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Western Sahara: Violence Brings Rare Attention
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Nov 17, 2010 (101117)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"On November 8, Moroccan occupation forces attacked a tent city of
as many as 12,000 Western Saharans just outside of Al Aioun, in the
culminating act of a months-long protest of discrimination against
the indigenous Sahrawi population and worsening economic
conditions. Not only was the scale of the crackdown unprecedented,
so was the popular reaction: In a dramatic departure from the
almost exclusively nonviolent protests of recent years, the local
population turned on their occupiers, engaging in widespread
rioting and arson." - Stephen Zunes
The turn to violence has attracted rare attention to Morocco's
long-standing occupation of Western Sahara, and the stalemate
despite continuing UN efforts to promote negotiations. Western
Sahara, not Morocco, is a member of the African Union. But
Morocco's Western allies, particularly France and the United
States, have declined to pressure Morocco to engage in serious
negotiations. Although there is a UN peacekeeping mission, the
mission's mandate includes no human rights component.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several updates, from the United
Nations and from the International Federation of Journalists, as
long as an analytical article by Stephen Zunes published by
OpenDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.org). Zunes is co-author,
with Jacob Mundy, of the recent book on the Saharan conflict
entitled Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict
Irresolution.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Western Sahara, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/westernsahara.php
For additional references, see particularly
http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/wsah1006.php
For Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy's new book, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0815632193
Additional articles by Stephen Zunes on Western Sahara are
available on http://stephenzunes.org/category/topic/africa/
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note++++++++++++++++++++
UN Security Council 'Deplores' Western Sahara Violence
16 November 2010, Margaret Besheer | United Nations
Voice of America http://www.voa.gov
The U.N. Security Council has deplored last week's deadly clashes
in Western Sahara, but has not said it will agree to a request from
the pro-independence Polisario Front for a U.N. investigation into
the violence.
The 15-member Security Council had private briefings Tuesday from
the U.N.'s department on peacekeeping and the Secretary-General's
personal envoy for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross.
Afterwards, the council expressed its condemnation of the recent
deaths and injuries during a raid on a protest camp city outside
the Western Saharan city of Laayoune. It reaffirmed its support for
the U.N. mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, and urged the
parties to demonstrate further political will towards a solution.
But the statement stopped short of calling for a U.N. or
independent investigation into the violence.
Ugandan Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda, who holds a non-permanent seat
on the council, told reporters that his country would like to see
a fact-finding mission dispatched.
"The Ugandan delegation would like to see facts established by the
United Nations or any other independent force, so that the world,
the humanitarian agencies and all those concerned, can know the
extent of the problem and how to deal with it," said Ruhakana
Rugunda.
He said Uganda would also like to see full access granted to
humanitarian organizations, and he criticized the lack of a human
rights monitoring component to the U.N. Mission. MINURSO is the
only U.N. mission to not have such a component, despite past
attempts by some Security Council members to enlarge the mission's
mandate to include one. Morocco is strongly opposed to such a
component, and critics say its ally, veto-wielding Security Council
member France, has blocked the addition of a human rights component
to the mission.
Morocco's U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Loulichki told reporters his
government has nothing to hide and would share all of its
information on the recent violence with MINURSO.
But Ahmed Boukhari, the representative of the Polisario Front, said
the Moroccan government is not credible and the Polisario would
continue to ask for an independent investigation.
"We say that, in any case, the conclusion of the debate, even
deploring what has happened is not enough," said Ahmed Boukhari.
"We would like to continue to ask the Security Council members to
allow a full investigation of what has happened. We believe -
Polisario - the information we have gathered is indicating that a
huge tragedy took place in Western Sahara."
The Polisario says dozens of people were killed in the raid, but
Morocco says the death toll was much lower, and includes 10 members
of its security forces.
The United Nations has been seeking a settlement in Western Sahara
since the withdrawal of Spain in 1976, and fighting ensued between
Morocco and the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria. Morocco has
offered Western Sahara autonomy, but the Polisario says it wants a
referendum on self-determination, with independence as an option.
Western Sahara: IFJ Rejects 'Baseless' Accusations Against Spanish
Media in Morocco
16 November 2010
http://allafrica.com/stories/201011160932.html
International Federation of Journalists (Brussels) -
http://www.ifj.org/
press release
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on
the Moroccan authorities to lower the temperature of its criticism
of Spanish media which have been accused of being 'hateful' and
'racist'.
These attacks, targeting in particular the ABC newspaper, come in
the wake of a series of restrictions on foreign journalists,
including the withdrawal last week of the accreditation of Luis de
Vega, ABC Correspondent in Morocco.
"There is no basis for accusing Spanish journalists of racism and
hatred in their coverage of the crisis in Western Sahara," said
Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "The Moroccan attacks are
misguided and the authorities should calm down and focus instead on
allowing journalists the right to report independently on the
crisis. The withdrawal of Luis de Vega's accreditation is an
unacceptable interference in journalists' affairs."
Moroccan officials have escalated their attacks on Spanish
journalists since the events in Laayoune last week, accusing media
in Spain of bias reporting on events in Western Sahara. Yesterday,
the Information Minister, Jalid Naciri in a press conference
accused some Spanish media of being hateful and racist. The attack
follows the decision last week to ban flights to Laayone which
affected many Spanish journalists. On Friday Luis de Vega was told
he could no longer work as journalist in Morocco.
The IFJ says these actions raise concerns over the commitment of
Morocco's to press freedom.
"The ill-tempered language from Morocco has not been helpful. This
is the time to focus on professional quality and solidarity, not to
be divisive and make baseless accusations," added White. "Luis de
Vega must be reinstated and all journalists allowed to visit
unhindered the zone they wish to report on."
Western Sahara: Parties to UN-Backed Talks Agree to Meet Again Next
Month
10 November 2010
http://allafrica.com/stories/201011101023.html
http://www.un.org
The third round of United Nations-backed informal talks on the
dispute over Western Sahara has ended with Morocco and the Frente
Polisario agreeing to continue their discussions next month and
again early next year.
The UN has been involved in efforts towards a settlement in Western
Sahara since 1976, when fighting broke out between Morocco and the
Frente Polisario after the Spanish colonial administration of the
territory ended.
Morocco has presented a plan for autonomy while the position of the
Frente Polisario is that the territory's final status should be
decided in a referendum on self-determination that includes
independence as an option.
According to a communiqué issued last night at the end of the
talks, which took place outside New York City at the invitation of
the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara,
Christopher Ross, the parties engaged in "broad and frank"
discussions of each other's proposals.
This is despite the fact that "each party continues to reject the
proposal of the other as a basis for future negotiations," stated
the communiqué.
"To create an environment propitious for progress, the parties have
started to build a new dynamic for the next steps of the
negotiating process," it added.
The communiqué also noted that, for the first time, the delegations
of the two parties and the two neighbouring States, Algeria and
Mauritania, together discussed the programme of Confidence Building
Measures set out by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Among the elements of the programme, which was launched in 2004,
are flights aimed at connecting Sahrawi refugees living in camps in
Algeria's Tindouf region with their relatives in the territory of
Western Sahara.
The parties agreed to resume family visits by air without delay and
accelerate the inauguration of family visits by road. The four
delegations plan to meet with the UNHCR to further discuss these
issues.
It was decided at the end of the talks, which began on Monday amid
clashes on the ground between Moroccan security forces and Sahrawi
protesters which reportedly resulted in a number of deaths and
injuries, that the parties will continue their discussions again in
December as well as early next year.
Upsurge in repression challenges nonviolent resistance in Western
Sahara
Stephen Zunes, 17th November 2010
Open Democracy
http://www.opendemocracy.net /
direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/37dcy4l
Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as
advisory committee chair of the International Center on Nonviolent
Conflict. His most recent book (co-authored with Jacob Mundy) is
Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution
(Syracuse University Press, 2010)
Summary: Sahrawis have engaged in protests, strikes, cultural
celebrations, and other forms of civil resistance focused on such
issues as educational policy, human rights, the release of
political prisoners, and the right to self-determination. They have
also raised the cost of occupation for the Moroccan government and
increased the visibility of the Sahrawi cause.
On November 8, Moroccan occupation forces attacked a tent city of
as many as 12,000 Western Saharans just outside of Al Aioun, in the
culminating act of a months-long protest of discrimination against
the indigenous Sahrawi population and worsening economic
conditions. Not only was the scale of the crackdown
unprecedented, so was the popular reaction: In a dramatic
departure from the almost exclusively nonviolent protests of recent
years, the local population turned on their occupiers, engaging in
widespread rioting and arson. As of this writing, the details of
these events are unclear, but they underscore the urgent need for
global civil society to support those who have been struggling
nonviolently for their right of self-determination and to challenge
western governments which back the regime responsible for the
repression.
Western Sahara is a sparsely-populated nation located on the
Atlantic coast of northwestern Africa. Traditionally inhabited by
nomadic Arab tribes, collectively known as Sahrawis and famous for
their long history of resistance to outside domination, the land
was occupied by Spain from the late 1800s through the mid-1970s.
The nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed independence
struggle against Spain in 1973, and Madrid eventually promised the
people of what was then still known as the Spanish Sahara a
referendum on the fate of the territory by the end of 1975.
Irredentist claims by Morocco and Mauritania were brought before
the International Court of Justice, which ruled in favour of the
Sahrawis' right to self-determination. A special Visiting Mission
from the United Nations engaged in an investigation that same year
and reported that the vast majority of Sahrawis supported
independence under the leadership of the Polisario, not integration
with Morocco or Mauritania. Under pressure from the United States,
which did not want to see the leftist Polisario come to power,
Spain reneged on its promise for a referendum and instead agreed to
partition the territory between the pro-Western countries of
Morocco and Mauritania.
As Moroccan forces moved into Western Sahara, most of the
population fled to refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. Morocco
and Mauritania rejected a series of unanimous UN Security Council
resolutions calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces and
recognition of the Sahrawis' right of self-determination. The
United States and France, meanwhile, despite voting in favor of
these resolutions, blocked the UN from enforcing them. Meanwhile,
the Polisario - which had been driven from the more heavily
populated northern and western parts of the country - declared
independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Thanks in
part to the Algerians providing significant amounts of military
equipment and economic support, Polisario guerrillas fought well
against both occupying armies. Mauritania was defeated by 1979,
agreeing to turn their third of Western Sahara over to the
Polisario. However, the Moroccans then annexed that remaining
southern part of the country as well.
The Polisario then focused their armed struggle against Morocco
and, by 1982, had liberated nearly 85% of their country. Over the
next four years, however, the tide of the war was reversed in
Morocco's favor thanks to dramatic increases in American and French
support for the Moroccan war effort, with U.S. forces providing
important training for the Moroccan army in counter-insurgency
tactics and helping with the construction of a wall which kept the
Polisario out of most of their country. Meanwhile, the Moroccan
government, through generous housing subsidies and other benefits,
successfully encouraged thousands of Moroccan settlers to immigrate
to Western Sahara. By the early 1990s, these Moroccan settlers
outnumbered the remaining Sahrawis indigenous to the territory by
a ratio of more than 2:1.
A cease fire in 1991 was part of an agreement that would have
allowed for the return of Sahrawi refugees to Western Sahara
followed by a UN-supervised referendum on the fate of the
territory. Neither the repatriation nor the referendum took place,
however, due to Moroccan insistence on stacking the voter rolls
with Moroccan settlers and other Moroccan citizens that it claimed
had tribal links to Western Sahara. To break the stalemate, the UN
Security Council passed a resolution in 2004 which would allow
Moroccan settlers to also vote in the referendum following five
years of autonomy. Morocco, however, rejected this proposal too,
with the apparent reassurance that the French and Americans would
yet again threaten to veto any resolution imposing sanctions or
other pressures on them to compromise.
Unarmed popular resistance
As happened during the 1980s in both South Africa and the
Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, the locus of the Western
Sahara freedom struggle shifted from the military and diplomatic
initiatives of an exiled armed movement to a largely unarmed
popular resistance from within, as young activists in the occupied
territory and even in Sahrawi-populated parts of southern Morocco
confronted Moroccan troops in street demonstrations and other forms
of nonviolent action, despite the risk of shootings, mass arrests,
and torture. Sahrawis from different sectors of society have
engaged in protests, strikes, cultural celebrations, and other
forms of civil resistance focused on such issues as educational
policy, human rights, the release of political prisoners, and the
right to self-determination. They also raised the cost of
occupation for the Moroccan government and increased the visibility
of the Sahrawi cause. Indeed, perhaps most significantly, civil
resistance helped to build support for the Sahrawi movement among
international NGO's, solidarity groups and even sympathetic
Moroccans.
Internet communication became a key element in the Saharawi
movement, with public chat rooms evolving as vital centres for
sending messages, as breaking news regarding the burgeoning
resistance campaign reached those in the Saharawi diaspora and
among international activists. Despite attempts by the Moroccans
to disrupt these contacts, the diaspora has continued to provide
financial and other support to the resistance. Though there have
been complaints from inside the territory that support for their
movement by the older generation of Polisario leaders was
inadequate, the Polisario appears to have recognized that by having
signed a cease-fire and then having had Morocco reject the
diplomatic solution expected in return, it has essentially played
all its cards. So there was a growing recognition that the only
real hope for independence has to come from within the occupied
territory in combination with solidarity efforts from global civil
society. There have been some small victories, such as the
successful campaign which led to Sahrawi nonviolent resistance
leader Aminatou Haidar securing the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human
Rights Award, as well as forcing Moroccan authorities to reverse
their expulsion order in December 2009, which resulted in her
near-fatal 30-day hunger strike.
After Moroccan authorities' use of force to break up the large and
prolonged demonstrations in 2005 -2006, the resistance subsequently
opted mainly for smaller protests, some of which were planned and
some of which were spontaneous. A typical protest would begin on
a street corner or a plaza where a Sahrawi flag would be unfurled,
women would start ululating, and people would begin chanting
pro-independence slogans. Within a few minutes, soldiers and police
would arrive, and the crowd would quickly scatter. Other tactics
have included leafleting, graffiti (including tagging the homes of
collaborators), and cultural celebrations with political overtones.
Such nonviolent actions, while broadly supported by the people,
appear to have been less a part of coordinated resistance than a
result of action by individuals. Still, the Moroccan government's
regular use of violent repression to subdue the Sahrawi-led
nonviolent protests suggests that civil resistance is seen as a
threat to Moroccan control.
One of the obstacles to the internal resistance is that Moroccan
settlers outnumber the indigenous population by a ratio of more
than 2:1 and by more in the major cities, making certain tactics
used effectively in similar struggles more problematic. For
example, although a general strike could be effective, the large
number of Moroccan settlers, combined with the minority of
indigenous Sahrawis who oppose independence, could likely fill the
void resulting from the absence of much of the Sahrawi workforce.
Although that might be alleviated by growing pro-independence
sentiments among ethnic Sahrawi settlers from the southern part of
Morocco, it still presents challenges that have not been faced by
largely nonviolent struggles in other occupied lands - among them
East Timor, Kosovo, and the Palestinian territories.
A shift in Morocco's strategy
Despite this, civil resistance also appears to have forced a shift
in Morocco's strategy to maintain control of the mineral-rich
territory. Although the Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory
put forward in 2006 does not meaningfully address Morocco's legal
responsibility to recognize the Sahrawi's right of
self-determination (see my Open Democracy article More Harm Than
Good), it nevertheless constitutes a reversal of Morocco's
historical insistence that Western Sahara is as much a part of
Morocco as other provinces by acknowledging that it is indeed a
distinct entity. Protests in Western Sahara in recent years have
begun to raise some awareness within Morocco, especially among
intellectuals, human rights activists, pro-democracy groups, and
some moderate Islamists - long suspicious of the government line in
a number of areas - that not all Sahrawis see themselves as
Moroccans and that there exists a genuine indigenous opposition to
Moroccan rule.
In the occupied territory, Moroccan colonists and collaborators are
given preference for housing and employment and the indigenous
people receive virtually no benefits from their country's rich
fisheries and phosphate deposits. In response, a new tactic
emerged late this summer, as Sahrawi activists erected the tent
city about 15 kilometers outside of El Aioun, the former colonial
capital and largest city in the occupied territory. Since any
protests calling for self-determination, independence, or
enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions are brutally
suppressed, the demonstrators pointedly avoided such provocative
calls, instead simply demanding economic justice. Even this was
too much for the Moroccan monarchy, however, which was determined
to crush this nonviolent act of mass defiance. The Moroccans
tightened the siege in early October, attacking vehicles bringing
food, water and medical supplies to the camp, resulting in scores
of injuries and the death of a 14-year old boy.
Finally, on November 8, the Moroccans attacked the camp, driving
protesters out with tear gas and hoses, beating those who did not
flee fast enough, setting off rioting and triggering the burning
and pillaging of Sahrawis homes and shops, with occupation forces
shooting or arresting suspected activists, hundreds of whom
disappeared after the outbreak of violence.
Morocco has been able to persist in flouting its international
legal obligations toward Western Sahara largely because France and
the United States have continued to arm Moroccan occupation forces
and blocked the enforcement of resolutions in the UN Security
Council demanding that Morocco allow for self-determination or even
simply the stationing of unarmed human rights monitors in the
occupied country. So now, at least as important as nonviolent
resistance by Sahrawis is the potential of nonviolent action by the
citizens of France, the United States, and other countries that
enable Morocco to maintain its occupation. Such campaigns played a
major role in forcing Australia, Great Britain, and the United
States to end their support for Indonesia's occupation of East
Timor.
Despite 35 years of exile, war, repression and international
neglect, Sahrawi nationalism is at least as strong within the
younger generation as their elders, as is their will to resist.
How soon they will succeed in their struggle for
self-determination, however, may well rest on such acts of
international solidarity by global civil society.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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