes. In reponse, the new Malian army brutally repressed the Tuareg, slaughtering hundreds of people and their livestock flocks. Malian military rule was then imposed on this region of Mali for 25 years.

Modern nations don’t like nomadic peoples. Nomads don’t pay taxes and are difficult to control. The Tuareg have endured ethnic discrimination and marginalization ever since the Agadez was carved up. In some places their language, Tamashek, was outlawed. The Arabs to the north look down on the Tuaregs as primitive people who have little affection for law and order, and see their religious belief system as apostate. To the south, the Black-African majority states have sought to shut out the light-skinned Tuaregs from both government and business. In Niger, for example, the government chose to invite Chinese workers to operate a uranium mine in the Agadez, leaving the local Tuaregs without jobs and saddled with pollution of their land and limited water supplies.

Draw new political lines. Fence them in. Outlaw their language. Discriminate based on ethnicity. Dominate with Military Force.

Isn’t this a story we’ve seen time and time again? The story of the Native Americans? The Gaelic-speaking Irish? Palestinians?

And so, lacking jobs and an ability to engage in their traditional lifestyles, the Tuareg – particularly in Mali – have been seeking their own homeland in an on-again, off-again rebellion for the last half-century.

Meanwhile, in Libya, Colonel Gaddhafi seized the opportunity to hire thousands of Tuaregs into his private militia. When the Gaddhafi regime fell, these trained – and armed - Tuareg returned to the Agadez. The number of returning Tuareg fighters range somewhere between 800 and 4,000. While all journalistic and political eyes were focused on the events in Libya, the returning warriors joined other independence-minded Tuareg and formed the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (Mouvement National de Liberation de l'Azawad) or MNLA. And the MNLA had some immediate success.

In January of this year, the MNLA routed the Malian army, which lost complete control of the Azawad region to the Tuareg. More than 1,000 Malian troops were killed, and their defeat was accompanied by the humiliation of having run out of ammunition. The MNLA issued a press release stating that it aimed "to free the people of Azawad from the illegal occupation of its territory by Mali". As indicated earlier, the Azawad region covers not only northern Mali, but northern Niger and southern Algeria as well. Suddenly, multiple African states - and the west - have become attentive and nervous. Within the last few weeks, the MNLA has been reinforced by Tuareg deserting the Malian army and young recruits from within the region. Estimates put the former as high as 1,500 and the latter at 500. The accompanying map shows Tuareg gains in the last 3 months.

In the wake of the success by the Tuareg, remaining members of the Malian army, bitter over their stunning defeat, turned their wrath on their own government, ousting Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and his cabinet and installing a military junta openly hostile to the Tuareg.

Which brings me to the most important part of this Blogpost.

Governments around the world are beginning to issue cautious statements about the overall situation. Journalists unfamiliar with the region are reaching for any quote they can get. And the new junta in Mali is issuing statements pleading for legitimacy. In all of this flurry, the Tuareg are being called everything from Islamicists to Al Qaeda allies.

They are neither.

They are, like so many indigenous people, asserting their right to their own homeland, one not drawn up by colonial powers and imposed on them.

One journalist who knows the situation well is Ben Barber, who has written about the developing world since 1980 for Newsday, the London Observer, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Times and USA TODAY. Yesterday, he was a bright spot in an otherwise foggy and murky reporting flurry, when he wrote:

“The United States, which has sent special forces, trainers and other troops to Mali and the region to fight Al Qaida, should lead diplomatic efforts to bring the Tuareg and the governments of Mali, Niger and Algeria, to the table with concrete proposals.

The Tuareg should have some say in the administration of resources in the desert. They should get access to land with water as they move their flocks away from a drought-affected region. They should be invited to join local governments, police and armies as equal citizens of their home countries. And a pan-Tuareg cultural or trade union could be formed to facilitate their nomadic journeys and preserve their unique lifestyle.”

Any effort to ignore the legitimate demands of the Tuareg can only become a self-fulfilling prophecy: at best, the 60-year old instability will continue to rock the region; but at worst, an ill-informed anti-Tuareg western response may drive yet another indigenous people right into the arms of the terrorists that we insist we are trying to defeat.

(For a similar story regarding the Sahwari people, see Morocco's Occupation of the Sahwari People... on this Blog)


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