Not Another Failed State: Toward a Realistic Solution in the Western Sahara

Abstract

One of Africa's most bitter territorial disputes, with profound implications for both regional and global stability and security, the “question of Western Sahara” has defied the international community's efforts to facilitate its “solution” for decades. This article explores the historical background to the conflict, the viability of the self-proclaimed “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic,” and the strategic significance of the integration of both the Saharan territory and the Maghreb region, before concluding with the outlines of a realistic approach to resolving the conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• autonomy
• Maghreb
• Morocco
• Polisario Front
• self-determination
• Western Sahara

INTRODUCTION

A sparsely populated, wind-scorched desert land covering an area slightly larger than Great Britain—albeit with virtually no water and barely fifty square kilometers of arable land—whose primary export commodity, phosphates, ¹ has seen its price plummet amid the global economic downturn, the Western Sahara would seem an unlikely candidate to be the object of one of Africa's most bitter territorial disputes, one with profound implications for both regional security and economic development in the Maghreb as well as international stability and order. And yet the “question of Western Sahara,” as it is termed in the nomenclature of the United Nations (UN), is one of those challenges that, repeatedly defying the international community's efforts to facilitate its “solution,” has become an almost-routine item on the agenda of the Security Council, alongside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the division of Cyprus. ²

With the exception of a small group of journalists and scholar-activists among some of whom passion has regrettably trumped the objectivity expected of academic inquiry, ³ this issue has been largely passed over by researchers and ignored by policymakers for most of the past four decades. More recently, there has been not only increasing recognition of the need to resolve this forgotten conflict once and for all, but also the growing conviction that any workable arrangement must be based on a sober calculus of state viability and regional stability, rather than flights of fancy as illusory as the desert mirages of the region. In fact, an expanding body of literature acknowledges that the integration of and sustainable development in the Maghrebi countries as well as the security interests of the broader international community requires a defusing of tensions, ⁴ but in a manner consonant with the principles of political pragmatism in order to avoid the specter of a state failure in a geopolitically sensitive region.

This essay does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of the long and complex history of the Western Sahara question. However, before exploring both the threat of state failure and the promise of a realistic solution of the dispute, it needs to touch upon three broad sets of topics: (1) the historical background to the conflict, including the crucial role that the territory in question has played in the history of Morocco, and its ongoing significance to the political, economic, and social stability of the Moroccan state; (2) the viability of the Saharan territory if, hypothetically, separated from Morocco and independent as the self-proclaimed “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR); and (3) the strategic significance of the integration, both of the Saharan territory as an autonomous area within Morocco and of the subregion as a whole, whether under the aegis of the Arab Maghreb Union or some other framework. While the primary focus of this study is geopolitical, this perspective cannot be divorced from the considerations of the natural resource potential (especially phosphates, fisheries, and hydrocarbons) of the Saharan territory, including the implications for juridical title to exploit those resources and how to best harness their development to the benefit of the population. Finally, on the basis of these assessments, the outlines for what a realistic approach to resolving the conflict can be traced, one that is not only in the best interest of the population of the territory concerned but will also enhance regional stability and prosperity.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

One of the great ironies of the conflict over the Western Sahara is that, for all its attendant bitterness, it evinces none of the characteristics usually found in ethnic conflicts in which minority groups have struggled for self-determination. In fact, in this case the parties to the conflict are defined by none of the “ascriptive differences, whether the indicium of group identity is color, appearance, language, religion, some other indicator of common origin, or some combination thereof.” ⁵ By religion, language, and appearance, the inhabitants of the Western Sahara are virtually indistinguishable from those of the southern part of Morocco. ⁶ Not surprisingly, with the exception of the colonial period beginning in the nineteenth century when Spain managed to take control “by invoking ‘historic’ rights based on the unstable occupation for a few years by trading companies constantly attacked by a population hostile to the implantation of foreign powers on its territory,” the “cultural and effective ties of this region predominate over every other allegiance.” ⁷

From at least the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century C.E., the various nomadic tribes inhabiting what is today designated “Western Sahara” on most maps owed allegiance to the rulers of Morocco—that is, with the exception of periods when “Saharan families, taking the conquerors route in the opposite direction, were, in turn, to impose their domination on Morocco,” ⁸ as was the case under the Almoravids (from the Spanish derivative of al-Murabitun, those of the military ribat, or retreat-fortress), a dynasty originating in a group of rigorist Berber adherents of the Mālikī school of Islamic jurisprudence. The Almoravids seized Sijilmasa in 1055, which provided them with the resources of the lucrative Sahara trade, and went on to found Marrakesh as their capital in 1062 and to capture Fez (1069), Algiers (1082), and Toledo and Valencia (1102), as well as to annex parts of the Soninke kingdom of Ghana and Andalusia. Subsequently another dynasty with roots in a Saharan religious reform, the Almohads (from the Spanish derivative of al-Muwahiddun, those of oneness), supplanted the Almoravids and conquered North Africa from Morocco to Tripolitana in Libya and expanded into al-Andalus until they were defeated by King Alfonso VIII at Los Novas de Tolosa in 1212. The Almohads lasted in Morocco until 1275. ⁹

The tradition of Moroccan dynasties from the south continued with the Sa'dis, who captured Marrakesh in 1524 and Fez in 1549, and whose greatest ruler, the Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur (1549–1603), defeated and killed the Portuguese King Sebastian I at the Battle of Qasr al-Kabir in 1578. He arrested the westward expansion of the Ottomans at the very borders of Morocco by clever alliance with the Spanish and, defeating the Songhai Empire centered in modern Mali, conquered Gao and Timbuktu in 1591. Ahmad is also credited with creating the Makhzan (literally “treasury), the nebulous term that in Morocco has become synonymous with the central government, its army, and its officials. ¹⁰ After the decline of the Sa'dis, the tradition of allegiance of the southern territories continued under the current Alaouite dynasty, which traces it descent from Hasan, son of Ali and Fatima, the grandson of the prophet of Islam (hence Morocco's designation as the “Sharifian Kingdom”—Sharīf (“illustrious”) being the traditional title given to the family of the prophet Mohammed. The first of the Alaouite sultans, Moulay al-Rashid, captured Fez in 1666 and took Marrakesh in 1669, reuniting Morocco. His successors issued royal rescripts known as dahirs accepting the fealty (bay’a) and tribute of the Saharan chieftains and appointing them as qaids, or civil governors, over their respective peoples, from whom they also collected taxes in the name of the sovereign. For example, Moulay al-Rashid's half-brother and successor, Moulay Ismaïl (d. 1727), was the recipient of an appeal from Ali Chandora, ruler of the Hassan tribes of the Trarza region in modern southwestern Mauritania. Ali, under attack by both his cousins, rulers of the nearby Brakna region, and Europeans coming from the coast and Senegal, “undertook the long trip to Meknès to ask for Moulay Ismaïl's intervention in his favor, obtaining armed contingents and subsidies, and officially receiving from the sultan command of Southern Mauritania.” ¹¹

Like most of Africa, the Maghreb was carved up by European colonial powers after the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference opened the way for the “Scramble for Africa.” ¹² Spain claimed for itself the Saharan regions of Saqiet al-Hamra (“Red Creek”) and the rather ironically named Río de Oro (“River of Gold”), unilaterally proclaiming a protectorate in December 1884, although the resistance of Moroccan monarchs made the Spanish claim an ineffectual one until March 1912, when France succeeded in imposing a protectorate on Sultan Abdelhafid. ¹³ Nine months later, Paris signed an agreement with Madrid that included acknowledgment of the hitherto ineffectual Spanish claim to “Spanish Sahara” as well as other Moroccan territories. Even then, it was four years later before the Spanish established some coastal installations and more than two decades before they overcome stiff resistance from Moroccan Rif and J'bala tribesmen and managed to penetrate to the interior of the Western Sahara to occupy Smara, at time the territory's only real city and formerly stronghold of the Sufi holy man and anticolonial leader Sheikh Ma al-‘Aynayn (ca. 1830–1910). Like countless other leaders in the southern areas over the course of the centuries, Ma al-‘Aynayn took care to establish close links with the Moroccan sovereigns, traveling to Marrakesh to swear homage in person to the Sultan Moulay Abd al-Aziz in 1897, receiving in return a number of privileges. ¹⁴

Morocco recovered its political independence from France on March 2, 1956, under Sultan Mohammed V, who proclaimed himself king the following year. Mohammed V began the process of recovering the territorial integrity of the lands that had acknowledged the sovereignty of his forefathers. A month after the end of the French protectorate, Morocco recovered the Spanish protectorate of Tetouan in the northern part of the country. In August 1956, Morocco succeeded in having the international control council for the international zone around Tangier repeal its status and reintegrated the city into the kingdom. It took two more years, until April 1958, for Spain to return the zone of Tarfaya, which was governed under the same colonial regime as the Spanish Sahara immediately to its south. ¹⁵ And it was only in 1969, during the reign of King Hassan II, Mohammed V's son and successor, that, after failing to legitimize its continuing occupation by arguing that the enclave was a “historic” part of Spain fully integrated into the Spanish state, Madrid finally ceded back Ifni, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco opposite the Canary Islands, headquarters since 1934 of the governor-general of Spanish Morocco. ¹⁶

It should be noted that as soon as independence had been achieved, Moroccan politicians like Allal el-Fassi, founder of the Istiqlal (“independence”) Party, raised the issue among Moroccans of the country's rights to its historical territory under the great dynasties of the precolonial period, including not only the Spanish Sahara but also what later emerged as Mauritania and southwestern Algeria. ¹⁷ When, in turn, Mohammed V, in a famous speech in M'hamid, an oasis town in the Draa River valley not far from the frontier with Algeria, on February 25, 1958, paid homage to the “faithfulness of the Saharan tribes” and pledged to “pursue action to restore the Sahara to Morocco,” many interpreted his remarks as having been necessitated by the need “to prevent the Istiqlal Party from outpacing the monarchy in nationalist fervor” ¹⁸ as well as motivated by the more obvious political boost to the royal government by association with the glories of the past. In fact, it was not just the nationalist supporters of the Istiqlal Party who clamored for the vindication of Morocco's historic rights. When, after having refused to recognize Mauritania's independence in 1960 because of unsettled territorial issues, Hassan II invited that country's president to the founding summit in Rabat of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1969, he found himself assailed from the left as well as the right, with the Moroccan communists, led by Ali Yata, just as vociferous as el-Fassi's followers in denouncing the monarch's alleged abandonment of claims to Mauritania, parts of Algeria, and the Sahara. Even the radicals of Medhi Ben Barka's National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP), who did not share Istiqlal's enthusiasm for claims to Mauritania and Algeria, demanded “a clear position concerning our occupied territories” in the then-Spanish Sahara. ¹⁹ Over the years a number of scholars and analysts, many of whom were not especially sympathetic to the Moroccan monarchy, have nevertheless gone so far as to suggest that any perception of betraying Morocco's legitimate claims to the region could well lead to the toppling of the current political order in favor of either an Islamist or military-nationalist regime. ²⁰

Although historically it derived little economic value from the colony, Spain hung tenaciously to its major remaining Moroccan holding in the Sahara, despite the fact that it was only in 1958 that it had succeeded in realizing full military control over the territory, “a feat that was only accomplished with the brutal aid of the French army stationed in Mauritania.” ²¹ Although the conventional explanation for this policy is the “prestige factor” of holding on to the last colonial possessions of the imperial Spain, ²² perhaps it was also a certain nostalgia on the part of the aging caudillo, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who had not only made his early fame as valiant fighter in the “Rif War” to take over the Saharan territory but from there assumed leadership of the Nationalist uprising in the Spanish Civil War. ²³ As a result of the impasse, in addition to Moroccan demands on the international stage for retrocession, the Spanish colonial authorities also faced, from 1973, increasing pressure from among the Saharawi population organized by the Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro (“Popular Front for the Liberation of Saqiet al-Hamra and Río del Oro,” Polisario Front), which had its origin in the activities of one El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, a tribesman of the Reguibat whose destitute family had settled in the port town of Tan-Tan in southern Morocco and who, with the help of government scholarships, had managed to enroll in the law faculty of the Mohammed V University. Significantly, as even a sympathetic chronicler of the Polisario cause has admitted, the group's “founding manifesto did not explicitly mention independence as a goal” and El-Ouali himself “seemed to approve the idea of Western Sahara's integration with Morocco.” ²⁴ Ahmedou Ould Souilem, a founding member of the Polisario Front and a longtime member of the committee overseeing the group's external relations, has affirmed that the “liberation” originally intended by the group's name was that from Spanish colonial domination and that it did not signify any political program of independence for the territory. ²⁵

It was in this context that, in 1974, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on whether the Western Sahara at the time of colonization belong to no one (res nullius) and, if the answer was negative, what were the legal ties between this territory and the Kingdom of Morocco (as well as the historical “Mauritanian entity”). ²⁶ While, in the decision it handed down on October 16, 1975, the ICJ ruled unanimously that the Western Sahara was not terra nullius before the European colonization and 14 to 2 that “a legal tie of allegiance had existed at the relevant period” between the Sultan of Morocco and the nomadic peoples of the territory, the latter was nonetheless deemed—more than a little incongruously in an attempt to adopt a compromise in the matter ²⁷ —insufficient to give Morocco clear title to sovereignty. ²⁸ As one scholar of political science and Islamic studies put it, Morocco's claims to territorial sovereignty based on Muslim legal norms with its particular juridical notions and authority relations between state and sub-state groups such as tribes “proved an enigma to the International Court in The Hague” that “simply did not know how to interpret these claims.” Thus, the opinion is “questionable because it evaluates the authority of a premodern state structure on the basis of modern mechanisms of sovereignty such as taxation records, voting districts, or a national currency. According to this interpretation of sovereignty, most Moroccan provinces would be considered illegal annexations, and indeed the entire Moroccan state would be considered illegitimate.” ²⁹ Indeed, the ruling fits into what some legal scholars have argued is the problematic relationship between ideas of cultures and sovereignty and the ways the latter has been identified with a specific set of cultural practices to the exclusion of others, especially as the concepts were improvised out of the colonial encounter. ³⁰

Morocco thus interpreted the Court's recognition of tribal allegiance to Moroccan sultans in its favor and, on November 6, 1975, 350,000 unarmed Moroccans crossed from Tarfaya into Spanish Morocco, brandishing Moroccan flags, portraits of King Hassan, and copies of the Quran. “With the exception of the far left, the kingdom was united in total consensus and the Spanish army stood by while the impressive cortège passed the frontier.” ³¹ The “Green March” (the color green for the demonstration was an appeal to Islam) demanded the return to Morocco of the Saharan territory, a campaign that one scholarly observer at the time astutely noted could not be explained in purely economic of imperialistic terms without ignoring “massive evidence of the deeply felt Moroccan belief in historical and legal claims based on Islamic concepts of allegiance and sovereignty.” ³² Less than a fortnight later, as Franco lay dying in Madrid, his government—perhaps seeing how its Portuguese counterpart had been toppled the year before by troubles in overseas possessions—negotiated a deal on November 14, 1975, which divided the Spanish Sahara with most of the territory going back to Morocco and a small sliver in the south being handed to Mauritania. Under this accord, Spain relinquished the administration of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania on February 26, 1976.

Egged on by Algeria's socialist strongman Houari Boumediènne whose military engaged the Moroccan army near Amgala in the Saharan territory in the days immediately before the Spanish withdrawal, the Polisario Front rejected the Madrid accord and, demanding full independence for the territory, launched a guerrilla campaign against the Moroccan and Mauritanian forces that had assumed control after the Spanish withdrew. In some instances, units from the Algerian army joined the Polisario forces. As a result of reverses in combat, in 1979, Nouakchott gave up its claims, which were taken up by Rabat. While the Polisario forces, with considerable support from the Algerians—who had their own boundary disputes with Morocco as well as coveting the potential access to the Atlantic Ocean through the former Spanish Sahara—acquitted themselves well in the early stages of the fighting, even though their leader, El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, was killed while fighting in Mauritania. By 1981, however, Morocco was in control of more than 85 percent of the former Spanish Sahara's territory and was constructing the “sand berm,” a defensive shield consisting of a series of barriers of sand and stone completed in 1987. Since then the Polisario Front has been largely confined to a small zone around Tindouf in southwestern Algeria, where it has sequestered tens of thousands of Saharawi refugees in squalid camps. ³³ For its part, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) muddied the waters in 1984 by recognizing and admitting to membership the virtual “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic” that the Polisario Front had proclaimed in 1976. As a result, Morocco left the OAU and has yet to join its successor organization, the African Union (AU). ³⁴

In 1991, the UN managed to achieve a ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, monitored by the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), a peacekeeping force that, as its name implies, is theoretically supposed to work toward a vote on whether the territory reintegrates into Morocco, affiliates in some other mode with Morocco, or becomes independent. As of the end of 2009, the UN mission deploys a total of 233 uniformed personnel—including 27 troops, 6 police officers, and 199 military observers from 29 different countries—and 97 international civilian staff in a $53.53 million per year operation, ³⁵ led by Hany Abdel-Aziz of Egypt as Special Representative of the Secretary General and Major General Zhao Jingmin of the People's Republic of China as Force Commander. Since the beginning of the MINURSO mission, a series of high-level special representatives of the UN Secretary-General and special envoys have come and gone (including former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served in that capacity from 1997 until 2004), while the process remains deadlocked over who should vote, when they should vote, and what they should be voting on. ³⁶

Meanwhile, in a November 2005 speech commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Green March, Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who succeeded to his father Hassan II's throne in 1999, announced that he would begin an internal national dialogue within Morocco on the subject of possibly granting autonomy to the country's southern provinces (i.e., the Western Sahara) and would present proposals to the UN once a consensus had been reached. As part of the process of consultation, in 2006, Mohammed VI revived the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS) as a consultative body for proposals relating to the Sharifian Kingdom's southern provinces. ³⁷ The 141 members of CORCAS included leaders representing the various Moroccan political parties, tribal sheikhs, elected delegates from women's groups and youth organizations, and representatives of civil society. ³⁸

In April 2007, Rabat sent a proposal to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that included not only an elected local administration—including executive, legislative, and judicial branches—for the “Saharan Autonomous Region” that would be created, but also ideas about education and justice and the promise that financial resources would be forthcoming to support them in addition to whatever revenues might be raised locally. ³⁹ Under the “Moroccan Initiative for Negotiating an Autonomy Statute for the Sahara Region,” ⁴⁰ the only matters that would remain in control of Rabat would be defense and foreign affairs as well as the currency, while the Sahara Autonomous Region would have broad powers over local administration, the economic sector, infrastructure, social and cultural affairs, and the environment. ⁴¹

The autonomy proposal was generally well received by the international community as a significant step forward. In his June 2007 testimony before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, echoing language that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 1754 a little more than a month earlier, ⁴² described the Moroccan proposal as “serious and credible.” Welch also noted that, unresolved, the dispute would be “an obstacle to increased regional integration and this impedes U.S. policy interests.” Moreover, maintaining the Polisario Front administration of its area of control “leaves 90,000 Sahrawi people languishing in refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, and the territory a potentially attractive safe haven for terrorist planning or activity.” On the other hand, a settlement along the lines of the autonomy proposal “would offer real hope in strengthening political, economic, commercial, and counter-terrorism cooperation for the Maghreb and the Sahel.” ⁴³ In October of that same year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, addressing a joint session of the two chambers of the Moroccan parliament, likewise hailed the autonomy proposal as “a serious and credible basis for negotiation,” adding: “The Moroccan autonomy plan exists, it is on the table and constitutes a new element proposed after years of impasse. I hope that the Moroccan plan of autonomy can serve as a basis for negotiation in search of a reasonable settlement.” ⁴⁴

On April 30, 2009, in renewing the mandate of MINURSO for a year through unanimously adopted Resolution 1871, the UN Security Council explicitly welcomed the “serious and credible Moroccan efforts to move the process forward towards resolution.” More interestingly, just weeks before the Security Council acted, an unprecedented bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives—some 229 members, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Minority Leader John Boehner, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson, and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence—sent a joint letter to President Barack Obama urging support for what they described as the “ground-breaking” plan for autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, noting that it was “the only feasible option.” ⁴⁵ Three years after it was initially offered, the Moroccan proposal is still on the table.

THE POLISARIO'S “FAILED STATE”

If the Moroccan autonomy plan is the “only feasible option,” what is the alternative, presumably impractical, option? On February 27, 1976, one day after the Spanish withdrawal from the Saharan territory, the Polisario Front proclaimed the creation of the SADR. This move marked a significant escalation of the conflict over the territory since “the declaration of Western Saharan independence gave the Polisario front a greater margin to maneuver internationally,” turning it from “a struggling liberation movement” into “a government-in-exile that could compete against Morocco and Mauritania for international recognition.” ⁴⁶ A closer examination of this entity, however, reveals that, without ever even having been a state, it actually is a classic failed state, which, if given the chance to actually occupy and attempt to govern the entire territory that it claims for itself, would likely metastasize into a “collapsed state,” with adverse consequences for regional and international stability and security.

The classical international legal definition of an entity that may be regarded as a sovereign state was set down in the first article of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States. The Montevideo criteria are that, to qualify as a state, an entity must have (1) a permanent population, (2) a defined territory, (3) a government, and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. ⁴⁷ In his theoretical study of the phenomenon, political scientist Scott Pegg proposes a definition for the de facto state that may fulfill the first three of these criteria, but lacks the recognition that would allow it to pursue the fourth:

A de facto state exists where there is an organized political leadership, which has risen to power through some degree of indigenous capacity; receives popular support; and has achieved sufficient capacity to provide governmental services to a given population in a specific territorial area, over which effective control is maintained for a significant period of time. The de facto state views itself as capable of entering into relations with other states and it seeks full constitutional independence and widespread international recognition as a sovereign state. ⁴⁸

The modern consensus, however, is that the state not only has to meet these minimal legal criteria, it is also responsible for the provision of certain public goods to those living within its borders, focusing on and answering the concerns and demands of its citizenry. The success or failure of states is measured by how effectively they deliver these political goods, which range from assuring human security to the rule of law and a system for the adjudication of disputes to basic human rights including that of citizens to fully participate in free and open political processes to the provision of infrastructure, education, healthcare, and other services. States are judged strong, weak, or failed on how well they deliver these goods—or not. While there is considerable variation in the precise symptoms manifested, the failed state is essentially a polity that is either not able or unwilling to perform the basic functions of a nation-state in the modern world. ⁴⁹

The first function of any government is, clearly, control of its frontiers and territory. By this standard, the Polisario's SADR is not even a failed state, but rather an “aborted state,” one where the regime never even consolidated its authority over the territory it claims. ⁵⁰ In fact, aside from the refugee camps where tens of thousands of Sahrawis are forcibly detained in violation of their basic human rights, ⁵¹ the Polisario has never administered any territory. ⁵² Almost all of the former Spanish Sahara is secured behind a 2,700-kilometer-long defensive berm, built between 1980 and 1987. Protected by this barrier, the territory and its residents are part of the Moroccan state.

In the case of the SADR, this lack of territoriality compounds other deficits. In his classic study of the historical processes of nation-building, Anthony Smith defined the nation as a “named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members,” ⁵³ with certain allowances for variations on this ideal type. Even observers noted for their sympathy to the Polisario concede that “Western Saharans never constituted a nation in pre-colonial times, and their present-day nationalism is a very recent phenomenon.” ⁵⁴

As for other political benchmarks such as the rule of law and participation in the political processes of the state, Robert Rotberg warns that they are often the next items, after security, to be sacrificed in cases of state failure:

Failed states exhibit flawed institutions. That is, only the institution of the executive functions. If legislatures exist at all, they are rubber-stamping machines. Democratic debate is noticeably absent. The judiciary is derivative of the executive rather than being independent, and citizens know that they cannot rely on the court system for significant redress or remedy, especially against the state. The bureaucracy has long ago lost its sense of professional responsibility and exists solely to carry out the orders of the executive and, in petty ways, to oppress citizens. The military is possibly the only institution with any remaining integrity, but the armed forces of failed states are often highly politicized, devoid of the esprit that they once demonstrated. ⁵⁵

The SADR that was unveiled on the morrow of the Spanish withdrawal came into being without any constitutional charter, a brief text being made available later, almost as an afterthought. A conference of the Polisario Front, which met six months later in August 1976, adopted a more complete text with thirty-one articles. This text was subsequently further revised at various occasions. ⁵⁶ The current text dates from the tenth “national congress” of the movement, which met from August 26 to September 4, 1999. ⁵⁷ This document makes clear the dependence of the SADR “government” on the Polisario movement, with the former being little more than a façade to give the latter the semblance of legal respectability without actually encumbering the phantom entity with any of the substantive checks and balances that exist in the operative constitutional systems of most real states, including that of Morocco, where a multiplicity of political parties, civil society organizations, and a lively civic culture that expresses itself in regular elections balances the authority of the monarchy and the influence of the Mahkzan.

The “chief of state” of the SADR is the secretary-general of the Polisario (art. 51); Mohamed Abdelaziz has held both positions since 1976. The “chief of state” appoints and dismisses the “prime minister” (art. 53), albeit without any reference to parliamentary majorities since the SADR legislative body, the fifty-one-member “National Council,” is “formed … in conformity with regulations established by the national secretariat of the Polisario Front” (art. 75). The chief of state also appoints all military and civil officials of the SADR, including governors, judges, and security personnel (art. 58). While the chief of state is elected (art. 59), responsibility for the drafting and revision of election laws as well as the oversight of the voting, the apportionment of constituencies, and “other principles of the electoral code” are entrusted to the national secretariat of the Polisario movement headed by the selfsame chief of state (art. 76). Nonetheless, the constitutional document “recognizes” the right of the “citizens” of the SADR to form associations and political parties, but this basic freedom is only “guaranteed after the total establishment of sovereignty over national territory” (art. 30). Until such time as full national sovereignty is achieved, “the Polisario Front shall remain the political framework that gathers and politically mobilizes Sahrawis to express their aspirations” (art. 31)—a rather Orwellian description of the totalitarian nature of the enterprise.

As for the economy, while the SADR affirms that “private property is guaranteed and organized by law” (art. 34), “the market economy and freedom of enterprise will be recognized” only “after the full achievement of national sovereignty” (art. 45)—a contradiction that virtually assures economic insecurity and underdevelopment. In fact, not only is there utter lack of investment and development in the “free zone” Polisario forces claim to have “liberated,” but the movement's sympathizers insist that its representatives should have an effective veto over the management of natural resources in the parts of the territory administered by Morocco. ⁵⁸ Were this surreal proposal to be taken seriously, the development of any significant phosphate deposits, fisheries, and oil and natural gas reserves would have to be put on hold, jeopardizing the livelihoods of more than 400,000 people living in the Saharan territory as well as more elsewhere. ⁵⁹ In this respect, more realistic has been the European Union's recognition of Moroccan authorities as valid interlocutors for reaching agreements that affect the Western Sahara, “entitled to sign contracts with foreign companies for the exploitation of its mineral resources, so long as the needs of the people of the territory are taken into account.” ⁶⁰

A prolific academic advocate of the Polisario cause has argued that the refugee camps around Tindouf are “a microcosm, a prefigurative lived model, of what an independent Western Sahara would, and still could, look like.” ⁶¹ Despite his determined attempt to present a picture of “the camps’ success in social and political organization,” ⁶² the grim reality is that the track record of the Polisario indicates that a Western Sahara governed by the movement is more likely to be that rare and extreme version of the failed state known as the collapsed state, where “security is equated with the rule of the strong” and the inhabitants are “no longer citizens.” ⁶³ With a miniscule population that would be among the poorest in the world with no arable land to speak of, an independent Western Sahara would be struggling from the outset to make its way in the world. Many, undoubtedly, both Moroccan and Sahrawi, would opt for the more promising prospects of life in Morocco or elsewhere.

Moreover, internally, its peoples already divided among themselves would find their sharp divisions only be heightened in an independent state with very limited resources. The Polisario Front's pretensions to represent all Sahrawis is belied by the fact that its base of support is among some of the Reguibat tribes of the east, while the Reguibat tribes in the western part of the territory as well as the Tekna confederation are largely pro-Moroccan. ⁶⁴ In fact, while the Polisario Front and its sympathizers are wont to romanticize the movement as a united front forged by adversity, ⁶⁵ the fact is that the attempt to create a new Sahrawi identity based on abstract principles foundered by the early 1980s and the movement internally fell back on tribal identities, rallying the Reguibat in particular. By the middle of the following decade, this ethnic strategy had itself foundered and the majority of the Reguibat with origins in the former Spanish Sahara had returned to Morocco, leaving the Polisario with a small minority of Reguibat from the territory along with Reguibat who originally hailed from Algeria. One can only imagine that, absent the overarching framework for unity supplied by the Moroccan monarchy, this ethnic division and conflict among the Sahrawi would be exacerbated in an independent Western Sahara where the population would be even more diverse than in the refugee camps of Tindouf—a factor that would hardly augur well for the viability of a Polisario-run Saharan polity when it is recalled that the “fear of the other (and the consequent security dilemma) that drives so much ethnic conflict stimulates and fuels hostilities between regimes and subordinate and less-favored groups” ⁶⁶ is usually one of first indicators of state failure to register.

In stark contrast, there is the political participation within the part of the territory currently integrated into Morocco. During the Moroccan parliamentary elections in September 2007, while turnout in the other provinces of the kingdom averaged a low 38 percent, voter enthusiasm was marked higher in the nine provinces of the Moroccan Sahara—Aoussert, Assa-zag, Boujdour, Es-Semara, Guilmim, Laayoune, Oued Eddahab, Tan-Tan, and Tata—where participation rates averaged 60 percent. ⁶⁷ Likewise, during the June 2009 election for the 27,795 seats on local government councils, turnout in the Western Sahara was higher than the national average. ⁶⁸

There are also demographic and, specifically, generational fissures to consider. With a majority of the Saharan population consisting of young people who have only known Moroccan administration and who have been educated in the universities of the kingdom, the extent to which proindependence sentiment is in any way attractive to them and how legitimate a Polisario-run state would be for them is rather debatable. ⁶⁹ Interestingly, a few scholars have noted an analogous phenomenon in the Polisario-controlled refugee camps where Sahrawi youth have “emancipated themselves politically by distancing themselves from the generation that has led up to now and have succeeded in maintaining their domination over others in the name of a past primordial struggle.” ⁷⁰

In short, an independent Saharan mini-state with few resources would constitute a “mini-Mauritania,” that is, “a source of instability for its people and, more broadly, for the region, as other, mainly Arab states and forces—from Morocco and Algeria to Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda—vie to buy its allegiance.” ⁷¹ Thus, Rotberg's warning rings true:

Wherever there has been state failure or collapse, human agency has engineered the slide from strength or weakness and willfully presided over profound and destabilizing resource shifts from the state to the ruling few. As those resource transfers accelerated and human rights abuses mounted, countervailing violence signified the extent to which states in question had broken fundamental social contracts and become hollow receptacles of personalist privilege, personalist rule, and national impoverishment. Inhabitants of failed states understand what it means for life to be brutish and short. ⁷²

THE STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE OF AUTONOMY AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION

In a different time and place, that the Polisario might lead the Sahrawi people to such ruination would be a tragedy for them, but the rest of the world could cope, because Western Sahara's state failure and collapse could be isolated and certainly kept from spreading to other parts of the international community. Now, however much the suffering of those so unfortunate as to be caught within that potential regime's grip, the greater danger is that posed by the failed state beyond its borders. But positively, the peoples of the Sahara, their neighbors, and, indeed, the entire international community have a stake in the future autonomy of the Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, Morocco, and the integration of the entire Maghreb region overall.

North Africa and the Sahel are home to many security concerns other than the Western Sahara conflict, the most notorious of which is that posed by Islamist extremism and terrorism as exemplified by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). ⁷³ Any tension in the subregion would, in turn, create circumstances that are favorable to subversion and the activities of extremist groups like AQIM and criminal organizations like drug and human trafficking cartels that are active in the area. ⁷⁴ More worrisome are the indicators that the terrorists and the criminals are increasingly making common cause. ⁷⁵ In fact, a study of contraband tobacco in the Maghreb by Altadis, the multinational manufacturer of tobacco products created by the merger of the former Spanish monopoly Tabacalera and the former French monopoly SEITA, found that “Sahrawis are involved in a vast network of smuggling … using various routes, passing through the Western Sahara to Algeria via Tifariti and Bir Lahlou, oases controlled by the Polisario Front.” ⁷⁶ Moreover, there is also evidence that members of the military arm of the Polisario Front have been involved in these illicit activities, including several, presumably former members of the movement, who were detained by Mauritanian officials for their involvement in the late-November 2009 kidnapping of three Spanish aid workers from the Catalan nongovernmental organization Barcelona Acció Solidària. ⁷⁷ Apparently the tactical information and weapons that these militants received is highly sought after by AQIM and its criminal associates. ⁷⁸

These factors guarantee that, detached from the Moroccan state, the territory would become an even greater source of conflict between the Maghrebi countries. A recent report was not exaggerating by much when it speculated that an independent Western Sahara would be “another Somalia on the Atlantic coast of North Africa.” ⁷⁹ In fact, another report recently documented that while the Polisario Front has largely been a secular throughout its history, more recently there has been “rapprochement of some elements of the Polisario with Islamist terrorism.” ⁸⁰ The report went on to conclude that “although the contamination of one part of the Polisario by Salafist ideology does not mean the Islamization of the movement as a whole, the Polisario nonetheless has become one of the principal pools of recruitment for AQIM.” ⁸¹ Even more recently, speaking at a conference on “The Dynamics of North African Terror,” Michael Braun, former head of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, remarked on the potentially dangerous tie between the Polisario and AQIM. According to Braun, in the former's Tindouf camps, “young people aged 16–25 are deprived of their rights and live in despicable conditions with no hope for a better tomorrow,” while powerful terrorist organizations like the latter are expert at finding such vulnerable individuals, thus making the Polisario-controlled camps “a potential gold mine for AQIM recruiters.” ⁸²

In addition to AQIM, Morocco faces a challenge from groups like the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain (GICM, Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group), the organization whose cells were responsible for the terrorist attacks of May 16, 2003 in Casablanca and March 3, 2004 in Madrid, as well as the November 4, 2004 murder in Amsterdam of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. ⁸³

While Morocco's comprehensive efforts to counter extremist ideology and terrorist violence have helped to reduce the overall threat, both to the kingdom itself and to other countries, ⁸⁴ there is no doubt that a settlement of the Saharan conflict “would have significant positive security implications for the region as it would provide for a more coordinated and sustained effort to counter terrorism and deny terrorists a safe haven in the Western Sahara bordering the Sahel.” ⁸⁵

The challenge of terrorism brings the focus back to the Western Sahara. The dispute over this territory demonstrates the need for some form of agreement to reduce and hopefully remove the tense relations between Algeria and Morocco. Both countries find themselves having to deal with sophisticated terrorist networks that run through their borders. In order to successfully handle these, both countries need to resolve their outstanding issues—including the Western Sahara dispute—and work constructively together. For the moment, however, the Western Sahara conflict is a major impediment in the region, preventing significant economic progress, inhibiting economic development and coordination, and, moreover, leaving unimplemented the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) first agreed to between Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia in 1989. ⁸⁶ This is ironic because the AMU would be the ideal institution within which to formulate a regional counterterrorism strategy. However, because the Western Sahara dispute prevents the finding of common ground, it potentially gives way to a vicious cycle whereby terrorists can find an opening in the conflict to exploit because the conflict prevents the development of a collaborative counterterrorism program. This concern was underscored by Robert Godec, Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department observed that “while the Maghreb governments have had some success in combating AQIM and terrorism, there remains much to be done.” “Unfortunately,” he noted, “the lack of resolution of the Western Sahara question block[s] the cooperation and integration the region needs. For the region to achieve real success, the key differences must be resolved or at least bridged.” ⁸⁷ Thus, any meaningful sustainable security cooperation will only come about if the Sahara issue between Morocco and Algeria is resolved. ⁸⁸ Specifically, as a leading French analyst of the Maghreb summarized it, “The Polisario Front continues to exist thanks to Algeria and it is a fact that this country has not abandoned its ambition to dominate the region.” ⁸⁹

Moreover, there are significant economic benefits to be had if one can resolve the conflict, thus removing a major obstacle that impedes the realization of the hopes reposed in the AMU, which has been “frozen” since 1994 as a result of the dispute between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara issue. ⁹⁰ This regional integration would improve the lives of millions of citizens in Maghrebi countries and beyond:

Economic model analysis suggests that a full-fledged free trade area among the Maghrebi countries would yield a gain in total merchandise trade of some $1 billion.1 Even this modest figure would almost double the extent of commercial relations within the region and might pave the way for a future deepening of ties. [Free Trade Agreements] between the EU or the U.S. and the major Maghrebi countries would generate even larger gains. Based on gravity model (GM) calculations, total Maghrebi trade would expand by $4 to $5 billion (3.0 to 4.5 percent) if the EU and the U.S. separately establish FTAs with the UMA countries, and by nearly $9 billion (nearly 8 percent) if both establish regional FTAs with the UMA countries. In terms of a possible EU‐US‐Maghreb FTA, total Maghrebi inward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks would increase by $5.8 billion (75 percent), and total Maghrebi outward FDI stocks would rise by $3.9 billion; both the U.S. and European economies stand to benefit from enhanced integration with the Maghreb region as well. ⁹¹

This regional integration, imperative for the states of the Maghreb if they are not only to avoid strife but also to promote development for their peoples, ought to itself be reflection, albeit on a grander geopolitical scale, of the largely unheralded integration through autonomy of the Saharan territory with Morocco. A recent extensive study by the head of sociological analysis group of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of the economic integration of the Sahara and various modernization indicators, including demographic change and pressure on the labor market, basic infrastructure, gross school enrollment, and employment, resulted in conclusions that all pointed “in the same direction, that of the emergence and strengthening of social and economic bonds that integrated the Saharan provinces and helped them to leave the state of destitution in which they found themselves during colonization, and allowed them to modernize.” ⁹²

CONCLUSION: ADVANCING A REALISTIC SOLUTION

For the sake of regional stability and development as well as the security and interests of the larger international community, Western Sahara can no longer be a “forgotten conflict” peripheral to world affairs. Of course, whatever solution adopted, in order to be viable and sustainable over time, must necessarily be founded on the principles of realism. Interesting, the man who oversaw the establishment of a ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front and set in motion the deployment of MINURSO nearly two decades ago also outlined the contours a pragmatic framework for resolving the conflict. In his memoirs, former UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuellar wrote

I was never convinced that independence promised the best future for the inhabitants of the Western Sahara. Their number, however counted, is less than 150,000, and aside from its phosphate deposits the land is poor, offering meager prospects of viability as a separate country. Such political leadership as exists is not impressive and in some cases is not Sahrawi in origin. A reasonable solution under which the Western Sahara would be integrated as an autonomous region in the Moroccan state would have spared many lives and a great deal of money. The Maghreb countries were in the best position to pressure Polisario to accept such a solution since Polisario was largely dependent upon them, especially Algeria, for support. They chose not to do so, even though in conversations with me President Chadli seemed prepared to support such an outcome …

As the years passed, Morocco was able to strengthen its position in competing with Polisario, first militarily but subsequently in its political position within the Western Sahara, which it cultivated with substantial economic assistance. I believe that King Hassan II can have considerable confidence that if the referendum is ever held, there will be majority support for integration with Morocco. ⁹³

Others have come around to the same conclusions, not least among them Dutch diplomat Peter van Walsum, who served as personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Western Sahara from 2005 until 2008, who reported to the Security Council that an independent Saharan state was “not a realistic option.” ⁹⁴ The then-U.S. representative to the Security Council agreed, telling reporters, “The best way to move forward, in our view, the realistic way to move forward, is to pursue a negotiated solution resulting in true autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.” ⁹⁵ The autonomy option likewise received support from the French and Spanish governments ⁹⁶ —not surprising given not only the historical links between the two former protectorate powers and Morocco but also because “Morocco is not only considered as a privileged partner of the EU, but also as the most advanced country in the region with regard to the process of democratization and consolidation of the rule of law.” ⁹⁷ Moreover, the resolution renewing MINURSO's mandate on that occasion made a point of “welcoming serious and credible Moroccan efforts to move the process forward towards resolution” and recommended that the parties continue to be guided by “realism and a spirit of compromise.” ⁹⁸ More recently, U.S. Secretary of State of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has reaffirmed that “there has been no change in policy” ⁹⁹ and support for the autonomy initiative is firmly rooted in American policy as something “that originated in the Clinton administration … was reaffirmed in the Bush administration and it remains the policy of the United States in the Obama administration.” ¹⁰⁰

Given the alternative—the terrible specter of another failed state, one that neither Africa nor the world needs—it is certainly in the interests, not only of the peoples directly affected but also of all responsible members of the international community, that a realistic perspective inform the path toward a resolution of a conflict that has gone on all too long. To this end, policymakers and analysts would do well to bear in mind that history and present-day reality both concur that while Morocco without the Sahara is diminished and its stability threatened, the Sahara without Morocco is a wasteland—and a dangerous one at that.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Peter Pham

J. PETER PHAM, associate professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and senior fellow and Africa Project director at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, New York, New York, is vice president of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Middle East and Africa.

Notes

¹Despite frequent references in some of the literature describing the region as being “resource-rich”—thereby imputing a materialistic motivation for Moroccan interests there—it should be noted that, in fact, the phosphates of the Western Sahara are of a lower quality and represent just 2.4 percent of Morocco's total reserves; see Office Chérifien de Phosphates, http://www.ocpgroup.ma/english/servlet/accueil/ServletAccueil?tache=Accueil.

²UN Security Council, Resolution 1871, April 30, 2009; also see Benjamin Rivlin, “The Western Sahara: Towards a Referendum? The UN Political Process at Work,” (Occasional Paper 18, Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 1994).

³See, inter alia, Tony Hodges, Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983); Yahia H. Zoubir and Daniel Volman (eds.), The International Dimension of the Western Sahara Conflict (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993); and Toby Shelley, Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa's Last Colony? (London: Zed, 2004).

⁴See, inter alia, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and Conflict Management Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Why the Maghreb Matters: Threats, Opportunities, and Options for Effective American Engagement in North Africa (Washington: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies/SAIS, 2009).

⁵Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 17–18.

⁶See Lloyd Cabot Briggs, Tribes of the Sahara (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).

⁷Robert Rézette, The Western Sahara and the Frontiers of Morocco (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1975), 36.

⁸Ibid., 38.

⁹See Phillip C. Naylor, North Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 89–96.

¹⁰Ibid., 124–129.

¹¹Rézette, 49.

¹²See Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, 1876–1912 (New York: Random House, 1991).

¹³See C. R. Pennell, Morocco since 1830: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 136–153.

¹⁴See H. T. Norris. “The Wind of Change in the Western Sahara,” The Geographical Journal 130, no. 1 (March 1964): 1–14.

¹⁵See Pennell, 292–296.

¹⁶See Guadalupe Pérez García, “La falacia histórica sobre la colonia de Ifni,” Historia y Comunicación Social 8 (2003): 207–222.

¹⁷See Rézette, 93.

¹⁸Tony Hodges, “The Origins of Saharawi Nationalism,” Third World Quarterly 5, no. 1 (January 1983): 38.

¹⁹Ibid., 40–41.

²⁰See George Joffé, “Morocco: Monarchy, Legitimacy and Succession,” Third World Quarterly 10, no. 1 (January 1988): 201–228.

²¹Tami Hultman, “Background to a Desert War,” Africa Today 21, no. 1 (January 1977): 71.

²²See John D. Harbron, “Spain, Spanish Morocco and Arab Policy,” African Affairs 55, no. 219 (April 1956): 135–143.

²³See Shannon E. Fleming, “Spanish Morocco and the Alzamiento Nacional, 1936–1939: The Military, Economic and Political Mobilization of a Protectorate,” Journal of Contemporary History 18, no. 1 (January 1983): 27–42.

²⁴Hodges, “The Origins of Saharawi Nationalism,” 52.

²⁵Interview with Ahmedou Ould Souilem, founding member of the Polisario Front, February 22, 2010.

²⁶UN General Assembly, Resolution 3292, December 13, 1974.

²⁷See Jean Chappez, “L'avis consultatif de la Cour internationale de justice du 16 octobre 1975 dans l'affaire du Sahara occidental,” Revue Generale de Droit International Public 80, no. 3–4 (1976): 1132–1187.

²⁸Advisory Opinion on Western Sahara, I.C.J. Reports 1975, 12ff, http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/61/6195.pdf; also see B. O. Okere, “The Western Sahara Case,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 28, no. 2 (April 1979): 296–312.

²⁹Abdeslam Maghraoui, “Ambiguities of Sovereignty: Morocco, The Hague and the Western Sahara Dispute,” Mediterranean Politics 8, no. 1 (2003): 119.

³⁰See Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law, Cambridge Series in International and Comparative Law 37 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); also see J. Peter Pham, “Beyond Power Politics: International Law and Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 World,” Human Rights & Human Welfare 6 (2006): 203–216.

³¹Benjamin Stora, “Algeria/Morocco: The Passions of the Past. Representations of the Nation that Unite and Divide,” Journal of North African Studies 8, no. 1 (March 2003): 25.

³²Jerome T. Weiner, “The Green March in Historical Perspective,” Middle East Journal 33, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 33; also see Marguerite Rollinde, “La Marche Verte: Un nationalisme royal aux couleurs de l'Islam,” Le Mouvement Social 202 (January 2003): 133–151.

³³See Caitlin Dearing, Group Rights and International Law: A Case Study on the Saharawi Refugees in Algeria, ed. Jean AbiNader (Washington: Inter-University Center for Legal Studies, 2009).

³⁴As of December 31, 2009, only twenty-one of the fifty-two state members—that is, less than half—of the African Union formally recognize the SADR: Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Of these, only nine actually host “diplomatic” representatives of the Polisario in their capitals: Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania. In contrast, some fifteen members of the AU have canceled or suspended the recognition that they previously accorded to the SADR: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Togo.

³⁵MINURSO, Facts and Figures, December 31, 2009, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minurso/facts.shtml.

³⁶See Erik Jensen, Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate, International Peace Academy Occasional Papers (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005).

³⁷See Mohammed VI, Founding Speech for the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs, March 25, 2006, http://www.corcas.com/SearchResults/FoundingSpeech/tabid/734/Default.aspx.

³⁸Perhaps the most interesting member of CORCAS is one Khalil Rkibi, a retired non-commissioned officer of the Royal Moroccan Army living in Kasbah Tadla, a walled city built in the seventeenth century by Moulay Ismaïl, second sultan of the Alaouite Dynasty. Khalil Rkibi is none other than the father of Mohamed Abdelaziz, chief of the Polisario Front and self-proclaimed president of the chimerical SADR (Rkibi's two other sons, a surgeon and a lawyer, both live in Morocco).

³⁹El Mostafa Sahel, Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization, April 10, 2007, http://dcusa.themoroccanembassy.com/moroccan_embassy_letter_un_secretary.aspx.

⁴⁰Moroccan Initiative for Negotiating an Autonomy Statute for the Saharan Region, April 10, 2007, http://dcusa.themoroccanembassy.com/download/political/Initiativ_ang.pdf.

⁴¹For a detailed commentary on the provisions of the autonomy proposal, see Abdelhamid El Ouali, Saharan Conflict: Towards Territorial Autonomy as a Right to Democratic Self-Determination (London: Stacey International, 2008), 144–153.

⁴²UN Security Council, Resolution 1871, April 30, 2007.

⁴³C. David Welch, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, 110th Cong., 1st sess., June 6, 2007, http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/35873.pdf.

⁴⁴Nicolas Sarkozy, Allocution de Monsieur le Président de la République devant les Membres des Deux Chambres Marocaines, October 23, 2007, available at www.elysee.fr.

⁴⁵The text of the letter, dated April 3, 2007, along with the signatures is available at http://www.moroccanamericanpolicy.org/CongressionalLetter.pdf.

⁴⁶John Damis, Conflict in Northwest Africa: The Western Sahara Dispute, Hoover International Studies (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 76.

⁴⁸Scott Pegg, International Society and the De Facto State (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 26.

⁴⁷Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (adopted December 26, 1933, entered into force December 26, 1934), in Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America 1776–1949, vol. 3, ed. Charles I. Bevans (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1969): 881.

⁴⁹See Robert I. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair,” in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert I. Rotberg (Princteon: Princeton University Press, 2004), 1–49.

⁵⁰See Jean-Germain Gros, “Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order: decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti,” Third World Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1996): 455–471.

⁵¹See Marilena Bogazzi, “I diritti umani sono veramente universali? La verità sull'universo carcerario del Polisario nel sud dell'Algeria” (tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi di Bologna, 2005).

⁵²It is worth recalling that, despite the often-repeated myth that the SADR's “interim capital” is Bir Lehlou east of the security berm in Saharan territory, the Polisario is actually based in Tindouf, in Algerian territory, where its headquarters is in a specially adapted camp at Rabouni. Thus, the very existence of the self-declared “government-in-exile” is wholly dependent on the government in Algiers.

⁵³Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), 43.

⁵⁴Hodges, “The Origins of Saharawi Nationalism,” 28.

⁵⁵Robert I. Rotberg, “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators,” in State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror, ed. Robert I. Rotberg (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 6–7.

⁵⁶ See Claude Bontems, “The Government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic,” Third World Quarterly 9, no. 1 (January 1987): 168–186.

⁵⁷Constitution de la République Arabe Sahraouie Démocratique (RASD) adoptée par le dixième Congrès national, 26.08. – 04.09.99, http://www.arso.org/03-const.99.htm.

⁵⁸See, for example, Hans Morten Haugen, “The Right to Self-Determination and Natural Resources: The Case of Western Sahara,” Law, Environment and Development Journal 3, no. 1 (2007): 70–81.

⁵⁹It should be noted that under the Moroccan Initiative for Negotiating an Autonomy Statute for the Saharan Region, the Saharan Autonomous Region would enjoy greater financial resources than a prospective independent Western Sahara. In order to ensure that the region would “have the financial resources required for its development in all areas” (para. 13), it would receive not only an allocation from the exploitation of natural resources throughout Morocco in line with other parts of the kingdom, but it would receive both such proceeds as collected by the state from natural resource development within its regional boundaries and addition “necessary funds allocated in keeping with the principle of national solidarity.”

⁶⁰Richard Gillespie, “European Union Responses to Conflict in the Western Mediterranean,” Journal of North African Studies 15, no. 1 (March 2010): 96.

⁶¹Jacob A. Mundy, “Performing the Nation, Pre-figuring the State: The Western Sahara Refugees Thirty Years Later,” Journal of Modern African Studies 45, no. 2 (June 2007): 275.

⁶²Ibid., 292.

⁶³Rotberg, “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators,” 9.

⁶⁴See I. William Zartman, “Time for a Solution in the Western Sahara Conflict,” Middle East Policy 14, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 182.

⁶⁵See, inter alia, Sophie Caratini, “La prison du temps. Les mutations sociales à l'oeuvre dans les camps de réfugiés sahraouis. Première partie: La voie de la révolution,” Afrique Contemporaine 221 (2007): 153–172; idem, “La prison du temps. Les mutations sociales à l'oeuvre dans les camps de réfugiés sahraouis. Deuxième partie: L'impasse,” Afrique Contemporaine 222 (2007): 181–197; Pablo San Martín, “Nationalism, Identity and Citizenship in the Western Sahara,” Journal of North African Studies 10, no. 3 (September 2005): 565–592. The lyrical descriptions of the latter about the squalid refugee camps as the “spatial organization” that was “connected to series of traditional narratives that facilitated the integration of the dramatic circumstances of the exile in a new coherent historical plot” (ibid., 569) are positively perverse.

⁶⁶Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair,” 5.

⁶⁷See National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), Final Report on the Moroccan Legislative Elections, September 7, 2007 (Washington: NDI, 2007), 34–38.

⁶⁸See International Strategic Studies Association, Report on Local Elections in the Kingdom of Morocco, June 14, 2009, http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/ISSA%20Election%20Report.pdf.

⁶⁹See Omar Brouksy, Être jeune au Sahara occidental aujourd'hui (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 2008).

⁷⁰Cédric Omet, La politisation des jeunes dans les camps de réfugiés sahraouis (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 2008), 15.

⁷²Rotberg, “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators,” 23.

⁷¹Ibid., 183.

⁷³See Jean-Luc Marret, “Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb: A ‘Glocal’ Organization,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 31, no. 6 (June 2008): 541–552; also see Anthony N. Celso, “Al Qaeda in the Maghreb: The ‘Newest’ Front in the War on Terror,” Mediterranean Quarterly 19, no. 1 (January 2008): 80–96.

⁷⁴See Stephen Ellis, “West Africa's International Drug Trade,” African Affairs 108, no. 431 (April 2009), 171–196.

⁷⁵See William K. Rashbaum, “U.S. Charges 3 Malians in Drug Plot,” New York Times, December 18, 2009, 1; also see J. Peter Pham, “Emerging West African Terror-Drug Nexus Posed Major Security Threat,” World Defense Review (January 28, 2010), http://worlddefensereview.com/pham012810.shtml.

⁷⁶Khadija Mohsen-Finan, Les défis sécuritaires au Maghreb (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 2008), 6.

⁷⁷See Europa Press, “Tres ex combatientes del Polisario detenidos por presuntos vínculos con Al Qaeda en el Magreb Islámico,” January 30, 2010, http://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-mauritania-tres-ex-combatientes-polisario-detenidos-presuntos-vinculos-qaeda-magreb-islamico-20100130143534.html.

⁷⁸Interview with senior intelligence official, February 22, 2010.

⁷⁹Potomac Institute and SAIS, Why the Maghreb Matters, 9.

⁸⁰Claude Moniquet, Front Polisario: Une force de destabilization regional toujours active (Brussels: European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, 2008), 3.

⁸¹Ibid., 5.

⁸²Michael Braun, Remarks during Panel on “The Expanding Reach of Extremists Groups in the Maghreb” (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, February 16. 2010), http://csis.org/event/conference-dynamics-north-african-terror.

⁸³See Jessica Raquel Bermudez, The Moroccan Islamic Combat Group: Terror in the Desert and Western Europe, Monograph 2 (Pretoria: International Institute for Islamic Studies, 2009).

⁸⁴See Jack Kalpakian, “Against both Bin Laden and Belliraj: Lessons from Moroccan Counterterrorism,” Contemporary Security Policy 29, no. 3 (December 2008): 453–476.

⁸⁵Yonah Alexander, Maghreb and Sahel Terrorism: Addressing the Rising Threat from al-Qaeda and Other Terrorists in North and Central/West Africa (Washington: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2010), 18.

⁸⁶See Mohammed Boughadi, Le Conflit Saharien dan le Contexte Sécuritaire euro maghrébin (Rabat: Éditions Bouregreg, 2007), 315–328.

⁸⁷Robert Godec, “Opportunities and Challenges for U.S.-Maghreb Cooperation” (keynote address, Conference on “The Dynamics of North African Terror,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, February 16, 2010), http://csis.org/event/conference-dynamics-north-african-terror.

⁸⁸A leading specialist on the question has succinctly summarized the difficult-to-conceive nature of Algeria's opposition to Morocco on the Western Sahara issue:

Diplomats have long asked what Algeria really wants, since the issue is not an existential matter for the government or the state and is at best (or worst) a matter of pride for the Algerian army, which has no raison d'être outside its rivalry with Morocco. Others have suggested that Moroccan ratification of the 1972 border treaty with Algeria, confirmed by the king in 1981 but not yet by parliament, might lessen tensions, although Algeria, which ratified it in 1973, publicly counts the treaty as a given and discounts any Moroccan moves. Others have suggested that what Algeria really wants is an outlet to the Atlantic, and so Moroccan assurance of a railway to the coast for Algerian iron ore from Gara Djibelet would help. But in the end, it is not clear whether any item would catch the interest of the Algerian regime, or whether the issue is not of greater interest unresolved, to tweak Morocco when useful (Zartman, “Time for a Solution in the Western Sahara Conflict,” 181).

⁸⁹Mohsen-Finan, Les défis sécuritaires au Maghreb, 7.

⁹¹Potomac Institute and SAIS, Why the Maghreb Matters, 8.

⁹⁰See Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Claire Brunel (eds.), Maghreb Regional and Global Integration: A Dream to be Fulfilled, Policy Analyses in International Economics 86 (Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2008); also see Fouad M. Ammor, “De l'environnement stratgique du Maghreb,” in Le Maghreb stratégique, Occasional Paper 14 (Rome: NATO Defense College, 2006), 11–23.

⁹²Mohamed Cherkaoui, Morocco and the Sahara: Social Bonds and Geopolitical Issues (Oxford:Baldwell Press), 179.

⁹³Javier Pérez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace: A Secretary-General's Memoirs (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 352.

⁹⁴UN Department of Public Information, News and Media Division, “Security Council Extends Western Sahara Mission until 30 April 2009, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 1813 (2008),” April 30, 2008, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sc9319.doc.htm.

⁹⁵Quoted in Claudia Parsons, “UN Council Urges Realism in Western Sahara Dispute, Reuters, April 30, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN30547316.

⁹⁶See Khadija Mohsen-Finan, Trente ans de conflit au Sahara occidental (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 2008), 3.

⁹⁷Karima Benabdallah, “The Position of the European Union on the Western Sahara Conflict,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17, no. 3 (December 2009): 433.

⁹⁸UN Security Council, Resolution 1813, April 30, 2008.

⁹⁹Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks with Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi-Fihri, November 2, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/11/131229.htm.

¹⁰⁰Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Interview with Fouad Arif of Al-Aloula Television, November 3, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/11/131354.htm.