Social Protest and Nationalism in Western Sahara: Struggles around Fisheries and Housing in El Ayun and Dakhla

Abstract

The Gdeim Izik protest emerged in response to Moroccan public policy (the distribution of land for construction) and adopted a nationalist line during the course of the action, provoking a heavy-handed response from Moroccan state security forces. This paper analyses the process and places it in the broader context of protest movements that emerge in situations of occupation and authoritarian rule. To that end, the study addresses the reconfiguration of the protest camp in Western Sahara during the 2000s, including protests that were not explicitly pro-independence struggles, to examine how Sahrawi protest actors perceived and assessed this context and how this assessment influenced their individual and collective action strategies.

Acknowledgements

This paper forms part of the project on ‘Territorial policies and processes of colonization/de-colonization in Western Sahara: actors and interests’ (SEJ-7234), financed by the Government of Andalucía and the project ‘Persistence of authoritarianism and processes of political change in North Africa and the Middle East: consequences for political regimes and the international situation’ (CSO2012-32917), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Notes

1. As the de facto ruler, Morocco has administratively and politically assimilated Western Sahara (Mohsen Finan, 1997).

2. The ‘Sahrawis’ are those people who think of themselves and are considered Sahrawi (identity as relationship, Caratini, 2006: 4), whose mother tongue is Hassānīya, and who belong to one of the qabā’il that inhabited Western Sahara during the Spanish colonial period (1884–1975).

3. In 2009 Algeria witnessed nearly 9,000 riots (Parks, 2013: 109); in 2008, Tunisia experienced the longest and most important protest actions in decades in the region of Gafsa (Allal, 2010: 107); and over the past decade, there has been a consistent increase in socio-economic protest in Morocco (Bogaert, 2015: 125).

4. After the events at Gdeim Izik, it became possible to speak of a hypothetical new reconfiguration of the field of protest in Western Sahara which, however, is not covered by this article for obvious reasons of space. The perception of the interviewees during fieldwork done after Gdeim Izik (2011, 2013 and 2015) is that the Moroccan mechanisms of control have been reinforced. However – and despite being configured in a context less prone to the emergence of protests – they have not completely disappeared. In September 2015 I witnessed the mobilization of a group in Dakhla demanding the aid once offered by the Moroccan state to the aidīn (‘returners’ or ‘defectors’ from the refugee camps in Arabic). The interviewees during this trip advised me to avoid the members of this group so as not to attract the attention of the authorities (see also Wilson, 2015).

5. Using the option of analysing interactions, the study can include other categories of actors (not just those who protest) who also took part in the construction of a legitimate and tolerated cause in Western Sahara.

6. A cycle of pro-independence protests that began in May 2005 in El Ayun, the capital of Western Sahara, but which spread to other Sahrawi cities and continued over time.

7. During the so-called Years of Lead (1960–80), and according to information on the Equity and Reconciliation Commission website, the greatest number of claims related to forced disappearances came from the three administrative regions into which the disputed territory is divided (Vairel, 2008: 237). See also Barreñada (2012).

8. The Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara was submitted to the UN in April 2007. The Sahrawis interviewed, who were in favour of this proposal as a way to resolve the conflict, share the idea that Sahrawis should govern the Sahara with pro-independence Sahrawis.

9. Researchers face many obstacles when trying to do fieldwork in occupied Western Sahara. My trips there have been intermittent and have ranged from one week to three months at the most since my first trip to Dakhla in April 2001. During these visits I have had numerous meetings (formal and informal) with Sahrawis from different professional groups (fishing intermediaries, businessmen, civil servants, the unemployed, university graduates out of work, etc.), protestors (nationalist and non-nationalist activists) and politicians (voters, people with ties to political parties, candidates for regional and municipal legislative elections). The continuity of my visits has also made it possible for me to situate the actors and their discourses in a specific social context and observe how they change over time and according to particular interactions (interlocutors).

10. The works published on mobilizations in Western Sahara limit political protest to the pro-independence protest. However, in accordance with the theoretical perspective described in this article, both the pro-independence protest (constructed around nationalist demands) and social protest (whose cause is constructed and publicized around socio-economic demands) are political protests because they both question power relations from a conception constructed around what is fair and what is unfair. This work, therefore, does not distinguish between political and social protest, but rather between pro-independence and social protest.

11. The decision taken by the Ministry of Maritime Fisheries in 2004 entailed reducing the number of licensed boats from 7,859 to 2,500 and destroying all boats operating irregularly (a similar number according to l’Institut National des Recherches Halieutiques or INRH).

12. Since the early 1980s the fishing sector has allowed the Moroccan state to compensate senior military personnel who took part in the Sahara War (1975–91) with licences, tax benefits and financial advantages to acquire large freezer containers. However, high-ranking officials such as Abdelaziz Bennani, Hosni Benslimane and Abdelhak Kadiri were not the only beneficiaries. The Yumani Sahrawi family, the descendants of the last president of the Djemaa (the General Assembly of the Sahara during Spanish colonial times) who pledged their allegiance to Hassan II at the beginning of the conflict, are important operators of large fishing boats, whose activity has increased in recent years. For an analysis of the links between the fisheries sector and the military, see Veguilla (2011a: 263–267).

13. For an analysis of the involvement of Sahrawis in the fishing sector in Dakhla which considers the social representations that influence their professional careers, see Veguilla (2011a).

14. Interview with a technician from the Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Planning delegation from the region of Oued Ed-Dahab-Lagüira. Dakhla, 26 November 2012.

15. Mauritania assumed control of Oued Ed-Dahab (Rio de Oro) at the beginning of 1976, when the Madrid Agreements signed on the 14 November 1975 between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania came into effect. However, the Mauritanian government had few military and civilian resources in Dakhla, which was devastated by an economic crisis and could not bear the costs of the conflict with the Polisario Front to which it finally handed over sovereignty in 1979. The fall of Mauritanian President Moktar Ould Daddah, after the July 1978 coup and the subsequent rise to power of Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, from the Arousiyyin qabila and born in Western Sahara, marked a welcome change for the interests of the Polisario Front. In August 1979 the new president renounced the territories in southern Western Sahara after signing a peace agreement with the Polisario Front (Segura, 2001: 52).

16. The armed conflict did not end until 1991. The local economy only began to develop during the mid-1990s with the first appearance of fish-freezing units. The fishing sector developed rapidly, although it underwent a crisis during the early 2000s. Similarly, during the 1990s and early 2000s, prices for land and rents were relatively low in this city. Nowadays, in a more favourable economic context, prices have risen considerably.

17. This hypothesis is based on the differentiated impact of the ‘Second Green March’ (the displacement of some 100,000 people by the Moroccan authorities as a strategy related to the referendum) on the two cities given that El Ayun borders the region of the Ait Baamrane qabila, from which Dakhla is almost 1,000 kilometres distant. The interviews done during the visits to Dakhla confirm that the impact on the local social structure of so-called ‘ethnic Sahrawis’ (Mundy, 2012) was less.

18. In both cases ‘true Sahrawis’, according to the definition given in note 2, have become a minority within local social structures.

19. This is the case of his conflict with the former wālī, one of the factors that may explain the emergence and rapid expansion of the Gdeim Izik camp (Fernández-Molina, 2015); but also with Hassan Derhem, the member of another important Saharan family and deputy in El Ayun since 1993, who ran in the 2011 legislative elections in the district of Oued Ed-Dahab (Dakhla) in response to these conflicts.

20. The creation of patronage networks that stretch beyond his primary group, the practice of buying votes during the elections and the national and regional political alliances explain the influence of Hamdi Ould Errachid in local politics.

21. The founder, in November 2004, of the Action Committee against Torture in Dakhla, part of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA).

22. The licences obtained by the group did not allow their owners to fish as much as other licences.

23. Interview with the Secretary-General of the artisanal vessels association, a member of the local ad hoc committee responsible for reducing the number of licences, Dakhla, 8 September 2005.

24. Interview with a relative of one of the leaders of both protests. Interview in Dakhla, January 2009.

25. The use of ‘Sahrawi’ to identify people and groups who share the criteria given in note 2 was not standardized in Morocco until the late 2000s, when the name became more widely accepted by the authorities in the public arena. This change has been noticeable throughout the course of my fieldwork, which began in 2001. During the early years, the use of the term ‘Sahrawi’ in formal and informal interviews with members of the administration would provoke dismissive reactions from the officials.

26. Berebere in the Moroccan Arabic dialect (Darija). This is a pejorative term used by the Sahrawis to refer to Moroccans.

27. The author reproduces an extract from her interview with a militant Sahrawi who participated at Gdeim Izik.