Western Sahara Endgame

Pham the Sham and the Sahrawis

2011-02-16T12:43:00.011-05:00

Recently, a very creepy character by the name of J. Peter Pham has been spearheading a media assault on the rights of the Western Saharans. After his entrance into the debate on the future of the territory with an article in the World Defense Review (June 11, 2008) titled Western Sahara: Time to Move Ahead, Realistically, he has continued with a steady stream of pro-Morocco and anti-Polisario articles with revealing titles such as Moroccan Exceptionalism? and Why Morocco Must Stay . His strenuous arguments in favor of Morocco’s autonomy plan for the region follow closely the royalist party line: the Western Sahara has always been Moroccan, the referendum never took place because the parties could never agree on things, Western Saharan independence is not realistic because it is too small, too poor, and would be a failed state, the Polisario has Al Qaeda sympathies, Moroccan hegemony over the region is essential for the war against terrorism, the autonomy plan is a wonderful compromise. Same ‘ol stuff. His genuflection before the Moroccan monarch is so servile one would think he is auditioning for the Commander Alouite. It is not hard to understand how he has become perhaps the most quoted source by the pro-Morocco crowd.

Pham’s thing is clearly the failed state/war on terrorism argument. He makes only a half-hearted attempt to justify Moroccan invasion and occupation historically, and international law is just of no concern to him (he never even mentions the International Court of Justice opinion). His point of view boils down to the following:

... given the importance to the United States and its allies of a stable and secure Maghreb, the compromise of autonomy offered by Morocco—reasonably located between complete assimilation into the Sharifian Kingdom and total independence—is the only realistic course. With no arable land to speak of and only the barest of natural resources, an independent Western Sahara would be an instantaneous failed state. Its prospective population of less than 200,000—that is, those Moroccans (including Sahrawis) who didn't opt for the more promising prospects of life in Morocco and abandon the territory before any independence—would thus be among the poorest and least economically viable people in the world.

Predictably, Pham offers up little or no evidence to back up his assertion that the Western Sahara would be “an instantaneous failed state” whose population would be “among the poorest and least economically viable people in the world.” Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy in their illuminating recent book, Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, estimate earnings from the Western Saharan fishing and phosphate sectors alone at upwards of three-quarters of a billion dollars. Pham’s “evidence” from his 2008 article that the phosphate sector “has seen its price continue to plummet to below half of what it was only a year ago” completely ignores the huge run-up in phosphate prices since 2006 which currently still leaves the phosphate price several times higher than the 2000-2006 average. Furthermore, if you can believe on-line advertisements for wind-surfing vacations on the Western Saharan coast, there is tourism potential. Last but not least, Morocco continues to believe that there is oil under the Western Sahara, and solar energy potential appears limitless. The economic viability of an independent Western Sahara is clearly far greater than Mr. Pham is willing to admit.

So who the hell is this J. Peter Pham? A bio from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, where he his is Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Project, reads as follows:

Dr. Pham is currently on leave from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he is tenured as Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science and Africana Studies and served as Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is also non‐resident Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., and has been part of the adjunct faculty of the Sub‐Saharan African Studies Program at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School, Hurlburt Field, Florida and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance, a National Security Agency Center of Academic Excellence.

A specialist on U.S. foreign and defense policy, African politics and security, and terrorism and political violence, Dr. Pham is the author of over three hundred essays and reviews and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. He also writes a weekly column on African security issues and American interests, “Strategic Interests,” which is distributed by the World Defense Review, and contributes to a number of online publications, including National Interest Online and ForeignPolicy.com. Dr. Pham has appeared in various media outlets, including CBS, PBS, CBC, SABC, VOA, CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the BBC, Radio France Internationale, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, USA Today, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Weekly Standard, New Statesman, and Maclean’s.

Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions – most recently on June 25, 2009 – and conducted briefings or consulted for U.S. and foreign governments as well as private firms. In 2005, he served as member of the U.S. Agency for International Development‐funded International Republican Institute (IRI) delegation monitoring the national elections in Liberia. He also served on the IRI pre‐election assessment (2006) and election observation (2007) delegations to Nigeria. In May 2008, at the invitation of General William E. “Kip” Ward, he gave the keynote address at the first Senior Leaders Conference of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Mainz, Germany.

Dr. Pham is the incumbent Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), an academic organization chaired by Professor Bernard Lewis and representing over 750 scholars of Middle Eastern and African Studies at more than three hundred colleges and universities in the United States and overseas.

Dr. Pham was the winner of the 2008 Nelson Mandela International Prize for African Security and Development presented by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for Defense and Security Studies, the Brenthurst Foundation, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

On first reading this, I have to admit to being somewhat intimidated by the shear weightiness of these credentials. Furthermore, I just couldn’t figure out how I had never even heard of the guy before he came out with his Western Sahara article in 2008 – especially since I too consider myself somewhat of an africologist. Pham’s institutional affiliations give us an idea of where he is coming from.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) where he is a Senior Fellow is described by Sourcewatch as “a neoconservative think tank that claims to conduct ‘research and education on international terrorism’” issues. With a strong pro-Israel/zionist orientation, its leadership Council includes Louis J. Freeh, Newt Gingrich, Bill Kristol, and Joseph Lieblerman and Board of Advisors Richard Perle, Gary Bauer, and Charles Krauthammer. One critical assessment of the FDD pegs it as “one of the most influential and powerful of the Zionist lobbies which changed its name and sprung into action immediately after 9-11.” For an interesting description of the marriage of convenience between the Israel and Morocco lobbies, I refer you to Morocco and AIPAC -- What They Have in Common from the blog Milfuegos.

Pham’s vice-presidency of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) puts him in the company of popular author and scholar of Islam and the Middle East and Chair of the organization, Bernard Lewis, who is described by Western Sahara historian, Stephen Zunes, as a “notorious genocide-denier” (for his work on the Ottoman Empire and the Armenians). Perhaps genocide denial has a place in this discussion, given Professor Pham’s desire to have the Sahrawis turned over to the Moroccan crown for disposal. What makes Pham’s background even more fascinating, however, is another bio, this one from 1997:

John-Peter Pham, a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, is a fellow of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He is the editor of upcoming volume, "Centesimus Annus": Assessment and Perspectives for the Future of Catholic Social Doctrine, and served as the co-moderator of the International Congress on Social Doctrine in Rome (1997), sponsored by the Acton Institute and the Pontifical Athenaeum "Regina Apostolorum". He holds advanced ecclesiastical degrees in theology and canon law in addition to his prior studies in economics at the University of Chicago, where he wrote his thesis on The Declining Labor Force Participation of Older Americans since 1970 under the direction of Dr. D. Gale Johnson and for which he was awarded the Donnelly Prize for 1990.

First of all, from photos attached to this bio, it is clear that John-Peter Pham and J. Peter Pham are indeed the same person. He apparently, decided to alter his name a bit during the 2000’s. His transformation from a Roman Catholic priest in 1997 to academic and africologist is, indeed, fascinating. In August 2004, Pham joined the faculty of James Madison University (JMU). Biographical information from the JMU website fills in many of the gaps in this transformation:

Before coming to JMU, Pham held various diplomatic appointments through the Vatican Secretariat of State, including serving as the interim head of the diplomatic mission mediating the regional conflict in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2001-02. He was acting deputy chief of mission at the Vatican Embassy in the Philippines in 2000 after a five-year tenure as counselor to the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Vatican office in charge of human political, economic and social rights.

Pham apparently caught the Africa bug while serving in the Vatican diplomatic service (talking about Neanderthal institutional affiliations) in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and by 2004 he was ready to turn in his priestly garb for academic tweed. His book on Papal succession that year seems to be the last of his religious writings, and with his appointment to JMU his subsequent work is on Africa/International affairs topics.

In the end, I find Pham’s demonization of the Polisario, denigration of Western Saharan nationalism, and glorification of Morocco highly suspicious, given his sympathetic treatment of some of the other self-determination cases in Africa – most notably South Sudan and Somaliland. His attempts to rewrite Western Sahara history to justify Morocco’s invasion and occupation only reinforce my suspicions. His willingness to ignore the Western Sahara’s clear-cut case for self-determination under international law in the name of some ill-defined and nebulous drivel about viability and political realism makes it hard to see him as anything more than an apologist for Moroccan expansionism

And again, I can’t help but find J. Peter Pham incredibly creepy. It’s just that neo-con/zionist-aligned pontificating papists-turned-africologists who have gone through mid-life name changes and choose to vilify the most deserving national liberation movement on the planet totally freak me out.

Frederick Vreeland, High Solar Rollers, and the Looting of the Western Sahara

2010-06-01T09:11:00.006-04:00

While researching my last post on Samuel J. Spector and Hurst Hannum, I reread Ambassador Frederick Vreeland’s March 3, 2007, New York Times op-ed in support of Morocco’s autonomy proposal. Once again, Vreeland’s arguments in favor of autonomy were firmly slapped down by Professor Hannum in a letter to the editor the next day, and, in addition, three weeks later, the Times issued a correction stating that the “Op-Ed article should have more fully disclosed the background of the author,” as he was “also the chairman of a solar-energy company that has had contracts with the Moroccan government.”

Not having heard anything out of Vreeland for quite a while, I got to wondering what he was up to – especially since solar-energy has been a hot topic of late. Apparently, he’s been up to quite a bit.

His Marrakech-based solar-power company, Noor Web, is “a supplier of photovoltaic systems and related energy services in rural and remote areas of Morocco,” according to the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, which in 2002 had received a project financing application from Noor Web. Vreeland founded the company in 1996 with financial backing from E & CO, an energy investment spin-off from the Rockefeller Foundation and has served as chairman ever since. As of mid-2002 when the IFC released its project report, ownership included: “Shell Overseas Investment (39%); Al Tayyar – a middle east investment fund-- (21%); Marocaine Industrielle Financière Agricole (18%); Mr. Frederick Vreeland –an individual-- (10%); E&Co (9%), and others (3%).” This is one very well-connected company with very deep pockets. Shell Overseas Investment is a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell; Al Tayyar is an Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy investment fund founded by Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco, cousin of King Mohammed VI; Vreeland brings in his heavy-duty US government connections; and again E & CO has the Rockefeller connection.

Until recently, Noor Web appears to have concentrated on small-scale solar projects in the mountainous province of Taroudant south of the company’s offices in Marrakech. From an interview with Noor Web executives, by 2001 they were serving a mere 2,200 customers and acquiring 200 new households a month.

Increasingly, it seems that Noor Web’s small-scale orientation is changing. The last couple years have seen seismic changes in Morocco’s solar-power landscape. Most notably, two gargantuan solar initiatives have emerged -- one from the Moroccan government and the other a European/Mediterranean group.

Back in July 2008, Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) alerted us to the launch by Morocco’s Office Nacional de l’Electricité (ONE) of an invitation for the expression of interest and prequalification for three solar plant projects (using “electricity generation technology … based on Photovoltaic (PV) panels”), one based in Morocco (Ouarzazate) and the other two in occupied Western Sahara (Dakhla and Boujdour).
According to the tender, dubbed the Courak Iniative (appearing also as Chourouk), the awarded company would “construct, operate and own the plant for a period of 20 years,” during which ONE would buy all the electricity generated. WSRW strongly criticized the inclusion of Dakhla and Boujdour in the prequalification tender:

The planned investment could provide the necessary infrastructure to further back up Moroccan industry and illegal settlers in the neighbouring and occupied country Western Sahara. The UN has previously asked Morocco to terminate the occupation of Western Sahara, but now Morocco offers the world electricity companies a 20 year contract in the occupied territory…. Morocco has in the offering presented Dakhla and Boujdour of being within "the Kingdom of Morocco", despite the fact that no state in the world recognises Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Keeping on top of the issue, WSRW in February 2009 listed the names of the 21 groups that were prequalified to participate in the tender, urged them to withdraw from the tender, and informed them that any awarded company that started supplying electricity in occupied territory would be “subject to a public campaign.” Within the context of this article, the name on the list that jumps out is number 16, Solar Ecopower/Taqa/Noorweb /Solon.

Noor Web’s prequalified group offers up impressive credentials in the energy and solar sectors to complement its already impressive ownership pedigree. Solar Ecopower is a German company that provides “investor services for large scale solar PV farms/plants, solar PV system integration, and procurement services and direct product sales.” Abu Dhabi-based Taqa describes itself as “a global leader in the energy sector…. that is fully integrated with operations from wellhead to wall socket.” It has majority ownership by the government of Abu Dhabi and minority shares traded on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. Taqa has a huge and long-established foothold in Morocco with a 30-year contract to operate the Jorf Lasfar coal-fired plant 130 kilometres southwest of Casablanca which on average supplies 50% of the country’s electricity demand. Solon is a publicly-traded Berlin-based manufacturer of photovoltaic solar systems with an expertise in power-plant construction.

Morocco’s solar plans became clearer in November 2009 when Rabat officially launched a $9 billion dollar solar energy project, expected to meet 38% of the country’s energy needs by 2020. While the 2008 prequalification tender mentioned Ouarzazate, Boujdour, and Dakhla as the sites for solar plants, the new plan identified again Ouarzazate and Boujdour, but replaced Dakhla with Ain Bni Mathar, Foum Al Oued and Sebkhat Tah. Of the new lineup, Ouarzazate and Ain Bni Mathar are in Morocco and Boujdour and Foum Al Oued are in occupied Western Sahara. Sebkhat Tah appears to straddle the border. At the end of February 2010, Morocco officially opened up for bids on construction of the Ouarzazate facility, and the commercial operation date for Ouarzazate was projected for March 2015.

At the same time as Morocco was ratcheting up its solar plans, a pan-Mediterranean group, the DESERTEC Foundation, was putting together a massive 400 billion euro solar energy plan to meet potentially over 50% of the electricity needs of the EUMENA region (Europe, the Middle East, North Africa) by 2050. A major part of this vision involves harnessing the solar potential, and to a lesser degree the wind, of the Sahara and exporting North African energy to Europe. The DESERTEC Concept has been around since 2003, when it was developed by the German Club of Rome and a network of experts called Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC). The project started to gather steam in 2008 with the birth of the DESERTEC Foundation to coordinate the activities of the DESERTEC Networks, the creation of the Mediterranean Solar Plan by the Union for the Mediterranean, and the launching of the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (Dii Gmbh). To get a graphic depiction of DESERTEC’S vision for solar (and wind) power development in North Africa and the prominence of the Western Sahara in that vision, I urge you to link here to the DESERTEC Foundation’s website.

Given the importance of the Western Sahara in both DESERTEC’s scheme and Rabat’s solar plans, there has been much speculation about whether DESERTEC might place one of its test plants in the occupied territory. In an April 23, 2010, article in the UK Guardian, a DESERTEC spokesperson stated that while Morocco was a “a natural choice for the first Desertec pilot plant as the country is already connected to Spain via a sub sea electricity cable,” they would not build in the Western Sahara for “reputational reasons.” A German NGO, the Society for Threatened People, had earlier condemned Morocco’s plans to build a solar plant in Boujdour and had urged DESERTEC to reveal where they planned to build their first pilot project in Morocco. These words from DESERTEC are certainly encouraging. Nevertheless, I wonder how long DESERTEC can maintain this principled stance as it becomes more and more evident that the occupied status of the Western Sahara and chilly relations between Morocco and Algeria might jeopardize the feasibility of the whole project

It would be fair to say that Frederick Vreeland very much finds himself in the right place at the right time. He has been on the ground in Morocco since 1996 doing solar, and the solar market appears to be on the verge of exploding. Morocco’s tender for Ouarzazate is ongoing, but of course building a solar power plant there is not a problem since it would be in Morocco. Where the solar picture gets far thornier is when and if Morocco opens up for bids on Boujdour and Foum Al Oued in the Western Sahara. Given that almost all groups looking into the matter see the solar potential of the Western Sahara as far greater than that of Morocco, it will be interesting to see how Rabat proceeds. Any companies bidding on those contracts in the occupied zone would undoubtedly find themselves the target of widespread international condemnation along the lines of Western Sahara Resource Watch’s campaign against oil exploration companies that chose to explore in and off Moroccan-occupied territory. Would Shell, for instance, with the largest ownership stake in Noor Web, risk an international campaign against it by getting involved in the Western Sahara?

One aspect of the Morocco and Western Sahara solar issue that hadn’t occurred to me until I started looking into all this is the heavy involvement of Germany. Germany has historically shown little interest in the Western Sahara. This might be about to change. It seems that wherever I looked in researching this post, some German connection appeared. Two of Noor Web’s partner companies in the group that was pre-qualified for the solar business, Solar Ecopower and Solon, are German companies. The DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (Dii Gmbh) is a German company and the DESERTEC Concept very much has its roots in Germany. Furthermore, when Morocco announced its 9 billion dollar solar plan, one report noted: “Among potential partners, Morocco has already secured agreement with the World Bank, the European Commission, and Germany. During a visit to Berlin in January, the Chief Executive of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy Mustapha Bakkoury held talks with officials from Germany’s development bank KfW about investing in the pioneering project.” Somehow energy issues have a way of leading Germany and German leaders into the arms of strange bedfellows. Look, for instance, at former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s canoodling with Vladimir Putin while in office and his relationship with various Russian oil interests, especially involving the Nord Stream pipeline project, after stepping down. An increased German government perception that it is in its national interest as well as the interest of some of its companies to side with Morocco could lead to a higher profile supporting Rabat, which would be a highly unwelcome development.

What does this all mean for the Western Sahara? With the potential for solar energy perhaps rivaling or even exceeding that of oil, Morocco, its agents, and its sympathizers will almost certainly let out all stops in attempting to convince the international community that the Western Sahara must be recognized as part of Morocco. This has actually already begun, as the U.S. media over the past year has been bombarded by an unprecedented volume of pro-Moroccan articles urging the U.S. government, the world community, and the UN to recognize and accept Moroccan rule over the non-self-governing territory. Contrary to international law, Morocco is already looting the fish and phosphates of the Western Sahara. The potential for solar generation in the Sahara is so huge that it is hard to imagine that Rabat won’t go all out to also steal the sun.

And what can we expect from Frederick Vreeland? I rather suspect that given his conflict-of-interest and transparency issues and his well-known propensity for supporting Rabat’s expansionist agenda, he will keep a very low profile on the PR front and will concentrate instead on making money and lobbying his buddies in the U.S. government to support Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Besides I assume he is more than happy to let his fellow-ex-ambassadors-to-Morocco, Michael Ussery and Ed Gabriel, do the dirty work for him. Once again his company, Noor Web, has already prequalified, as part of Ecopower/Taqa/Noorweb/Solon, for upcoming Moroccan solar projects, and he has shown interest in proceeding to the next level; he was recently quoted by a group called North Africa Advisers as saying, “I am interested in the Morocco government’s $9 billion solar energy project announced under the auspices of King Mohammed VI in early November 2009.” And should Rabat go ahead with its plans to loot the sun of the Sahara, Frederick Vreeland will undoubtedly do what he has always done, which is to ignore international law and the rights of the Western Saharans in pursuit of his own self-interest.

Samuel J. Spector’s Egregious Malfeasance on the Western Sahara

2010-04-10T16:55:00.007-04:00

Morocco

and Western Sahara

As a consultant to James Baker in drafting what became known as the "Baker Plan" for Western Sahara, I must disagree with Ambassador Frederick Vreeland's pro-Moroccan argument for an autonomous Western Sahara in "A young king's wise proposal," (Views. March 3).

Nowhere is it mentioned that Morocco's claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara was specifically rejected by the International Court of Justice in a 1975 advisory opinion, which reaffirmed the Saharans' right to decolonization and self-determination. The 1975 Moroccan march to "reclaim" Western Sahara cited by Vreeland was government-instigated and widely condemned.

Every resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council in recent years has reaffirmed the right of the people of Western Sahara to determine their own future, but Morocco has consistently rejected any proposal that would allow the fate of Western Sahara to be determined through a free referendum in the territory.

King Mohammed VI's proposal for autonomy may well be the most sensible solution for Western Sahara, and it should be considered seriously by the Sahwari government-in-exile and people. However, Morocco has no authority to impose a solution unilaterally, and the UN Security Council should not issue a diktat against the wishes of the people of Western Sahara.

Hurst Hannum, Hong Kong

written in response to Frederick Vreeland’s Op-ed article in the New York Times, Will Freedom Bloom in the Desert? (March 3, 2007)

In the summer of 2009, an article titled Western Sahara and the Self-Determination Debate (Middle East Quarterly (MEQ), Summer 2009, PP. 33-43) by someone I’d never heard of, a certain Samuel J. Spector, crossed my computer screen. The article is a somewhat-interesting attempt to make an international law case for implementing Morocco’s autonomy proposal, which - given international law’s clear rejection of Morocco imposing anything on the territory - is just not the normal approach taken by pro-autonomy people. While the approach might have been novel, my recollection is that I found the article’s legal case for autonomy extremely weak and promptly dragged it to the recycle bin.

Last November, I ran across Mr. Spector once again in the comments section following a pro-autonomy article by our old friend Ed Gabriel that appeared on Globalpost.com. Ambassador Gabriel’s article was his rather typical pro-Morocco nonsense, and when I chimed in to disagree with him, first Robert Holley from the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) and then Samuel J. Spector added their comments in support of Gabriel. Spector’s piece was pretty much a condensed version of his MEQ article.

I am now posting a blog on Spector’s article almost a year after it came out because, as much as I would like to believe that tossing things in the recycle bin makes them and their authors disappear, Mr. Spector just won’t go away. Actually, with his recent participation in a rabidly pro-Moroccan Middle East Institute “policymakers roundtable” on the Western Sahara (March 11), he appears to be becoming a darling of the pro-autonomy set. His support of Robert Holley and Ed Gabriel noted above and the fact that MACP saw fit to issue a laudatory press release on the MEI event a day after it took place only confirm my suspicions.

At first glance, Mr. Spector’s education (Georgetown Law School), employment (the prestigious law firm Weil Gotschal and Manges), and the impressive number of heavy-duty footnotes in his article seem to indicate that he is a reasonably serious fellow. Likewise, the fact that an earlier version of his essay won second prize in the Middle East Quarterly's 2008 Albert J. Wood Student Writing Contest is further indication that there are serious people out there who also feel he is a reasonably serious fellow.

So after my quick dismissal of his article last summer, I felt that I better go back and reread it in case I had missed something. Unfortunately, several rereadings only confirm my original conclusion that this is far from being a serious paper.

Samuel Spector’s basic argument is that, with the winding down of the colonial era, “self-determination must … be reframed in the present context as a continuum of rights affording the affected populations a range of democratic entitlements and humanitarian protections within existing sovereign states.” By taking the possibility of independence out of self-determination, he argues that “an arrangement rooted in a realistic vision of autonomous self-government that would incorporate reasonable guarantees of cultural expression, political freedoms, and human rights for the inhabitants of Western Sahara might then be given a chance to take shape.” In other words, his argument is that evolving international law supports adopting autonomy as the sole basis for solving the Western Sahara debacle.

Mr. Spector’s article is unconvincing on several levels. The historical overview and, in particular, his analysis of the referendum years, is particularly weak. In trying to illustrate how “desolate in resources” the Western Sahara is, for instance, he states, “There is no arable land and while the region boasts phosphate deposits, much of its economic potential comes from fishing off its 700-mile coastline.” Given that the Western Sahara would be one of the largest exporters in the world of phosphates -- a vital, rapidly diminishing and currently very-high-priced resource – I would say that his command of the economics of the situation is tenuous. And he chooses to not even mention the possibility of oil and potential for solar power. In addition, his admission that throughout Western Sahara’s history “various North African Islamic dynasties … exerted some control” but that “nevertheless, the region remained largely nomadic and free from central authority” punches holes in several of his later arguments for ignoring the International Court of Justice opinion and accepting Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. All told, he pontificates mightily about things he clearly knows little about.

It is, however, his legal arguments that strike me as the worst part of the article. If there is one particular aspect of Spector’s discussion of self-determination and the Western Sahara that demands comment – and indeed condemnation - it is his quoting and referencing Hurst Hannum, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Tufts University and our leading self-determination guru, in support of his thesis. My copy of Professor Hannum’s Autonomy, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, the classic college text on self-determination, sits on my bookshelf alongside Tony Hodges’ Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War as the most referenced books for my work on the Western Sahara. I greatly admire Professor Hannum’s work and use him often in support of MY fervent conviction that the Western Saharans have a clear right under international law to determine their own fate, be it as an independent state or part of Morocco. Needless to say, Spector’s use of Professor Hannum to support the opposite view – namely that forcing the Western Sahara to become an autonomous part of Morooco is OK under international law – certainly caught my eye. In addition, Spector’s invocation of Hannum struck me as particularly bizarre given Professor Hannum’s 2007 letter to the editor in the New York times – quoted in its entirety at the top of this post – clearly stating his position that “Morocco has no authority to impose a solution unilaterally, and the UN Security Council should not issue a diktat against the wishes of the people of Western Sahara.”

The fatal flaw in Mr. Spector’s argument here is very much linked to his total misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Hurst Hannum. Actually the extent to which he tortures Hannum’s ideas to fit into his autonomist agenda is truly mind-boggling. Five of his footnotes refer to Hannum’s article “Self-Determination in the Twenty-First Century” in a book co-edited by Hannum, Negotiating Self-Determination (2006). Professor Hannum encapsulates his thesis in his article as follows:

It is the suggestion of this chapter that, following several years of indecision, the international community has moved toward a new definition of self-determination. This new definition continues to exclude the possibility of unilateral, nonconsensual secession, but it has become infused with broadly defined human, minority, and indigenous rights that may signal a new usefulness for the concept of self-determination in the decades to come.

The vital element of this “new definition” that totally escapes Spector is that it is specifically for situations of secession. While Hannum acknowledges that we are in “largely a post-colonial era” in which “calls for self-determination, possibly including independence, are even becoming more muted in the classic decolonization cases of Kashmir and Western Sahara,” nowhere in his article does he suggest that we or the world community should do away with the right to independence inherent in de-colonial self-determination. But that is precisely what Spector tries to do. He takes Hannum’s new definition of secessionist self-determination and applies it to the non-secessionist de-colonial situation of the Western Sahara. And then having taken Hannum out of context, he uses Hannum’s new definition to back up his legal argument for denying the possibility of independence to the Western Sahara and instead imposing autonomy within Morocco.

And for anyone who has any doubts about Spector’s thoroughly unethical abuse of Hannum, I refer you again to Professor Hannum’s letter to the editor at the top of this post which was written a year AFTER the Hannum article referenced by Spector.

In the final analysis, Samuel Spector’s attempt - in the name of redefining self-determination for the 21st century - to reframe the Western Sahara situation solely within the context of autonomy without the possibility of independence is preposterous. His understanding of both Western Saharan history and self-determination law leave a lot to be desired. And his shoddy scholarship is just plain unethical. No wonder that he is becoming the darling of the pro-Morocco lobby.

RSF & Cartographic Genocide in the Western Sahara

2009-11-16T13:46:00.003-05:00

For a number of years now, Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) (RSF) has chosen to completely contradict its high ideals by writing the Western Sahara off its on-line maps and including the territory within Morocco. If you visit RSF.com, click on any of the countries on the drop-down menu under Middle East & North Africa (MENA), and scroll down to their MENA map you will find a Morocco that stretches from Gibraltar to Mauritania. The only hint of Western Sahara’s existence can be found if you click on Morocco itself to reveal a red-highlighted greater Morocco with a barely visible line depicting the border with the Western Sahara.
Weirdly, if you click on any of the other MENA countries, you will find the same MENA map but without the thin line in Morocco.

This is not a new problem. Alle at Western Sahara Info brought RSF’s inexplicable treatment of the Western Sahara to our attention in 2007, and way back in 2003 this tidbit about RSF’s mapping shenanigans appeared on the ARSO website:

Following a protest campaign, the "North Africa to Iran" office of Reporters without Borders (RSF - Reporters sans frontières) decided to withdraw a map of Morocco which included Western Sahara. This map which did not conform to international law figured in RSF publications relating to the campaign for Ali Lmrabet. The President of the Spanish office, said that she realised the map used expressed the expansionist claims of Morocco, but wanted to make clear that RSF did not campaign politically about it, as they were trying to save the life of the Moroccan journalist !!!

Before looking closer at RSF’s mapping problem, a quick review of the Western Sahara’s status is in order. Legally, the territory is categorized by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory. Claims to sovereignty over the territory by Morocco and Mauritania were rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1975. Diplomatically, no country officially recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, even though a couple dozen mostly Arab League countries give lip service to Moroccan sovereignty. Close to 80 countries have at some point recognized the sovereignty of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), but current recognitions number around 40 if you believe that de-recognitions are acceptable. Another element in the diplomatic equation is the full membership of the SADR in the African Union. Militarily, Morocco has de facto control of around 75-80% of the land with the SADR controlling the rest.

On all three counts RSF’s map is totally inaccurate. International law and diplomatic recognition clearly reject any inclusion of the Western Sahara in Morocco; and any depiction of de facto occupation must show the division of the territory between Morocco and the SADR.

RSF’s complete offing of the Western Sahara raises serious issues.

RSF is no Moroccan-American Center for Policy, which clearly is paid by Morocco to lie about the Western Sahara. It is a well-respected human rights NGO that cares about international law and does consistently superb work in support of beleaguered journalists around the world. Furthermore, it has been very forceful in its condemnation of Moroccan press freedom abuses. Why then would they choose to ignore international law and use a map that is rejected by just about everybody except Morocco and its agents?

Then there is the question of consistency and double-standards. RSF on its MENA map unambiguously gives Rabat its greater Morocco, but denies Tel Aviv its greater Israel (The West Bank is clearly not included in Israel). Why has RSF applied different mapping standards to two similar cases of occupation? Alle, once again, has commented on this.

Whenever I run into something as strange as this RSF thing, I can’t help but wonder about motives. Why in the world would a group as basically outstanding as RSF resort to cartographic genocide by mapping the Western Sahara out of existence. Does it have to do with the fact that they are headquartered in France, which supports without reservation Morocco’s illegal occupation? Is there any French political pressure at play, or maybe corporate financial pressure? Is there anyone on their Board that particularly loves Morocco or hates the Western Sahara? Not being privy to RSF internal politics, I am at a loss to understand their persistent refusal to do the right thing on this issue. All I know is that RSF has been made aware of their mapping problem for years now (and I have recently contacted both their offices in Paris and Washington DC about it), and they stubbornly resist changing their maps.

If anyone can shed any light on RSF’s behavior, we here at Western Sahara Endgame would love to hear from you. But until they decide to do the right thing and remove the Western Sahara from Morocco on their maps, I urge you to email your objections to:

Soazig Dollet, North Africa & Middle-East Desk, Reporters without Borders: moyen-orient@rsf.org

Clothilde Le Coz, Director Reporters without Borders USA: clc@rsf.org

Jean-François Julliard, Secretary General RSF: rsf@rsf.org

I went through, it seems, hundred of maps of Morocco and the Western Sahara in putting together this post – many of them quite original if not altogether accurate. In line with their iconoclastic image, Lonely Planet gets the award for Most Bizarre Map. Apparently having missed the part of the ICJ ruling about terra nullius, they clearly separate the two entities, refraining from naming the southern entity, and writing “Western Sahara Desert” overlapping the borderline. For those of you who wonder why so many Moroccans are perpetually constipated over the Western Sahara issue, there’s the Greater Moroccan Map. They just can’t get over being smaller than Algeria and not being able to steal fish from the Senegal River like they do from the Western Saharan waters (actually I was surprised not to find Washington DC on the Greater Moroccan Map given the US’s perpetual genuflecting before the King on the Western Sahara issue; but then I guess I could say the same thing about Israel). The award for Most Conflicted Mapmaker goes to the National Geographic Society. Between their On-Line Atlas , On-Line World Map , and Africa Political Map, they map the area in at least three different ways using a mind-boggling array of borderline, color, and nomenclature gimmicks. Finally, the Most Accurate Map prize goes to MINURSO, the UN Mission in the Western Sahara. I detect a crazy amount of time being spent by a lot of organizations trying to figure out how to map the area. Why not show it as it is and use the MINURSO map that clearly separates Morocco and the Western Sahara and marks the zones of occupation?

Commander Zartman's Last Stand on the Western Sahara

2009-08-16T13:30:00.016-04:00

Why the Maghreb Matters: Threats, Opportunities, & Options for Effective US Engagement in North Africa has been sitting on my desk for a few months now. This policy paper released in March by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and the Conflict Management Program (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins is worth a look, if only because of the all-star cast that has chosen to affix their names to such a thoroughly flawed study. Panel Members on the North Africa Policy Paper Project behind the report include such luminaries as Secretary Madeleine Albright, General Wesley Clark, and Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, and notable academics Chester Crocker from Georgetown, John Entelis from Fordham, and I. William Zartman from Johns Hopkins (Co-Chair). While one would think that this star power might guarantee a certain level of honesty and rigor in the study, Why the Maghreb Matters is a joke, and a very bad one at that.

Initially, my intention was to write a lengthy post about all that is wrong with this study, but alas as so often happens several individuals and groups beat me to it with excellent reviews. So rather than bore you with a rehash, I’ll link you to the two that I found most illuminating: The Potomac-SAIS report on North Africa: Paid Analysis, Partisan Fear Mongering, Bad Policy by Jacob Mundy and Why the Facts Matter: A Response by the Saharawi Journalists and Writers Union (UPES) to “Why the Maghreb Matters." Their revelations on the blatant dishonesty of the Potomac-SAIS work are truly damning.

While these two reviews are pretty comprehensive in their debunking of the Potomac-SAIS study, there is one part of the study that epitomizes its utter intellectual bankruptcy and which, as far as I can tell, nobody has commented on -- that is their incursion into comparative self-determination. On page 14 they site several examples of what they consider to be similar self-determination cases to that of the Western Sahara which back up and support their autonomy proposal. An examination of these examples reveals that they either have nothing at all to do with the Western Sahara or else serve as far better support for the Polisario point of view. Here is the section in question, with the highlights mine:

The people of the region must be given an opportunity for self-determination, which can take the form of autonomy (as occurred from Zanzibar to Aceh). That acceptance can be expressed in a referendum confirming the option offered. The process could begin with a formal endorsement by the interested Western states— US, UK, France, Spain—of the principle of autonomy, with a limited period of time for final negotiations to take place over its details. At the end of the upcoming fifth round of UN-sponsored negotiations between the parties, whatever its outcome, the US could pursue an effort among Security Council members to recognize autonomous status within Morocco and invite others to follow suit, much as was done for a similar option for Aceh, Cameroon, Biafra, and for a reverse option for Bosnia and for Kosovo.

Zanzibar

Zanzibar? Their choice of Zanzibar is baffling. A British protectorate from 1890, Zanzibar was given full independence from Britain in 1963 after a 1961 election that formed the first post-protectorate government. In 1964, after a bloody revolution brought a leftist regime to power under Amani Karume, the Zanzibar government agreed to unite with newly-independent Tanganyika to form The United Republic or Tanzania under which Zanzibar had substantial autonomy. What is so strange about this choice of examples is that, since Zanzibar was granted independence BEFORE agreeing to join up with Tanganyika and accept autonomy, this is a far better argument for granting independence to the Western Sahara. Then if it turns out that the Saharawis really love the Moroccan crown as much as Rabat claims, they can always join up later with Morocco. Moroccahara has a good ring to it.

Aceh

This is an interesting choice. Aceh’s claims to self-determination stem primarily from the territory’s marginal integration into the Netherlands East Indies. Jakarta’s brutal military rule and exploitation of the abundant natural resources of the territory have further complicated the matter. Nevertheless, Aceh was never designated a non-self-governing territory by the UN, and I am not aware of any country that does not recognize Aceh as an integral part of Indonesia. The study’s attempt to use the example of Aceh to justify their autonomy proposal for Western Sahara is perplexing on several counts. First, under international law the cases are totally different. Second, autonomy for Aceh -- from the granting of “special territory” status in 1959 with some autonomy in religious, educational and cultural matters to the autonomy granted after the 2004 tsunami – is very much a work in progress and there are real questions about the sustainability of the current status. Last but not least, the use of Aceh begs the question of why the authors chose to ignore the case of East Timor, which has far closer parallels to the Western Sahara than does Aceh. In case you hadn’t noticed, the non-self-governing East Timor got its referendum in 1999 and gained independence in 2002. Fears that the loss of East Timor would lead to an unraveling of Indonesia, a communist and/or fundamentalist takeover in Jakarta, and the end of the free world as we know it were apparently unfounded.

Bosnia

I admit my ignorance here of what this “reverse option” is. Why Bosnia is even mentioned is a mystery to me in that it is not autonomous and furthermore has a rather dubious independence given the threats of the Republika Srpska to secede.

Kosovo

One would think that Potomac-SAIS would have avoided mention of Kosovo like the plague. After all, it was the CANCELLATION of Kosovar autonomy by the Serbs in 1989 that in no small measure set in motion the events that led to Kosovo’s independence. If anything the Kosovo case is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of autonomy and thus I would think greatly strengthens the Polisario case.

Cameroon

I’m at a bit of a loss identifying exactly which part of Cameroonian history is being held up here to support the autonomy proposal. Is it the decision of the UN in 1961 to deny the British Cameroon real self-determination (in violation of the UN Charter) and to instead offer them a choice between inclusion in Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroon (the former French Cameroon)? Is it the decision of President Ahidjo in 1972 to unilaterally cancel the autonomy that the federated state of West Cameroon (the part of British Cameroon that chose to join the Republic of Cameroon) enjoyed after 1961? Or is it the clamoring of the anglophone Cameroonians for at least the last 20 years for a return of the autonomy they enjoyed until 1972? Whatever the case, none of this long sad history of denial of self-determination and cancellation of autonomy appears to offer much support for the Moroccan autonomy plan. Au contraire, autonomy in Cameroon comes across as a pretty dubious proposition. And actually the more I think about the original UN decision in 1961 to deny the British Cameroonians a vote on independence but to allow a choice between inclusion in Nigeria and Cameroon, the more I wonder whether the Potomac-SAIS people might be on to something. If they really think that independence is the end of the world, why not offer the Western Saharans a choice between inclusion in say Algeria, Mauritania, Spain, and Morocco. But then again I guess we all know who would come in last here.

Biafra

Biafra is the classic case of secession. As much as Morocco likes to think of the Western Sahara as secession pure and simple, there is very little international support for this notion. The UN certainly doesn’t consider it secession, and the total lack of any recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the territory tells me that the international community is similarly skeptical.

As an aside, I can’t help but add that this bizarre collection of examples dredged up in support of Morocco’s autonomy proposal bears the unmistakable marks of Commander I. W. Zartman’s compromised scholarship on the Western Sahara. Commander Zartman, once again, is the co-chair of this whole Potomac-SAIS fiasco. Take a look, for instance, at these talking points from his presentation at a 2005 forum on self-determination and the Sahara hosted by the NGO Search for Common Ground:

What is the case of Western Sahara like and not like (in comparison to “similar” cases)?
It is not like East Timor -- Western Sahara was colonized 40 years ago and not 400.
It is not like Palestine -- It is not a separate nation.
It is not like Sudan -- Its habitants are not “separate” people (e.g. its habitants are of the same religion as Morocco)
It is not like Namibia -- It is not a trusteeship territory with the UN as an administrator.
It is like Catalonia (Spain) -- It is self-autonomous within a larger state.
It is like Aden (Yemen)
It is like Zanzibar (Tanzania)
Compared to “similar” cases, Western Sahara has a tiny population and little resources.

Western Sahara colonized 40 years ago? Not like East Timor? Like Catalonia? Didn’t Aden get INDEPENDENCE as the People's Republic of South Yemen in 1967, long before it united with North Yemen in 1990? I’ve already talked about Zanzibar. Do any of his examples make any sense?

The recommendations of the Potomac-SAIS report are based on bad history, bad facts, bad analysis, and, as I argue here, bad examples. With this level of honesty and scholarship from Commander Zartman and his cronies, it is no wonder the Obama administration is considering dumping Morocco and its autonomy plan.

The Bodansky File (Continued)

2008-08-01T10:16:00.015-04:00

In a recent analysis, Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), noted that the greatest threat to stability in the Maghreb and Western Mediterranean was what he described as “the rejuvenation of the terrorism campaign” of the Polisario Front. The escalation by the Polisario comes in the midst of the latest United Nations effort to finally resolve the Western Sahara conflict.

-- Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) press release (January 11,2008)

Unaware that Polisario had a terrorism campaign to rejuvenate, I wrote a short post a few months ago titled The Bodansky File in which I mention my unsuccessful attempt to find the “recent analysis” on Polisario terrorism referred to by MACP. I am pleased to report that recently I stumbled across that analysis on an obscure blog called Med-Atlantic.

Made up of six posts from October 2007 to May 2008 by a poster identified as Medperson, Med-Atlantic -- subtitled “On the importance of the Mediterranean Basin as a strategic environment, with its impact on North Atlantic Security” -- is a passionately pro-Morocco and savagely anti-Algeria rant heavy on Polisario bashing. It even comes down hard on the U.S. for not supporting Morocco forcefully enough. The basic thrust of the site is that Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara must be asserted in order to counter what the author sees as Algerian expansionism that threatens the stability of the Maghreb. Medperson apparently has no problem with Moroccan expansionism.

The study referred to in the MACP press release is printed in its entirety in the body of a December 2007 post titled Algeria Pushes POLISARIO Toward a New War “More Dangerous than Al Qaida”. Medperson prefaces that study with the following:

Med-Atlantic received a leaked report from the Global Information System (GIS), an intelligence service used by the US Defense Department and other key Western governments, which details Algeria's plans for POLISARIO. We're running it in full here: POLISARIO Congress Reflects the Major Threat to Maghreb Stability as Algeria Enters a Power Struggle, With Itself and the West By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS.

Mr. Bodansky gets right to the point in his first two paragraphs:

The great threat to stability in the Maghreb and the Western Mediterranean is not the ascent and spread of the Islamist-jihadist trend — which is extremely dangerous in the mid- to long-term — but is shaping up to be the rejuvenation of the terrorism campaign by the Frente POLISARIO (Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y de Rio de Oro).

POLISARIO is currently holding its special 12th congress in Tifariti, Moroccan Western Sahara (MWS), east of the berm. Because of the regional strategic dynamics, the calls for, and threats of, the resumption of the “armed struggle” against Morocco emanating from this POLISARIO congress may prove a greater destabilizing factor for the entire Maghreb than even the most recent jihadist bombing in Algiers.

The rest of Bodansky’s report is spent trying to back up these rather ominous warnings. But before I take a look at his ideas I would just like to highlight a couple things in these first two paragraphs that I feel betray his mindset.

There is for starters the matter of his insistence on calling the territory the “Moroccan Western Sahara.” Most of the world calls the former Spanish Sahara colony the “Western Sahara,” but Morocco prefers the “Moroccan Sahara.” Why Bodansky prefers to use the made-up “Moroccan Western Sahara” – and the even sillier “MWS” – is a mystery to me. And his placing Tifariti within the Moroccan Western Sahara is just bizarre, since it is in the part of the territory controlled by the Polisario and thus firmly within the SADR Western Sahara (SADRWS).

And then there is his subtle bait and switch. Having warned us of “the rejuvenation of the terrorism campaign by the Frente POLISARIO” in the first paragraph, by the second this has morphed into a resumption of armed struggle. In fact, the question of Polisario terrorism is never again mentioned in the study. It’s hard to tell whether his branding Polisario a terrorist organization was just a slip of the pen or whether he just forgot to offer any proof. In any event, it is all too typical of MACP’s modus operandi that it should trumpet the terrorist threat of Polisario based on a study that offers absolutely zero evidence of such terrorism.

Now on to Bodansky’s ideas. What apparently initially got him all riled up was the Polisario party congress held in Tifariti in December 2007 where, he states, “the POLISARIO Frente resolved to rearm and prepare for a new war which would be launched by 2009 if the diplomatic process could not deliver POLISARIO’s demands for full independence.” Bodansky’s take on the Tifariti congress is just wrong. Nowhere at the congress did Polisario threaten war if its “demands for full independence” were not met. Polisario has unambiguously made it clear that self-determination through a referendum with independence as an option is what they seek, and that they will abide by whatever the people decide, be it independence, autonomy, or inclusion in Morocco.

From this erroneous premise, Bodansky proceeds to make his case for quashing Polisario and supporting Moroccan hegemony. He makes three basic arguments: 1) that the Western Saharan people overwhelmingly support a return to Morocco, 2) that Africa doesn’t need another failed ministate, and 3) that Polisario’s threat to return to arms is directly related to the Algerian succession crisis.

The Western Saharan people overwhelmingly support a return to Morocco

Here is what Bodansky has to say about the desires of the Western Saharans:

More than 15 years after the latest ceasefire agreement in MWS, the entire population — both in Morocco and in the POLISARIO-run camps — has demonstrated a strong commitment to a return to stability, normalcy, and chance at the betterment of their own lives. The population of MWS has indicated, through elections and other indicators, a measurable determination to remain an integral part of the Moroccan rejuvenation and development. The MWS population has been passing this message for several years to the POLSARIO leadership via their expatriate kin in Western Europe. In contrast, the refugee population in the POLISARIO camps, mainly in the Tindouf area in Algeria, is exhausted from the closure, hardship, lack of prospects. The people see no hope for themselves in an Algeria torn by civil war and afflicted by economic misery….

Simply put, the people of MWS realized that their own aspirations can be best achieved when they are part of Morocco….

The Moroccan elections of early September 2007 provided an uncontroversial proof of this transformation of the people of MWS….the voter turnout in the MWS was extremely heavy….This constitutes a clear demonstration that the population in MWS considers itself Moroccan, is convinced that it has vital stakes in the political process in Rabat, and is determined to have its say there….Thus, the Moroccan parliamentary elections in MWS proved that the local population considers itself an integral part of a single, unified Morocco.

What is one to make of this kind of writing that opinionates with absolute and categorical certainty about things that demonstrably are not true? About thirty seconds of research is enough to realize that what he says is “clear” is totally unclear, what he says in “uncontroversial” is totally controversial. He chooses to not even mention the anti-Moroccan demonstrations and riots of the last few years that clearly debunk his theory of total Western Saharan support for Moroccan hegemony. He chooses to ignore the fact that the majority of people currently living in the occupied territory are subsidized Moroccan migrants and colonists with no legal ties to the Western Sahara under international law and thus no say on the territory's future. He chooses not to mention any of the numerous studies by respected NGOs that chronicle the brutality of Moroccan police rule and increasing assertions of Western Saharan nationalism and anti-Moroccan sentiment. His generalizations about the yearnings of the refugees in Tindouf don’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny. And in the final analysis, Bodansky’s claim that the entire population desires a life under Moroccan rule is rendered totally farcical by Rabat’s refusal to allow a referendum under any circumstances.

We Don’t Need Another Failed Mini-State

Bodansky writes:

Meanwhile, the international community has become increasingly alarmed by failed ministates, such as Timor-Leste, and unchecked secessionism. Even the most ardent supporters of the “Sahrawi people” in the West now doubt the viability of a POLISARIO-run state. The West sees no need for another failed state and bastion of criminality, living off the smuggling routes between west-central Africa and Western Europe. All expert studies have demonstrated that a POLISARIO-run state cannot sustain any other type of economy on its own; industrial and resource development are impossible without reliance on the infrastructure and human resources of Morocco while POLISARIO advocates the complete delinking of MWS from Morocco. Hence, particularly after the POLISARIO’s intransigence in the UN-run Manhasset, New York, talks in early August 2007, international support for Morocco’s autonomy plan — with all its possible imperfections — has started to grow.

While the issue of failed states is indeed serious, Bodansky’s attempt to convince us that the Western Sahara would be such a state is hardly convincing. His contention that “Even the most ardent supporters of the 'Sahrawi people' in the West now doubt the viability of a POLISARIO-run state” is just silly. I would love to know who these “most ardent supporters” are. The ardent supporters I am aware of tend to feel that an independent Western Sahara would do just fine given the small population and the large natural resource reserve base of the territory. Similarly, his sweeping declaration that “All expert studies have demonstrated that a POLISARIO-run state cannot sustain any … type of economy on its own” other than one based on criminality and smuggling is ludicrous. To say “all expert studies” is I would say a bit presumptuous; I have trouble thinking of even one.

POLISARIO’s threat to return to arms is directly related to the Algerian succession crisis

And here Bodansky really hits his stride:

However, what makes POLISARIO’s threat to resume the armed struggle so ominous — beyond the continued military build-up of POLISARIO in its Algerian sanctuaries — is its impact on the Algerian succession crisis. Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s health has deteriorated recently. With no heir apparent, inner struggles are intensifying within the Algerian Government. Most important is the succession struggle between the “army élite” and the “energy lobby”, both comprised of most senior officials and their cronies. Furthermore, each of these groups is further divided into pro-Russia, pro-France, and pro-US sub-groupings. Therefore, all decisions are made as a result of power-maneuvers between at least six “clans” which confront each other and win through transient and narrow-issue alliances.

The “army elite” and some in the “energy lobby” believe that crisis and war are the quickest way — a shortcut — to the post-Bouteflika throne. In recent years, Bouteflika preferred to stay neutral. When he had to take a side, he tilted with the “energy lobby”, which generated US and Western support. However, in recent months, Pres. Bouteflika has clearly tilted toward, and even openly sided with, the “army élite”. While Bouteflika made his move because he believes the military élite is better suited to sustain him in power and follow his policies, he will have to “pay” for the military support by heightening the regional tension even if it leads to war with Morocco.

This is the nitty gritty of Bodansky’s argument – that Algerian perfidy is behind all of the Polisario saber-rattling or more specifically that Algerian President Bouteflika is purposely trying to destabilize the whole region to sustain himself in power. I haven’t a clue whether Bodansky’s analysis of the Algerian succession makes any sense at all. I do find it ironic, though, that what he accuses Algeria of doing is precisely what Morocco has been doing throughout this conflict. There is a wide acceptance, especially within the U.S. government, of the notion that the Alaouite dynasty might fall if it “lost” the Western Sahara. Mohammed VI and his father Hassan II have for over 30 years rejected self-determination for the Western Sahara in defiance of the UN and international law and kept the region in a state of perpetual instability in order to guarantee THEIR succession. All I know is that Morocco, by completely refusing to abide by the terms of the cease-fire agreement of 1991 and by refusing to now even discuss real self-determination has forced the Western Saharans into a corner. If the Western Saharans once again take up arms, Morocco will have no one to blame but itself. Bodansky’s attempt to place the blame on Algeria is preposterous.

Yossef Bodansky’s study is an elaborate fabrication masquerading as informed security analysis. He either doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about or else is intentionally falsifying the current situation in the Western Sahara for Moroccan gain. His pompous attempts to sound authoritative about things that are clearly not true are damning. His attempt to brand Polisario a terrorist organization without any substantiation is just plain unethical.

There is something altogether very sleazy about Bodansky's whole involvement with the Western Saharan issue. To begin with, there’s MACP’s reference to his study, which in itself makes the report very suspect. Then there’s the supposed leaking of the secret study to Medperson at Med-Atlantic; the stylistic similarities between Medperson’s posts and Bodansky’s study lead me to believe that Medperson IS Bodansky and he is leaking his own report.

And then there is the whole relationship I allude to in The Bodansky File between Bodansky, Marc. S. Ellenbogen, and Hassan Abouyoub, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to King Mohamed VI of Morocco in Prague at the Global Panel Foundation and Prague Society. Rabat through Abouyoub is clearly using this well-connected behind-the-scenes networking cabal in Prague to give a stamp of legitimacy to its cockamamie ideas about the Western Sahara. Ellenbogen through his syndicated column Atlantic Eye provides an entrée into Reverend Moon’s media empire (UPI, Washington Times, Middle East Times, etc.); Bodansky supplies a well-established following from his best-selling books on terrorism and a direct conduit into the U.S. government from his employment with Congress. The drivel that came out of this group’s field trip to Morocco last year (see Marc S. Ellenbogen & the Myopic Miasma of Moroccan Malice) only confirms the extent to which this group is compromised.

In conclusion, I return to Bodansky’s warning that a resumption of Polisario’s armed struggle would be more destabilizing for the Maghreb than Al Qaeda. I happen to agree with that. A return to war in the Western Sahara would be a catastrophe for all involved. However, as I see it, this is a rationale for the world community to once and for all force Morocco to hold a referendum on independence (with autonomy as an option if you like), so this whole issue can finally be put to rest. Trying to force Moroccan sovereignty onto the Western Saharans and to legitimize Rabat’s expansionism, as Bodansky would have it, would only create the very situation he says he is trying to prevent.

Why Was Morocco's Autonomy Initiative Devised?

2008-07-04T12:15:00.007-04:00

The Initiative was launched to overcome the deadlock in United Nations’ mediated negotiations between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Republic of Algeria and their proxy the Polisario Front. As the work of several United Nations’ Secretaries-General and their Personal Envoys to the region have failed to reach a mutually-acceptable solution, the Kingdom of Morocco drew up the Initiative for negotiated autonomy for the Sahara to reach a lasting political solution to the conflict.

-- Freedom for All website (Tanya Warburg, Director)

This view that Morocco’s autonomy initiative for the Western Sahara should be supported because it is a commendable and reasonable compromise to once and for all overcome “the deadlock in United Nations’ mediated negotiations” has been getting a lot of play time recently by the pro-Rabat forces. The view is unacceptable and should be soundly rejected because its basic premise -- that the “deadlock is the result of a “fail[ure] to reach a mutually-acceptable solution -- is just not true. The reality of the matter is that the current deadlock is based totally on the failure of Morocco to abide by the “mutually-acceptable solution” that was reached by Rabat and the Polisario in 1988, approved in its final form by the Security Council (S/22464, “Settlement Plan”) in 1991, and refined further by the Houston Accords signed by both parties in 1997. The autonomy initiative is a joke because it ignores the reality that it is Morocco that has created the current deadlock by refusing to implement the far-reaching solution that was agreed to by all the parties to the conflict (Morocco, Polisario, Algeria, and the UN) two decades ago.

With the 20^th Anniversary of that historic agreement coming up in August it is I think an appropriate time to look back at the Settlement Plan. I will quote liberally from the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) June 2007 report, Western Sahara: Out of the Impasse, which gives a concise, accurate, and well-written analysis of the referendum years (all quotes below are from that report with page numbers noted).

In August 1988, both Polisario and Morocco declared that they accepted a UN proposal (based on an earlier OAU proposal) for a ceasefire, exchange of prisoners, repatriation of refugees and the withdrawal of Moroccan forces from the territory, to be followed by a referendum on self-determination, with the choice being between independence and integration into Morocco. A final version of this proposal, known as the Settlement Plan, was approved by the Security Council in 1991. (p.1-2)

I was following the issue at the UN in Geneva in the early 1990’s and remember the euphoria accompanying the Settlement Plan. The Polisario and Hassan II had met for the first time; a mutually-acceptable plan to resolve the crisis had become a reality; MINURSO was in place to register voters; and the referendum was expected within a year. The euphoria, however, proved to be short lived. With the ink on the Settlement Plan still wet, Morocco embarked on a pattern of obstruction that would eventually result in the scuttling of the Plan a decade later. The ICG continues:

Morocco and the Polisario Front had formally agreed in 1988 that the referendum should be based on the electorate as defined by the 1974 census of the territory….But in April 1991 King Hassan of Morocco insisted that the voter rolls be expanded well beyond what has previously been agreed and include people who had long been settled in Morocco. (p. 2)

Had King Hassan allowed MINURSO to do its work per the Settlement Agreement, the referendum would have taken place in 1992 or 1993 and the crisis would have been over. Instead he chose to pursue a strategy of trying to pad the electoral roles with pro-Rabat Moroccans “in order to maximize Morocco’s chances of winning the referendum.” (p. 2) The Polisario of course resisted this attempt to rewrite and circumvent the agreement, and by mid-decade the referendum process had made little progress. Then along came James Baker III to try to save the day.

When the process seemed in danger of coming to a stop, the personal envoy of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, managed to rescue it through intensive diplomacy. In a series of meetings which he held with Morocco, Polisario and Algeria in April 1997, all three parties reaffirmed their commitment to the 1991 Settlement Plan. Further rounds in London and Lisbon paved the way for a final meeting in Houston on 14-16 September 1997. There, agreement was reached by the parties on all the issues blocking implementation of the Settlement Plan, including the key issue of voter identification. (p. 2)

With a new agreement in hand, MINURSO was able to resume the registration of voters. “In January 2000, MINURSO, after years of meticulous work, at last arrived at what it regarded as a fair determination of the valid electorate for the proposed referendum, namely a total electorate of 86,386.” (p. 2) At that point, once again the end of the crisis was in sight and the referendum could have been held in short order. But Rabat had other ideas. MINURSO was “promptly faced with no fewer than 131,038 appeals against its decisions…, the vast majority of these Moroccan-sponsored applicants.” (p. 2) The Settlement Plan was dead.

Reluctant to dismiss these appeals and accordingly faced with the prospect of, in effect, having to begin the voter identification process all over again, the UN tacitly dropped the 1991 Settlement Plan…. (p. 2)

Again, my reason for returning to this history of the Settlement Plan is to counter the view of the pro-Rabat people that autonomy is a fine compromise justified by the elusiveness of a “mutually-acceptable solution.” As you should see from the above, the parties mutually accepted two major solutions in 1988 and 1997, and Morocco obstructed, undermined, and ultimately trashed both. Again, the ICG is eloquent on this:

There is a clear asymmetry in the behaviour of the main parties. The Polisario Front signed up to the 1991 Settlement Plan and, having made a number of concessions on the voter identification issue and on certain secondary matters, was clearly prepared to abide by its outcome…. It cannot be said of Polisario that it went back on any of its undertakings. But Morocco repeatedly did so with impunity. Whenever matters came to a head, Morocco demonstrated that it did not accept UN arbitration of important issues if this arbitration went – or threatened to go – against it. And Morocco also, and above all, repeatedly demonstrated that it accepted the principle of self-determination only if the result of its exercise in a referendum could be guaranteed in advance to be in Morocco’s favour. (p. 5)

Why was the autonomy initiative devised? Tanya Warburg’s view that it has to do with Morocco’s desire to find a “mutually-acceptable solution” to break the deadlock is pure nonsense. Once again, such a solution was reached years ago and Morocco showed itself to be a thoroughly dishonest and duplicitous negotiating partner. The autonomy initiative is nothing more than a cynical attempt by Morocco to leverage its friendship with the U.S. and France to prevent self-determination in the ex-colony and to gain formal recognition of its illegal annexation. I say “cynical” because history has proven that Morocco and its apologists such as Tanya Warburg couldn’t care less about the well-being of the Western Saharans. If they did they wouldn’t be so insistent on denying them the right to vote on their future.

Freedom for All (except the Western Saharans)

2008-06-27T11:43:00.006-04:00

Over at One Hump or Two, Nick Brooks of Sand & Dust recently alerted us to the appearance of another outrageous pro-autonomy website titled Freedom for All:

I thought the Together Foundation had slipped gently away after it became obvious that it was a put-up job by Moroccan spooks. It seems to have been replaced by this:

http://www.freedom-for-all.org/index.php

They seem to have hired someone with better web skills and a more comprehensive command of the English language for FFA. However, it's still the same unsubtle pro-Rabat bilge.

As if it wasn't obvious enough who's behind this, there's a watermark-style background that shows a greater Morocco, with a Moroccan flag squatting over the western Mediterranean.

Same old craaap, just a bit slicker.

I checked out the Freedom for All site, and Nick is quite right that this is a far slicker production than the Together Foundation. Since the site does not list officers, board members, or any names for that matter, I thought I’d try to find out who was behind this blatant propaganda effort.

A quick google of their phone number in London (+44 (0) 7711 67 1896) shows that Freedom for All shares a number with a public relations and marketing firm also in London named Davis Warburg Associates, named after the partners of the enterprise Helen Davis and Tanya Warburg.

Googling “Helen Davis” and Morocco revealed nothing of interest; “Tanya Warburg” and Morocco, however, pulls up around 25 results informing us that Tanya Warburg is the director of Freedom for All. She sprang onto the Western Sahara scene in October 2006 when she testified in support of Morocco’s autonomy proposal and on behalf of Freedom for All at the 4^th Committee in New York.

After this testimony, she kept a low profile until she registered her website in April 2007 under the name of her web designer, Paul Freedman of Red Sphere Media (thank you Laroussi for posting this on One Hump or Two).

Given that PR firms (most notably Edelman) are the main conduits of Moroccan propaganda and misinformation regarding the Western Sahara in the U.S., the fact that Freedom for All is run by a partner in a U.K. PR firm raises all kinds of red flags.

A quick call to London confirmed that Tanya Warburg is indeed director of Freedom for All. To my rather pointed questions, she denied receiving any money at all from Morocco and said that her work for Freedom for All was strictly a hobby. With no evidence to the contrary, I will take her at her word on this.

Of course, if she is not being paid by Morocco that raises the question of what then explains the grotesque pile of misinformation, factual errors, errors of omission, and flawed analysis that makes up her site.

The Morocco Lobby, Brokeback Mountain, & the Fate of the Western Sahara

2008-06-24T10:23:00.009-04:00

Having recently gotten back from an extended trip abroad, I searched and searched the Internet for blog-worthy items about the Western Sahara and was on the verge of concluding that Will, Alle, et al. had comprehensively taken care of business when I ran across a strange tale of J. Peter Segall and Edward M. Gabriel from early April that somehow missed their radar. Thanks guys for leaving one for me (or could it be that you did not consider it a blog-worthy item?). Anyway….

Now Ed Gabriel is familiar to my readers as the former American ambassador to Morocco who over the last few years has been on Rabat’s payroll as one of the major attractions in their multimillion-dollar propaganda circus in the U.S. Without getting into the tawdry particulars of his selling out to Morocco – which I have covered ad nauseum elsewhere – let me just say here that his groveling recitations of the Moroccan royalist line betray a moral compass little evolved from a cicada.

On April 1 the following “in memoriam” ad for Mr. Gabriel appeared in the Washington Post below his smiling mustachioed face: “Though I no longer have you as my partner, this day will always be OUR anniversary. . . . I could never quit you.” Before you construe my nasty words about Mr. Gabriel in the previous paragraph as tasteless trashing of a dead man, let me quickly add that the ad was an April Fools joke and that Mr. Gabriel is not in fact dead (you can still construe it as tasteless trashing of a live man if you like).

In the spirit of aprilfoolery, the Post on April 2, in an article titled “A ‘Death’ is Noticed,” explained that Edward M. Gabriel, an “international business consultant who was the U.S. ambassador to Morocco from 1997 to 2001,” was “very much alive”; that the ad, “in language reminiscent of the movie ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” was a hoax; and that the one who took out the ad, public relations executive and lawyer J. Peter Segall, was paying for a retraction in that day’s Post.

Other than Mr. Gabriel’s obvious association with Morocco’s campaign to discredit the Polisario Front, I suspect you are wondering what it is that makes this a blog-worthy Western Sahara story. The hook is that J. Peter Segall is “general manager in Edelman's Washington office, and oversee[s] the relationship with the Kingdom of Morocco.” In February of last year on Richard Edelman’s “6 A.M.” blog, I took Mr. Edelman to task for getting all self-righteous in criticizing Robert Mugabe’s autocratic ways, while at the same time taking lots of money from Morocco to cover up and whitewash Mohammed VI’s disdain for democracy and Morocco’s totalitarian ways in the occupied territories. Anyway, it was J. Peter Segall who responded to my comments with a predictably wishy-washy and unconvincing defense of Edelman’s relationship with Morocco. “Our work with Morocco has been transparent and forthright and we look forward to continuing our partnership with this unique and important country.”

According to the Post article, poor Ed “fielded calls all day from friends who thought he had died. One woman told him she spent two hours crying after seeing the ad.” An apparently mortified Segall explained, “As I said in a correction that I hope is published [today], I engaged in a very stupid and ultimately cruel April Fools' joke against a man that has been my best friend for 30 years, and I deeply, deeply regret it." And Gabriel elaborates, “He's an old friend who plays jokes on me every year, and some are hilarious, but they've been private….He's a good friend who went a little too far. He's apologized profusely, and I've accepted it, but not without being a little hurt. I think -- I know -- he had no ill intent.” Summarizing the whole episode, “Segall said,” according to the Post “that he is a mature man who made an immature mistake.” Given the utter stupidity and silliness of publishing a gay death hoax about a friend in the Washington Post, I would say that Segall’s maturity is certainly open to question -- especially since he is a high-level executive for one of the biggest and most influential PR firms in the world.

And what in the world is the homosexuality angle all about? While Segall’s ad does seem to insinuate a gay relationship (“though I no longer have you as my partner…”), the Washington Post article takes it a step further by making the connection with “Brokeback Mountain” (“in language reminiscent of the movie ‘Brokeback Mountain’”), a popular recent movie about two married cowboys who carry on a long-time gay love affair behind the backs of their wives. The language in question in Segall’s ad, by the way, is “I could never quit you,” which is indeed reminiscent of Brokeback’s “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Let me preface this paragraph with a disclaimer that I couldn’t care less about Segall, Gabriel, or anyone else’s sexual orientation. I just find it incredibly strange that Segall would pull a public gay spoof on his old friend when, first of all, Gabriel is married (to Democratic Party operative and tobacco industry lobbyist, Kathleen “Buffy” Linehan), and, secondly, both these guys lobby and do PR for Morocco, where homosexual relations are illegal and can land you in jail for up to three years (Section 489 of the Moroccan Penal Code). With Edelman’s Morocco desk being overseen by someone exhibiting such atrociously bad judgment, there just might be some hope after all for the Western Sahara cause.

This whole silly April Fools episode strikes me as sadly symbolic of the tragic dilemma in which the Western Sahara currently finds itself. For over 35 years, the UN and the world community -- through numerous resolutions and rulings, and the refusal of even one country to recognize Morocco’s occupation -- have confirmed the Western Saharan’s right to self-determination. A combination of blind US and French support for Morocco, the UN retreating on its commitments to the Western Sahara (see van Walsum’s realism), and Morocco’s huge expenditures on PR and lobbying has brought us to the point where the future of a people is being determined by a mercenary bunch of yahoos such as J. Peter Segall and Edward M. Gabriel.

I can’t help but be left with an image of J. Peter Segall and Edward M. Gabriel in their tight blue jeans sitting around a campfire on a dark stormy night on Brokeback Mountain concocting new and exciting schemes to screw the Sahrawi.

As an aside, in confirming that Gabriel was in fact married, I ran across some tidbits online about Gabriel’s wife, Buffy, that are interesting in the context of this story. In 1992, as head of Philip Morris’s lobbying group, she was deposed in a lawsuit against B.J. Reynolds Tobacco (KUEPER v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO). Sourcewatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, comments about her deposition: “…Linehan indicated that she was involved in lobbying against the banning of smoking on commercial aircraft, and that she does not consider the health consequences of the product she is lobbying (cigarettes).” And at another deposition in 1995, Sourcewatch adds that “Linehan stated that she did not believe that cigarette smoking is addictive.” Buffy and Ed really do seem made for each other; both are lobbyists who get paid for actively promoting products (cigarettes and Morocco) that spread misery and death, and neither is willing to consider the human consequences of their actions.

The Bodansky File

2008-04-07T21:08:00.003-04:00

While researching my recent post on Edelman, I came across a Moroccan-American Center for Policy (MACP) press release from January 11, 2008, titled Western Sahara Negotiations Continue Despite Polisario War Threats.

The following paragraph in that release caught my attention:

In a recent analysis, Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), noted that the greatest threat to stability in the Maghreb and Western Mediterranean was what he described as “the rejuvenation of the terrorism campaign” of the Polisario Front. The escalation by the Polisario comes in the midst of the latest United Nations effort to finally resolve the Western Sahara conflict.

Now this Youssef Bodansky is an Israeli-born political scientist and terrorism expert with ten mostly-terrorism-related books under his belt, a ton of articles in big publications to his credit, vast work experience throughout the US Government, and a reputation for having foreseen and predicted many of the terror incidents of the last few years, including 9/11. See Wikipedia for specifics.

With a resume like this one can hardly be faulted for thinking that maybe this guy knows a thing or two about terrorism and that he might be on to something when he makes such a damning statement about the Polisario. But having already been burned once by assuming the same thing about another pro-Israel terrorism expert, Claude Moniquet, I thought I’d dig a little further and try to find the “recent analysis” where the quote about “the rejuvenation of the [Polisario’s] terrorism campaign” came from. I scoured the internet and have come up empty. So a few days ago I shot off e-mails to both MACP and Mr. Bodansky for clarification and so far have heard nothing.

The reason all this is of interest to me is that most of the scholars I am aware of specializing in and writing on the Polisario (see Shelley, Zunes, Mundy, and even Jensen) clearly see the Polisario and the terrorism question in quite a different light. They are very consistently impressed by the Polisario’s refusal, even in the face of rather ugly state terrorism practiced by Morocco, to resort to terrorism. So I am forced to wonder, first of all, what past “terrorism campaign” Mr. Bodansky is referring to as being ripe for “rejuvenation.” Some have tried to construe a handful of Polisario attacks on fishing boats entering the war zone in the ‘70s and 80’s as terroristic activity, but few find this convincing. Secondly, I wonder what leads Mr. Bodansky to think that the Polisario is on the verge of changing their MO and adopting terrorism.

While trying to figure out where Mr. Bodansky is coming from on the Western Sahara issue, I happened to run across some interesting associations of his. He it turns out is on the Executive Commitee of a group called Global Panel America along with none other than Marc S. Ellenbogen, and who should appear on their Advisory Board but Hon. Hassan Abouyoub, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to King Mohamed VI of Morocco. In a similar vein, Mr. Bodansky is also a Director of the Prague Society for International Cooperation of which Mr. Ellenbogen is President and Mr. Abouyoub a frequent guest. Both these groups appear to be behind-the-scenes networking organizations with very fancy members. Mr. Ellenbogen, in case you are not one of my regular readers, has written some of the most factually compromised material in recent memory on the Western Sahara and got his very own post on my blog last year.

Another interesting coincidence is that Mr. Bodansky is a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, home of Professor I. William Zartman who also has interesting ideas about the Western Sahara and merited his own post. But Johns Hopkins is a big diverse place and I have no idea whether the two even know each other, so I will refrain from pursuing this angle.

Anyway, I reserve judgment on what all this means until I get a copy of Mr. Bodansky’s “recent analysis” that MACP promises will enlighten us all about Polisario terrorism.

Richard Edelman, Spinmeister

2008-04-04T10:07:00.008-04:00

“There is no place in PR for spin. To be deemed a spinmeister is the ultimate insult. We are in the business of presenting reality, both to clients’ stakeholders but also to the client. We advise, develop strategy and listen, so that we help to shape the reality.” www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/archives/2007/06/

--Richard Edelman, June 1, 2007

Last year Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR, the world’s largest independent PR firm, came out with a post on his blog, 6 A.M., that is so hypocritical that one really has to wonder whether he is clueless about what his large company is up to or whether he is, well, just a hypocrite.

The post in question from May 25 is titled “The Power of One (and of Stories).” In it Mr. Edelman tells of a screening he had attended the night before of a National Geographic documentary called “God Grew Tired of Us (The Lost Boys of Sudan).” It is a moving and inspirational story of refugee children from southern Sudan who fled the genocidal brutality of Khartoum, suffered years of horror and deprivation living in refugee camps, and, in the case of John Bul Dau (author of the book on which the movie is based), ended up reunited with his family and getting an education in Seattle.

From the film, the discussion that followed the screening, and a meeting with Mr. Bul Dau, Mr. Edelman eloquently outlines the lessons that we can learn from the author and all these courageous children: that “leaders can emerge from unexpected places and unforeseen circumstances,” that “his optimism was tempered by realism but nourished by a deep faith from his religious background but also by confidence in himself,” that “there is no substitute for hard work,” and that “the power of family is a central element of his success.”

While I laud Mr. Edelman’s bringing this moving story to our attention and agree with the sentiments he expresses in his post, I am stunned by his seeming ignorance of the refugee crisis his company is helping to perpetuate on the other side of Africa, in the Western Sahara.

For those of you uninitiated about this issue, in the mid-1970s, in the wake of an International Court of Justice ruling that confirmed the Western Sahara’s right to de-colonial self-determination, Morocco invaded the territory driving some 150,000 of the indigenous Sahrawi from their homes and into dismal refugee camps over the border in the Tindouf region of Algeria. After 15 years of inconclusive warfare, the parties signed a peace treaty in 1991 which called for a referendum on independence. And after another 15 years of attempts by the UN to implement the referendum, Morocco unilaterally canceled the referendum process rather than risk a vote they might lose.

Morocco’s refusal to abide by clear international law and to allow the Western Saharans the right to self-determination enjoyed by every other colony in Africa, has resulted in a refugee crisis now well into its fourth decade. Many in the camps have known no other home. The refugees live in tents and mud-brick houses. Educational and professional opportunities are extremely limited or non-existent. UNHCR which monitors the camps regularly cites dire health conditions with high levels of anemia and acute malnutrition among the most severe problems. If Mr. Edelman is looking for “lost” refugee children to champion, he need look no farther than the boys and girls of Tindouf.

Mr. Edelman’s company, however, chooses to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Sahrawi children and to take money, lots of money, from the Government of Morocco which helps perpetuate their misery. In particular, I point to Edelman PR’s partnership with the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP), a registered agent of the Kingdom of Morocco.

While Edelman PR’s relationship with the Government of Morocco deals with a number of issues, their partnership with MACP appears to be all about the Western Sahara. A look a MACP’s website is revealing. Here we get the same collection of untruths, half-truths, omissions, and distortions about the Western Sahara that has been coming out of Rabat for over thirty years. For instance, we learn that “current Moroccan claims of sovereignty are merely reassertions of … [a] past period of influence” (totally rejected by the International Court of Justice); that Sahrawi children from the refugee camps are habitually “kidnapped” and “deported” to Cuba for “indoctrination” (totally rejected by the UNHCR); and that the Polisario Front, the national liberation movement of the Western Sahara, is a “separatist movement" (see my last few posts). The information we get about the Western Sahara is pure boilerplate Moroccan propaganda.

The outrageousness of the site is aptly symbolized by its inclusion of a map of Morocco (including the Western Sahara within its borders) that is accepted by no country. I’m sure Mr. Edelman would have a thing or two to say about Palestinian maps that don’t show the state of Israel (or even Israeli maps that include Palestine within its borders).

Edelman PR’s active collaboration with MACP in the dissemination of Moroccan propaganda is clearly illustrated by the disclaimer that appears at the end of MACP press releases. They read: “This material is distributed by DJE, Inc. and the Moroccan-American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.” DJE in case you were wondering stands for Daniel J. Edelman. Stick this disclaimer in your favorite search engine and read some of the press releases that Edelman has been distributing -- pretty raunchy stuff most of it, if truth is what you value.

Edelman PR’s highest profile work on behalf of MACP was the Free Them Now campaign for the release of the last remaining Moroccan prisoners of war being held by the Polisario Front -- a campaign by the way that got Edelman a Golden World Award for Advocacy & Lobbying from the International Public Relations Association (IPRA).

It is not so much the actual cause of the prisoners of war that I find a problem; several pro-Polisario analysts had concluded that holding the remaining POW’s had become counterproductive for the Western Saharan cause and that they should be released on humanitarian grounds. Actually, the Polisario itself had been committed for over a decade to releasing the prisoners and had already released most of them. Nevertheless, it was Morocco’s refusal to come clean about hundreds of Western Saharan disappearances and to hold a referendum as they had agreed to that more than anything held up the release.

What I find reprehensible about the Edelman campaign is its utter mendacity. Free Them Now was part of a much broader effort by Edelman to demonize the Polisario by blitzing the American media with Moroccan lies. Edelman’s own description of the campaign on the website of the International Public Relations Association is an amazing read on the art of spin.

I have written extensively about several of the “execution points” (as Edelman calls them) of the campaign: Senator McCain’s grandstanding, the Washington Times’ propensity to believe and print any rubbish Morocco and Edelman give it, Congressman Diaz-Balart’s totally disgraceful press conference in Miami. In a nutshell, Edelman PR partnered with MACP to spread misinformation about the Western Sahara in order to sway public opinion to accept Morocco’s brutal and illegal occupation and to whitewash Morocco’s blatant refusal to abide by international law.

Oh yes, this is about Mr. Bul Dau and poor refugees. Edelman PR is actively colluding with Morocco to deny the Western Saharans their day at the ballot box and to ensure that the boys and girls of Tindouf suffer in their dismal refugee camps for the foreseeable future. Mr. Edelman’s attempt to have us believe that he cares at all about poor refugee children is a bit rich I would say.

Let me return for a moment to my initial paragraph where I ponder whether Mr. Edelman was hypocritical, ignorant of what his company is up to, or a hypocrite. I admit to being a regular reader of Mr. Edelman’s 6.A.M. blog. As a long-time critic of Edelman PR’s involvement with Morocco, I am fascinated by his weekly attempts to position his company as THE ethical PR firm., while the blogosphere groans under the weight of thousands of posts ranting about Edelman PR’s ethical envelopepushing. Google Edelman and Wal-Mart or Microsoft for a sample. Hypocritical, ignorant, or a hypocrite? Oh I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Edelman should rename his blog 8 A.M or even 10 A.M.; perhaps he needs a few extra hours of sleep.

On Mr. Edelman’s blog I asked him a question that he refrained to acknowledge or answer; so in conclusion I will ask it here. Mr. Edelman, if the Government of Sudan walked into your office tomorrow and offered you lots of money to clean up their image in the United States, would you take it? If your answer is “yes” then shame on you; if it is “no” that’s commendable, but then why do you take money from Morocco?

Edward M. Gabriel: Beating on a Dead Camel

2007-09-10T09:28:00.000-04:00

Oh I know I said I wasn’t going to bore you with a detailed analysis of Edward M. Gabriel’s article in National Interest supporting Morocco’s autonomy plan . However, after Ambassador Gabriel honored me with a comment on my humble blog, I feel impelled to respond to his challenge.

“I stand by the content of my article,” writes Mr. Gabriel.

Here are some of the statements he stands by (his words in bold):

“For centuries, nomadic tribes of the Sahara–known collectively as Sahrawis—subsisted in the vast expanse of the Sahara (across present-day Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali) while pledging allegiance to the Sultanate of Morocco. The colonial occupation of the region by Spain, and subsequent borders imposed in the area, did not take into account the unique cultural, political and economic identity of the Sahrawi people, who had always been inextricably tied to the south of Morocco.”

I’m a little confused here. If the Sahrawi tribes subsisting in the “vast expanse of the Sahara (across present-day Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali)” all pledged allegiance to the Sultanate of Morocco and if these pledges really constituted bonds of sovereignty that justify Morocco’s invasion and occupation of the Western Sahara, then why isn’t Morocco trying to recover their Algerian, Mauritanian, and Malian Saharas also. Actually, after Morocco got its independence from France, the nationalist Istiqlal party did claim all of this area (and even some of Senegal), but these grandiose claims haven’t seen the light of day for a while. Why Mr. Gabriel seems to be dredging up the long-discredited greater-Moroccan thesis is unclear. And if he truly believes in this thesis, why is Mr. Gabriel picking only on the Western Sahara?

“During the Cold War, following Spain’s withdrawal from the Sahara, a separatist revolutionary group known as the Polisario Front, backed by the USSR, Algeria, Cuba and Libya, attempted to wrest the region away from Morocco, which had reestablished its traditional sovereignty in the former Spanish colony.”

I wonder whether that is “separatist revolutionary” as in the thirteen colonies. In any event, I have discussed the erroneous use of “separatist” elsewhere. No country recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the WS, so there is nothing to separate from. In his attempt to place the Polisario on the wrong side in the Cold War, Mr. Gabriel includes the USSR as one of their backers. In fact, the USSR always refused to back the Polisario either financially or militarily in order to protect its huge 30-year phosphates deal concluded with the kingdom in 1978. Even diplomatic backing was lacking, which can be seen from the fact the USSR (and Russia for that matter) has never recognized the Polisario Front. And Mr. Gabriel seems to have forgotten that during the Cold War the number of countries that “backed” the Polisario with official recognition reached into the seventies. And of course Mr. Gabriel’s claim that Morocco “reestablished its traditional sovereignty in the former Spanish colony” was debunked by the International Court of Justice and discredited by the de facto refusal of the world community to recognize any such “traditional sovereignty.”

“A United Nations ceasefire was established in 1991, but since that time various efforts to reach a political solution to the issue have failed.”

The 1991 cease-fire agreement that was signed by both parties and which, among other things, called for a referendum on independence or inclusion in Morocco WAS a “political solution.” If Morocco had honored its agreement to hold a referendum with an electorate based on the 1975 census, the Western Sahara crisis would have been over a long time ago. Gabriel’s contention that “efforts to reach a political solution … have failed” is a feeble attempt to cover up the fact that a political solution was reached years ago and the reality that Morocco bears full responsibility for not allowing implementation of that solution.

“The impasse reflected the Polisario Front’s firm stance that only independence will suffice, while Morocco insisted upon reintegration of its land and people within its national borders.”

This is just wrong. The Polisario has NEVER taken a “stance,” and certainly never a “firm” one, that “only independence will suffice.” The Polisario has always said they would abide by whatever the inhabitants of the territory voted for in a referendum – be it inclusion in Morocco, autonomy, or independence. Their firm stance is that only a referendum on independence will suffice. Similarly, if Morocco has always “insisted upon reintegration of its land and people within its national borders,” why then did Hassan II sign an agreement setting up a referendum on independence?

In assessing this article, the sections that I have put under the microscope constitute only the edge of the Sahara of Mr. Gabriel’s dishonesty. As is usually the case with this kind of writing, all the facts and points of international law that that don’t fit into or that contradict his pro-Moroccan line are just left out.

And so, having fabricated a totally misleading and bogus history of the conflict, Mr. Gabriel moves on to make his case for Morocco’s autonomy proposal. You know right away where he is going when he writes, “This decision [to present the autonomy plan] was reached through a wide-ranging discussion among the stakeholders in Morocco….” Come on Mr. Gabriel, who cares what they think in Morocco; they are after all the invader and occupier. It’s what they think in El Ayoun or Tindouf that matters.

I find his case far from convincing, but here I will really truly refrain from delving into the minutia of his arguments. Mr. Gabriel can blather on all he wants about how Western Saharan autonomy is the best solution for all the ills of Morocco and the Maghreb, but his arguments are all irrelevant because of his total rejection of the Western Saharans’ right to de-colonial self-determination.

The Polisario has already rejected Morocco’s plan and after two meetings in Manhasset has stood firm in its refusal to discuss autonomy outside of the context of a referendum on independence. Mr. Gabriel’s article in support of Morocco’s autonomy plan is an attempt to create a sand storm to blind the American reader to the truth and reality of the Western Sahara issue. Or as Bob Dylan might have said ("Man in the Long Black Coat" in Oh Mercy), “Somebody is out there beating on a dead camel.”

I thank Mr. Gabriel again for making his comment on my blog. His excuse that he divulged his affiliation with the Moroccan government with National Interest and they refrained to mention it with his article is I think rather lame. In published opinion pieces, authors who have a financial interest in the propagation of a particular point of view have an ethical obligation to divulge that interest – either in the article or in a biographical note. Mention of Mr. Gabriel’s paid relationship with the kingdom of Morocco initially appeared in neither place.

Edward M. Gabriel, Piranha

2007-09-02T10:05:00.000-04:00

There’s nothing like a few days of stalking large- and smallmouth bass, stripers, and northern pike to take my mind off of the situation in the Western Sahara. As I settled back to my desk after a relaxing fishing vacation in Maine, I came upon an August 31^st article on National Interest Online by the old piranha, former American ambassador to Morocco Edward M. Gabriel, titled Inside Track: Resolving the Western Sahara Saga. Oh well, the soothing pristine calm of the Kennebec is all of a sudden a distant memory.

I will not bore you with a detailed analysis of this piece of Moroccan propaganda; there is absolutely nothing that distinguishes it from the rubbish coming out of Rabat, or from the spinmeisters at Edelman, or the poisoned pens of others who have sold out to the Moroccans such as Frederick Vreeland and Robert Holley. Let me just say that it is very much what we have come to expect from former American diplomats to Morocco who now make a pleasant living on Rabat’s payroll.

In the latest (available online) Report of the Attorney General to the Congress of the United States on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended, for the six months ending June 30, 2006, we learn that Mr. Gabriel is somewhat of a double-dipper, as he turns up as a registered foreign agent for Morocco under both his own company, Gabriel Company, LLC, and Robert Holley’s chop shop, Moroccan-American Center for Policy, Inc.(MACP) To dispel the notion that he might have gotten a real job since that last report, Mr. Gabriel in May of this year prefaced his remarks at a Western Sahara conference at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, DC, by divulging that he was still taking money from the Government of Morocco.

Mr. Gabriel over the last couple years has been a fixture on the Moroccan propaganda circuit showing up regularly at MACP, Edelman, and National Clergy Council events. Always seated next to his fellow Moroccan foreign agents, he struts his ambassadorial status in a lame attempt to give some stamp of legitimacy to the crass dishonesty of these propaganda shows. His article is, similarly, nothing more than propaganda aimed at influencing American public opinion to accept Morocco’s illegal occupation of the Western Sahara.

It is mindboggling that Mr. Gabriel should have the audacity to write his article in support of Morocco’s autonomy plan without divulging his relationship with the Moroccan government – especially in view of a similar stunt in the New York Times back in March by another former American ambassador to Morocco, “Fricky” Vreeland. In Vreeland’s case, the Times issued a correction three weeks later stating that he was “chairman of a solar-energy company that has had contracts with the Moroccan government” and the article “should have more fully disclosed the background of the author.” It is my hope that National Interest Online will exhibit a similar concern for transparency and journalistic ethics by adding a disclaimer to Mr. Gabriel’s article.

I am pleased to report that National Interest has amended their biographical note about Mr. Gabriel, and it now reads, "Edward M. Gabriel is a former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco and a consultant to the Moroccan government."

I. William Zartman & the Final Solution of the Sahrawi Problem

2007-05-27T11:05:00.000-04:00

On 16 May 2007, the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies presented an article in its Africa Policy Forum series titled "Western Sahara – Continuing Standoff." The author of the article, Anna Theofilopoulou, is described as follows:

Anna Theofilopoulou covered Western Sahara and North Africa in the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations from 1994 to 2006. She worked closely with former U.S. Secretary of State, James A. Baker, III throughout his appointment as Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General on Western Sahara – from March 1997 until his resignation in June 2004.

Ms. Theofilopoulou clearly has an intimate familiarity with the Western Sahara issue, and her analysis of the present situation is one of the better ones that I have read in a while. The whole article is well worth reading, but for the purposes of this post I quote her concluding paragraph:

The Security Council has chosen to deal with this issue by adopting the suggestion by the Secretary-General for negotiations between the parties without preconditions. This is not the first time that the Security Council, when confronted with a difficult choice and crucial disagreements among its members, has bounced the issue back into the court of the Secretary-General. There has been giddy talk among Morocco’s supporters about a “breakthrough,” since the parties have indeed agreed to direct talks. However, given the irreconcilable nature of the positions that each side has brought to the table, what are the chances for these talks to bring about any results? At best, the latest decision by the Security Council promises several more years of stalemate.

I agree with this assessment and can only add that, at worst, war in some form could return to the Maghreb. The Africa Policy Forum actively solicits comments and what really caught my eye was this comment by I. William Zartman directly following the article:

· 1. I William Zartman | May 16th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

Ana [sic] Theofilopoulou’s piece on the Western Sahar [sic] is cogent and well informed, but it stops where it should continue. Sure, Algeria needs to be brought into a settlement. But what settlement? Morocco’s proposal for autonomy is the only proposal ever made by one of the parties including Algeria) that departs from extreme positions and seeks the middle. In so doing, Morcco [sic] takes enormous risks: 1) that its autonomy proposal be viewed as a step toward independence, like East Timor or Palestine, as the UN Secretariat tends to view the solution, and 2) that its proposal be viewed as the new starting position and Algeria then proposing to split the difference, landing on te [sic] Polisario side of the “crest of sovereignty.” The challenge is to flesh out and implement the autonomy plan as a final solution, and inthat [sic] the US, France and Spain are not wrong in supporting the plan. Theofilopoulou does not tell us what to support, only that Algeria (and the PLS) need to be brought in. Into what? Autonomy is a good proposal and we should stick to it.

While fully aware of Mr. Zartman’s lofty reputation as Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution and Director of the Conflict Management Program at Johns Hopkins University, I am somewhat baffled and disturbed by some of his comments regarding Ms. Theofilopoulou’s article and on the Western Saharan conflict in general.

His basic problem with the article is that it does not take a stand, that “it stops where it should continue.” What he means by this becomes immediately clear. He writes, “Morocco’s proposal for autonomy is the only proposal ever made by one of the parties (including Algeria) that departs from extreme positions and seeks the middle.” I find Mr. Zartman’s idea that the autonomy plan “seeks the middle” totally off base. The Polisario Front and Morocco signed a UN-brokered agreement in 1991 calling for a referendum on independence. Given that the UN had been calling for this referendum since the 1960s when the Western Sahara was designated a non-self-governing territory and given that both parties agreed to the referendum, I am at a loss to understand how this proposal to hold a referendum could be considered an “extreme position.”

In fact, for the decade after 1991 the holding of a referendum on independence WAS the “middle,” and both parties considered autonomy “extreme.” A quote by John Bolton, who helped James Baker in the negotiations, is illustrative:

…when Secretary Baker went to the region and asked the King, asked the government of Morocco, asked the leadership of the POLISARIO, "What do you want?" They said, without hesitation and without equivocation, "We want a free and fair referendum." "Want to talk about autonomy?" "No, we don't want to talk about autonomy. We want to talk about a referendum. (Defense Forum Foundation, 1998 Congressional Defense and Foreign Policy Forum, “Resolving the Western Sahara Conflict”)

Mr. Zartman’s view that autonomy is now a commendable middle position that should be supported by all totally ignores the history of how and why Morocco finally rejected the referendum on independence that after all both parties had agreed to. In several stages, Morocco quite simply came to the realization that it would or could lose any referendum, no matter how many concessions were made by the Polisario (and they made several) and no matter how many thousands of pro-Moroccan settlers were added to the voter list. In fact, the Polisario’s acceptance of James Baker’s last plan in 2003 (Baker II) was an incredibly risky concession in that the Moroccan settlers that would be allowed to vote in Baker’s referendum greatly outnumbered the indigenous Sahrawi. And even with the numbers heavily stacked in its favor, Rabat, apparently still convinced it could lose, rejected Baker II, took any possibility of independence off the table, and declared autonomy a noble compromise.

Mr. Zartman makes much of Morocco’s risks in proposing autonomy. For instance he states, “Morcco [sic] takes enormous risks: 1) that its autonomy proposal be viewed as a step toward independence, like East Timor or Palestine, as the UN Secretariat tends to view the solution.” Mr. Zartman is quite right that the UN Secretariat groups the Western Sahara with East Timor and Palestine as places that under clear international law are (and in the case of East Timor were) entitled to independence. What Mr. Zartman doesn’t make clear is why the Western Sahara should be treated differently from the other two, and in particular East Timor. East Timor before independence fell precisely under the same legal framework as the Western Sahara. Both were categorized as non-self-governing territories with the right to self-determination with independence as an option. I would be interested in knowing why Mr. Zartman apparently accepts East Timor’s independence but rejects the possibility of the Western Sahara’s. In any event, his flippant dismissal of international law (“as the UN Secretariat tends to view the solution”) in favor of Morocco’s autonomy plan is disturbing. And in the final analysis what Mr. Zartman is saying is that Morocco's "enormous" risk is that in the end international law just might prevail. How horrible.

In addition, on the question of risk, Mr. Zartman is silent on the risks of the Western Saharans accepting autonomy. Morocco pretty much broke every agreement it made with the Polisario in the decade after 1991. Why should the Polisario trust that Rabat would honor any autonomy agreement, even with constitutional and international guarantees?

I would urge Mr. Zartman to consider the cautionary tale of Eritrea. Eritrea in 1952 (in a situation with far too many eerie parallels to the Western Sahara to go into here) was forced into an autonomy arrangement within Ethiopia – but with seemingly ironclad assurances that Eritrea’s status could not be changed without UN approval. It took little more than a decade for Ethiopia to throw autonomy out the window and fully annex Eritrea, with hardly a whimper from the UN or the world community. And then it took another thirty plus years of unbelievable carnage and misery in the horn of Africa before Eritrean independence was achieved.

Agreeing to autonomy for the Polisario involves, it seems to me, an incredible leap of faith, and if oil one day is discovered in Western Saharan waters does anyone really think that Morocco would continue to allow the Western Saharans to run their own affairs?

Mr. Zartman quickly reaches his conclusion:

The challenge is to flesh out and implement the autonomy plan as a final solution, and inthat [sic] the US, France and Spain are not wrong in supporting the plan. Theofilopoulou does not tell us what to support, only that Algeria (and the PLS) need to be brought in. Into what? Autonomy is a good proposal and we should stick to it.

My impression (and I think Ms. Theofilopoulou’s too) is that no amount of fleshing out will be enough to convince the Polisario to discard their right to self-determination and accept the extreme solution of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. They have international law on their side, and as mentioned above they have every reason to completely mistrust Morocco’s intentions. I don’t think it is farfetched to consider that if the Western Sahara loses its international status as a non-self-governing territory and becomes an “internal affair,” Morocco would have free rein to really bring us a “final solution,” as Mr. Zartman so delicately puts it. And if you feel I am being a bit alarmist here, I suggest you check out the latest Western Sahara reports from Freedom House, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch to get a picture of Morocco’s brutal totalitarian occupation.

I find it interesting that Mr. Zartman would have us “implement” Morocco’s autonomy plan, without any consideration of what the Western Saharans might think about it nor any mention that the Polisario has already categorically rejected the plan. This seems to be a plan to ram autonomy down the Western Saharans’ throats.

He feels that “the US, France and Spain are not wrong in supporting the plan.” I guess there IS nothing wrong with supporting it, but there is everything wrong with imposing it; and imposing it seems to be very much what Mr. Zartman has in mind. What else could he have in mind given that the Polisario has, I repeat, already rejected Morocco’s plan? Mr. Zartman has no problem with bringing Algeria and the Polisario into the process, but only to discuss autonomy. That smells of imposition to me.

And finally Mr. Zartman finishes with, “Autonomy is a good proposal and we should stick to it.” Good for whom, Mr. Zartman? And your argument that we should “stick to it” appears to be more of an argument to “stick it to” these poor desert people who deserve better.

What I find most disturbing about Mr. Zartman’s statement of support for Morocco’s autonomy plan is that he is a world-famous and prestigious expert on conflict resolution. No matter how nice autonomy might appear on paper, forced autonomy or autonomy outside the context of the Western Sahara’s right to self-determination (with independence as an option) is a recipe for disaster and conflict deterioration.

Mr. Zartman gets on Ms Theofilopoulou’s case about her not telling us what to support, so I will give my view. I can say wholeheartedly that I support a return to the referendum on independence as the basis for a settlement. The UN proposal to hold the referendum has been the only substantive thing the two parties have agreed on in over thirty years. Just because Morocco backed out of the referendum when it realized it might lose is no reason to scuttle this middle ground. The great powers must finally pressure Morocco to honor its agreements and abide by international law. The autonomy plan, that rewards Morocco’s aggression, sidesteps international law, and has little or no discernable support from the Polisario or among the Western Saharans, should be buried very deep in the sands of the Sahara.

Marc S. Ellenbogen & the Myopic Miasma of Moroccan Malice

2007-05-08T13:30:00.002-04:00

In a recent UPI/Washington Times article titled Atlantic Eye: Morocco's Right to Sahara, Marc S. Ellenbogen reports on his recent visit to Morocco, heading a delegation from the Global Panel Foundation and the Prague Society for International Cooperation. The purpose of the trip was to hold “a series of briefings and brain-storming sessions … held under the auspices of THE ROYAL STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE (IRES)” on the future of Morocco. The visit was “at the invitation of the Hon. Hassan Abouyoub, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to H.M. King Mohammed.” The article, which deals specifically with the Western Sahara situation, opens with the following poetic paragraph:

Washington D.C., April 26 (UPI) -- Ambassador Hassan Abouyoub, Jens-Hald Madsen and I stood on the portico of the magnificent Mirage Hotel in Marabata. The Atlantic waves hammered the steep cove below. Hassan and I took a smokers break, as Madsen noted the vast beauty in front of us.

From what follows in the article, one has to wonder what it was they were smoking while gazing down from the portico. Morocco is, after all, the world’s leading exporter of hashish. In any event, as the article moves from this idyllic scene to more serious matters of international law regarding the Western Sahara, Mr. Ellenbogen’s grasp of reality seems to completely deteriorate as he descends into a myopic miasma of Moroccan malice (hey, I get to wax poetic too).

Having reported recently on several cases of media madness on the Western Sahara, I’ll try to keep it brief by touching on the worst of what Mr. Ellenbogen has to say. I urge you, however, to follow the link and read the whole article because you will be tickled by the gravitas of it all. Here are some of the gems:

“It remains undisputed that Spain's restoration of Western Sahara to Morocco was legal.” Of course it is exactly the opposite of this that is much closer to being “undisputed.” The UN has ruled unambiguously that Spain’s transfer of the Western Sahara to Morocco (and Mauritania) was ILLEGAL under international law. And Morocco’s claim that it was a “restoration” was emphatically rejected. Here, Mr. Ellenbogen, are the links to the International Court of Justice ruling on the Western Sahara in 1975 and the more recent reaffirmation of that ruling by the UN’s legal counsel, Hans Corell, in 2002.

“The Moroccan proposal for extended autonomy submitted to the UN has been praised by experts - but rejected by both the Polisario and Algeria.” Sure SOME experts on the Western Sahara have supported Morocco’s proposal, but most of the experts that I am aware of are dismissive of any such Moroccan plan that denies the Western Saharans the right to self-determination.

“The supporters of the Sahrawi, who are mostly Algerians and European 60's throw-backs, have used the question of human rights as an instrument for forcing the issue of Moroccan Western Saharan secession and independence.” Mr. Ellenbogen is apparently unaware that some 40 countries also support the Sahrawi. I’m trying to figure out who exactly these “European 60’s throw-backs” are. I suspect they are those Europeans who believe fervently in decolonization and self-determination for colonial peoples. But then Mr. Ellenbogen doesn’t appear to support self-determination. As for those Sahrawi supporters using “the question of human rights as an instrument for forcing the issue…,” what’s wrong with that? But then again the author doesn't seem to like human rights either.

“There is no legal reason for Morocco to accept the secession of Moroccan Western Sahara - and UN formal resolutions do not demand this either.” To illustrate the inanity of this statement, I’d like to tell the story of a friend of mine who left her husband and filed for divorce; a couple days later her lawyer got back to her with the good news that, since she had lied about her age (15) when they got married in Vegas, they had never legally been married – so they didn’t need to get divorced. Just as you can’t legally divorce if you were never legally married, you can’t legally secede if you were never legally joined in the first place. That precisely is the case with the Western Sahara since not one country recognizes Morocco’s annexation.

“Morocco's approach, which respects the letter of the UN resolutions, puts an end to the logic for Moroccan Western Sahara secession.” How “Morocco’s approach…respects the letter of the UN resolutions” is a total mystery to me. Morocco’s autonomy proposal is an attempt to circumvent over thirty years of UN resolutions supporting Western Saharan self-determination. Sure the UN has urged the parties to start talking again, but nowhere does the UN support Morocco’s autonomy approach, which is clearly inconsistent with self-determination. Many UN resolutions, however, support the right of the Western Saharans to self-determination and independence if they so choose. And again to talk about putting an end to the logic for secession is absurd, since the parties were never married to begin with.

“The consensus at this Global Panel session is that the Moroccan Western Saharan question is best left to the principals involved. The United Nations, noted a ranking European diplomat, would best serve the needs of all concerned by removing itself from the entire question.” The Global Panel doesn’t seem to have a clue here that the Western Saharan question from 1975 until the late 80’s WAS “left to the principals involved” with minimal UN involvement. And it is not a coincidence that those were the years of war between the parties. It is disturbing that the best the panel can come up with is the return to a situation which would probably make war inevitable.

What is most interesting about this article is that Mr. Ellenbogen actually tries to make a legal case for Morocco’s autonomy plan. This is in stark contrast to the more-typical negative approach we have been seeing a lot of recently which says that one must support Moroccan sovereignty because the Polisario is a terrorist organization, or in cahoots with al-Qaeda, or communist, or in bed with Castro, or non-democratic, or whatever.

While Mr. Ellenbogen’s avoidance of the usual false negatives is I guess commendable, unfortunately his legal approach is just as bad. As I discuss above, his arguments that Spain’s transfer of the Western Sahara to Morocco was legal, that the Western Sahara quest for independence is illegal secession, that replacing self-determination with autonomy is legal, all these arguments are bogus. The UN and international law just don’t back him up on any of these things.

In the final analysis, this whole exercise by Mr. Ellenbogen strikes me as a thinly veiled attempt to kiss up to his gracious and generous Moroccan hosts by parroting their totally discredited legal opinions on the Western Sahara.

Polisario, Cuba, & Martian Invaders

2007-04-21T11:35:00.000-04:00

Recently an outfit in Florida by the name of the Cuba Transition Project (CTP) of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (University of Miami) has done us a tremendous favor by telling a Polisario tale so outlandish that it reveals the ugly face of Moroccan propaganda for all to see. The April article in this group’s online magazine, Focus on Cuba, titled Western Sahara: Where the Castro Regime Meets Al-Qaeda, would have us believe that, with the US pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Cuba/Polisario/Al-Qaeda axis has taken shape to “conceivably coordinate an offensive against U.S. interests and allied governments in the region, ” -- that region being North Africa. How the CTP manages to put together such an ominous story out of wind, sand, and camel dung is the story of this posting .

The CTP argument goes something like this (all quotes are from the article linked above):

The Polisario hates Morocco. As they put it, “In 1975, Moroccan King Hassan II led the peaceful "Green March" that reclaimed the territory that had historically been part of Morocco.” The “leftist” Polisario, “founded in 1973 as a national liberation movement opposed to Spanish colonial rule in North Africa,” fought a guerrilla war against this reclamation until a cease-fire in 1991. Since then the Polisario has been “confined to the far eastern fringe of Western Sahara.”

Cuba loves the Polisario and vice versa. “Since the 1970s, the Castro regime has been a fervent ally and backer of the POLISARIO Front.” On one hand, “upwards of 2,000 Sahrawis … have been trained in Cuban institutions and today occupy important political, social, administrative and professional positions in the POLISARIO political and military structure.” On the other, “The Cuban government maintains a “brigade” of physicians, advisors, and intelligence operatives within the POLISARIO zone.”

El-Qaeda hates Morocco, all moderate Islamic states, and the United States. Answering a call from Bin Laden henchman, Ayman al-Zawahiri “for 'new Fronts' in North Africa to 'crush the pillars of the Crusader alliance,'” al-Qaeda proxies such as Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb have set up “mobile camps … in the Sahara hinterland for the training of new fighters."

Cuba hates the United States. This needs no explanation.

Out of this strange brew of loves and hates, the CTP, citing Moroccan government sources, concludes that the Polisario is coordinating and cooperating with al-Qaeda. They explain why this makes sense with, “Moroccan Justice Minister Mohamed Bouzoubaa interpreted POLISARIO’s rationale for an alliance with al-Qaeda ‘at all levels’ as a case of cultivating ‘an enemy of an enemy as a friend.’”

And finally the CTP pulls their whole theory together with the following concluding paragraph which I quote in its entirety due to its unparaphrasable eloquence and elegance:

If al-Qaeda and POLISARIO are indeed collaborating against Morocco and other moderate Arab states in North Africa, it is highly unlikely that the POLISARIO leadership would be doing so without the knowledge and acquiescence of Havana. Moreover, the "Cuban brigade" of advisors and intelligence operatives stationed within the POLISARIO zone may be directly or indirectly (via Cuban-trained Sahrawi) supporting al-Qaeda operations and training camps. At the very least, it would be unwise to assume that Cuba’s sophisticated intelligence apparatus is not providing valuable information and guidance to POLISARIO with a tacit consent to pass it on to an enemy (al-Qaeda) of a mutual enemy (the U.S.).

I find this article and indeed this whole exercise of connecting Cuba to al-Qaeda through the Polisario as repulsive for three basic reasons: 1) it doesn’t make any sense, 2) the facts don’t back it up, and 3) it is dishonest.

The basic commonsensical reason why Polisario/al-Qaeda collusion makes no sense is that al-Qaeda hates Algeria as much as or more than it hates Morocco, and Algeria is the Polisario’s best friend and benefactor. Algeria’s support is the sine qua non of Polisario survival. It is interesting that in the article, the CTP’s evidence for al-Qaeda activity in the Maghreb is not some attack in Morocco, but “a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Algeria since December 2006.” As the people over at Mambi Watch (in their wonderful 9-part series titled What’s a Polisario) quite rightly point out, why in the world would the Polisario get in bed with a group (al-Qaeda) dedicated to the overthrow of their main benefactor (Algeria)? And how do you think Algiers would react to news that the Polisario was consorting with al-Qaeda types?

Furthermore, I am not aware of any evidence of contact between al-Qaeda and the Polisario. The Polisario has been openly antagonistic to everything al-Qaeda believes in (and vice versa), and for the CTP to take the word of the Moroccan government on all this without any kind of evidence is laughable.

As far-fetched as al-Qaeda/Poliario cooperation is, a Cuba/al-Qaeda connection is even more so. Why would Cuba want to jeopardize its historical friendship with Algeria by having anything to do with al-Qaeda or its proxies? The CTP writes, “Given Fidel Castro's historic ties to Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Cuban personnel likely enjoy secure access to the area via the Algerian border with Western Sahara.” Let me get this straight. Algeria is allowing Cubans to run around the Sahara to make common cause with Islamic jihadists who are trying to overthrow the Algerian government. A collaboration between the Polisario, Cuba, and Martian invaders would be more believable.

The most disturbing aspect of this article, though, is the thorough lack of any scholarly rigor. The basic failing is that the very serious allegation made here about a Cuba/Polisario/al-Qaeda axis taking shape is based totally on unsubstantiated material from the Moroccan government and its proxies (especially its registered agent in the US, the totally discredited R. M. Holley). Not one bit of evidence is offered to show that either Cuba or the Polisario have ever even met anyone from al-Qaeda. Needless to say, quotes by Moroccan ministers and agents about the Western Sahara hardly rate as evidence, given Morocco’s chronic mendacity regarding the territory .

Another dishonest technique used throughout the article is listing fine-sounding and credible sources and then misinterpreting those sources to fit the authors’ thesis. For example, in their first paragraph which gives historical background material on the Western Sahara, two sources are listed in the notes, one 2007 article from the Economist and a 1999 article from Time Magazine. Now these are decent enough articles from respected magazines. The only problem is that there is nothing in these sources that gives any credence to the CTP contention in the paragraph that the Western Sahara “had historically been part of Morocco.”

Similarly, in trying to make the case that al-Qaeda is setting up shop in the Western Sahara, the CTP informs us that “according to information obtained from an al-Qaeda recruiter arrested in Spain in February, mobile camps have been established in the Sahara hinterland for the training of new fighters.” This startling information is attributed in the notes to: Simon Tisdall, "Al-Qaeda's new front in Africa," Mail & Guardian, 19 February 2007. Checking out Tisdall’s article, we discover that the mobile camps referred to by the al-Qaeda recruiter were located in the “scrub country” of the Sahel, and nowhere near the Western Sahara. This kind of playing around with sources is, to say the least, journalistically dishonest.

After a careful reading and analysis of the article, one can only conclude that the whole Cuba/Polisario/al-Qaeda scare is a sham and a hoax.

The larger story behind this disgraceful article is the well-funded and by-now-well-traveled Moroccan propaganda trail that leads from Rabat through PR, lobbying, and media outfits in Washington D.C. such as Edelman PR, the Moroccan-American Center for Policy, and the Washington Times into the anti-Castro world of Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, law firm Tew-Cardenas LLP, and think tanks such as the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) in Miami. For anyone interested in the Cuban connection and why this bunch of anti-Castro zealots has such a “thing” about the Polisario Front, I refer you to the above-mentioned series of brilliant articles (What’s a Polisario, Parts 1-9) in Mambi Watch.

The Washington Times’ Onedownsmanship on the Western Sahara

2007-04-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

It seems that just when you start thinking that media coverage of the Western Sahara crisis can’t get any worse, an article comes along that sets a new standard for dishonesty.

A few weeks ago, a stunningly blatant piece of Moroccan propaganda from the pen of former US ambassador to Morocco, Frederick Vreeland, appeared as an editorial in the New York Times. Vreeland’s piece in support of Morocco’s stillborn autonomy plan certainly raised eyebrows among those who know a thing or two about the issue. It took only a few days for the Times to discover that a company of which Vreeland is chairman had Moroccan government contracts and that he was certainly not some disinterested analyst of the situation. Vreeland was quickly and emphatically discredited.

That fiasco was just starting to recede from memory when last Friday (April 13) the Washington Times (WT), in a rather incredible case of onedownsmanship, came out with an editorial titled “A Solution in the Western Sahara.” I think it is fair to say that this bit of editorial nonsense, also in support of Morocco’s autonomy plan, breaks new ground for Moroccan propaganda.

Truly the WT comes out with stuff that would make even Frederick Vreeland blush. Take the opening sentence: “On Wednesday, the Moroccan government presented the United Nations with a framework for autonomy for the Western Sahara region, taking the first step, which the United Nations has called for repeatedly, toward a political dialogue with its longtime adversary, the Polisario Front.” What is it, let us think, that the UN has been calling for repeatedly. Well if I recollect the UN has for over thirty years repeatedly called for a referendum on independence in the Western Sahara. There has been plenty of political dialogue already between the parties in the 1990’s before, during, and after the 1991 cease-fire agreement, and Morocco has already broken all the agreements resulting from this dialogue. And while the UN recently has indeed been calling for a renewal of talks, it has been careful not to endorse the autonomy plan which is clearly not consistent with international law regarding self-determination. It is just somewhat hard to comprehend how the autonomy proposal is “a first step…toward a political dialogue” when the other party, the Polisario Front, has already categorically refused to join the dialogue and so far the UN refuses to endorse the idea.

It gets even worse. Two paragraphs down from this opening volley we learn that “The terms of the 1991 cease-fire agreement were not fully met until August 2005, when the Polisario, under pressure from the international community -- particularly the United Nations and the United States -- finally released the last 404 Moroccan prisoners of war.” I’m still trying to figure out what this means. Wasn’t the MAIN “term” of the cease-fire agreement the holding of a referendum on independence? Since the last I looked Morocco unilaterally cancelled the referendum process and refuses to discuss it further, it is hard to understand how all the terms of the cease-fire agreement were met in August 2005.

And then we learn, “The heinous conditions the POWs faced, including barbaric torture and forced labor, was a human face on the political struggle, and revealed the true nature of the Polisario Front, which had long portrayed itself as victim.” While the extent of torture and forced labor at the hands of the Polisario is a matter of continuing discussion and debate, there is no doubt about the extent of Moroccan torture and forced labor, not to mention disappearances and murder. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the results of Morocco’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission and any number of Human rights Watch and Amnesty International reports. The true nature of Morocco stares us in the face, and the Washington Times wants to turn the Western Saharans over to these monsters.

Unbelievably, the editorial continues downhill: “Allowing the Sahrawi people to vote on a referendum seems like a simple enough solution, but the Polisario's insistence on restricting the voter lists locked that process into more than six years of effectively fruitless discussion.” Pinning the blame for the scuttling of the referendum on the Polisario just doesn’t stand up to any kind of honest scrutiny. Certainly, the Polisario would have preferred the narrowest possible voter list based on the old Spanish census, which would have unquestionably led to an overwhelming vote for independence; but they compromised several times on this in the hope that it would lead to a vote. The Polisario’s eventual acceptance of the Baker II plan which would have allowed most of the illegal Moroccan settlers (who outnumber the Western Saharans some two or three to one) to vote doesn’t sound to me like “insistence on restricting the voter list.” In fact, it was Morocco’s insistence on EXPANDING the voter list to include many Moroccans with no history of living in the territory that killed the process. And, of course, Morocco’s true colors were revealed when they rejected Baker II. No matter how broad a voter list was forced down the throats of the Polisario, Morocco was just not going to allow a referendum on independence.

The WT continues: “The Moroccan initiative is the first, and to date the only, proposed framework for a political solution to come from either side, and from it the two sides can craft a final agreement.” First of all, we must not forget that back in the 1990s Morocco and the Polisario already agreed on a “framework for a political solution” with the cease-fire agreement and then the Houston Accords. And then the Times conveniently ignores the fact that one day before Morocco brought its autonomy plan to the UN, the Polisario released its own plan -- for holding a referendum and with a special relationship with Morocco should the vote be for independence. Morocco’s initiative is hardly the first and only proposed framework for a political solution.

And the WT goes on: “It preserves Moroccan sovereignty, but gives the Western Sahara sufficient autonomy to become effectively self-governing.” Must I repeat for the umpteenth time that no country on earth, nor the UN, recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that Morocco doesn’t and never did have sovereignty. According to international law “sufficient autonomy” just doesn’t cut it.

And on: “The autonomous region would, for instance, have a local legislature that would, in turn, elect an executive, who would be invested by the king.” Yes, “invested by the king,” who was never elected by anyone and can unilaterally dismiss his own Moroccan legislature and cabinet. Some autonomy that would be.

And on: “Resolving this issue is also necessary for the entire Maghreb region to move forward economically.” Oh so true, even though it is not immediately apparent why forcing autonomy down the throats of the Western Saharans is a better way to resolve the issue than to say hold a referendum and allow an independent Western Sahara if they so choose.

And on: “Inasmuch as poverty and dire economic circumstances fuel the recruitment of terrorists, two incidents this week -- one an attack in Algiers claimed by a group that now calls itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the other a standoff in Casablanca that ended after three suicide bombers blew themselves up and a fourth was killed by police -- testify to the importance of helping the region.” Again, it seems to me that this is more an argument for holding a referendum on independence than on forcing autonomy on the Western Saharans. Inasmuch as poverty and dire economic circumstances fuel the recruitment of terrorists, giving the Western Sahara its independence and relieving Morocco of the huge financial burden of a highly unpopular military occupation, would go a long way towards improving Morocco’s dire economic circumstances.

The WT begins its conclusion: “The Polisario now needs to reciprocate the Moroccan government's move to the negotiating table.” The Polisario needs to do nothing of the sort. For over thirty years the UN and the world community have been assuring the Western Saharans that they have the right to self-determination (which includes independence) through a referendum. Why should the Polisario engage with Morocco on a plan that defies the UN and international law, and terminates a just struggle on the aggressor’s terms? The WT somehow condemns the Polisario for “continu[ing] to demand a referendum” as though that is what is perpetuating the misery in the region. Hey, come on now – the UN demands a referendum, James Baker wanted a referendum, most of the world is for a referendum, even John Bolton was pro-referendum. Why not just force Morocco to hold a referendum? The WT similarly condemns the Polisario for its threats of “renewed violence.” It seems to me that once the centerpiece of the cease-fire agreement, the holding of a referendum on independence, was taken off the table by Morocco, Rabat was asking for a return to violence. If Rabat tries to unilaterally impose annexation or autonomy without a referendum that includes independence that would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

And finally the editorial ends: “A firm line is required. The United States can make clear to the Polisario that if it cares for the Sahrawi people, it needs to begin serious negotiations.” NO NO NO NO. Negotiations? There is no longer anything left to negotiate here. The US must make clear to Rabat that it just cannot continue defying the UN and international law, and that it must hold a referendum.

With Their Backs Up Against The Berm

2006-06-07T09:52:00.000-04:00

When Kofi Annan in 2005 appointed Peter van Walsum , a very low-profile Dutch diplomat, as his Personal Envoy for Western Sahara to replace the very high-profile James Baker, most Western Sahara watchers were struck by the obvious down-grading of the Envoy position. It was as though Mr. Annan was throwing in the towel. After all, if Mr. Baker, the negotiator extraordinaire with the clout of the lone superpower behind him, couldn’t get the job done, who imagined that a relative unknown from a second tier country could make any headway with the wily, intransigent, and well-connected Moroccans?

With the release on April 19, 2006, of the Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation Concerning Western Sahara (S-2006-249), it is fair to say that this assessment was right on target. Mr. Annan in a startlingly candid analysis of the current state of the crisis has let it be known that the UN’s almost-50-year crusade to de-colonize and bring justice to the Western Sahara is coming to an end. Sure he recommended a six month extension of MINURSO, but given Mr. van Walsum’s total lack of spine in confronting Rabat and upholding international law and the Secretary-General’s bowing to political reality (aggression), there is little possibility that anything constructive will take place during this period.

The Secretary-General’s argument goes something like this. The Western Sahara question is at an impasse, with Morocco refusing to accept any referendum that would include the option of independence and the Polisario refusing to consider any plan that DID NOT include such an option. While the International Court of Justice has ruled in favor of Western Saharan self-determination, the United Nations has consistently come down on the side of the Polisario, and no member states recognize the Moroccan occupation, none of the great powers, especially those in the Security Council, have seen fit to pressure Morocco to alter its current stance. Given this situation on the ground, there are two options, “indefinite prolongation of the current deadlock in anticipation of a different political reality; or direct negotiations between the parties.” The first option in the opinion of the Special Envoy is a “recipe for violence,” which would be catastrophic for the Western Saharans, and thus is unacceptable.

And so in Paragraph 34 we get the Secretary-General’s recommendation:

What remained therefore was a recourse to direct negotiation, which should be held without preconditions. Their objective should be to accomplish what no “plan” could, namely to work out a compromise between international legality and political reality that would produce a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution, which would provide for the self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara.

The fatal flaw in these recommendations, in the Secretary-General’s whole argument, and indeed in the whole report, is the refusal to recognize that it is Morocco alone that has created the impasse by refusing to hold a referendum on independence and that the Polisario is being asked to settle for a “compromise between international legality and political reality” when they have already done so several times.

The Report seems totally oblivious to the huge compromises the Polisario has made from its initial position that the referendum should be based totally on the old Spanish census numbering 74,000 to their acceptance of the Baker II Plan that would allow an additional several hundred thousand illegal Moroccan settlers -- who outnumber the Western Saharans by some two, three, or four, to one -- to vote. Since 1988 the pattern has always been the same. The Polisario and Rabat negotiate and come to an agreement. Rabat realizes that the electorate they had agreed to would almost certainly vote for independence. Rabat consequently obstructs voter registration until the UN brings the parties together again to put together a new agreement that broadens the electorate in Morocco’s favor.

And what is the Polisario’s reward for fifteen years of negotiating in good faith, respecting the cease fire, unilaterally returning the Moroccan prisoners, compromising several times, and finally agreeing to what can only be seen as a horrible referendum plan slanted enormously in Morocco’s favor? Their reward is Morocco raising the bar once again by removing independence from the table altogether and the Secretary-General calling for more negotiation and compromise.

The question I ask myself and which the Secretary-General should be asking himself is why in the world should the Polisario once again sit down with Morocco. After all the Polisario and Rabat have already negotiated three agreements to hold a referendum -- in 1988, 1991, and 1997. And all three times Morocco has refused to honor the agreements. Rabat has proven itself time and time again to be a totally untrustworthy negotiating partner. Rabat’s rejection of Baker II is the surest sign that Morocco all along was just stalling. They never had any intention of allowing any referendum on independence to take place.

In short, the Secretary-General’s Report is a disgrace. It is appeasement pure and simple. Holding direct negotiations “without preconditions” is a joke. Since the early 1960’s the UN has always operated under the basic “precondition” that the Western Sahara must be considered a non-self-governing territory with the right to self-determination through a referendum. The Secretary-General simply does not have the right to discard this precondition. And the Polisario is not about to discard it unilaterally.

And the final silliness of the Report is the preposterous idea that somehow somewhere out there is a negotiated compromise “that would produce a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution, which would provide for the self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara.” As I discuss above, for the Polisario there are just no compromises left. And if the Western Sahara conflict has taught us anything it is that there is no “mutually acceptable political solution.”

So where does all this leave the Western Sahara. Mr. Annan is probably correct when he says that doing nothing is a “recipe for violence.” But, as I argue above, the alternative that he offers, direct negotiations without preconditions, is no recipe at all. Unfortunately, this leaves the Polisario with their backs up against the berm. The logic of the Report is that the Polisario will never get their referendum on independence as long as they pursue legal and non-violent means. By throwing the territory to the wolves, the Secretary-General is telling the Polisario that their only recourse is a return to violence.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart: Congressional Enemy #1

2006-04-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I touched on the disgraceful press conference of three Cuban-American legislators (Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) in Miami, Florida, on September 19, 2005 to showcase the plight of several Sahrawi young people who were supposedly separated from their parents and spirited off to Cuba for indoctrination and abuse. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart started the performance with the following remarks:

During the Cold War, one of the terrorist groups which was created, armed, and trained by the Soviet Union—and in fact was put in the hands of the Castro, Khadfi and Algerian regimes by the Soviet Union and continues to provide arms and training—is what is known as the Polisario Front.

Many people think that the Polisario Front no longer exists because the Soviet Union has fallen. But the reality is that, fundamentally, the Polisario Front has been armed, trained, financed, guided and coordinated by Castro’s Regime, Algeria and Khadfi’s regime in Libya. Yes, the Polisario Front very must exists.

We have here today, as our guests, in addition to members of the Cuban exile community, some individuals who honor us with their presence and have a personal story. Several of them were separated from their families by the Polisario Front and Castro and were taken to Cuba. Something that many people don’t realize is that thousands of children and young people from the Sahara are still in Castro’s Cuba today. They are being indoctrinated and separated from their families. So, this is a story that is very shocking, as well as important, because it’s not only the story of the separation of families, and the destruction that it brings to the families. What is also important, during these times, after September 11, 2001 is that there is a terrorist group, the so-called Polisario Front, which is trying to create an independent state in North Africa to carry out terrorist activities. And this is very important for you to know.”

The other two in their remarks had equally scathing things to say about the Polisario and you can read the full press release on the website of the Moroccan-American Center for Policy (MACP).

Lincon Diaz-Balart, a hard-core conservative Republican from Miami, has been on somewhat of a pro-Morocco anti-Polisario rampage of late. In addition to the above-mentioned press conference, he founded and co-chairs the Congressional Morocco Caucus, he worked for the release of the last of the Moroccan POW’s in Tindouf (for which he received from Rabat the medal of "Commander of the Ouissam Alaouite Order of Morocco"), and he made a statement at a hearing on the Western Sahara of the Subcommittee on Africa of the House’s Committee on International Relations.

Diaz-Balart’s emergence as the House’s most activist Polisario hater appears related to a convergence of his extreme pro-business and anti-castro views. With US Chamber of Commerce ratings of 96%, 95%, and 93% over the last three years, he has been one of the most consistently pro-business members of Congress. He has been cozying up to Morocco since at least 2003 when he formed the Congressional Morocco Caucus to work for passage of the US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement which became law in 2004. As a Cuban-American born in Havana with a an aunt once married to Castro and father well-connected to the pre-Castro Batista regime, he has long been one of the most fanatic anti-Castro members of Congress. Moroccan tales of Che Guevara forming the Polisario, of Cuban and communist military support for their “separatist” war against Morocco, and of Sahrawi children separated from their parents and shipped by the Polisario into a life of servitude and forced indoctrination in Cuba all must have found in Diaz-Balart a very receptive audience.

And so, Lincoln Diaz-Balart has had a hard time seeing anything but evil in Cuba’s hosting of Sahrawi students and an easy time regurgitating every bit of propaganda fed him by Rabat and MACP. See his press conference remarks above. In the overblown role he attributes to Cuba in the origins of the Polisario and as a supporter and military supplier in the early years, Diaz-Balart clearly has Cuba on the brain. In the almost 400 pages of Tony Hodges’ classic account of the origins of the crisis, Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, Cuba is hardly even mentioned. And on his allegations that Cuba continues to supply and train the Polisario, given the current possibility of a return to arms and the persistent rumors about the horrible conditions of the ancient Polisario weaponry, I suspect the Polisario wishes it were so.

Finally, there is the issue of Diaz-Balart’s allegations that Sahrawi from Tindouf are forcibly “separated from their families by the Polisario Front and Castro and … taken to Cuba” for indoctrination and worse. While one can find plenty of anecdotal evidence disproving these stories from Sahrawi students who have returned to Tindouf from Cuba, the definitive debunking of this lie comes from UNHCR, which runs the refugee camps and has looked into the allegations of Cuban abuse. The Refugee Children Coordination Unit of UNHCR in a December 2003 report deals specifically with this issue. It is worth quoting the section on the Sahrawi in its entirety (and I thank Alle for bringing this report to my attention):

In 2001 a new group of 252 Western Saharan refugee minors (all boys between the ages of 12 and 17) arrived in Cuba as part of the programme of educational assistance agreed between the Cuban government and the Polisario Front. As UNHCR’s policy was to provide assistance only to refugee students who were already in Cuba in 1994, as per an agreement with the Cuban Government, funds had not been foreseen to help meet the needs of this group of children. In 2002, the Regional Office in Mexico, undertook a thorough assessment of the situation of above-mentioned group of 252 refugee children, prompted by concern over the separation from their parents. These children’s parents and/or other close relatives are in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, and their separation took place with the consent of the parents. It was necessary to evaluate whether the best interest of these children was being met by their stay in Cuba, and what it meant for these adolescents to have the opportunity to pursue studies at levels not available in refugee camps. Considering that education and family environment are both main factors when considering the best interest of the child, and taking into account the right of the child to express his/her opinion, it was decided to consult them individually. A survey was performed among all refugee children, which found that they had been explicitly authorized by their parents or guardians to travel on scholarship to Cuba, and that it was the children’s own personal will to continue taking advantage of this opportunity to study in Cuba. A reallocation of funds already approved for assistance to refugees in Cuba was made to contribute to the improvement of the living and health conditions of these refugee children. Refugees have the same opportunities as nationals to continue on to higher education, according to academic achievement. Refugee children are organized in a student’s association and their representatives participate in the school’s administrative council where decisions are made.
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect/opendoc.pdf?tbl=PROTECTION&id=408e04074
p.48

The results of this survey are totally consistent with the testimony received by any number of NGO and international organization observers who have visited the camps: given the boredom and limited educational opportunities in the camps, the Sahrawi children overwhelmingly welcome the Cuba experience. As for MACP’s traveling road show of disgruntled Sahrawi who claim to have been separated from their families against their will and subjected to communist indoctrination and abuse by the Cubans, these people are just frauds.

It is sad, pathetic, and morally reprehensible that Lincoln Diaz-Balart is so blinded by his hate of Castro that he feels he must demonize and spread lies about the Polisario for taking advantage of one of the few educational opportunities available to Sahrawi children. If he were really concerned about the children, he might think about working to create opportunities for children from the camps to come and study in the US. From the experience of Sahrawi children who have spent summers in the US as guests of various Christian groups, they love coming here and would undoubtedly be very happy studying here.

Robert Holley, Professional Liar for Hire

2006-04-13T21:11:00.000-04:00

The following brief news item appeared in the December 5-12, 1999, Western Sahara Weekly News on the indispensable arso.org website:

08.12.99
Protest
The policy advisor from the US embassy in Morocco, Robert Holley, protested that he was followed by security agents during his entire visit in El Ayoun last week, during which he held a number of meetings with political groups in the city regarding the recent events and trials. His visit was in preparation of an annual report on human rights issued by the US State Department (Al-Ittihad al-Ichtiraki, Moroccan daily).

A low-level US State Department employee’s testiness at the well-known totalitarian methods used by Rabat to keep the lid on the illegally occupied Western Sahara is not in itself earth shattering. What is of interest here is the career history of the protester, Robert Holley. From those seemingly principled days in 1999 battling Moroccan heavy-handedness and writing reports on Moroccan human rights abuses, Holley has emerged as Rabat’s number one apologist and propagandist in the United States.

From his position as director of the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP), a registered agent of the Moroccan government, Holley is the American face and voice of Rabat’s aggressive, well-funded, and thoroughly mendacious campaign to win over public opinion, interest groups, and political leaders to the Moroccan point of view on the Western Sahara issue.

Given the direct link between MACP and the Moroccan government, it is no surprise that their website, moroccanamericanpolicy.com, reads like a greatest hits of Moroccan propaganda, with lots of juicy press releases glorifying Morocco and demonizing the Polisario Front. There you will learn that the Polisario is a Marxist-inspired terrorist group that has been holding tens of thousands of poor Saharawi civilians as prisoners in Algeria-supported refugee camps for over thirty years and that they intend with help from Fidel Castro to take over the Western Sahara, which has been Moroccan sovereign territory for some thousand years. Morocco, of course, is portrayed as a lovely, moderate, democratic and modernizing place closely allied with the US under the enlightened leadership of their young and energetic king.

For those of us that have been following the Western Sahara issue for many years, none of this is extraordinary. These are basically the same lies and misinformation that Rabat has been floating for over thirty years and that have been definitively disproved many times over by numerous researchers (see Toby Shelley’s Endgame in the Western Sahara as the best recent update), NGO’s (see Freedom House, Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, for starters), and International Organizations (UN, UNHCR, African Union, etc.).

Holley’s efforts are worth commenting on only insofar as he has modernized the old Moroccan nationalist and cold-war message to fit the post-USSR and -9/11 world and has ratcheted up the efforts to manipulate American public opinion. The twin towers of Moroccan propaganda since at least 1975 have been their claims that the Western Sahara has been part of greater Morocco since ancient times and that the Polisario is a marxist-inspired proxy for the USSR and/or Cuba. Pandering to current American fears, Holley has repackaged the Western Sahara as a terrorism issue; his new message is that the Polisario cannot be trusted to rule the Western Sahara because it is a terrorist and criminal organization, and even worse one with Islamist tendencies. That the Polisario has absolutely no history of terrorist activity is irrelevant in Holley’s scheme of things – not to mention that Morocco itself is by far the largest incubator of terrorism in Europe and north Africa, as well as the largest hashish trafficker in the world.

Of greater concern than this propagandizing is Holley’s active lobbying on behalf of Morocco. To backup the blatant misinformation in his press releases, MACP has been parading a group of Saharawi and ex-Moroccan prisoners from Tindouf around the country to give first hand accounts of Polisario perfidy. The heavily scripted performances at these dog and pony shows usually include: a showing of a MACP-produced propaganda film heavy on pictures of SADR President Abdelaziz shaking hands with Fidel Castro and a shady Cuban spy divulging that Che Guevara was the originator of the Polisario; weepy speeches by the Saharawis and Moroccans about their abuse at the hands of the Polisario and Cuba; and stirring speeches by the sponsor of the particular show lifted directly from the MACP press releases.

Of course, Holley and his sponsors forget to mention that he is a registered agent of Morocco and that the guest speakers are Moroccan stooges. They also conveniently ignore the testimony of thousands of international observers who have lived in the Tindouf camps for extended periods, of UNHCR who runs the camps (see UNHCR Machel report P. 48), and of the many Saharawi who have studied in Cuba, who overwhelmingly refute Holley’s tall tales of horror. And then there is the small question of why, if all the Saharawi in Tindouf are prisoners of the Polisario and all the students in Cuba are being abused, Morocco and MACP so violently oppose a referendum.

It is also interesting to note the groups and individuals that Holley has been targeting to host his road shows. To counter the historically strong support for the Polisario in the US Congress, he has latched on to a group of rabidly anti-Castro Cuban-American congressmen in Florida. A press conference thrown by Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Ballart, Mario Diaz-Ballart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Miami last September to showcase Holley’s abused Saharawis and Moroccan prisoners was an especially preposterous and dishonest Moroccan propaganda show. The tone was set by Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Ballart’s opening comments which are right out of MACP’s playbook:

During the Cold War, one of the terrorist groups which was created, armed, and trained by the Soviet Union—and in fact was put in the hands of the Castro, Khadfi and Algerian regimes by the Soviet Union and continues to provide arms and training—is what is known as the Polisario Front.

And these are some of the nicer things thy had to say about the Polisario. What is disturbing here is Holley’s success at using a wedge issue – in this case anti-castroism – to manipulate and win over a group of legislators who clearly are clueless regarding the issues surrounding the Western Sahara. And what is particularly nutty about this case of the Cuban-American legislators is that these exiles from and victims of Castro’s brutality should be the first to sympathize with the Polisario, who after all represent the exiles from and victims of Rabat’s brutality.

This use of wedge issues to split groups that historically have been largely sympathetic to the Polisario was equally evident at a series of MACP events in March sponsored by the National Clergy Council. Christian groups have for many years been the most visible and activist supporters of the Polisario in the US. In particular, the US-Western Sahara Foundation’s Christian liaison office has coordinated a wide array of Christian efforts to bring supplies and organize visits to the refugee camps, raise awareness of the Western Sahara issues, and host Saharawi children in the US. These Christians have lived among the Saharawi in the camps for months at a time and arrive at their strong support for the Polisario from a solid base of first-hand experience.

The head of the National Clergy Council, Reverend Rob Schenck, ended up in Morocco last year on a mission to promote Christian-Muslim understanding in a moderate Muslim place closely allied with the US. It is apparent that the Moroccan government saw the Christian-Muslim understanding issue as a good wedge to split the US Christian community, and so the dirty work fell to Holley and MACP to recruit Schenck to host his propaganda show. Thus we had in March the pathetic spectacle of Reverend Schenck foaming at the mouth about Polisario atrocities in front of a group of clergy at the Trenton (NJ) Marriott, followed by the weepy speeches of the abused Saharawi and the nauseating MACP propaganda film. The fact that Schenck openly admitted that he had not bothered to contact any of the Christian groups who have been active in the Western Sahara for years is the best indication of how clueless and irresponsible this man of God is.

I guess the Moroccan agents following Robert Holley around El Ayoun must have concluded that he was a man that could be bought; and I suppose his new career as a professional liar for hire kissing the king’s ring is more lucrative than hunting down human rights abusers for the State Department. For those of us who are interested in truth regarding the Western Sahara and are convinced of the righteousness of the Polisario cause, it is important that Robert Holley be recognized as the mercenary and propagandist that he is.

Shame on Jennifer Joan Lee

2006-02-08T21:57:00.000-05:00

An article appeared recently in the Washington Times, titled Morocco and Algeria Fight over Western Sahara, by a Jennifer Joan Lee, that is typical of the shoddy journalism we have been seeing recently that is little more than an extension of Moroccan propaganda. The techniques of this variety of terroristic reporting are all too familiar, but are so reprehensible that they bear repeating:

Interview a lot of Moroccan officials and either ignore the Polisario totally or else give them a cameo appearance so the reader thinks it is a balanced article

Over two-thirds of the article is taken up with quotes from a barrage of Moroccan officials and lackeys: Taib Fassi Fihri, Morocco's minister delegate for foreign affairs and cooperation; Government spokesman Nabil Benabdallah; Hamid Chabar, the Moroccan representative of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara; Khalid Zerouali, director of migration and border surveillance in the Moroccan Interior Ministry; and Robert Holley, executive director of the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP), a Washington-based nonprofit organization created to enhance Morocco-U.S. relations.

In all fairness, Robert Holley is American, but a quick glance at MACP’s website clarifies his sympathies: “MACP is a registered agent for the Government of Morocco. All information on the MACP website … is posted on behalf of the Government of Morocco.” Jennifer Joan Lee could easily have informed us that MACP is no impartial non-governmental organization, but why let honesty get in the way of a good snow job.

And then the cameo. “The Polisario's representative at the United Nations in New York denies his organization is linked to Islamic terrorist groups. Ahmed Boukhari told United Press International that the Polisario is ‘a clean movement that does not support terrorism.’” That’s it for the Polisario, but Jennifer Joan, we do appreciate the equal time.

Quote liberally from the Moroccan sources so they have plenty of opportunity to cover the greatest hits of Moroccan propaganda

So we learn that Morocco is bending over backwards to resolve the conflict. “We are ready to go as far as we can to negotiate. When everybody agrees, we can grant autonomy in good faith."

We learn that the autonomy plan is a great deal for the Western Saharans that would allow “total devolution of authority on people over everyday affairs."

We learn about how evolved an Arab country Morocco is. “If the plan is accepted, Morocco will become the first country in the Arab world to give autonomy to one of its territories.”

We learn about Morocco originality. “The initiative sets a precedent for a diverse nation that has opposed separatism.”

We learn about Morocco’s courage. “For Morocco to say they're willing to accept autonomy is a politically courageous thing because of the risks attached."

We learn that Morocco is trying to do its part in the war against terrorism. “If a political solution is not found, the Sahel -- the belt of countries between North Africa and states south of the Sahara, where borders are less controlled, could become a breeding ground for terrorism.” In this “no man's land controlled by terrorists and mafia groups … the presence of the Polisario Front makes it even more dangerous.”

Don’t forget the Islamist threat. "There are a lot of young people in the Sahel who are leaning towards radical Islam.”

And Morocco is even sensitive. "We have offered something that helps Algeria save face."

Needless to say, the picture we get is one of Morocco doing everything possible to save the western world from terrorism and Islamism by offering a generous autonomy deal to the gangsters and terrorists in the Sahara.

Ignore and leave out anything that doesn’t support the Moroccan case
Thus we read nothing about international law, or non-self-governing territories, International Court of Justice rulings, or the right to self-determination. We read nothing about the Western Sahara’s membership in the African Union or the United Nation’s consistent support for a referendum on independence. We read nothing about the numerous NGO’s that habitually and vehemently criticize Morocco. We read nothing about the 50 plus countries that recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. This list could go on and on.

Don’t try to substantiate or verify anything

Basically what the Moroccan sources say is what we get. Why complicate the article with facts, truth, verification, or substantiation. Hearsay and innuendo work just fine. The Moroccan sources have impressive sounding titles so I guess we can take their word for everything. One tell tale sign of Moroccan propaganda is that it regularly gets carried away with its own lack of veracity. Thus in a much-quoted report we learned recently that Che Guevara formed the Polisario even though he had been dead for several years. Jennifer Joan gets carried away in her article with quotes about how the Polisario contributes to terrorism in the Sahel, so the area must be controlled by Morocco. This one for example, “"We need to put something on the table before something happens out there in the Sahel and blows up in our face," [a Western analyst] said. "The U.S. doesn't have the forces necessary to handle a conflict in the Sahel.” That the Western Sahara is well north of the Sahel is apparently of no concern here. The quote sounded good. Okay, I’ll give the Western analyst the benefit of the doubt. Maybe what he meant to say was that terrorists FROM the Sahel might try to infiltrate THROUGH the Sahara. Still, that the analyst would prefer to have city slickers from Casa and mountain men from the Atlas patrolling the desert frontier, rather than the indigenous Saharawi, seems slightly counterintuitive.

Before I read this article I had never heard of Jennifer Joan Lee. A quick search identifies her as a “freelance journalist based in Paris....who covers European affairs for print media around the world including the Washington Times in the US, the Globe & Mail in Canada, the International Herald Tribune in France and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong." What I find most disturbing about this kind of journalism is that she clearly made some effort to hunt down experts and officials to put together her article – but they are almost all supporters of the Moroccan thesis. There is no attempt to find or present views contrary to the Rabat line. And there is absolutely no indication that she tried to learn the most basic facts about the conflict. Even a half hour on the web would have alerted her to the silliness of much of what appears in her article. Shame on her.

Why Morocco is Proposing Autonomy Now

2006-02-07T09:21:00.000-05:00

I've been commenting so much on other people's blogs that I've been neglecting my own, so here's a re-run of a recent comment on the excellent and insightful Sahara Watch.

Just a few observations about why I am so skeptical about Morocco's autonomy plan and what I see as Morocco’s reasons for going down the autonomy road.

Anyone who thinks that Morocco would ever allow the Sahrawi to control any of the territory’s mineral or fishing wealth is seriously suffering from “head-in-the-sand” syndrome. It just won’t happen. The Moroccan military, elite, and monarchy have been happily stealing Western Sahara’s abundant resources for over thirty years and are not about to relinquish their cash cow.

Why is Morocco proposing autonomy now after showing little or no interest in it for over 30 years?

I suspect that US pressure has something to do with it. The US was reportedly disgusted that Morocco refused to embrace Baker II. At the same time, US geopolitical and economic interests have led to increasingly close ties between the two countries (i.e. the US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI), and the naming of Morocco as a major non-NATO ally). Much of the success of these initiatives depends on economic cooperation and regional integration in the Maghreb, and clearly the greatest obstacle to this is the unresolved Western Sahara situation. The US just wants the conflict resolved. And to Morocco’s thinking, now with the Maghreb so prominent in US plans is probably as good a time as any to make a big push for a “third way” not including independence.

In addition, the West’s current obsession with the war on terrorism provides a smokescreen behind which Morocco feels it can slip one by the international community. By trying to appear the good guy with a seemingly generous plan for broad autonomy and by softening up world public opinion with an unprecedentedly aggressive and mendacious propaganda campaign (which brands the Polisario as a terrorist organization), Morocco is trying to exploit the window of opportunity provided by the war on terrorism. As long as terrorism is on the front page, Morocco feels it just might gain validation of its land grab through the back door, with the ruse of autonomy.

Finally, and probably most importantly, is oil. A discovery of oil off the Western Sahara would pose a huge dilemma. Economically, Morocco is suffering mightily from $60 plus oil and would want to exploit any finds as quickly as possible. Morocco obviously cannot exploit the oil by itself, but it is open to question whether international oil companies would be willing to drill for oil in a non-self-governing territory under illegal occupation. The big push for autonomy fits in neatly with the current Moroccan imperative to resolve the Western Sahara crisis but while retaining sovereign control of the land. And again, anyone who thinks that an autonomous Western Sahara would realize any economic benefits from oil off its territory has probably been smoking too much of the hashish that the Moroccan government and military habitually smuggle into Europe.

In conclusion, I just can’t find any reasons to think that there is anything sincere or serious about Morocco’s autonomy plan. They are floating it not because they want to, but either because they feel they have to or because they feel they just might get away with it.

Why Autonomy for the Western Sahara is a Bad Idea

2006-01-23T13:20:00.000-05:00

A Reuters story on January 22 reads: “Morocco plans to submit a proposal in April to grant autonomy to Western Sahara, home to Africa's longest-running territorial dispute, a Moroccan source close to the situation said on Friday.” At first glance, I can think of three reasons why such a proposal should not be taken seriously.

1) Under international law, Morocco does not have the right to “grant autonomy.”
2) The Polisario and most of the Sahrawi oppose autonomy, would never agree to it, and would violently resist it.
3) Granting autonomy to the Western Sahara would be for Morocco only a short stop on the road to full annexation and subjugation of the territory.

Autonomy is Contrary to International Law

The UN designation of the Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory plus the International Court of Justice ruling that Morocco never exercised territorial sovereignty over the area unambiguously give the Western Sahara the right of self-determination. Morocco quite simply does not have the right to “grant autonomy.” Autonomy would require either:

-- a referendum, which Morocco refuses to hold, or
-- a negotiated settlement, which the Polisario would refuse to consider, or
-- a UN ruling, which after over 30 years of championing self-determination is highly unlikely, or
-- a unilateral move by Morocco in defiance of the UN, which would solve nothing given that Morocco has already been defying the UN since 1975.

Forced Autonomy Would be Violently Resisted

If autonomy were forced down their throats, the Polisario and the Sahrawi would fight and the last thing anyone wants is more instability in North Africa. While Morocco has for years been propagating the fantasy that the Polisario represents only a small percentage of the Sahrawi people and that the majority of the Sahrawi would prefer to return to the bosom of the motherland, the reality is quite different. Thousands of international observers who have been through the refugee camps can attest to the strong support for the Polisario among the refugee camp population. And the increasingly large demonstrations in the territories by Sahrawi displaying the SADR flag suggest widespread support for independence. It is the Moroccan rejection of the Baker II Plan, however, that is most revealing. The referendum spelled out in Baker II would allow most of the Moroccan settlers in the territories to vote and the indigenous Sahrawi would be outnumbered by some three or four to one. That Rabat would reject a plan that is seemingly so stacked in its favor tells me that they still think they might lose. The point here is that any forced autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty would almost certainly be met by substantial resistance and violence from a large portion of the Sahrawi population.

Autonomy is annexation in disguise

I see no possibility that Morocco could or would keep their word about granting real autonomy to the Western Sahara. For over thirty years the Moroccan Monarchy, military, and elite have been enriching themselves by plundering the natural endowments of the Western Sahara – in particular the phosphates and the fish -- and would be extremely reluctant to relinquish control of their cash cow. Given the pervasive corruption in Morocco, the kingdom’s social, economic, and political backwardness, and its long history of lying, duplicity, and reneging on agreements and promises regarding the Western Sahara, it is inconceivable that any kind of autonomy would be respected. Autonomy would very rapidly turn into annexation.

Most of those who have jumped onto the autonomy bandwagon seem to think that granting autonomy to the Western Sahara will somehow miraculously lead to peace and tranquility in the Maghreb. It is hard to see, however, how refusing to hold the referendum, taking the option of independence off the table, and then arrogantly proposing to "grant" autonomy can be anything other than a recipe for disaster. After almost 15 years since the cease-fire, by rejecting all electoral and negotiated solutions and playing the autonomy card Morocco will, in effect, be declaring war on the Polisario. It didn't have to come to this.

Claude Moniquet (continued)

2006-01-14T23:07:00.000-05:00

Another useful addition to the rapidly growing list of scathing critiques of Claude Moniquet and his report on the Polisario is an article by Khatry Beirouk that appeared on 1 January 2006 titled What Lies Behind the ESISC Report. Mr. Beirouk maintains the informative Western Sahara On-line website at www.wsahara.net and has for many years been a tireless advocate for the Sahrawi cause.

Mr. Beirouk’s article concentrates on placing Moniquet and his report within the context of the broader Moroccan campaign to discredit the Polisario. I have argued in an earlier posting that the consistent refusal of the Security Council – and in particular the US and France – to pressure Morocco to abide by UN resolutions calling for a referendum combined with the Moroccan refusal since at least 2003 to even consider a referendum or the option of independence has lead to an end to UN primacy on the Western Sahara issue. The likelihood that Washington and the other interested capitals will play a much larger role in the endgame than in earlier phases of the conflict means that public opinion will also play a much larger role. Morocco’s endgame strategy clearly is to step up its misinformation campaign to demonize the Polisario in order to finesse the world community into side-stepping the UN and finally giving in to Morocco’s illegal land-grab. Thus, Mr. Beirouk is totally correct when he says, “Never have the media been so influential in determining the course of the events on the conflict in Western Sahara as during the current Saharaui uprising.”

Mr. Beirouk identifies several pillars of the Moroccan campaign. International NGO’s have for over thirty years been in the forefront of the fight for a referendum. To counter their almost universal condemnation of Morocco, he writes that Rabat “was in search for a humanitarian organization denigrating Polisario to use as reference, and found it on France-Libertés.” To counter the United Nations long history of support for Western Saharan self-determination, Rabat found Erik Jensen, who served as head of MINURSO from 1994 to 1998, who was “willing to sell his soul to the devil” by abandoning self-determination and espousing autonomy within Morocco. Finally, to divert attention from the increasing Islamist and terrorist drift (born of failed social and political policies) among Moroccans both in Morocco and in Europe, Rabat found an expert on Islamism and terrorism, Claude Moniquet. Mr Beirouk writes, “Now, the hand-kissing government will be relying on the ESISC's 'expertise' on international security to spread its falsehoods.”

And from my perspective in the United States I can add a fourth pillar. The United States Congress has been very sympathetic to the Polisario for many years due to the effective lobbying of their ambassador-at-large in the US, Moulud Said, the efforts of the US-Western Sahara Foundation (under the umbrella of the Defense Forum Foundation) to educate members of Congress and their aides on the issues and to fund trips to the refugee camps, and the active involvement of, in particular, two pro-Polisario legislators, Congressman Joe Pitts and Congressman Donald Payne. Recently, however, Rabat has aggressively targeted Congress and found several American legislators willing to do their dirty work. A group of rabidly anti-Castro Cuban-American Congressman in Florida (Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Mario Diaz-Balart) have proved to be particularly receptive to tall tales of the exploitation of Sahrawi students in Cuba and have been more than willing to parrot Moroccan propaganda. Morocco’s biggest coup was, undoubtedly, convincing former prisoner-of-war Senator John McCain to champion the cause, in a well-publicized press conference, of the remaining Moroccan POW’s in Tindouf without a peep about the Sahrawi prisoners held, disappeared, or slaughtered by Morocco.

In addition to placing Claude Moniquet and his report within the broader context of Moroccan propaganda, Mr. Beirouk also traces the strange and perplexing transformation of Moniquet from anti-Moroccan terrorist guru to pro-Moroccan Polisario basher. He shows how from 2003 until late 2005, Moniquet publicly warned of the increasing dangers of Moroccan terrorism both in Morocco and in Europe and criticized the Moroccan government for its “official denial of the risks of terrorism” and “the lack of social and democratic reforms in Morocco.” The bitter reaction in Morocco to Mr. Moniquet’s analysis comes across loud and clear in the following description by Mr. Beirouk:

On June 2005, Claude Moniquet becomes the focus, and the target of the Moroccan press. He is slammed and denigrated by the Makhzen propaganda machine. He's called the "self-appointed terrorism expert". The weekly Maroc-Hebdo, spearheading the campaign, wrote that "such misinformation cannot and should not go without a reaction", in response to his testimony before the US Congress. The press wondered about his "real motivations".

And then the ESISC Polisario report comes out in November 2005, Mr. Moniquet appears in Morocco and “the government controlled media present[s] a new member of the ESISC, in the person of Mohamed Ifkiren, a Moroccan, as vice-president of the Center, and Claude Moniquet has morphed into the darling of the Moroccan elite. Mr. Beirouk writes, “How could the ESISC so easily succumb, by whatever means, to the Makhzen's trap when other European Centers with good reputation did not?” The sudden about face and the utter venality and dishonesty of the ESISC report really do make you wonder.

Khatry Beirouk has done us all a great service by contextualizing Claude Moniquet’s behavior.

What is Claude Moniquet's Problem?

2006-01-10T14:54:00.001-05:00

In November of last year the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC), a Brussels-based think tank and research center specializing in terrorism and security issues, presented a lengthy (81 page) report titled The Polisario Front: Credible Negotiations Partner or After-effect of the Cold War and Obstacle to a Political Solution in Western Sahara. From their website we learn that the ESISC was founded in 2002 by Claude Moniquet, a well-known journalist and expert on counter-terrorism, and that the Center’s areas of expertise include: “terrorisme et contre-terrorisme, renseignement, conflits de basse intensité, conflits ethniques et religieux, antisémitisme et racisme, islamisme et les autres formes d’extrémisme politique ou religieux, crime organisé et corruption, sécurité économique.” A cursory websearch reveals, furthermore, that the Center has built up a substantial reputation on matters related to terrorism in its four short years of existence, and their founder and president, Mr. Moniquet, is indeed a well-respected expert in his field who has written books, consulted and written for CNN among others, and has testified at Congressional hearings in the US. This impeccable pedigree combined with “Methodological Observations” at the beginning of the report informing the reader of the comprehensive, scholarly, and systematic research that goes into their reports prepared me for a weighty, illuminating, and definitive analysis of the Polisario Front.

Unfortunately, what we get from the ESISC is inexplicably disappointing. Contrary to all expectations, what emerges in the pages of the report is an embarrassingly amateurish, poorly researched, factually inaccurate, and badly written hatchet job. The most disturbing aspect of the report is not so much its poor quality (which is not exceptional if you keep up on the transparent propaganda that has been coming out of Rabat for over thirty years on the Western Sahara), but the clear malicious intent of Claude Moniquet and his crew. The lack of scholarly rigor, the numerous factual errors and the omission of widely accepted facts, the use of unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo, and ultimately the baseless attacks and badly reasoned conclusions, the accumulation of all these serious faults leaves no doubt in my mind that this is an intentional attempt to inflict extreme harm on the Polisario Front and the Western Saharan cause by purposely distorting the historical record.

While most of the Moroccan and pro-Moroccan material floating around is so transparently propagandistic as to merit little discussion or comment, the ESISC report DEMANDS analysis and discussion because of the seemingly respectable and respected background of the author and his group and the stated serious intentions of the report. Already we are seeing references to the report to justify demonization of the Polisario Front and to lend legitimacy to Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. Fortunately, the Polisario and the SADR have responded quickly, thoroughly, and eloquently to the report, and rather than add another lengthy rebuttal to the list, I will supply links to these more-than-adequate efforts.

Recently I received a superb review of the ESISC report off the excellent Yahoo Groups site, Sahara-Update, run by Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara. The author of the review is a Mr. Sidi M. Omar who is identified by Sahara-Update as a “researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies [at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain] and Front Polisario's representative to the United Kingdom and Ireland.” This 25-page review is a detailed section-by-section and often page-by-page debunking of the report and does a commendable job of setting the record straight. In addition, off the indispensable arso.org site, I recently read an official 9-page letter under the SADR letterhead by Malainin Ahmed, the Director of Political Affairs and Information, Saharawi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which highlights the most outrageous failings of Moniquet’s report.

I would, however, like to supplement these Polisario sources with a few comments on aspects of the ESISC report that I find particularly despicable.

The backbone of the Polisario case for self-determination is the designation of the Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory. Morocco’s challenge to this status was their assertion that before colonization by the Spanish the territory was part of Morocco, and thus with Spain’s departure it should revert back to Morocco. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1975 clearly shot down the Moroccan view by ruling that the evidence did not support Moroccan territorial sovereignty and that the Western Sahara had the right to choose their own future. From almost the moment the ICJ ruling appeared, Morocco has attempted to turn it on its head by claiming that it in fact was a ruling in THEIR favor – that the bonds of allegiance mentioned by the ICJ between some of the tribes and the Sultan actually constituted bonds of territorial sovereignty between Morocco and the whole territory. This creative Moroccan misinterpretation of the ICJ ruling has been since 1975 the hallmark of Moroccan propaganda. For the ESISC to state that the ICJ “following a debate within the UN General Assembly… handed down a judgment recognizing that bonds of allegiance had existed between the tribes of the Sahara and the sultans of Morocco,” and then to ignore the rest of the ruling is clearly dishonest, but more importantly clearly revealing of a bias in favor of Moroccan lies and propaganda.

Similarly the obsessive and tortured attempt by the ESISC to brand the Polisario a dangerous extreme-left-wing group is both dishonest and indicative of a bizarre attachment to Moroccan propaganda. As Shelley in Endgame in the Western Sahara states, “The suggestion that El Ouali and associates [the founders of the Polisario] were closet Marxists who hid their schemes for social engineering and apostasy until they had lured Sahrawis to the Tindouf camps is… unappealing.” The explicit rejection of communism by the Polisario and the refusal of the Soviet Union to support or even recognize the Polisario makes one wonder why the ESISC would even start down this path of inquiry. Shelley states, “To this day, Morocco and its supporters continue to assert that the founders of the Polisario were Leninist, Guevarist, Maoist cadres.” For the ESISC to parrot the old Moroccan cold war lines truly makes one wonder the extent to which they are in bed with Rabat. The ESISC’s communist argument reaches its ultimate absurdity with its quote of Juan Vives, “a former high-level manager of the Cuban intelligence services,” that the Polisario was “developed by Cuba … by Che in person.” Claude Moniquet apparently doesn’t have a problem with the fact that the Polisario was born in 1973 and Che died in 1967.

Another major criticism I have of the ESISC report is that to make its case it relies inordinately on interviews with a handful of Polisario defectors without even one interview with a member of the Polisario. Furthermore, the researchers do not appear to have visited either the refugee camps in Tindouf or the occupied territories. Shelley’s treatment of the Polisario – which includes testimony from defectors, current members of the Polisario leadership, and Sahrawi in both Tindouf and the territories – is, to say the least, far more even-handed. The Morocco Times recently reported that Claude Moniquet was planning to sue the independent Moroccan weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire for defamation for stating that his report was “guided” by Morocco, “only reiterates the official theses of Morocco,” and “is a document made to please the Moroccan authorities.” In a delicious piece of irony, the Morocco Times reported further that according to Moniquet, “the weekly – Le Journal Hebdomadaire – did not respect the main bases of journalism, that is, contacting a person before writing about them.” One is, once again, left to wonder why it apparently never occurred to Moniquet to contact the Polisario before writing about THEM.

It is hard to read the ESISC report without wondering about motives. Why in the world would Claude Moniquet jeopardize his reputation by publishing such a blatantly compromised analysis? As an acknowledged expert on terrorism why does he choose to go after a group that has no history at all of terrorist activity, while fully supporting and repeating the propaganda of a country with a long history of state terrorism? Why does he feel compelled to bend and ignore the truth to the extent that he does? Why has he decided on autonomy for the territory as the only solution, when international law clearly stipulates self-determination? I wonder about these and many other things, but do not pretend to know the answers. I know only that the ESISC report on the Polisario Front is an intentionally malicious and grotesquely immoral piece of work with no scholarly merit that should be soundly condemned.

Hale and Neo-colonialism

2005-12-22T09:01:00.000-05:00

Hale in his Bloggin' the Maghreb in a recent posting "I Don't Trust the Polisario" makes this argument: 1) "my wish is that the Sahrawi wind up with as much freedom and justice as is possible. 2)"I have now come to the conclusion that Polisario can not to be trusted to lead the Sahrawi in a free and democratic country." 3) "The Sahrawi deserve better than Polisario." 4) ergo, the Western Sahara must be ruled by Morocco. This argument doesn't hold sand for all kinds of reasons.

Reason 1

His demonization of the Polisario is based on Moroccan propaganda and cheap-shot hatchet jobs such as the recent report on the Polisario by the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC). While I will deal in detail with ESISC in a future posting, I refer you here to the chapter titled "Polisario and the SADR" in Toby Shelley's recent book, "Endgame in the Western Sahara," which is a far more balanced and sane treatment of what is in most respects a "model" national liberation movement.

Reason 2

Hale holds the Polisario to standards that Morocco doesn't come close to meeting. He criticizes the Polisario for lack of democracy, when Morocco is run by a corrupt and autocratic monarchy accountable to no one. He accuses the Polisario of torture, when Human Rights Watch and others have written extensively about Moroccan torture. He doesn't trust the Polisario, when the monarchy has a long sad history of lying and duplicity. In the final analysis, Hale is just hypocritical.

Reason 3

Hale's argument that the Western Sahara should be part of Morocco for the good of the Saharawi people is just plain neo-colonial and patronizing. Here are my comments from Hale's Blog.

Hale writes: "But in this case, Morocco is definitely the lesser of evils. And I firmly believe that the Sahrawi have a much better chance for a good life under Morocco than under Polisario."

But isn't this the logic of the colonizer? The colonizer always feels that it is providing a better life for the colonized. There was a time that the French felt strongly that their rule over Morocco provided a better life for the Moroccans; and you can probably make a good argument that they were indeed providing a better life for the Moroccans. According to your reasoning France should have denied independence to Morocco. And didn't the slaveowner before the American Civil War also argue that he was providing a better life for the slave.

My point is of course that international law just does not allow the stronger, more viable, or more democratic countries to invade and rule over what they consider "lesser" countries. That Morocco might provide a better life for the Saharawi (which I vehemently contest by the way) is absolutely no reason to deny the Saharawi the same right to self-determination that Morocco enjoyed.

It is not for you or for Morocco to choose. All the Western Saharans have ever wanted is the referendum that has been promised them, so they can choose.

Western Sahara Endgame

2005-12-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

As is obvious to anyone who keeps up on the rather limited written material available on the Western Sahara, the name of this blog derives from the title of Toby Shelley’s excellent recent book, Endgame in the Western Sahara. The Western Sahara’s post-colonial history seems to be fitting neatly into three broad stages: 1) the war years 1975-1991 from the Moroccan invasion until the cease-fire when little or no negotiating took place between the parties and they fought themselves to a draw; 2) the referendum years 1991-2003 from the first attempts to compile a voting list under the cease-fire agreement through the Houston Accords to the resignation of James Baker and Morocco’s rejection of the Baker II Plan; 3) and starting in 2003 the endgame.

The challenge of the endgame is to find a way out of this mess without resorting to war and without negotiation between the two parties. I say “without resorting to war” because the Polisario is all too aware that a return to arms would be useless and suicidal -- that their ability to prevail against vastly superior Moroccan numbers and resources is non-existent. And because a return to arms could very easily escalate into a fratricidal war between Morocco and Algeria, the world community would pull out all the stops to keep violence in check. I say “without negotiation” because the Polisario, by accepting the Baker II Plan that would result in a referendum heavily slanted in Morocco’s favor, has given just about all that they can give short of giving up the struggle; and Morocco, by rejecting the Plan, was forced to admit that they had no intention of ever allowing a referendum under any circumstances. With the death of Baker II there is no longer anything left to negotiate.

The new endgame paradigm involves strategic shifts on all fronts. For the Western Saharans we have seen a dramatic shift of the axis of their struggle from Tindouf to the occupied territories where demonstrations have been taking place with increasing regularity. Predictably Morocco has responded with more troops and increased repression. On the Moroccan front, Rabat has greatly ratcheted-up the public relations war with a world-wide propaganda and misinformation campaign to discredit and demonize the Polisario. Another notable aspect of Morocco’s endgame is the King’s first serious mention of autonomy for the Western Sahara as a possible solution. Predictably the Polisario immediately and vehemently rejected this overture.

Internationally, the UN has once again extended MINURSO, this time for six months until the end of April 2006. And the Security Council has once again signed on to a referendum plan, this time Baker II. Ironically, the UN’s endorsement of Baker II probably signals the end of the UN’s primacy in the conflict resolution process. It has been a long road for the UN from the original designation of the Spanish Sahara as a non-self-governing territory in the 60’s to their call for a referendum in the 70’s to their facilitation of the first negotiations between the parties in the 80’s to the Cease-fire Agreement and Houston Accords in the 90’s to the Baker II Plan in the 00’s. To the UN’s credit they have for over forty years stuck to their guns in insisting that this is purely a de-colonization issue and that the Western Sahara has the right to self-determination and a referendum. Any further retreat by the UN from Baker II would inevitably involve a rejection of self-determination for the Western Saharans, and I see no indications that the UN would take this drastic and ignominious step. All told, the consistent refusal of two members of the Security Council, France and the United States, to pressure Morocco to abide by UN resolutions has resulted in a greatly reduced role for the UN in the endgame.

Thus, for the world community, the endgame will be played out not in New York, but in Washington, Paris, Madrid, and the other capitals that have a stake or interest in the issue. The elevation of John Bolton to be US Representative to the UN (at least for the moment) is an impoortant move in the endgame. As Baker’s assistant in the Western Saharan negotiations, Bolton is by far the most knowledgeable member of the Bush administration on the issue, and he is on record as supporting a referendum. The fact that he is a rabid unilateralist and an anti-UN zealot reinforces my contention that Bolton will try to solve the issue from Washington not New York. Whether he can overcome the very strong American friendship with Morocco is of course the big question. Recognition of the SADR by South Africa and Kenya have been major recent successes for the Polisario. But outside of Africa, the SADR still doesn’t have the big country support necessary to turn the screws on Morocco.

To read much of the Moroccan and pro-Moroccan material on the Western Sahara issue is to understand the often-repeated dictum that if you repeat lies often enough people start believing them. The prime example of this is Morocco’s position on the ruling of the International Court of Justice in 1975. Despite the fact that the Court unambiguously concluded that it did ”not support Morocco’s claim to have exercised territorial sovereignty over Western Sahara,” Morocco from almost the moment the ruling came out has insisted that the ICJ ruled in its favor and thus supported their invasion and hegemony. Morocco has been spreading this lie for over thirty years now, and it is with much dismay that I read a lengthy report on the Polisario Front dated November 2005 and written by a serious-sounding group called the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center that sure enough justifies Moroccan sovereignty by citing the ICJ ruling.

Now that the endgame is upon us it is more important than ever to make sure that Morocco’s sleazy misinformation campaign does not go unanswered. Western Sahara Endgame is my small contribution to this effort.