With Their Backs Up Against The Berm

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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?

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.