Self-determination for Western Sahara

Western Sahara remains Africa’s last major unresolved colonial question. When Spain relinquished control of the territory in 1975, it handed the territory to Morocco and Mauritania despite an International Court of Justice ruling supporting self-determination for the Sahrawis.

The pro-independence Polisario Front fought both states, forcing Mauritania to withdraw in 1979. Morocco then occupied most of the territory, building the Berm, a 2,700-kilometre fortification of sand walls and minefields, separating the 80 per cent of Western Sahara it occupies from Polisario-held territory. By then, a large proportion of the Sahrawi population had fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria. Today, 170,000 live in these camps. A substantial number of Sahrawis remain in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

Ceasefire

A UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991 promised a referendum on self-determination. Polisario has accepted peace plans based on this, but these have been consistently blocked by Morocco, which instead insisted on an “autonomy plan”, a fig leaf for Moroccan rule. Morocco has never produced a credible plan for autonomy since this is incompatible with the current autocratic monarchy. Since 1975, the US has paid lip service to the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination but has continued to support and arm Morocco as an ally in the region.

Morocco’s motives are often misleadingly presented as economic. Western Sahara’s Bou Craa phosphate mine mattered greatly to Spain, but Morocco possesses vastly larger phosphate reserves and production. Economic development primarily serves a political purpose, encouraging migration from Morocco and helping to alter the territory’s demographic balance to make the Sahrawis a minority. Annexation of the territory serves both a geopolitical purpose, strengthening Morocco against its larger regional rival Algeria, and an ideological one, as a remnant of the nationalist project of “Greater Morocco”, based on the imperial past of Morocco’s Alaouite monarchy.

The ceasefire broke down in 2020, but fighting has remained low-level, with little prospect of a Polisario breakthrough. Diplomatically, the balance has moved against the Sahrawis. In 2020, Donald Trump recognised Moroccan sovereignty in return for Morocco normalising relations with Israel. In his second term, Trump now treats Morocco’s “autonomy plan” as the only acceptable basis for a settlement, increasingly sidelining the UN and encouraging US investment in Western Sahara. More European and African states have followed.

Impasse

The Sahrawis face an impasse. But Moroccan settlement does not make Sahrawi independence impossible. Economic development is creating a larger working class, including Moroccan workers whose loyalty to the monarchy cannot be assumed. Sahrawi-led demonstrations in 1999 began around economic demands but developed pro-referendum and pro-independence demands. Significantly, some poor Moroccan settlers also joined the protests.

One potential source is Morocco’s workers’ movement. A movement against the monarchy should take up the issue of the Sahrawis, although much of the Moroccan left currently has poor politics on the issue, with only the revolutionary left supporting self-determination. The decisive task is for the Moroccan workers’ movement to take up the cause of Sahrawi self-determination, linking opposition to the occupation with the struggle to overthrow the monarchy that sustains it.