The Ignorance, Dishonesty, and Hypocrisy of Caitlin Dearing Scott on Western Sahara

Caitlin Dearing Scott is Senior Vice President of Research, Projects, and Programs at the Moroccan American Center where she provides overall supervision and coordination of research for the Center, with a focus on political and security issues pertinent to Morocco, Moroccan-American relations, and North Africa. Fluent in French, Caitlin holds an MA in International Affairs from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and a BA in History and International Studies from the College of New Jersey.

I have closely followed Caitlin Dearing Scott (I will refer to her as “Dearing” for short) since she got out of college in 2008 and started working for the Moroccan American Center (MAC), a long-time paid lobbyist and foreign agent for Morocco. I admit to always being astounded by the disjoint between her impressive educational background - with specializations in international affairs, human rights, conflict resolution, genocide in Rwanda, and North African politics - and the ignorance, dishonestly, and hypocrisy of her work for the MAC.

Her first attempt at intellectual gravitas at MAC was her lengthy Group Rights and International Law: A Case Study on the Sahrawi Refugees in Algeria (September 2009), A Project of the Moroccan American Center for Policy of which she is the Principal Author. In a nutshell, she spends 70 pages bashing UNHCR, Algeria, and the Polisario Front for the “warehousing” of Sahrawi refugees in Tindouf, while at the same time ignoring Morocco’s trampling on the large body of international law that caused the refugee crisis in the first place and has sustained that crisis for almost 40 years. Basically, it takes her until the last sentence of the report to come up with something that I can wholeheartedly agree with:

It is legally, morally, and financially imperative that the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria be granted all of the rights to which they are entitled under international law, so that they do not have to live as warehoused refugees for another 30 years.

I agree that it is imperative that they be granted “all of the rights to which they are entitled under international law.” (my emphasis) And of all the many rights to which they are entitled, the first and foremost is the right to independence inherent in their status as the last non-self-governing territory in Africa.

The above is a short introduction to a look at a recent article by Dearing, Lesson on Self-Determination from Scotland – What’s Good for the UK is Good for Morocco, which strikes me as quite possibly her most incomprehensible, dishonest, and hypocritical piece. 

I urge you to follow the link above and read her article in its entirety. I also urge you to read one of my earlier blog postings titled Samuel J. Spector’s Egregious Malfeasance on the Western Sahara (4/10/10), which looks at a similar attempt to justify Morocco granting autonomy to the Western Sahara by misstating the international law of self-determination. I will look at her current attempt paragraph by paragraph (Dearing’s article is in bold).

Lesson on Self-Determination from Scotland – What’s Good for the UK is Good for Morocco

Caitlin Dearing Scott’s idea that Scotland’s voting against secession from UK is a lesson for Western Sahara and Morocco is laughable. My point here is that Scotland and Western Sahara are totally different entities under international law and recognition. Scotland is an integral part of the UK under international law and is universally recognized by the international community as part of the UK. On the other hand, none of this is true about Western Sahara. Western Sahara has been categorized by the United Nations since the 1960s as a non-self-governing territory with the right of self-determination and independence, the International Court of Justice in 1975 ruled that Morocco had no sovereignty over the territory, and no country recognizes Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Dearing’s argument that what’s good for the UK is good for Morocco just doesn’t hold any water since self-determination under international law is totally different for secessionist entities and non-self-governing entities. Secessionist entities don’t have the “right” of independence; non-self-governing entities do.

Is there a lesson to be learned from the recent independence vote in Scotland? Was it about more than just Scotland as a precedent for separatist movements throughout the world? These are important concerns, since before the vote, separatists from Catalonia to Nagorno-Karabakh saw this campaign as an inspiration for their own claims for independence. Yet the result, though it may have disappointed some, really brings home a very important point about self-determination – that independence is not always the way forward.         

I would say that for secessionist and separatist movements, there might be something to learn from the Scotland vote. I’m sure that many in Catalonia and Nagorno-Karabakh were following Scotland very closely and were hoping for an independence vote. But, believe me, Western Sahara, which as I explained above is not a separatist or secessionist territory, has nothing at all to learn from Scotland. Likewise, Dearing’s conclusion – “that independence is not always the way forward” – may pertain to separatist or minority groups, but rarely to  non-self-governing territories. Almost all the 50 or so non-self-governing territories and colonies of Africa got independence. As the last non-self-governing territory of the continent and given the overwhelming support for independence among the indigenous Sahrawis, I feel strongly that independence for Western Sahara is the only way forward. And to the predictable Moroccan argument that most Sahrawis actually support inclusion or autonomy in Morocco, why doesn’t Morocco hold the long-postponed referendum?

As seen it Scotland, it is fraught with uncertainly – economically, politically, and socially. It remains to be seen what the impact of such a close vote (55% to 45%) will do to Scottish identity, but there is no doubt that Scotland’s social fabric is forever changed as families, siblings, and friends came down on opposite sides of the vote. Fortunately, things seem quiet for now. And Westminster and Holyrood seem committed to negotiations on devolution that will ensure the strength of the United Kingdom while providing the Scots with more of the self-determination they desire.

This paragraph is just incomprehensible. Only history will tell whether the Scots will be satisfied with more devolution. And yes it was a close vote, and would Dearing still be saying that Scotland was a good lesson for Western Sahara if it had voted for independence? But her blather here has clearly nothing to do with the Western Sahara.

Indeed, the major lesson is that self-determination is best arrived at through a negotiated political settlement – a process that ensures stability and avoids the uncertainty and marginalization that could occur between victors and losers. Scots in favor of independence didn’t get what they wanted from the ballot box, but the devolution process will provide them with genuine self-determination. This is good for the United Kingdom, for Scotland, and for other countries that are undergoing decentralization in order to empower people at the regional level while still maintaining territorial integrity.

Again, Daring’s conclusion that the “major lesson is that self-determination is best arrived at through a negotiated political settlement” might very well be true for separatist or minority groups, but not for non-self-governing and especially illegally-occupied non-self-governing territories. Does she really think that a negotiated political settlement is possible between the Polisario Front and Morocco? After all, Morocco illegally invaded and occupied Western Sahara, illegally annexed the territory, has arrested, tortured, and murdered untold numbers of Sahrawis, has illegally moved hundreds of thousands of settlers into the territory, has illegally plundered the resources of the territory, and has taken UN-mandated independence off the negotiating table. There is nothing left to negotiate. And while “the devolution process” might provide the Scots “with genuine self-determination,” there is no way negotiated devolution could ever provide Western Saharans with their “genuine self-determination.” And finally, international law very clearly rejects Morocco’s claim that their occupation of a portion of Western Sahara is justified by some mythical idea about Morocco’s territorial integrity.

It is also in line with international law. There are many paths to self-determination - the UN sets out three means by which a territory can achieve self-government: independence, free association with an independent state, or integration with an independent state. Beyond this, the concept is constantly evolving as different countries negotiate creative means of resolving internal conflicts. Examples include Aceh, where a peace agreement established special autonomy for the territory and Mindanao, where the Filipino Congress is currently reviewing a draft law proposing the creation of an autonomous Muslim region. This is why legal scholars – from Hurst Hannum to Donald Horowitz – have called for a new vision of self-determination, one that recognizes nation-state efforts to address questions of majority and minority rights through autonomy and devolution before they result in conflict and demands for independence.

This is where Caitlin Dearing Scott bares her unbelievable ignorance of international law. First of all, she totally ignores the Declaration on the granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, which spells out the right of Spanish Sahara to independence. On the many paths to self-determination, she summarizes Principle VI of General Assembly resolution 1541 (XV) from 1960.  This reads: “A Non-Self-Governing Territory can be said to have reached a full measure of self-government by: (a) Emergence as a sovereign independent State; (b) Free association with an independent State; or (c) Integration with an independent State.” In her summary, she leaves out two major things. First, she leaves out that the General Assembly is talking about non-self-governing territories here, not about separatist territories like Mindanao or Aceh or Scotland. General Assembly Resolution 1541 has nothing at all to do with Scotland. Secondly, she leaves out what follows in Resolution 1541:  Principle VII (a) tells us that “Free association should be the result of a free and voluntary choice by the peoples of the territory concerned expressed through informed and democratic processes”; and Principle IX tells us that “The integration should be the result of the freely expressed wishes of the territory’s people acting with full knowledge of the change in their status, their wishes having been expressed through informed and democratic processes….” In other words, while autonomy and integration are perfectly acceptable expressions of the self-determination of non-self-governing territories, the non-self-governing territory is the one who gets to make the decision – not the colonizer or occupier. Yes, Morocco has been denying Western Saharans their right to de-colonial self-determination by refusing to allow a referendum on independence, autonomy, or integration. For non-self-governing territories, granting autonomy or devolution is just not “in line with international law.”

Let me add, furthermore, that Dearing’s chronic inability to get the international law of Western Sahara straight tells me that she never got around to reading the ICJ’s2010 Kosovo advisory opinion (see Paragraph 79) which clearly states: “During the second half of the twentieth century, the international law of self-determination developed in such a way as to create a right to independence for the peoples of non-self-governing territories and peoples subject to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation … A great many new States have come into existence as a result of the exercise of this right.” Why Dearing writes that this doesn’t apply to the inhabitants and descendants of Spanish Sahara is a great mystery to me. After all, the Sahrawis of Spanish Sahara are both the people of a non-self-governing territory and are people subject to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation.

Dearing’s attempt to back up her shaky case by bringing up Hurst Hannum is probably her lowest blow. I have brought up Professor Hannum several times on my blog, because he has written the textbook on self-determination and because he has consistently supported the right of the indigenous people of the Western Sahara to determine their future. For example, he wrote in 2007: “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.” Dearing’s dredging up Hannum to back up her thesis on the people of Western Sahara submitting to Moroccan sovereignty is a disgrace. She states above that he has “called for a new vision of self-determination, one that recognizes nation-state efforts to address questions of majority and minority rights through autonomy and devolution before they result in conflict and demands for independence.” For starters, Western Sahara is not a question of majority and minority rights. Anyone who has really read Hannum knows that his “new vision of self-determination” refers specifically to the self-determination of secessionist or separatist groups/territories, and clearly not to non-self-governing territories like the Western Sahara. There is something thoroughly unethical as well as totally dishonest about Dearing using Hannum to back up her bludgeoning of Western Saharan rights, when he has for years championed the Western Sahara’s cause and rights. 

And lastly, it is also realistic. This is why Morocco is devolving power to its regions and offering an autonomy plan for the Western Sahara, as a model for the country. The Kingdom understands the vital importance of self-determination for the Sahrawi people as a viable and durable solution to the current impasse. And that the most stable and secure way of ensuring such self-determination – and avoiding a failed state in the middle of the chaos in the Maghreb and Sahel - is a negotiated political solution based on autonomy. Morocco understands this, the UN Security Council understands this, and the United States understands it. Hopefully the Polisario - the separatist group fighting for independence for the Western Sahara despite the consensus of the international community that it is not a feasible option - will draw the right lesson from Scotland (and Aceh and Mindanao) and see that the vote was a confirmation of arguments for unity, stability, and peace.

Just as Caitlin Dearing Scott’s international law arguments are nonsense, so is her reality argument. Morocco’s devolving power and offering an autonomy plan for Western Sahara is hardly a model for anything since it is illegal under international law. It is a recipe for war and bloodshed because Morocco has long ignored their right to independence, there is plenty of evidence that the indigenous Western Saharans would never accept autonomy, and the Polisario is increasingly mentioning an end to the cease fire. And once again I repeat that Morocco’s refusal to allow the indigenous Western Saharans to choose between independence, autonomy, and integration confirms the real reality – that they overwhelmingly support independence and reject autonomy.

It’s hard to imagine where she comes up with the idea that autonomy would be a viable and durable solution. Plenty of statements by the Polisario and regular demonstrations in favor of independence in the occupied territories indicate otherwise.   If it were true that there is an international consensus that independence for Western Sahara was not a feasible option, why is it that some eighty countries have recognized the Polisario Front, not one country has recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the territory, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) is a full member state of the African Union, and most of the member states of the AU support Western Sahara independence? Again, Scotland, Aceh, and Mindanao are not non-self-governing territories and offer no lesson for the Western Sahara.  Granting autonomy to Western Sahara would hardly avoid a failed state in the Maghreb; it would throw the whole region into war and would create a failed state in the form of Morocco.

In summary, Caitlin Dearing Scott makes a totally dishonest attempt here to make a case under international law for giving Morocco the right to unilaterally grant autonomy to the Western Sahara. What is good for UK is not good for Morocco because Caitlin is comparing apples to oranges. What is good for UK is not good for Morocco because Morocco adamantly refuses to hold a referendum on independence.  And her arguments are even more dishonest because, even if one were to concede that Scotland might offer some lesson for Western Sahara, she happily ignores South Sudan and East Timor’s successful votes to secede from Sudan and Indonesia. Does she think that these are good lessons for Morocco? But ultimately, her argument that international law and Hurst Hannum back up her case for autonomy is totally dishonest ’cause it just ain’t so.

I just realized that I didn’t quite get around to Caitlin’s hypocrisy. In my Caitlin Dearing Scott research, I ran across a mention online that in 2012 she was a fundraiser for Friends of UNRWA Association, “a non-profit organization that supports the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).    Given the similarities between the plight of the Palestinians and Sahrawis (see Stephen Zunes, 1 and 2) , I do find it hypocritical that her heart clearly bleeds for the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere (as does my heart) at the same time as she demonizes, spits on, and advocates for the annihilation of the indigenous Sahrawis in the occupied Moroccan territories and their refugee camps in Algeria. I’m sure that Caitlin would object to my observation here and would say that she is writing what she writes about Western Sahara for the good of the Sahrawis. Her propensity to lie in favor of Morocco’s ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation of Western Sahara at the same time as she gets paid by Morocco tells me otherwise. And finally her raising all of $145 for Friends of UNRWA tells me that she also is a rather mediocre fundraiser.

10 Reasons Why “Morocco’s Emergence as a Gateway to Business in Africa” is a Joke

On August 4 Washington think tank the Atlantic Council held a presentation to publicize the release of “its new Issue in Focus report, ‘Morocco’s Emergence as a Gateway to Businessin Africa’ … coauthored by Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham and Senior Fellow Ricardo René Larémont. “

Moderated by Dr. Pham, panelists included H.E. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, minister of industry, trade, investment, and the digital economy for the Kingdom of Morocco; Mohamed El Kettani, chairman and CEO of Attijariwafa Bank; Karim Hajji, CEO of the Casablanca Stock Exchange; Nabil Habayeb, GE’s president and CEO of Middle East, North Africa and Turkey; H.E. Moustapha Ben Barka, minister of industry and propaganda investment promotion for the Republic of Mali.

Despite the impressive economic star power here, the event amounted to little more than a Moroccan propaganda love fest and the Pham/Laremont report’s conclusion that Morocco provides a potential solution” for African “corruption, burdensome and ambiguous regulation, undeveloped human resources, poor infrastructure, and insecurity, ” is delusional. Anyone who thinks that Morocco is emerging as a gateway to business in Africa should have his head examined.

Here are 10 reasons why “Morocco’s Emergence as a Gateway to Business in Africa” is a joke

1. Morocco is the only African country that is not a member of the African Union. What is actually amazing is how few people at the event even realized this. I brought it up with pretty much everyone I spoke with, and not one even knew that Morocco dropped out of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1984 over the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (as the government of Western Sahara) in 1982. With the transformation of the OAU into the African Union (AU) in 2001, Morocco has remained the only African country that is not a member of the union. This fact, alone, is hardly a good start for being a gateway for business in Africa.

2. Morocco is the only African country that is illegally occupying an ex-colony.  The UN’s Fourth Committee on decolonization has only one African territory left on its list of non-self-governing territories (ex-colonies). That territory, of course, is the Western Sahara, which has been illegally occupied by Morocco for almost 40 years now, in defiance of innumerable UN resolutions and an International Court of Justice Opinion. It is a great mystery to me why a continent made up predominantly of colonies that have gained independence would see Morocco as a gateway to anything other than neo-colonization.  

3. Morocco is the world’s largest drug trafficker into Europe. Even with large governmental attempts to crack down on drug trafficking, Morocco remains among the largest exporters of hashish in the world, coming out of its legendary hippie haven in the Rif Mountains. Since we are talking about Morocco as a gateway to Africa, you might want to take a look at Drug Trafficking in Northwest Africa: The Moroccan Gateway.   A pretty raunchy gateway I would say.

4. Morocco continues to have a serious corruption problem. Freedom House and Transparency International tell you all you need to know: "Despite the government’s rhetoric on combating widespread corruption, it remains a problem, both in public life and in the business world. In the 2012 book, Le Roi Prédateur, journalists Catherine Graciet and Éric Laurent leveled sharp charges of corruption at the palace. Morocco was ranked 91 out of 177 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index."

And Wikileaks has even more to say about all this.

5. Freedom House’s respected Freedom of the World and Freedom of the Press ratings are not kind to Morocco and are scathing on Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara. Morocco’s Freedom Status in the 2014 Report is “Partly Free,” with a combined score for Political Rights and Civil Liberties far worse than South Africa, slightly worse than Nigeria, and with the same score as Madagascar and Mali. Morocco’s Freedom of the Press rating is even worse, with a status of “not Free,” which puts the country in pretty nasty company both in Africa and the world.  Finally, Morocco’s occupation of part of the Western Sahara gets them a Freedom of the World rating with the status of “not free” and “Worst of the Worst” alongside Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tibet.  The Atlantic Council’s conclusion that Morocco is “an especially attractive portal for investment and a significant US partner in Africa” looks a bit fishy to me.

6. Morocco, through OCP, its national office of phosphates, has been systematically and illegally looting the phosphate wealth of the illegally occupied Western Sahara, and King Mohammed VI has been systematically looting the wealth of OCP making him one of the wealthiest people on earth.  The international law case against Morocco’s plunder is extensive.  Western Sahara Resource Watch’s Recommended Reading on The Plundering is a good place to start on all this, and Mohammed VI’s plunder has been extensively reported. See in particular Forbe’s King of Rock and The Predator King: an Expose about Graciet and Larent’s book The Predator King: Plundering Morocco. All of this is rather disgusting stuff. Is there any wonder why, with all this plunder taking place in Morocco, literacy remains at least-developed countries’ levels.

7. Morocco has a “mediocre” record of resource governance based on its “overall lack of effective resource governance” over its phosphate sector. “Morocco is the world’s largest phosphate exporter and holds three-quarters of global phosphate reserves.” The respected Revenue Watch Institute gives Morocco “mediocre scores on all components of its Resource Governance Index (RGI)." If Morocco has anything to teach to the rest of Africa, it is how to thoroughly mismanage, steal, and waste its abundant resources.

8. Morocco is among the world’s largest incubators of terrorists. In a 2011 Brookings study by Anouar Boukhars, we learn that “The involvement of many Moroccans in international terrorism has raised pressing questions about the efficacy of the Moroccan regime’s strategy in preventing the spread of extremist ideology among the population.” In a similar vein, in the United States Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, we learn that despite huge Moroccan government counter-terrorism efforts “Reports of Moroccans either preparing to go or going to terrorist fronts in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan to receive training from al-Qa-ida (AQ) linked facilitators and/or to conduct attacks suggest Morocco remained a source for foreign fighter pipelines.”

9. Morocco’s refusal to hold a referendum on independence in the Western Sahara, that it agreed to hold as part of the 1991 cease fire with the Polisario Front, has scuttled all attempts to get the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) off the ground. Morocco’s invasion and illegal occupation of part of the Western Sahara has created a situation where “Intra-regional merchandise trade has languished at 1.3 percent of the region’s total trade, one of the lowest rates of any region in the world.” Given Morocco’s miserable record of fostering trade in the Maghreb, it’s hard to see how, according to Atlantic Council and Rabat, Morocco could or would be a lovely gateway for trade in sub-Saharan Africa. 

10. Finally, “Morocco’s Emergence as a Gateway to Business in Africa” is a joke because J. Peter Pham co-wrote this brief for the Atlantic Council. Pham’s long history of dishonesty, misinformation, bias, propaganda, and misanalysis on the Western Sahara and Morocco guarantees that everything he writes or says on this topic is totally false. In other words, if he says that Morocco is emerging as a “gateway to business in Africa” you can be sure that the opposite is true – that Morocco is the gateway to hell.

Michael Rubin on the Polisario Front: the Outer Limits of Journalistic Terrorism

I urge you to read this hit piece about the Polisario Front by Michael Rubin:

Arab Spring Comes to Polisario Front?

I have written here before about the Polisario Front, a Cold War throw-back and authoritarian cult funded by the Algerian military regime as a tool against Morocco. The Department of Homeland Security classifies the Polisario Front as a terrorist group. Polisario leaders seek to cloak themselves in a shroud of anti-colonial legitimacy saying they are fighting for a Sahrawi state in the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colonial territory now autonomous under Moroccan control. That is enough for many leftist journalists and progressive academics to embrace them, and even President Obama took a photo with the Polisario Front’s autocratic leader, but the reality is their constituency is tiny and growing smaller every day.

While the Polisario imagines themselves leading a state, the sad truth is they reign over little more than a handful of refugee camps in the Tindouf province of Algeria which house not more than 100,000 Sahrawi, of whom perhaps only 40,000 are refugees from the Western Sahara. These refugees live in a political culture as authoritarian and as that of Turkmenistan, Eritrea, North Korea, or the Mujahedin al-Khalq. Here, for example, is a report that the Polisario has forced youth into marriages in order to create new constituents. The Polisario notoriously separated children from their parents and shipped them to Cuba for indoctrination. The Polisario taxes residents to fund the profligate lifestyles of its leaders. Party membership—and blind loyalty to Mohamed Abdelaziz, the Polisario’s dictator—is required for employment and to receive other benefits. The group prevents residents of the Tindouf camps from returning home. While the United Nations facilitates some family visits between Moroccan Tindouf refugees and their families, the Polisario refuses to allow husbands and wives and children to travel together, treating those left behind as hostages in order to guarantee the return of the camp residents. In short, to be born into the Polisario-run camps is to be born into an authoritarian hell.

Just as the White House remained largely silent when Iranians rose up for freedom in 2009, and remains muted on similar anti-authoritarian protests in Venezuela today, so too is it now silent on a nascent freedom movement in the Polisario-run camps. According to al-Arabiya:

 The so-called “Youth Movement for Change” released a video accusing the Polisario Front’s leadership of corruption and called for improving the conditions of Sahrawi refugees in Tindouf. The movement also demanded the departure of the Front’s aging figures, including its 66-year-old leader Mohammad Abdelaziz who has been in control since 1976. The youth group, which was founded in February this year, accused Abdelaziz and his associates of “trading in the suffering of the Sahrawi refugees.” “We have suffered from injustice for more than 40 years. We demand the departure of this corrupt leadership, which is the oldest, most corrupt leadership in the world,” Mohammad Lamine, a spokesman for the nascent group, told Al Arabiya News Channel from the Tindouf refugee camp. “They have been stealing humanitarian aid provided by international organizations to the refugee camps and whenever we raise our voices against [this] they accuse us of being agents of Morocco,” he added.   
 
Susan Rice, currently Obama’s national security advisor, has twice during the Obama administration promoted policies which would impose a politically-charged ‘human rights monitoring’ regime in the Western Sahara, a move that would effectively undercut Morocco’s security and empower Polisario Front propaganda in the Western Sahara. She did so supposedly in the name of the interests of the Sahrawi population (most of whom, it seems, prefer to reintegrate into Morocco or into the Western Sahara to which Morocco granted autonomy). But when she and President Obama have the opportunity truly to support liberty, freedom, and human rights for Sahrawis, they remain silent. That silence simply makes the Polisario’s oppression easier. How sad. And how telling.

Having been off doing other things for the last year and a half, I regret that I have been neglecting this blog since my last post on September 30, 2012. Anyway, last week Michael Rubin, "a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations; and a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly" and much much more, came out with a Commentary Magazine blog article titled Arab Spring Comes to Polisario Front? that is so appallingly ignorant, so appallingly dishonest, so appallingly biased, and so appallingly mean-spirited that he has successfully driven me out of semi-retirement.  Quite simply it is the most compromised piece of writing on the Western Sahara and Polisario that I have read in my many years of scholarship in this area. This guy should be sued for defamation. And Commentary should be held accountable for hosting – apparently without any fact checking – this verifiable pile of lies. 

Again please read his article at the top of this posting a couple times, and I’ll start this exercise by going through his first paragraph sentence by sentence because it truly is a doozy of a paragraph and Rubin clearly has a severe problem.

Paragraph One

“I have written here before about the Polisario Front, a Cold War throw-back and authoritarian cult funded by the Algerian military regime as a tool against Morocco.” 

On the stuff that he has written before about the Polisario, I urge you to follow his link and feast on his earlier articles, which you will find are just as ignorant, dishonest, biased, and mean-spirited as this one.

Rubin’s dismissing the Polisario Front as “a Cold War throw-back” is moronic. The USSR never recognized the Polisario and, likewise, after the end of the Cold War Russia has never recognized the Polisario. Yes, Cuba-Polisario relations have been cordial and, with no higher education available in the refugee camps, many Sawrawi children have happily accepted Cuba’s offers of free education. In other words, Cuba-Polisario relations are very much like the cordial relations between Canada and Cuba. In their rhetoric, on the ground, and in their constitution, the Polisario is very much committed to pluralistic, free-enterprise democracy when they achieve independence. And even the Polisario support from Algeria has nothing to do with the Cold War. It is about de-colonialism and the Western Sahara’s status as the only African colony that has not been de-colonized.

His characterization of the Polisario as an “authoritarian cult” hardly deserves any comment. Let me just say that it is a far better description of the Morocco monarchy. See Freedom House’s description of Rabat’s illegal and totalitarian occupation of the Western Sahara as the Worst of the Worst on their Freedom of the World ratings.

And the part about “the Algerian military regime” funding the Polisario “as a tool against Morocco,” ignores the fact that the United Nations also funds the Polisario Front as a tool against Morocco’s illegal invasion and occupation. Algeria happens to be on the right side here. 

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) classifies the Polisario Front as a terrorist group.”

Nowhere does the Department of Homeland Security classify the Polisario Front as a terrorist group. If you take a look at the Department of Homeland Security website and do a search for “Polisario,” you will get “Sorry, no results found for 'Polisario'.” Oddly, Rubin’s link in this sentence takes you, not to the Department of Homeland Security website, but to a Global Terrorism Database (GTD) of a group called the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. While the GTD has been partially funded by the Department of Homeland Security for a number of years, START makes it very clear that “The GTD does not purport to represent the official position, inclusion decisions, or information holdings of the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Justice, the U.S. State Department or any other funding agency.” The GTD profile of the Polisario also very clearly states that the U.S. Department of State does not classify the Polisario as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and does not include them on the Terrorism Exclusion List. And even the Polisario’s appearance on the GTD list is hardly convincing given the lack of evidence tying them to terrorism and their consistent refusal to turn to terrorism – even in the face of massive state terrorism by Morocco. The bottom line is that the U.S.  Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security have never classified the Polisario Front as a terrorist group. Rubin either has no idea what he is talking about here, or he does and just chooses to lie.

“Polisario leaders seek to cloak themselves in a shroud of anti-colonial legitimacy saying they are fighting for a Sahrawi state in the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colonial territory now autonomous under Moroccan control.”

Rubin simply ignores here that it is international law, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, and the analyses of innumerable international lawyers that cloak the Polisario in the “shroud of anti-colonial legitimacy.”  The Polisario leaders have no need to “seek to cloak themselves” because international law has been cloaking them for decades.  The Polisario is fighting for a Sahrawi state in the Western Sahara because they have a clear-cut international law right to de-colonial self-determination and independence.

Rubin proceeds in this sentence to tell us that the Western Sahara is “now autonomous under Moroccan control.” This is just wrong. Morocco proposed autonomy under their sovereignty in 2007, but autonomy has never been implemented in the occupied territories and has never been accepted by the Polisario. The Western Sahara is NOT autonomous and Morocco’s refusal to hold a referendum on independence – even with autonomy as an option – tells me that Morocco knows all too well that the indigenous Sahrawi of the Western Sahara would never vote for autonomy.  As with Rubin’s totally bad info about the Polisario and terrorism, he also doesn’t have a clue or chooses to lie about Western Saharan autonomy.

“That is enough for many leftist journalists and progressive academics to embrace them, and even President Obama took a photo with the Polisario Front’s autocratic leader, but the reality is their constituency is tiny and growing smaller every day.”

Rubin’s idea here that the “embrace” of the Poliario and their anti-colonial legitimacy by leftists and progressives is the root of all evil in the Western Sahara is ludicrous. While there are indeed many leftist and progressive Polisario fans, strong support for the Polisario comes from all across the ideological spectrum. Pennsylvania Representative Joseph R. Pitts, longtime Polisario supporter, is a conservative Republican with a 100% rating from the American Conservative Union who co-chairs the Western Sahara Caucus in Congress.  Furthermore, the Polisario’s biggest supporter in the U.S. is the Defense Forum Foundation,  a solidly conservative 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation under the presidency of notable and respected human rights activist, SuzanneScholte, a Republican who is running for Congress in the 11^thCongressional District of Virginia this year. If anything, Michael Rubin’s neo-conservative dissing of anti-colonial legitimacy reeks of neo-colonialism.

“and even President Obama took a photo with the Polisario Front’s autocratic leader,”

Obama and Bush before him have posed numerous times with leaders who are far more autocratic than the elected Abdelaziz. Take, for starters, the kings of Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Everybody knows about the sordid autocratic rule in Saudi, but the enormity of Moroccan lobbying and propaganda has here in the U.S. shielded King Mohamed VI from the reality of his sordid and corrupt autocracy. And what is so bad about Obama posing with President Abdelaziz at Mandela’s memorial in South Africa? The Sahrawi Arabic Democratic Republic is a member of the African Union (and remember that Morocco is not a member), South Africa has always been among the biggest supporters of the Polisario, and Mandela was a great friend of the Polisario leadership.

“the reality is their constituency is tiny and growing smaller every day”

If the Polilsario’s constituency is really so small, how is it that not one country officially recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory and the UN’s Fourth Committee still lists the Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory with the right of self-determination.

Paragraphs two and three

Rubin’s next two paragraphs are a thoroughly biased attempt to demonize the Sahrawis and the the Polisario Front, which is the most exemplary national liberation movement in the world. He backs up his rabidly anti-Polisario rant with some very suspect sources.  These include Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned internet news source, that is notorious for mirroring Saudi Arabia’s very slanted and pro-Moroccan foreign policy, and Sahara News and and Morocco World News, Moroccan propaganda sites. And his most laughable trick is to back up his lies by referencing his own articles, which are also piles of lies.

There is so much biased, false, unsubstantiated and unproven stuff in these two paragraphs that I’m just going to touch on the worst of it. 

“These refugees live in a political culture as authoritarian and as that of Turkmenistan, Eritrea, North Korea, or the Mujahedin al-Khalq.” 

 Again, I have been following and researching the Polisario for a long time, and Rubin’s take on the political culture of the Polisario is just false. He bases his tales of the Polisario’s nastiness on little more than Moroccan propaganda disseminated by compromised media.  And again, he just happily ignores that Freedom House categorizes the Moroccan government’s totalitarian occupation of the Western Sahara among the Worst of the Worst alongside Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. And in case you were wondering if Freedom House is a hotbed of “leftist journalists and progressive academics,” take a look at Right Web’s profile of Freedom House. They conclude that “Although in recent years the organization has appeared to relax its close association with hawkish U.S. policies, its leadership remains heavily represented by individuals affiliated with neoconservatism and it has continued to support projects aimed at bolstering aggressive U.S. foreign policies.” And, in addition to substantial U.S. government funding. Freedom House receives much private funders “including many rightwing foundations, such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife, and the Olin Foundation.” And to be transparent, I have consulted for Freedom House in the past, but never on North Africa.

And finally what makes all of this more ironic is that Right Web describes Michael Rubin as follows: “An outspoken and sometimes controversial proponent of hawkish U.S. foreign policies, Rubin is closely associated with neoconservatism.” Wow, it turns out Rubin and Freedom House are on the same side. Yes, it is Morocco's, not the Polisario's, political culture in the Western Sahara that is the Worst of the Worst.

“The Polisario notoriously separated children from their parents and shipped them to Cuba for indoctrination.” 

This was debunked years ago by UNHCR interviews and numerous independent inverviews.

"The so-called “Youth Movement for Change” released a video accusing the Polisario Front’s leadership of corruption and called for improving the conditions of Sahrawi refugees in Tindouf.”

 For starters Al Arabiya is, again, a highly compromised source. There is no real evidence that this group even exists, and even if it does, my guess is that it is as anti-Morocco and pro-independence as the Polisario.

Let me move on to Rubin’s concluding paragraph. 

Final Paragraph

“Susan Rice, currently Obama’s national security advisor, has twice during the Obama administration promoted policies which would impose a politically-charged ‘human rights monitoring’ regime in the Western Sahara, a move that would effectively undercut Morocco’s security and empower Polisario Front propaganda in the Western Sahara.”

This conclusion is mind-bogglingly crazy.  He doesn’t even want to deal with the wealth of information from lots of NGOs, international lawyers, academics, etc. that is conclusive that Morocco’s human rights behavior in the occupied territories is atrocious and that there is lots of stuff that should be monitored. But despite this reality, Rubin doesn’t want human rights monitoring because it is “politically-charged” and would “effectively undercut Morocco’s security.”  It is far easier to make the case that Morocco’s security will be undercut, not by any monitoring of human rights abuses, but by the predictable end of the cease fire between the parties if Morocco continues denying the long-established right of the Western Saharans to self-determination and a referendum on their future.

And the part about empowering “Polisario Front propaganda” is just silly given the abundance of raunchy propaganda coming out of Rabat. The Polisario point of view is largely consistent with widely accepted international law.

“most of whom [the polisario], it seems, prefer to reintegrate into Morocco or into the Western Sahara to which Morocco granted autonomy.”

His idea that most of the Polisario prefers to reintegrate into Morocco is baseless. The UN finished selecting the electorate for the referendum on independence in 1999, and if Morocco really thought that the Sahrawi wanted to come back to the motherland they could have held the referendum years ago. But they didn’t because they know the Western Saharans would choose independence.

And I repeat, on the rest of this sentence about Morocco granting autonomy: Morocco has never granted autonomy. This is just oneof Rubin’s many fabrications.

The bottom line of all this is that Michael Rubin knows nothing about the Polisario and is a flat out liar and a thoroughly dishonest analyst: the Polisario Front is not a terrorist organization and the Department of Homeland Security doesn't consider them one, the Western Sahara is not an autonomous region of Morocco, liberals are not the only ones who love and support the Sahrawis, Algeria is not the only one who supports and funds the Polisario, and lots more. To say that this guy is a propagandist is too kind; he is a journalistic terrorist angling for the destruction of the most commendable national liberation movement on earth.