The current tensions between Spain and Morocco originated in November 1975, when the extremely weak Francoist Spain signed the Madrid Tripartite Agreement with Morocco and Mauritania as a result of a very astute move by Hassan II: the Green March. This agreement ceded the temporary administration of what until then had been just another Spanish province. Since then, the Western Sahara conflict has gone through several stages, without any of the disputing parties having achieved their objectives to date.
The UN
For the UN – which as early as 1960 identified the territory as subject to colonial domination and therefore recognised its right to self-determination – it has been impossible to implement its original idea and its 1991 peace plan, which envisaged the deployment of a United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). In practice the good offices of the UN special envoys, including the so-called Baker Plan (validated by the Security Council in July 2003), have been of little use in the face of Morocco’s reluctance to accept the idea of a popular referendum on self-determination, even after having achieved acceptance of its proposal to allow the participation of many of the settlers it had been installing in the occupied territory.
In fact, since 2008, successive Security Council resolutions have even failed to mention the referendum, de facto assuming the Moroccan position expressed by its monarch in 2004 and which offers limited autonomy to the Saharawis under Moroccan sovereignty. Moreover, the post of special envoy for the Sahara has remained vacant since May 2019, a clear sign of disinterest in finding solutions to the conflict.
Saharawis
For the Saharawis, divided between those who continue to inhabit the area occupied by Rabat and those who chose to become refugees in the Algerian hamada of Tindouf, neither the dying leadership of the Polisario Front (created in 1973) nor the creation, in 1976, of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR, a member of the African Union, but not recognized by the UN) have allowed them to exercise their right to opt for a state of their own. Those who live in what Morocco calls the “southern provinces” are visibly marginalised and those who live in the “southern provinces” are not allowed to exercise their right to choose a state of their own. who live in the camps in Tindouf can hardly find a minimally solid basis to cover their basic needs (dependent on a dwindling international charity).
In the military field, as demonstrated by the declaration of “total war” proclaimed by the Polisario on 14 November following a Moroccan military action that broke the 1991 ceasefire, it is inevitable to conclude that they do not have sufficient means to counterbalance the power of the Royal Armed Forces. And in the diplomatic field it is equally obvious that they have been left practically alone (with Algeria as their last support), without support that would allow them to minimally compensate for what Rabat has accumulated, with the United States and France in the lead. This support has also served to ensure that MINURSO has never had the mandate to monitor respect for human rights in its area of responsibility.
Morocco
For Morocco, sovereignty over the territory is one of the few points of convergence of all the social and political voices in the country, even though the International Court of Justice ruled in 1975 that there were no sovereignty ties between the Sahara and the Alawi kingdom. Even so, the crown has managed to win supporters for the cause and turn it into a fundamental pillar of the national agenda and an anchor point for the monarchy itself. To this is added a considerable investment effort to exploit (with the active connivance of the European Union in its fishing and agricultural agreements) the resources of the area, which it already controls 80%, protected by the 2,700km of walls built up to 1991 as part of its military campaigns.
Thanks to its military superiority (with some 100,000 troops deployed), the collaboration of the hundreds of thousands of settlers located there and the growing international support gathered over the years, Rabat understands that time is on its side. And Donald Trump’s gift in the form of recognition of Moroccan sovereignty is what has made it grow to the point of daring to take a step that it believed to be definitive in order to convince all and sundry of its sovereign will. It is in this context that we must understand the political crisis that Mohamed VI has decided to provoke over the last few weeks, playing with the lives of his own people and making even more visible the misery to which he condemns them.
Spain
For Spain, along with the persistence of theially pro-Saharawi, the position of successive governments has swung from an initial attempt to comply with what was agreed in Madrid and in line with UN guidelines, to the current more pro-Moroccan position, although appearances may indicate otherwise.
For decades Spain has shielded itself behind a formal position of “active neutrality”, which implies strictly conforming to what the UN determines, knowing that this body is, in real terms, inoperative. In reality, this position, which incidentally entails an abandonment of historical responsibility towards a population that has been left to its own devices, barely conceals the calculation that as long as the conflict drags on and Morocco is so intent on imposing its dictates there, the less pressure there will be on Ceuta, Melilla and other Spanish territories in North Africa (all of them claimed by Rabat, not forgetting the Canary Islands).
In the past decade, however, this position has given way to another that, in exchange for Rabat’s collaboration in the fight against Jihadist terrorism, drug trafficking and irregular emigration, has shown itself willing to forget the Saharawi cause, reducing it to a residual humanitarian issue. And so, by falling into a recurrent blackmailing scheme promoted by Rabat, Spain has been exposed both to its own population, which still remembers what happened, and to Rabat, which does not hesitate to exert even more pressure in order to tip the scales in its favour.
Thus international law, the UN and, above all, the Saharawi population lose; but at this point it only remains to be seen how far the refugees from Tindouf will resist before the Polisario is finally overcome by its own people or before it returns to the negotiating table to accept the framework designed by Morocco. And until that time comes, it is unfortunately easy to predict that there will continue to be more disappointment and more suffering.
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