The separatists of the Polisario Front accused, on Saturday, the United Nations of being responsible for the “political blockage” and of playing Morocco’s game in Western Sahara, a territory disputed for 30 years.
The UN pointed the finger at Western Sahara. The separatists of the Polisario Front accused the United Nations, Saturday February 27, of being responsible for the “political blockage” in this territory disputed with Morocco for 30 years.
“Morocco could not have done what it did without the support of the international community, the support of the UN, the Security Council as well as the UN secretary general,” said a senior official of the Polisario, Khatri Addouh, in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf in Algeria, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
After almost 30 years of ceasefire, tensions resurfaced in November 2020 when Morocco deployed its troops in the buffer zone of Guerguerat, in the extreme south of the territory, after a group of Sahrawi militants blocked the only road to neighboring Mauritania.
Since then, frustrated by the deadlock in the UN process, the Polisario has resumed hostilities and says it is “in a state of war of self-defense”.
It remains very difficult to know from an independent source what is happening on the ground, difficult to access.
The quadripartite peace negotiations – Morocco, Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania -, carried out under the aegis of the UN, have stalled since March 2019.
“Laxity” in the face of Morocco
“The Polisario Front has tried for 29 years to avoid war by making concessions, but it has faced a total lack of cooperation from both the Moroccan side and the UN”, criticized Khatri Addouh , quoted by the official Sahrawi agency SPS.
The Polisario official attributed to the UN the responsibility for the “political blockage” of the Sahrawi question because of its “laxity” vis-à-vis Morocco.
During a meeting Thursday with the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the Secretary General of the Polisario, Brahim Ghali, deplored the “silence of the international community”. He had urged international human rights organizations to visit the former Spanish colony “to protect the defenseless Sahrawi citizens”.
“The Saharawi people will continue their struggle to impose justice and free the Saharawi territory from the Moroccan presence”, promised Saturday Brahim Ghali, who is also president of the SADR, self-proclaimed on February 27, 1976, in a speech delivered at the refugee camp of Aousserd.
As on every anniversary, the Polisario presented its armed forces during a military parade in the presence of the Saharawi leaders. Columns of soldiers, wearing sanitary masks, presented arms, while a woman fully wrapped in the Sahrawi flag paraded in front of them.
The Polisario turns to Joe Biden
The question of the status of Western Sahara, considered as a “non-autonomous territory” by the UN in the absence of a final settlement, has opposed the Polisario to Morocco for decades.
The Polisario, supported by Algeria, is calling for a self-determination referendum planned by the UN, while Morocco is proposing an autonomy plan under its sovereignty. Rabat controls around 80% of this vast desert territory, where major Moroccan development projects have been launched in recent years.
Shortly before his departure from the White House, Donald Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the whole of Western Sahara in return for the normalization of Rabat’s relations with Israel.
The Saharawis are now placing their hopes in the new Biden administration so that it can reverse this decision which “violates all decisions and resolutions of all international bodies”. “In reality, Trump is only adding problems to the administration that succeeds him, that is to say that of Biden,” said Khatri Addouh, on the sidelines of the festivities in Tindouf.
Since then, the UN, which has a mission with limited prerogatives on site, the Minurso (United Nations Mission for the Organization of a Referendum in Western Sahara), has indicated that its position was “unchanged”, like several countries involved. in the file.
