war in western sahara

Strategic Studies Institute and US Army War College Press, 2013, Academia.edu uses cookies to personalize content, tailor ads and improve the user experience. On 13 November 2020, war returned to Western Sahara after a 29 year ceasefire. In turn, Morocco received the support of its Western Cold War allies for a war that lasted 16 years; Mauritania withdrew from the conflict in 1979. The north African territory sits on the western edge of the Sahara desert, stretching along about 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) of Atlantic coastline. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat has described “the Western Sahara conflict remains the oldest unresolved conflict on the continent.” While technically not true (the conflict in Katanga which dates to 1960 is a decade older) the quote speaks to the perception of the conflict as an intractable one. Western Sahara War Archive The Western Sahara War Archive (WSWA) aims to inform and to organize data about the latest stage of the last colonial war in Africa, which started on 13th November 2020 in Western Sahara. Responding to Shaykh Ma’lainin’s 1905 fatwa against French and Spanish colonial intrusions, Sahrawi warriors staged attacks on a border that was blocking their access to pastures and trans-Saharan trade networks. Time to continue urbanizing and settling Western Sahara. [2] The SADR is a polity in southern Algeria where close to 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live under the Polisario Front’s leadership. A Liberation War . [2] Vivian Solana, “Hospitality’s Prowess: Performing Sahrawi Sovereignty in Refugee Camps,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 42/2 (2019). However, Morocco continues to occupy the Saharawi territory without any respect to UN resolutions on decolonization. A war was fought until 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire and installed a peacekeeping force – the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known by its French acronym, MINURSO. They either willfully ignored the human rights violations that they seemingly condemn or even actively helped Morocco by backing the Moroccan military. This resumed war communicates the willingness that many Sahrawi people have to die (and to see their loved ones die) before becoming subjects of a regime they did not choose. A brief history of Western Sahara. Tellingly, between 1950 and 1983, over 90 percent of U.S. arms deliveries to Morocco occurred during the first 7 years of the Western Sahara war. Why Does Morocco Hide The Ongoing War In Western Sahara? Guns and bombs are blazing again in Africa’s most contested land of Western Sahara desert bringing an end to a ceasefire that has been in place for the past 29 years. When Spain, the former colonial power, withdrew from the territory in 1975, Morocco took it over. This event followed unsuccessful attempts to peacefully negotiate the independence of what was then known as Spanish Sahara. On 20 May he led the Khanga raid, Polisario's first armed action,[citation needed… Rabat, 4 January 2021 (SPS) – Researcher, journalist and former agent of the Moroccan intelligence services Farid Boukas spoke on his Facebook page of a lack of confidence and serenity within the command of the Moroccan army after the outbreak of the 2nd war in Western Sahara. The Spanish occupied Western Sahara from the mid-1880s until 1975. Ten years after Gdeim Izik, the latest expression of Sahrawi political resistance is again rendered invisible. In response to this new violation of the 1991 UN-mediated ceasefire, the secretary general of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, acquiesced to the popular will of Sahrawi refugees by making the long-awaited announcement that the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) would resume its armed struggle. Tensions between the Moroccan government and Sahrawis flared up in November of last year, leading Reuters to title a report on the incident Fears grow of new Western Sahara war … Sahrawis participate in the sit-in blocking the road at the Guergarat crossing from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara to Mauritania, through the UN buffer zone. Storytime: Polisario’s Imagined War in Western Sahara Explained Polisario’s war in theory. Boukas used the “N24” web channel to report the recruitment of 600 agents in charge of conducting … Polisario’s war in theory. Polisario Front Renews War in Western Sahara. The fact that this road was built under the passive watch of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) only served to heighten Sahrawi indignation. Western Sahara does not control its own airspace - it falls within both the GCCC/Canarias and the GOOO/Dakar FIRs, which may complicate airspace management should the conflict escalate. To those of us who study and follow news about the conflict over Western Sahara closely, the scant and distorted coverage that Sahrawi political expression receives is far from unfamiliar. To learn more, view our, Guerrilla Operations in Western Sahara: The Polisario versus Morocco and Mauritania, Terrorist organisation or liberation movement? ... “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic” between Mauritania and the areas under its control in Western Sahara. It became a protectorate of Spain in the 19th century and was later claimed by Morocco, Mauritania, and local inhabitants. The post-Cold War shift in Western foreign policy from containing communism to containing Islamic fundamentalism underscores why maintaining friendly relations with Morocco’s regime was prioritized over ensuring respect for Sahrawi political rights and enforcing the application of international law in the region. FacebookTwitter Rabat – Is there a war going on in Western Sahara? As such, Morocco violated the terms of the UN-mediated peace process, which both parties had agreed to in 1991, when it first opened a passage through the berm in 2001 and started building a road across the zone to Mauritania in 2016 without Sahrawi consent. Support for the Western Sahara as an independent state has ebbed over the years because of the growing importance of Morocco's $110 billion economy – … The new war between Morocco and the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army has started in western Sahara after a 30-year ceasefire in the region. And as the European nation abandoned its occupation, it handed control of the territory over to a joint administration run by Morocco and a French-backed Mauritania. [8] Victoria Veguilla, “Changes in Moroccan Public Policies in the Western Sahara and International Law: Adjustments to a New Social Context in Dakhla” in Raquel Ojeda García, Irene Fernández-Molina and Victoria Veguilla, eds. Compared to the over 50,000 protesters who congregated in iconic public squares such as Tahrir in Cairo, the absolute number of Sahrawi protesters was small (around 15,000–20,000). The current war in the area known as the Western Sahara began in 1975, when the area then known as the Spanish Sahara was evacuated by its Spanish rulers. "Given that war has flared up again in Western Sahara, as a direct consequence of Morocco's plunder of the territory, we call on Russia to suspend this new agreement, and refrain from engaging in any activity in Western Sahara until the conflict has been settled in line with international law", Eyckmans told. As a Spanish-Canadian anthropologist, my account of the significance of Western Sahara’s resumed war is heavily influenced by the many relationships I formed with Sahrawis while carrying out long-term ethnographic research in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The territory remained disputed between Morocco and local forces well into the 21st century. [1] More than a century later, on November 13, 2020, Morocco’s army forcefully removed the Sahrawi protesters blocking the road. About 600,000 people live in Western Sahara, a desert about the size of the United Kingdom. 5/December/2020 (All photos by Limam Bachir.) Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971. By Leila Belkacem, Rachel Huang & Anabel Ropero. It may also open opportunities for narco-traffickers who are increasingly using the Western Sahara as a transit area to increase their activities. About 600,000 people live in Western Sahara, a desert roughly the size of the UK. • An official and unofficial Moroccan media alert has been issued to respond to a report broadcast on Algerian public television, documenting the ongoing battles between the Saharawi army and the Moroccan army in the contact areas in the occupied Saharawi territories, in the aftermath of the Guerguerat incident, which caused … It is never over until it is over. The Polisario engaged in a 16 year war with the kingdom which ended with a ceasefire and a referendum plan on independence. Western Sahara War Archive The Western Sahara War Archive (WSWA) aims to inform and to organize data about the latest stage of the last colonial war in Africa, which started on 13th November 2020 in Western Sahara. The Western Sahara, or former Spanish Sahara, is an expanse of desert measuring over 260,000 square kilometers, bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. I mean war. [6] Raquel Ojeda-García and Joanna Allan, eds., “Why do Natural Resources Matter in the Western Sahara Conflict? Morocco controls about 80% of the … We often forget that it takes two to tango, and the war that broke out recently between Morocco and Western Sahara could only continue because the international community stood idly by. The Polisario, formed a few years earlier to fight for independence from Spain, opposed Morocco’s occupation. The main driver of this colonisation is natural resources. Boukas used the “N24” web channel to report the recruitment of 600 agents in charge of conducting … Approximately half of the Sahrawi population resides in the SADR, which is the result of a social revolution by Saharan nomadic pastoralists to make their longstanding notions of the political commensurate with the form of the nation-state. There is a new U.S. war in Western Sahara, being waged by Morocco with the support of the U.S. military. "Given that war has flared up again in Western Sahara, as a direct consequence of Morocco's plunder of the territory, we call on Russia to suspend this new agreement, and refrain from engaging in any activity in Western Sahara until the conflict has been settled in … We use cookies for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to analyse how our Sites are used. A new burst of energy is palpable online as young Sahrawi men and women organize livestreams and post regular images of demonstrations in the SADR and in the diaspora. Depending on the source, the answer can be a definite “yes,” or a chuckle-inducing “no.” Algeria and Polisario sources are claiming a true “hot war” is taking place on Morocco’s southern borders, for Morocco all appears calm on its southern front. The Polisario front's classification, A battlefield transformed: from guerilla resistance to mass nonviolent struggle in the Western Sahara, Making History in the Sahara: Historiography in the Nationalist Discourse of the Polisario Front, 1973-1976 - Healy Thesis. War has broken out in Western Sahara and few have heard the news. Progress on the issue has been at a standstill ever since Morocco and the Polisario Front signed a cease-fire agreement in 1991, but Rabat recently scored a few diplomatic wins, such as the United States’ move to recognise Moroccan sovereignty over … Other Human Rights Issues Related to The Western Sahara Conflict Rabat, 4 January 2021 (SPS) - Researcher, journalist and former agent of the Moroccan intelligence services Farid Boukas spoke on his Facebook page of a lack of confidence and serenity within the command of the Moroccan army after the outbreak of the 2nd war in Western Sahara. "The Security Council hasn't also broached the alarming deterioration of the situation in occupied Western Sahara, where the occupation authorities continue their attempts to … The current war in Western Sahara may be invisible to most, but it is leaving its mark on Sahrawi history. [3] Alice Wilson, “On the Margins of the Arab Spring,” Social Analysis 57/2 (2012). Inspired by Israel’s Bar Lev Line, it has bunkers, fences, motion radars and minefields and is defended by 100,000 soldiers. The story of Western Sahara is one of resistance, one of plunder, and one of colonialism. [11] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963), p 83. The most notable and documented case was the bombing of civilian encampments of internally displaced Sahrawis during the early phases of the war in late 1975 and early 1976, a clear violation of Hague Article 23. Following a guerilla strategy of tenacious harassment, the SPLA’s attacks on the wall send clear political messages, even if they are not delivering enough carnage to make headlines. The irony that the violence of ongoing occupation has coexisted with the practice of international peacekeeping in the territory certainly does not escape Sahrawis themselves. In October 2020 a group of Sahrawis stopped traffic across the road for 22 days—not the first time that the border between Western Sahara and northern Mauritania has taken center stage in this territorial conflict. As a result, Saharan political identities occupy a blind spot in social scientific area studies. Since the war’s declaration, the SADR’s official news agency has been sharing regular news of missile strikes against military positions along Morocco’s berm. In 1991, a ceasefire agreement was reached on the premise that the UN would step in to mediate the terms of a referendum on the self-determination of the territory. To Sahrawis, the road represents one of Morocco’s latest efforts to profit from the illegal commercialization of Western Sahara’s resources, further encroaching upon their right to determine the political status of the non-self-governing territory. At the same time, patriotic images of mothers waving goodbye to their sons dressed in military fatigues as they jump onto the back of trucks heading for the battlefront in Western Sahara, rumors of injured and deceased soldiers, footage of decimated camel herds and reports of rampant policing of Sahrawi activists who live under Moroccan occupation have began circulating through Sahrawi social media pages in abundance. According to the press agency of Algeria and that of Polisario itself, its militias are actively fighting in Western Sahara. Western Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الغربية‎‎ aṣ-Ṣaḥrā' al-Gharbiyyah; Berber languages: Taneẓroft Tutrimt; Spanish: Sáhara Occidental) is a disputed territory on the northwest coast and in the Maghreb region of North and West Africa. Guergarat lies in a United Nations (UN) monitored buffer zone. The Polisario Front resisted this re-imposition of colonial governance over Western Sahara by continuing its armed struggle. Seeking to interrupt a peace process that was providing time to bloat the colonization of Western Sahara, the SPLA’s missiles directly target a military berm but, more obliquely, they aim to open up space for Sahrawi futures. Its first Secretary General was El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed. By retaining longstanding nomadic practices and values, their anti-colonial movement sustains and regenerates itself in diaspora, through practices of human mobility and within the sovereign spaces of other nation-states. At a crossroads between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, the Saharan desert has long been misconstrued in colonial discourses as a largely unpeopled geography deemed culturally marginal and largely assimilable to Maghrebi post-colonial nation-states. When Spain, a former colonial power, withdrew from the territory in 1975, Morocco took it back. Executive Summary. The Polisario Front has called attention to this illegal passage many times before, including through its refusal on several occasions to allow the Africa Eco Race (also known as the Monaco-Dakar Rally) to cross through it. The Polisario engaged in a 16 year war with the kingdom which ended with a ceasefire and a referendum plan on independence. This would be in no one’s best interest. The Polisario Front was formally constituted on 10 May 1973 in the Mauritanian city of Zouirate, with the express intention of militarily forcing an end to Spanish colonization. This failure has been mainly due to Morocco’s obstruction of repeated efforts to organize the referendum, culminating in the May 2019 resignation of the UN Secretary General’s personal envoy to Western Sahara, Horst Köhler. Given the precarious nature of the situation, it is essential for the international community to move quickly to ensure this obscure conflict does not spiral into full open war. 1 More recently, the territory, known to Moroccans as the "southern provinces," has hosted intifada-style protests, violent confrontations, continued repression by Moroccan authorities, and growing discontent among the younger generation. Throughout much of the ceasefire period, the conflict over Western Sahara has been described as “frozen,” “locked” or “stalled” and as a stubborn “zero-sum” game between two parties. They are using online video messages, poems and memes in different languages to bring attention to their resumed armed struggle and to share information and perspectives among themselves. Third, it is worth noting that during the war for Western Sahara (1975-1991), Moroccan forces also committed war crimes. The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since 1991 after a ceasefire was reached to end a war that broke out when … The War in Western Sahara. The territory remained disputed between Morocco and local forces well into the … When outside observers declare their concern for these “escalating tensions,” “latest skirmishes” and a “re-ignited conflict,” few choose to utter the far more sobering label that Sahrawis themselves are using to describe the latest expression of their political resistance: war. As I […] Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony mostly under Morocco’s control. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, while the remaining 80% of the territory is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. Joseph Hammond The United States should pay careful attention to the brewing conflict in the Sahara which if left unchecked could contribute to destabilizing forces across North Africa and the Sahel. © Middle East Research and Information Project. The territory, which traditionally had a tribal, nomadic population, was under Spanish occupation from 1904 until 1975. Reading time: 7 minutes. The Western Sahara War was an armed struggle between Western Saharaball with it's Sahrawi indigenous Polisario Front and Moroccoball between 1975 and 1991,being the most significant phase of The Western Sahara Conflict. This Sahrawi uprising was forcefully dismantled by the Moroccan government only a few weeks prior to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia, an event which is often considered the beginning of the Arab uprisings. It became a protectorate of Spain in the 19th century and was later claimed by Morocco, Mauritania, and local inhabitants. In this way, like many indigenous peoples worldwide, the Sahrawi have long reproduced their life-worlds in the margins of global attention. War brews in Western Sahara as Trump strikes Morocco-Israel deal A hilltop manned by Moroccan soldiers in the Western Sahara. The war in Western Sahara is being rendered invisible to protect what has been a productive status quo for Morocco and its powerful international allies. [9] Time to obtain unprecedented overt political support for its occupation, including, as became evident after one of former President Trump’s final tweets, from the United States.[10]. Is this a meaningful task in a society overloaded with … [8] Time to consolidate a regional administration that attempts to assimilate Sahrawi identity into Morocco’s regime. Anti-colonial resistance in and around this border can be traced back to when it was first built by European colonizers in the early twentieth century. Morocco believes that the area is part of its sovereign land. When Spain left, neighboring Morocco and Mauritania sent in military forces, dividing the former Spanish colony between them. The long-dormant war in the Western Sahara, interrupted for the past 30 years by a truce, is erupting into renewed violence with military clashes between the Moroccan military and the Polisario Front. The Western Sahara conflict is bathed in misinformation and propaganda for one sole reason, because all sides involved are fighting an impossible war. These clashes represent the most serious violence between the two sides since the 1991 truce took effect. When Spain left, neighboring Morocco and Mauritania sent in military forces, dividing the former Spanish colony between them. But 30 years after the UN peace mission MINURSO was dispatched to the region, the referendum that Sahrawi people had settled for has not yet taken place. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Rabat, 4 January 2021 (SPS) – Researcher, journalist and former agent of the Moroccan intelligence services Farid Boukas spoke on his Facebook page of a lack of confidence and serenity within the command of the Moroccan army after the outbreak of the 2nd war in Western Sahara. Western Sahara. Today the Polisario Front explicitly identifies these early warriors as their predecessors. As Wilson argued, the fact that Gdeim Izik took place in “make-shift camps in the desert” contributed to the neglect of this Sahrawi uprising within the overall narrative of the Arab Spring. Polisario Flag. Morocco controls about 80% of the … Moroccan military incursions into disputed region of Western Sahara threaten to restart Polisario armed struggle against "occupation" Threat of war emerges again in Western Sahara | … HINT: Western Sahara is the disputed region on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Tellingly, between 1950 and 1983, over 90 percent of U.S. arms deliveries to Morocco occurred during the first 7 years of the Western Sahara war. When Spain, a former colonial power, withdrew from the territory in 1975, Morocco took it back. You can download the paper by clicking the button above. The contrast between the anxious exhilaration with which my Sahrawi friends and contacts (most of whom are refugees, as opposed to residents of occupied Western Sahara) celebrated, publicized and took stock of their nation’s return to war and the hesitance of outside observers to name the war, could not have felt starker. HINT: Western Sahara is the disputed region on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Since invading Western Sahara in late 1975, Morocco has exerted varying levels of control over the land. Morocco Wants Compromise, Not War, in Western Sahara Pro-Sahrawi U.S. commentators ignore the territory’s history and the international community’s shifting stance toward the conflict. It is one of the most s… Global, Regional and Local Dimensions of Western Sahara’s Protracted Decolonization: When a Conflict Gets Old (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). At a crossroads between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, the Saharan desert has long been misconstrued in colonial discourses as a largely unpeopled geography deemed culturally marginal and largely assimilable to Maghrebi post-colonial nation-states. The current war in the area known as the Western Sahara began in 1975, when the area then known as the Spanish Sahara was evacuated by its Spanish rulers. in Western Sahara. Western Sahara, territory occupying an extensive desert Atlantic-coastal area of northwest Africa. But the political determination of the Sahrawi people is not going to disappear simply because it is systematically overlooked. [6], This profitable, tacit compliance with Morocco’s occupation has also included France’s dependable veto of annual UN resolutions that propose to augment MINURSO’s competencies by including monitoring of human rights abuses in its mandate. Photo by Liman Bachir. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser. This framing, however, misses the fact that the failure to resolve the conflict has never only implicated two parties. The region has also been claimed by the Polisario Front, a guerrilla group fighting for a separate state, since 1975. Morocco and the Western Saharan Polisario Front exchanged fire after the Moroccan army entered Guerguerat, a ‘buffer zone’ just south of the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, to divert Saharawi peaceful protesters blocking Morocco’s “plunder corridor” to Mauritania. The U.S. military, unbeknownst to most people in the United States — it’s perfectly knowable but few give a damn — arms and trains and funds the militaries of the world, including almost all of the most brutal governments of the world. According to the press agency of Algeria and that of Polisario itself, its militias are... Polisario’s war in reality. Is this a meaningful task in a society overloaded with … When the Maghreb was consuming much of the world’s attention due to the wave of popular uprisings that took place in and around 2011, the anthropologist Alice Wilson asked why a month-long Sahrawi mass demonstration in Western Sahara’s Gdeim Izik failed to achieve visibility within the narrative frame of the otherwise much publicized “Arab Spring.”[3] After all, nearly 50 percent of Sahrawi residents in occupied Western Sahara carried out a non-violent, extended sit-in that was comparable in both form and substance to the actions of protesters who similarly demanded a greater distribution of political and economic power across the region (and beyond). Instead, it is Sahrawi human rights organizations in the occupied Western Sahara who undertake the dangerous work of documenting Sahrawi activists’ routine experience of police harassment, arbitrary detention, military trials, torture and unresolved disappearances.

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