Protests under Occupation: The Spring inside Western Sahara

Abstract

The emergence and empowerment of Sahrawi civil protests and pro-independence activism inside the Western Sahara territory under Moroccan occupation have to be seen in the context of varying sets of opportunity structures which this peripheral movement has actively seized in the past two decades by symbiotically combining domestic non-violent resistance and international ‘diplomatic’ activities. Different forms of recognition received from the two reference centres – the Moroccan state and the Polisario Front – plus the international community have been crucial in this process, with the last representing the most significant achievement of the movement. The Arab Spring has been a particularly fruitful window of opportunity in this regard.

Acknowledgements

In memory of Lahcen Moutik who passed away in December 2013, a few months after our interview. Thanks to Miguel Hernando de Larramendi and Michal Natorski for their feedback on the empirical work and the theoretical hints, to the editors of this special issue and to all of the interviewees from Laayoune and Rabat (also those who asked for confidentiality).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. See the classification of conflicts in Ramsbotham et al. (2011: 76).

^2. Sahrawi national liberation movement fighting against Moroccan presence in Western Sahara and recognized by the UN General Assembly in 1979 as ‘the representative of the people of Western Sahara’.

^3. In this article the term ‘internal Sahrawi’ is applied to civil society, organizations, groups, activists and leaders operating inside Western Sahara occupied territory, which self-define as ‘Sahrawi’ and broadly favour independence, in order to emphasize the distinction between them and their counterparts in the refugee camps of Tindouf or the diaspora, which is central to the argument. For an overview of Sahrawi civil society in the Tindouf camps, see Darbouche & Colombo (2011).

^4. A period of heightened state violence against political opposition under the reign of Hassan II, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

^5. The Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) had also opened a pioneer office there shortly before, but at that time only included members of Moroccan origin. Viewed as increasingly menacing by the Rabat authorities, the FVJ-Sahara was eventually dissolved by the Laayoune Court of First Instance in June 2003 on the grounds that it used ‘human rights as a cover to pursue both violent and diplomatic “separatist” activities’ (Human Rights Watch, 2008: 99–101).

^6. The Baker Plan II represented a polished proposal for a mixed solution combining a stage of transitory autonomy with a final referendum on self-determination.

^7. Not only was the Western Sahara territory excluded from the collective reparation programme designed for some regions, but also the public hearing scheduled in Laayoune was eventually cancelled (Vairel, 2006: 243). ‘The IER rather than addressing the particular breadth of violations suffered by Sahrawis, increased their feelings of marginalization’ (Amnesty International, 2010: 269–275).

^8. In late May, a small rally in Laayoune opposing the transfer of a Sahrawi prisoner to Agadir resulted in an unprecedented cycle of demonstrations, repression and riots after it was violently broken up by the Moroccan police (Mundy, 2007; Smith, 2005: 546, 558; Solà-Martín, 2007: 402; Interview XII, 2013).

^9. The Autonomy Plan was to be submitted to the UN in March–April 2007, and was backed up by an ambitious diplomatic offensive.

^10. The meeting organized in September 2009 stemmed from an initiative of internal groups later adopted by the Polisario (Interview III, 2013), which resulted in the arrest of the activists on their return to Laayoune, amid a climate of Moroccan patriotic outrage. In spite of the obstacles faced, this ground-breaking visit set a precedent and was to become the first of a handful of journeys to Tindouf in subsequent years.

^11. This address was highlighted as a pivotal fact almost unanimously in the author's interviews (for example Interview XIII, 2013).

^12. Some estimates refer to around 6,500–8,000 tents and 20,000–25,000 protesters (Gómez Martín, 2012).

^13. The distinction between socio-economic and ‘political’ protest is widespread in the literature on the Arab Spring and social movements in this region (Bergh & Rossi-Doria, 2015). For a critique of the ‘hierarchy of struggles’ implicit within this dichotomy, see Bogaert (2014: 2–4) and, in the case of Western Sahara, see Veguilla (2009).

^14. A draft regionalization bill following the recommendations of this Commission was presented by the Moroccan government in the summer of 2014.

^15. Set up in 2005 by former members of the Co-ordination Committee, ASVDH is characterized by its self-definition as an ‘association of victims’. Although all legalization procedures established by the Moroccan Association Law were followed, the Moroccan authorities continued to treat it as an ‘unrecognized’ organization. ASVDH has sections in several cities of Western Sahara as well as southern Morocco (Barreñada, 2012), but its failure to secure normalization has prevented it from having a proper membership record, so in principle ‘any victim can consider himself/herself as a member’ (Interview VI, 2013).

^16. CODESA was formally created in 2007 as the successor of the former FVJ-Sahara, although the Moroccan authorities prevented its founding congress from being held and refused to legalize it, arguing that its principles undermined the state's ‘territorial integrity’ and that its focus on the Sahrawi population amounted to ‘discrimination’. Due to this legal situation, the only internal body established within the organization is a 14-member secretariat (bureau). The three tasks performed are assisting the victims of violations to file both lawsuits and complaints with the CNDH, preparing annual and thematic reports concerning the human rights situation in Western Sahara, and carrying out international advocacy work (Interview X, 2013).

^17. CODAPSO was founded in April 2005 by the renowned Mohammed Daddach, the longest Sahrawi prisoner of war held by Morocco (1976–2001) and former Polisario Front fighter, in response, he said, to ‘the Moroccan propaganda regarding the Autonomy Plan’ (Interview VII, 2013).

^18. Another local ‘tansikiya’ was operating in the city of Smara at the time of Christopher Ross' visit in October 2013. The only relevant group that prefers to stay out of these inter-organizational networks is the CODESA (Interview X, 2013), which suggests a subtle strategic and tactical cleavage with the other leading organization, the ASVDH. The opposition between grassroots activity vs. ‘elite work’ and promotion vs. rejection of local inter-organizational co-ordination roughly describe the acknowledged differences between their respective approaches. This is coupled with some inevitable competition for domestic leadership and international attention and recognition at both individual and organizational level, even though in general co-operation visibly prevails over tensions or fragmentation.

^19. In the early 2000s, the use of mobile phones started to become widespread, rendering futile the previous restrictions on international calls from landlines in the occupied territory, while the internet entered the scene with the appearance of the first cybercafés. Later on, in 2009, another powerful vehicle for inter-Sahrawi reconnection in the media sphere came with the launch of regular RASD TV broadcasts from Tindouf, which soon became the most widely watched channel in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara (Interview IX, 2013).

^20. Two vital yet somehow contradictory discursive red lines were at stake here for a mixture of pragmatic/tactical and principled/identity reasons. On the one hand, any questioning of the unity and unanimity of the broader Sahrawi movement is avoided as being detrimental to the nationalist struggle and the preservation of the legal self-determination framework, to which pro-independence Sahrawis of all sides remain attached. On the other hand, any acknowledgement of integral connections with the Polisario would play into the hands of the Moroccan authorities, giving them a pretext to justify harsher repression of internal activists. An additional more identity-related explanation is that the internal groups' own search for recognition also discourages them from blending themselves in with the Polisario.

^21. The 54 members of this delegation, who belonged to organizations such as CODESA, CODAPSO, ASVDH and CSPRON, were involved in the so-called Commission of the Occupied Territories and the Intifada of Independence (SPS, 20 December 2011), and participated in all votes on an equal footing with the other congress delegates (Interview VII, 2013; Interview VIII, 2013).

^22.http://www.cihrs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/RFK-Center-Joint-UPR-Submission-Morocco.pdf.

^23. However, a new fisheries protocol was signed and adopted by the European Parliament and Council at the end of 2013.

^24. See, for example, Fiche USA-UK/Projet de lettre du MAEC au Roi du Maroc, Rabat, 3 February 2014, leaked document available at http://www.arso.org/Coleman/Fiche%20usa-uk.pdf.