Western Sahara

[CEZAYIRLI]

All news and developments regarding Western Sahara.

Western Sahara, the Biden Administration and Human Rights

The Moroccan government, emboldened by a Trump administration policy shift, is cracking down on Sahrawi activists.

www.lawfareblog.com

Western Sahara, the Biden Administration and Human Rights​

By Amit Dadon, Janna Ramadan
Tuesday, September 21, 2021, 10:35 AM

Members of the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) conduct a ceasefire monitoring patrol near Oum Dreyga in Western Sahara on June 15, 2010. Photo credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret via Flickr; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

For decades, the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara have mobilized toward the U.N.-backed goal of the right to express their choice of either independence from or integration with the Moroccan state. Despite international support, Sahrawis have been denied this freedom of expression and other human rights by a repressive Moroccan government and military rule, one entrenched since its annexation and claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara in 1975. In December 2020, then-President Trump drastically broke from established U.S. policy, international consensus, and U.N. resolutions to formally recognize Morocco’s control of Western Sahara in a quid pro quo for Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But in the process, Trump dismissed the human rights of Sahrawis, further marginalizing an oppressed people already struggling to maintain their collective voice, which is unjustifiable. Thousands upon thousands of Sahrawis have seen their peaceful, lawful expression and protest met with disturbing abuse and extreme crackdowns by Moroccan authorities. Yet despite promising commitments early in his administration to champion human rights as integral to the United States' international role, President Biden has so far left the Sahrawis behind. Meanwhile, Moroccan authorities have carried out increased crackdowns on Sahrawi human rights and dissent under the green light of sustained U.S. recognition for Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara. The administration’s recent public statements on the matter and continued commitments to a strong security relationship with the Moroccan government suggest a refusal to address these abuses and hold Morocco to account.

Implicitly allowing and abetting continued violations of Sahrawi rights and international law diminishes the Biden administration’s credibility when it criticizes abuses committed by other countries. The administration’s stances in defense of human rights have so far conveniently focused on geopolitical adversaries. Morocco, let alone any country, cannot be an exception just because it is a U.S. ally.

President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken must stand up for Sahrawis’ human rights without further hesitation. There are no political considerations that justify not doing so.

Western Sahara, From Annexation to Today​

Classified as a non-self-governing territory by the United Nations, Western Sahara and its indigenous population have faced forceful repression by Moroccan authorities since Spain withdrew its colonial rule in the 1970s, despite U.N. General Assembly resolutions passed with broad support in 1979 and 1990 that explicitly called for Sahrawi self-determination and an end to Morocco’s de facto annexation. The United Nations has reaffirmed this position numerous times, including just last year. Since conflict first broke out nearly five decades ago, the armed clashes and then post-cease-fire control by Moroccan forces have displaced tens of thousands of Sahrawis to Algeria. Generations of refugees remain there in run-down camps, waiting for a chance to return to a home where their rights are not repressed.

The Polisario Front, Western Sahara’s self-proclaimed government in exile in Algerian refugee camps, has held the banner of the Sahrawi movement for independence since its establishment in the 1970s and gained control of a small portion of territory ceded by Morocco in a cease-fire brokered by the United Nations in 1991. That cease-fire, and the compromises that immediately preceded it, also guaranteed a free and fair referendum for Sahrawis to choose independence or integration into Moroccan jurisdiction. The kingdom of Morocco explicitly agreed to facilitate the referendum. Yet Moroccan authorities have time and time again failed to follow through due to perpetual contention over who would be eligible to vote. As it stands, Morocco now effectively controls three-fourths of Western Sahara, with the Polisario controlling the remaining one-fourth.

Historically, U.S. policy toward Western Sahara prior to the Trump administration had strayed little from the international consensus and the U.N. plan for a referendum, formally supporting neither Morocco’s nor the Polisario Front’s claim to the territory. When the Moroccan government proposed a plan for regional autonomy for Western Sahara, the Obama administration called the plan “realistic and credible” and claimed it could enable the Sahrawi people to “run their own affairs in dignity.” Otherwise, the United States continued to encourage U.N. negotiations between Moroccan authorities and Sahrawi leaders. But the Trump administration’s decision abandoned any pretense of neutrality over the question of sovereignty.

Human Rights Violations and Lack of Monitoring​

The United States remains the only country to formally recognize full Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. But even with the broader international consensus and associated U.N. resolutions, meaningful international human rights monitoring and accountability in the territory are woefully inadequate.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO, inexplicably lacks a human rights monitoring and reporting mechanism to ensure Sahrawis’ rights, an extreme rarity across U.N. missions. With MINURSO renewed via U.N. Security Council vote each October, the United States—and now the Biden administration—holds significant influence as the mandate’s “penholder,” responsible for drafting and proposing the resolution. With impunity fueled by the absence of U.N. monitoring, Moroccan authorities continue to systemically assault, torture, arbitrarily arrest and detain, forcibly disappear, and silence Sahrawi activists and human rights defenders. And if the Biden administration does not include and push for such a human rights mechanism in its draft before the Security Council, these crackdowns are only likely to worsen.

Abuses against Sahrawis are nothing new. In one case in July 2019, Amnesty International verified Moroccan police’s use of excessive force targeting Sahrawi protesters, in a wave of brutality in which security forces in a tactical police vehicle also trampled and killed a demonstrator. Sahrawi journalist Ibrahim Amrikli was arbitrarily arrested, detained and beaten over two days in May 2020 until he signed a “confession” to false charges. Authorities had long targeted Amrikli, previously detaining him at least three times from 2017 to 2019 for between four days and two months on falsified charges of “committing violent acts.” In a similar case, in July 2020, police in Laayoune arbitrarily detained another journalist, Essabi Yahdih, interrogating him for 10 hours about the editorial line of the publication he founded, threatening him with baseless prosecution; he was not charged.

In recent months, several Sahrawi activists have raised alarm about authorities increasingly arresting and surveilling activists and their families in a renewed crackdown emboldened by Trump’s decision. In all, Amnesty International documented in a July 2021 report the targeting by Moroccan security forces of at least 22 Sahrawi activists, journalists, human rights defenders, and even minors peacefully exercising their rights to free speech and assembly since November 2020 alone. Among them, Amnesty has found at least seven cases of torture and cruel treatment; three house raids; and 11 instances of arbitrary detention, house arrest, assault, harassment, and/or credible allegations of rape by security forces.

Moroccan security forces have imposed a campaign of targeted abuse toward prominent Sahrawi activist Sultana Khaya and her family, held under violently enforced arbitrary house arrest since November 2020 without cause. On May 10, police raided Khaya’s home and arrested three activists who had sneaked in to support Khaya: Babouzid Labhi, Salek Baber and Khaled Boufraya. Authorities proceeded to torture them for hours and then stranded them deep in the desert. And in a horrifying episode two days later, dozens of masked police entered Khaya’s home on the eve of the Muslim celebration of Eid-al-Fitr and tied, beat, and attempted to rape her, while also attacking and raping her sister. There has been no meaningful investigation or accountability for any of this horrific abuse.
The Khayas’ plight is emblematic of the myriad government abuses against Sahrawis. This February, videos circulated on social media showing masked Moroccan policemen forcibly entering the home of another Sahrawi activist, Ghali Bouhla, where they tortured him in front of his mother and sister. Authorities later abducted and jailed him for the lawful acts of peaceful protest and distributing Sahrawi flags. He remains in jail, sentenced through the end of 2022 on bogus drug charges with no investigation into the torture against him.

Security forces also broke into activist Mina Bali’s house and attacked and beat her and her sister Embarka Alina in May 2021 after they waved Western Sahara flags on their rooftop. And when Lahcen Dali, a human rights defender came to check on the family, he was also beaten and then later abducted and dropped off deep in the desert. Mustapha Razouk, a 15-year-old boy, was violently assaulted and arrested by police, along with 14 other minors, after peacefully demonstrating in solidarity with Sultana Khaya. Mustapha was detained and brutally tortured for three days, with authorities pouring boiling melted plastic onto his body, beating him with iron sticks, and suspending him from the ceiling by a rope around his hands.

At least 19 Sahrawi activists currently remain detained following convictions in unfair mass trials over the past decade that carried sentences of 20 years to life imprisonment. These sham trials failed to investigate allegations of torture and coerced confessions. Several detainees have carried out hunger strikes to protest the poor conditions and ill treatment. One of them, Brahim Ismaili—who is serving a life sentence—was transferred to a psychiatric ward without justification in November 2017, just after he had started a second hunger strike. Authorities have further tortured, denied critical medical care and carried out other inhumane treatment of Sahrawi detainees Abdeljalil Laaroussi, Mohamed Haddi, Sidi Abbahah and Bachir Khadda. The latter three have been held in 23-hours-a-day solitary confinement for four years. As of mid-June, Haddi’s family had not heard from him since April 9, when authorities had him call his family to relay their threats to put him in a dungeon-like cell if his family did not stop publicly calling for his release.

The pattern throughout is clear: Moroccan authorities have gone to brutal, extreme lengths to crush dissent and the freedom of expression of Sahrawi activists and critics—no matter how tangential their involvement in the independence movement.

This worsening crackdown received condemnation from U.N. special rapporteur Mary Lawlor in July; meanwhile, the Biden administration has kept silent and maintained its military and diplomatic relations with the Moroccan government as if no crackdown is happening. While authorities continue to arbitrarily imprison and torture Sahrawi dissidents, the Biden administration agreed to increase military cooperation with Morocco’s security forces during a visit by Army Chief of Staff James McConville in August, and awarded Raytheon with a $212 million contract to arm the Moroccan military just weeks before McConville’s visit.
Since the inauguration in January, President Biden has contradicted his stated commitment to human rights in foreign policy by failing to press for and uphold accountability for Moroccan authorities’ flagrant, systematic human rights abuses. In fact, there has been no sign of any greater scrutiny of violations by Moroccan authorities in Western Sahara than the low bar set by the Trump administration.

Meaningful Action Needed by the Biden Administration​

The empowering effect of Biden and Blinken’s silence on the abuses in Western Sahara is clear. This silence, with the maintenance of the new status quo set by Trump, serves as a tacit rubber-stamp that grants political cover for Moroccan authorities to continue cracking down on pro-independence Sahrawis with impunity.
As an ally and backer of Morocco’s security state, the United States must stand up for the human rights of Sahrawis, not enable the government to violate them. That means exhausting all avenues to ensure inclusion of human rights monitoring mechanisms in Western Sahara when the U.N. Security Council votes in October to renew MINURSO, and pressing Moroccan authorities to end—and allow independent investigations into—the systematic abuses against Sahrawi activists. Biden must also hold Moroccan authorities accountable for the increasing crackdowns and human rights abuses against Sahrawis, increase efforts to secure appointment of a new U.N. special envoy, and bring an end to the denial of Sahrawis’ right to freedom of expression—including expression in support of independence.

The Moroccan government’s crackdown must also prompt a reevaluation of the U.S. security relationship with Morocco, to hold authorities accountable and ensure Washington is not enabling abuses against Sahrawis. In fact, this is explicitly required by U.S. law. The Leahy Laws and the Foreign Assistance Act both bar the U.S. government from providing security assistance to foreign security forces committing gross violations of human rights and international law. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States supplies 90 percent of all of Morocco’s arms, with more sales still pending or under negotiation. The Biden administration has a moral and legal obligation to review and report pursuant to these laws if U.S. assistance was used to carry out such abuses, and to suspend arms transfers if there is substantial risk of their use in carrying out further violations.

Eight months into his presidency, Biden still has time to place the United States unwaveringly on the side of the human rights of the Sahrawis, including their right to expression and to advocate for their independence. Systematic, flagrant human rights violations cannot be met by this administration with silence—not in Western Sahara, not anywhere.

Tags:

• Morocco,
• human rights,
• Western Sahara

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

EU-Morocco trade deals that include Western Sahara violate international law: top EU court : Peoples Dispatch

The European Court of Justice had issued similar verdicts in 2016 and 2018, stating that the Western Sahara region cannot be considered as part of Morocco in such trade agreements

peoplesdispatch.org

EU-Morocco trade deals that include Western Sahara violate international law: top EU court​

The European Court of Justice had issued similar verdicts in 2016 and 2018, stating that the Western Sahara region cannot be considered as part of Morocco in such trade agreements
September 30, 2021 by Peoples Dispatch

(Photo: Ambassador Oubi Bachir/Twitter)
The European Union’s (EU) highest court on Wednesday, September 29, cancelled two trade deals with Morocco, involving farm and fish products originating from the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara. The Polisario Front, which is fighting for the independence and self-determination of Western Sahara from Morocco, had brought the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It welcomed the court’s verdict, calling it an “important legal victory for the Sahrawi people.”
The ruling was with regard to a free trade and agricultural products agreement signed between Morocco and the EU in 2019, which also gave the former preferential tariffs over those products. The EU has so far been treating Western Sahara as a part of Morocco, including the waters off the coast of the occupied territory that are used extensively for fishing and extracting other important natural resources such as phosphate.

In its ruling, the court said that “the consent of the people of Western Sahara, as a third party to the agreements at issue … has not been respected. The agreements at issue are not intended to confer rights on the people of Western Sahara, but to impose obligations on them.” It added that the EU council, which represents EU member states, “did not sufficiently take into account all the relevant factors relating to the situation in Western Sahara.”

However, the court stopped short of implementing its decision right away,suspending it “over a certain period since annulling them with immediate effect could have serious consequences on the European Union’s external action and call into doubt legal certainty in respect of the international commitments.” There is a two-month window for an appeal to be filed against the ruling before it can take effect. If an appeal is not filed within this period, the final ruling will be implemented.

Western Sahara has been under Morocco’s occupation since 1975 after the Spanish colonizers vacated the region. With the present ruling, Morocco stands to lose an estimated USD 60 million (EUR 52 million) annually over the next four years just from the fishing part of the agreement. The fishing agreement was to allow 128 vessels from 11 EU states to fish in the waters off the coast of Western Africa including the 1,100 kilometers (680 mile) coastline of the occupied Western Sahara.

The court also recognized the status of the Polisario Front to bring complaints against the EU as the internationally-recognized representative of the Sahrawi people. It classified Western Sahara as a separate territory that cannot be treated as part of Morocco in any deal with the EU, and stated that doing so was in violation of international law. EU courts have in the past given similar rulings regarding the legality of trade deals between the EU and Morocco, in 2016 and 2018. According to the Polisario Front, Wednesday’s ruling was especially “strongly worded.”

War on Want, an international anti-poverty and social justice NGO, in a statement, welcomed the EU’s verdict, saying that “EU states and the UK have been complicit by the inclusion of Western Sahara in trade deals with Morocco, legitimizing and providing material support for Moroccan occupation – in contravention of international law.”

Chi-Chi Shi, a senior campaigner with the NGO, also noted that “Morocco has maintained an illegal, brutally repressive occupation in Western Sahara for 46 years, denying the rights of the indigenous Saharawi people and plundering their natural resources. Now, EU states have a legal duty to stop normalizing, entrenching, and profiting from the occupation. The UK government should take note: UK companies continue to profit from Morocco’s occupation.”
Since breaking away from the EU, the UK has struck a separate trade deal with Morocco, also based on the same “illegitimate” grounds, noted Sisi Breika, a representative of the Polisario Front, who also highlighted similar rulings by the UK’s High Court.
Share

Tweet

Share

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Sans référendum au Sahara occidental, « la guerre se poursuivra » | Radio Algérienne

En l'absence de garanties sur la tenue "immédiate" d'un référendum d'autodétermination au Sahara occidental, la guerre contre le Maroc se poursuivra, a affirmé, le chef d'état-major de l'armée sahraouie Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik.

news.radioalgerie.dz

Without a referendum in Western Sahara, "the war will continue"

World
11/29/2021 - 8:19 AM
In the absence of guarantees on the "immediate" holding of a self-determination referendum in Western Sahara, the war against Morocco will continue, affirmed, the chief of staff of the Saharawi army Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik.

"After the Moroccan violations, the Saharawi people made the decision to continue their struggle (...). Once again, we demand the application of international law and the decolonization of the territory of Western Sahara, considered as the last colony in Africa ", indicated the chief of staff of the Saharawi army in an exclusive interview granted to the Spanish newspaper" El Salto Andalucia ".

"It is essential for us that there is a guarantee and a specific action plan," he added, assuring that the only condition for a return to the negotiating table with Morocco, "is that the referendum (self-determination) is immediately applied ".

The head of the Saharawi army recalled that the Polisario Front was not at the origin of the violation of the ceasefire agreement signed with Rabat in 1991, but rather Morocco.

In this regard, Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik pointed out the responsibility of the United Nations Mission for the Organization of a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) "which failed to fulfill its mandate for the organization of a self-determination referendum within six months ".

"MINURSO, the Security Council and the international community have turned their backs on the Saharawi people and international legality," he lamented.

"We cannot continue in this confused situation if we do not have the guarantee that the future of our people will be determined by themselves and by no one else," he also said.

Companies working in Western Sahara must obtain the consent of the Saharawi people

To a question on the war strategy adopted against the Moroccan occupation forces, Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik said that "the Sahrawi army is facing a new war situation, after November 13, 2020, in which Morocco is supported by superpowers ".

"Currently, the Moroccan army wants to repeat what happened at the start of the invasion, through the elimination of all living beings, animal or human, in the liberated Sahrawi territories", he observed. .

Nevertheless, Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik assures us that, "the Saharawi army has the capacity to face all the means of war that the allies of the Moroccan invader can bring".

The Saharawi army "knows how to face them because it is an army of the people, an army motivated by its inalienable right to independence, to the liberation of its territory, and this is what gives it all the strength to do in the face of drones, radars, satellites and all the means provided by Morocco's allies, "he insisted.

On the other hand, and in response to a question on the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of Western Sahara, the Chief of Staff of the Sahrawi army called on the international community to avoid this territory, its wealth, inviting foreigners to avoid staying in a war zone without the consent of the people to whom this land belongs, namely the Saharawis represented by the Polisario Front.

"We therefore call and reiterate this call to companies, multinationals and states to avoid a territory at war as long as the Saharawi people do not give their consent," he added.

Mohamed El-Ouali Akeik underlined, moreover, that the legitimacy of the Polisario Front did not rest solely on the last verdict (of the General Court of the EU) handed down on September 29th. He said that, "throughout the 46 years of Moroccan occupation, all the institutions, all the experts in international legality have clearly affirmed that Western Sahara is not Morocco (...) and that only the Saharawi people and their representative, the Polisario Front, had the right to speak "on behalf of Western Sahara.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Morocco accused of "greenwashing occupation" of Western Sahara

The Polisario Front has released an unofficial climate plan for the Sahrawi people, saying Morocco has built wind and solar farms on their land without consent

www.climatechangenews.com

Morocco accused of “greenwashing occupation” of Western Sahara​

Published on 25/11/2021, 4:41pm
The Polisario Front has released an unofficial climate plan for the Sahrawi people, saying Morocco has built wind and solar farms on their land without consent

A Moroccan soldier on a training exercise in Senegal (Photo: US Africa Command/Flickr)
By Joe Lo

The Moroccan government has been accused of using the renewable energy and low emissions of the disputed region of Western Sahara to “greenwash” its climate statistics.

Western Sahara is a desert region which was annexed by Morocco after the Spanish colonisers left in 1975. Since then, the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front have fought for its control. Currently, the eastern “liberated territories” are governed by Polisario while the western “occupied territories” are controlled by Morocco.

The Polisario Front, which claims to represent the “colonised” people of Western Sahara, has worked with international experts to develop an unofficial national climate plan. As well as outlining the impacts of climate change and what they would do about it if they had the money and power, it criticises Morocco’s use of the area’s resources.

Morocco controls the red, Polisario the green (Photo: Orthuberra/WikiCommons)
Polisario’s European representative Oubi Bachir presented the plan to Cop26 in Glasgow. Speaking from the Algerian city of Tindouf, where most of the Sahrawi people live as refugees, he told Climate Home News: “Morocco is trying to greenwash its occupation of our land by using those noble and clean mechanisms and tools to try and advance its position on Western Sahara.”
He continued: “Morocco is known to be one of the leading countries, especially in the third world countries, in terms of climate change. But unfortunately, it has been given this position as a leading country because of the illegal force that Morocco is doing inside the occupied territories of Western Sahara.”

The document accuses Morocco of “exploitation” of the Western Sahara’s wind and solar power to reach its goal to get 53% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and to power its phosphate, desalination and airport industries. Bachir said: “Almost 50% of all the energy generated for Morocco [by 2030] will be generated by Western Sahara in the context of occupation.”

The climate plan says: “The development of renewable energy in the Occupied Territory thus supports the personal financial interests of the Moroccan ruling elite, facilitates unsustainable and potentially maladaptive water intensive agriculture, and provides financial returns and potentially energy resources to foreign interests at the expense of the Sahrawi people, and without their consent, contrary to international law.”

A member of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara speaks to a family (Photo: UN/Flickr)
The Moroccan environment ministry’s director of climate change, biodiversity and green economy Bouzekri Razi said that only UN members could submit nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, to the Paris Agreement.

“There is no party that bears the name of Western Sahara neither to the Paris agreement or to the UNFCCC convention nor to the UN,” said Razi. “Morocco administers 12 regions including Saharan provinces in the south… the southern provinces of Morocco are experiencing a development program of a total amount of $8bn and which provides for a large number of structuring projects aimed, mainly, at strengthening infrastructure and networks, encouraging private investment, supporting projects relating to human and social development, and promoting culture. And the Moroccan NDC covers the main emitting sectors at the national level including southern provinces.”

The Western Sahara climate plan also accuses Morocco of using Western Sahara’s low emissions to improve its own emissions statistics. While compiling accurate data is difficult, it estimates that Western Sahara’s emissions are 0.5 tonnes of CO2 per person. Morocco’s figure, which includes Western Sahara, is 1.8t.

Polisario’s UK and Ireland representative Sidi Breika said: “The map that Morocco presents to the UNFCCC is the wrong map…they are cheating the UN, cheating the agencies, cheating the countries which provide them with funds. They’re presenting Morocco with [an] extension… using the emissions of Western Sahara is if they were theirs.”

An acacia tree in the Sahara desert (Photo: Mark Janes/Flickr)
Breika said that the Moroccan occupation of the west of Western Sahara, which includes the coast, has pushed the Sahrawi people to lands which are less hospitable and more effected by climate change.

“East of the [fortified border] wall, it is 99% dry,” he said, “there are still a few acacia trees in the rivers that are still standing but the climate change is seriously having an impact on the territory.”

While Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data referred to in the NDC suggests there has been no long-term, Western Sahara-wide decline in rainfall, Breika said that it had not rained in most parts of Western Sahara for about five or six years.

“It is seriously affecting people,” Breika said. “We used to be historically nomads and that means our people keep looking at the sky and wherever it rains, people go there with their cattle and their belongings looking for the green, for the grass and all that.”

Sahrawi nomads (Photo: Nick Brooks/Flickr)
“We have seen that change,” he continued. “The people that are still linked to nomadism, they agree that in the last years there is a serious problem with the rain. They haven’t seen anything like this in the past years. It makes it impossible for them to live.”

While “a few are sticking to their way of life”, many are giving up and moving to the “occupied territories”, the Sahrawi refugee camps in south-west Algeria or to other neighbouring countries.

When the region did last experience rain, it caused severe problems too. In 2015, a few hours of rainfall damaged the homes and food supplies of 5,000 families in the refugee camps in Algeria.

While the rainfall was minimal, the camps were not prepared for it. The desert sand does not suck in the water and the homes are made of mud and brick not concrete. “They don’t tend to build anything strong or solid because there is always this idea of returning home,” Breika said.



Increasing heat is also a problem. Berkeley and CRU data suggests the temperature in Western Sahara is between 1C and 2C higher now than in pre-industrial times. This increase is particularly pronounced in the eastern “liberated” part of Western Sahara.

Breika said that about 60% of Western Saharans in the “liberated” territories and refugee camps have access to mains electricity for air conditioning but the electricity supply is intermittent. Many systems use solar panels and old car batteries and break down often.
The climate plan outlines actions the Polisario Front will take to tackle climate change including by teaching about it in schools, developing early warning systems for floods, heatwaves and dust storms and studying net zero pathways.

However, almost all these actions are dependent on international support. The only unconditional action is the formation of a cross-ministry unit for coordination of action on climate change.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

EU aids and abets war crimes in Western Sahara - study

Morocco's illegal exploitation of Western Sahara's natural resources is being facilitated through contracts with EU-subsidised companies, according to a new study from The Left in the European Parliament.

left.eu

EU aids and abets war crimes in Western Sahara - study​

November 14, 2021

Morocco’s illegal exploitation of Western Sahara’s natural resources is being facilitated through contracts with EU-subsidised companies, according to a new study from The Left in the European Parliament.

The study – ‘European companies and violation of International Law in Western Sahara’ – finds that the EU allocates millions of euros in subsidies and aid to Morocco, and to a multitude of European companies (mostly from Spain, France, and Germany) that invest in Western Sahara. This makes the EU a financier and accomplice to an illegal occupation, in contravention of the founding principles of the Union and international law.

Systematic human rights abuses, police brutality, violations of fundamental rights, the Sahrawi people of Africa’s last colony, Western Sahara, have endured decades of repression at the hands of Moroccan occupying forces. Since 1975 Morocco has attempted to control a territory about the size of the UK using military force to suppress free speech and pro-independence protests. Europe has largely stood by watching a tragedy unfold on its doorstep.

Beyond that there is also the illegal border crossing at Guerguerat which is commonly used by European companies, and may constitute a violation of international law and international humanitarian law. This border crossing point is located on the border with Mauritania. It was opened by Morocco in 2001, even though the United Nations does not recognise any Moroccan sovereignty nor administrative jurisdiction on the territory. The border crossing contravenes the Military Agreement signed by MINURSO in 1997 and 1998 with the Polisario Front and Morocco respectively, as a complement to the peace and cease-fire agreement adopted by the UN Security Council Security Council in 1991.
MEP Miguel Urban will be presenting the report’s findings to the Saharawi Parliament on Sunday.

Speaking ahead of the presentation, Urban said: “The EU and these companies are in flagrant violation of International Law and ‘crimes of colonisation’. The companies involved did not obtain the consent of either the people of Western Sahara or its sole representative, defined by the UN as the Polisario Front.”

“Meanwhile, the EU continues to ignore the constant violations of human rights and International Law that the Moroccan regime carries out on a daily basis.”

“The fate of the people of the Western Sahara are at stake. A people who endure, who just want to live their lives, enjoy basic rights free from violence, to be citizens of their own country. When will Europe stop ignoring these calls for fundamental rights and dignity? When will we stop facilitating repressive regimes and show some respect for the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination?” Urban concluded.

Key findings:
MOROCCO’S ILLEGAL OCCUPATION
The research confirms the legal consequences of the qualification of Western Sahara as a ‘Non-Self-Governing Territory pending decolonization’: the inalienable right to self-determination. It highlights Morocco’s status as an ‘Occupying Power’, which has control over a territory that it intends to annex illegally by the use of force, as declared by the doctrine of the United Nations and International Law.

EUROPEAN COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES
With reference to a 2019 report by the German Bundestag on Moroccan war crimes, the study sets out the case for the appropriation of the natural wealth of the occupied territory of Western Sahara, without the consent of the indigenous population and without the benefits going directly to them, to be treated as a war crime under Art. 47 of the IVth Geneva Convention.

EU FUNDING
The research details how the EU provision of millions of euros in subsidies to European companies that invest in Western Sahara violates international law.
For more information on the study and/or the delegation to Western Sahara, contact: Coline Laloy

• European companies in Western Sahara: violations of international law​

  ES
  

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

SPLA continues its bombardment against enemy positions along the Moroccan military wall | archives sps

www.spsrasd.info

Western Sahara continues bombardment against Moroccan military wall

SPS 14/12/2021 - 09:34

Bir Lehlu (Sahrawi Republic), Dec 14, 2021 (SPS) - The Saharawi People's Liberation Army (SPLA) continues its bombardment of entrenchments of the occupation forces along the Moroccan military wall.

In the framework of their combat offensives to carry the war throughout the territory and within Morocco, the Sahrawi forces have continued to harass the bases and positions of the enemy forces.

The Ministry of National Defense reported Monday in its 396th military statement that advanced detachments of our army launched intense bombardments at enemy positions.

Units of the Saharawi army have bombed the Laagad and Grarat Alfarsik area, both in the Mahbes sector, on Monday 395th day of the war.
On Monday, Sahrawi fighters also bombed the Asteilat ULD Bugrein area, in the Auserd sector.

The military reports that Saharawi army units carried out Sunday concentrated attacks on the Galb Nass area in the Hauza sector and Aadeim Umajlud, in the Auserd sector.SPS

125/090/TRA​

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

“Better to fight than to stand still thinking that the UN or peace will bring you freedom”

“Morocco will not admit that we are right. It won’t happen. At least, we will die trying to improve our future,” says Nih. As night falls in Boujdour —one of the five wilayas in which the Sahrawi refugee camps have been organised for the last 46 years in Algeria’s Tindouf— Nih, Yusef and I drink...

www.nationalia.info

Western Sahara “Better to fight than to stand still thinking that the UN or peace will bring you freedom”​

25.11.202111.30h KARLA FERRERA
Unitats sahrauís camí del front. Mahbes, territoris alliberats del Sàhara Occidental. Author: Karla FerreraSince Morocco broke the ceasefire in southern Western Sahara a year ago, thousands of young Sahrawis have been forced to choose between military or refugee life. Yusef and Nih, 28, fall between two stools: journalism and the front line. Mahyub and Ahmed, 23, between war, cinema, and care.


“Morocco will not admit that we are right. It won’t happen. At least, we will die trying to improve our future,” says Nih. As night falls in Boujdour —one of the five wilayas in which the Sahrawi refugee camps have been organised for the last 46 years in Algeria’s Tindouf— Nih, Yusef and I drink tea on the carpet that Aicha has just placed at the door of her house. “Here, in this shelter, we have no future,” Yusef adds, stressing Nih’s words.

Both are 28, and know each other because they have worked together at the National Radio Television of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). It is located in Rabuni, the camps’ administrative centre. Despite the fact that the two young men live in different wilayas, they have often shared a roof, their sleeping hours, and tea in a room next to the broadcasting station.

War or journalism?

“We won’t stop till victory,” Yusef says as he places a kettle on the campfire he has just lit in front of me. When I first met him in 2017, in the first project we organised under the Un Micro para el Sáhara association, Yusef was a journalist and cameraman for SADR TV. He is now a soldier in the second military region. A week ago he came back from the liberated territories, where he daily took part in attacks on the wall. He received military training in the camps from 2010 to 2013, but decided to try his hand at techniques and journalism. The truth is that the latter was his forte.

Yusef worked in television until circumstances dragged him elsewhere. He rejoined the army “because there is war” and “they needed people to return to military life,” he admits. So far he has spent two months on the front line and now he has a few weeks of rest in the camps. He intends to go back in a few days with his comrades to Tifariti, but some medical tests have truncated his expectations. Until he gets a positive result, he will not be able to continue bombing the more than 2,700 kilometres-long wall separating the occupied areas of Western Sahara from the liberated areas controlled by the Polisario Front.

Nih and Yusef in Boujdour, Tindouf camps. / Photo: Karla Ferrera


It has been a year since the Kingdom of Morocco broke the ceasefire at the Guerguerat border crossing in southern Western Sahara and the armed conflict, after 29 years of peace, re-escalated. Although Yusef has only spent on the front line two of 12 months that the offensives have been active, he has seen four of his platoon mates die. “They were with me three days before they died,” he uneasily recalls. “Whew, to tell you this...,” he stammers with a lump in his throat. “What I remember now about Sellma... An older fellow who was burned inside the car.... He was a soldier of about 65.”

According to Sahrawi sources, ground and artillery units of the Sahrawi Popular Liberation Army —the SADR’s armed forces— launched on September 4th a 20-missile offensive in the region of Hauza, in the north of the liberated territories, against a Moroccan base located on the so-called Wall of Shame. The attack left several dead and wounded among the Moroccan ranks. The remaining retreating soldiers decided to respond to the offensive by launching a missile from a military aircraft. “My comrades were killed by a drone attack,” says Yusef. “I am, like everyone else, sad…,” he admits, but this unfortunate experience has not made him reconsider going back to the front. “I’m not afraid of death. People are dying in their homes and you see how our sister Sultana Khaya is…,” he reflects. Khaya is a Sahrawi activist who has been held for almost a year in her home, without a court order, in occupied Western Sahara, in Boujdour, while Moroccan paramilitaries mistreat and assault her and her sister on a daily basis. Khaya has even denounced that one night they broke into her house and raped them.

Yusef’s mother does not cope as well as he does. When soldiers go to the front, they have no contact with their families until they return to the camps. “She gets sad, she doesn’t know if her son will come back. I tell her to hold on as long as it takes while I’m away. She must wait for me,” he pleads to her. Nih’s mother also suffered when she learned, two days after the ceasefire broke down, that her son wanted to join the army. Today, she breathes a sigh of relief that this has not yet happened, but Nih is not giving up on his idea. “I think I am more useful in the military school. The Polisario Front needs soldiers, whilst there are enough people in the radio. Information and journalism are not as useful in a war as fighting,” he nods with conviction.

Nih has been working as a radio journalist since 2018 at SADR Radio; since this year he does so at Zemla, the community radio station in the Laâyoune camp. He likes to learn new techniques and narratives. That’s why I met him a couple of years ago. We organised a radio workshop in Un Micro para el Sáhara’s second project, and he was one of its participants. Perhaps his need to continue training is to blame for the fact that he is not yet in a military school. His mother is grateful for that.

Nih has been waiting for months for a date to receive a course in new technologies. “I think it will be in Algiers, where Algeria’s broadcaster is located, so we will also be able to find out how they work,” he explains. It is here, at this point, where the biggest contradiction arises. “That course is not an opportunity I have every day, so I need to seize it. If I go to the military school instead and I don’t take the course, when I go back to the radio my colleagues will have learned things that I won’t know,” he admits, half-confident and half-upset. But on the other hand, he thinks that they have been for decades “speaking to the world from SADR Radio” and now they have “another opportunity” to stop being refugees. “Better to fight than to stand still thinking that the UN or peace will bring you freedom,” he flatly states.

On the one hand, Nih has been waiting for a year to join the army, but on the other he knows that a few more months won’t change his mind. War is a long-distance race, and for the moment, willingly or not, he has chosen journalism. Yusef, meanwhile, has taken the opposite route. “I’m thinking of becoming a journalist again, but during this time I have to remain with my colleagues until they ask me to go back to SADR TV. Military personnel can’t stay in the camps while their comrades are on the front lines,” he explains as he hands us each a glass of tea.

Youth, family, cinema

Ahmed’s case is different but similar at once. Aged 23, he is the local youth leader of the Youth Union of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (UJSario, the Polisario’s youth organisation) in a daira (district) of the Boujdour camp, still in Tindouf. He does his work on a voluntary basis and has revolutionised its structure since his arrival. He is the first man to hold a local responsibility in the Union since it was set up in the 1980s. “As a refugee people, we should not perceive any job as only women’s or only men’s; we should rather be involved in everything,” he says without hesitation.

Ahmed doesn’t understand how there can be so much reluctance in the camps for men and women to share spaces and activities, and he has set out to break the stigma: “I wanted to run for the position to show that we can all work together.” Since he took on this responsibility, several men have joined the group. They are involved in “clean-up campaigns in the daira and in the neighbourhoods,” thus making visible the voluntary work and social commitment of “youths, men and women.” In addition, once every 30 days, they meet with elders from the daira who once worked in the same organisation “so that they can see that we have not forgotten them.”.

Ahmed, in the camps. / Photo: Karla Ferrera


Despite his youth, Ahmed is a soldier from the sixth region. He received military training in the camps between 2018 and 2019, when the ceasefire was still in place. When the armed conflict re-escalated, “I thought about going to the front, I prepared all my equipment to go with my comrades, but I am responsible for the UJSario at the local level and I have another mission,” he says. Being part of the organisation’s leadership also means supporting, listening to and dedicating oneself to the youth in the camps who are currently determined to train for the struggle: “Since 13 November 2020, I haven’t met a single youth who hasn’t signed up for military school. They want a solution, and peace is not enough,” he concludes.

Besides his role at the Youth Union, Ahmed has another reason not to fight: “I have no sisters and I can’t leave my mother alone,” he admits. In Sahrawi culture, as in most others, women are the caregivers. Ahmed has two brothers who live outside the camps and financially support their family. So when he finished his studies in 2014, he took on the role of caregiver and he is the one who has been at his mother’s side. Perhaps unconsciously, he has taken on the same role with his daira’s youth.

Mahyub was born in the same year as Ahmed and what he likes most is to highlight the day of his birthday: 27 February. “It is a very important date for Sahrawis,” he professes with enthusiasm. It was on 27 February 1976 that the SADR was proclaimed in Bir Lehlu, the capital of the liberated territories. He was still more than two decades away from being born, but he is very proud to have been born on such a special day for his people. Despite his youth, Mahyub feels older. “I don’t know how to explain it, but here you grow up faster,” he admits. “Right now there is little work and we young people are tired. It’s like walking all the time hampered by the sand in the dunes. You walk, but it doesn’t let you climb the mountain,” he explains sadly.

At the age of 17 he left school and started working because his people needed him: “I’ve been in many places. In a shop, working on building sites, gardening.... until my sister’s host family, in Euskadi, told me about a film school that was being set up in the camps.” In 2016 he signed up. The school had been set up five years earlier by the organisers of the International Sahara Film Festival (Fisahara). Now, a decade later, the schools trains around 20 students a year. Mahyub received training in audiovisuals and photography there, and has been a teacher since August: “Our culture is not written, it is narrated, and we are filming and screening it so that people become familiar with what is happening in the camps.” He teaches photography workshops to twelve students on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and the rest of the days he helps director Tiba Chagaf prepare materials, take photos and organise schedules, or he even lends a hand in the kitchen. “I like being at the school because I am close to the camera. I enjoy it a lot,” he admits, shy but happy.

When he is not working, Mahyub is busy taking photos and editing them. “I try to take portraits that are somewhat happy. But then, in the description, I write that even if it’s a look or a smile, these people are shut,” he explains, alluding to the shelter where he lives. “I always try to keep the beautiful side of things, even though the beautiful side of things in the camps is very muted. And you foreigners realise that when you are about to go home,” he confesses to me with a certain melancholy.

Mahyub, in the camps. / Photo: Karla Ferrera


The day after the ceasefire broke down, Mahyub didn’t think twice about joining a military school. “At first they wouldn’t let me in, but I hid and was able to get in.” He spent four months in training but “when I was ready to go to the front, they wouldn’t let me go,” he recalls with resignation. At the age of 9, Mahyub broke his left elbow while playing with friends in the camps. He underwent four surgeries in Algeria and Spain but never regained 100 per 100 mobility. “A Sahrawi saying goes that what is taken by force is only returned by force. I wasted most of my youth here in the refugee camps, dreaming that one day I could be a soldier and go to the front.” He was upset at not being able to join his comrades to fight, and admits that the only thing that relieved him was Tiba’s call proposing that he teach at the film school. However, like Nih, he is not giving up: “I want to go there, even if only as a photographer.”

For our children

“We have lived so many years here, waiting for freedom, with no future,” says Nih. He recalls growing up in the camps playing in the sand. “Children in Spain, for example... when we went there under the Holiday in Peace programme, they had a PlayStation, they went to sleep at 10, they woke up and had breakfast, they had a healthy diet, they went to the doctor, their families took them to the park.... We have not lived that life. Our childhood and our youth have been hard,” he says.

“Do you want to have children?”, I ask, looking at Yusef and then at Nih. “Yes, but I don’t want them to live like I have lived, in this shelter. Before having a family, I have to fight for my country,” Yusef explains. His mate listens attentively and replies: “Of course I want to have children and I plan to have them by trying to liberate our land so that they can live a better life.”

We go silent. A few seconds later, Nih goes on: “When you think that your children can have the same experience.... That fear is more terrifying than dying in the war in the liberated areas, on the front lines, fighting for it,” and he adds: “You can also have children in such a world, but for me it’s a crime if I can’t make life better for them.... Why bring children here if you can go out and fight and try to improve their future?”.

Yusef pours us a third tea. He thinks for a few seconds, turns his head, and asks us rhetorically: “How long will we be refugees?”. Before we can answer, he goes on: “Our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers must go back. They have to go back.” In 1975, their mothers left Western Sahara and walked for days across the desert to Algeria. Their fathers were on the front lines. Yusef and Nih had not been born yet, but it didn't matter. Their parents were already fighting for their future, just as they are fighting today for their children or for their compatriots. “The future is our free country,” Yusef says as he turns off the cooker.

Author​

Karla Ferrera​

Journalist and jurist. For years she has been linked to radio media such as RNE or Latin American radios in Madrid. She is part of the journalists’ association Un Micro para el Sáhara, an organization devoted to denouncing and raising awareness of human rights violations anywhere in the world. It started in Western Sahara and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria), and has continued in the neighbourhoods of Madrid.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Climate Colonialism: Why Was Occupied Western Sahara Excluded from COP26 U.N. Summit in Scotland?

Activists are criticizing the British government for excluding Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco since 1975, from the U.N. climate summit in Scotland. Meanwhile, Morocco is counting renewable energy developments in Western Sahara toward its own climate pledges. Sahrawi activists and the...

www.democracynow.org

Climate Colonialism: Why Was Occupied Western Sahara Excluded from COP26 U.N. Summit in Scotland?​

STORYNOVEMBER 17, 2021

Watch Full Show












Listen
Media Options

This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today.
DONATE

TOPICS​

• Western Sahara
• Glasgow Climate Summit 2021
• Morocco

---

GUESTS​

• Oubi Bouchraya Bachir
  representative of the Polisario Front for Europe and the European Union.
• Nick Brooks
  climate change consultant.

Activists are criticizing the British government for excluding Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco since 1975, from the U.N. climate summit in Scotland. Meanwhile, Morocco is counting renewable energy developments in Western Sahara toward its own climate pledges. Sahrawi activists and the Sahrawi government in exile, known as SADR, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, have described this as climate colonialism. Negotiators from Western Sahara independently announced a plan to reduce carbon emissions outside COP26, as the climate crisis has brought extreme weather conditions, including drought, extreme heat and flooding, to the region. In an interview last week in Glasgow, Scotland, while COP26 was underway, Oubi Bouchraya Bachir, a representative of the Polisario Front for Europe and the European Union, estimated 30% of the solar energy produced by Morocco “will be produced from within the illegal context of occupation.” We also spoke with climate change consultant Nick Brooks, who has traveled to Western Sahara for decades to carry out archaeological and palaeo-environmental fieldwork and helped release the Sahrawi climate plan adjacent to the COP26. “They have been completely and systematically excluded from international processes of climate governance and climate finance,” Brooks said of the Sahrawi.

---

Transcript​

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
The British government is facing widespread criticism for excluding critical voices from negotiations at the U.N. climate summit. One group excluded was climate negotiators from Western Sahara, which has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Last week, Western Sahara publicly revealed its plan to reduce carbon emissions, but their announcement was not made inside the U.N. summit but at the People’s Summit in Glasgow because its negotiators aren’t accredited by the U.N. Meanwhile, Morocco is using renewable energy developments in Western Sahara to count towards its climate pledges.
Last week, we spoke with climate change consultant Nick Brooks and Oubi Bachir, the representative of the Polisario Front for Europe and the European Union. I began by asking Oubi Bachir why Western Sahara was not represented at the U.N. summit.

OUBI BOUCHRAYA BACHIR: Unfortunately, 'til now, the Sahrawi Republic is not yet a member of the United Nations. Of course, one day, certainly, it will join the rest of the nations of the world and gain its seat in the United Nations. But pending the end of the decolonization process and the independence of Western Sahara, we are not yet admitted as a full member in the U.N. And on the basis of that condition, the Sahrawi Republic could not, unfortunately, present its NDC, nationally determined contribution, to the international climate system. And that's why we are here in Glasgow.

Unfortunately, Morocco is undertaking a huge campaign to greenwash its ugly face of military occupation of our territory and embark on this propaganda campaign that it is friendly to the environment, using its military occupation to Western Sahara to pass through this message. We know that Morocco is now executing some project, especially on the renewable energy, on the wind energy, but also on the solar share, in the occupied part of Western Sahara, using also the assistance and the partnership with some international, multinational companies, such as the Italian Enel and also the Spanish Siemens Gamesa, who are now on a major project in Western Sahara.

Just to give you some sense of the statistics that we have, that maybe by 2030 the entire wind energy that will be produced in Western Sahara, around almost 50, 47% of it, it will be illegally produced from Western Sahara. On the solar energy, around 10%, and it may reach even until 30% of the global solar energy produced or announced to be produced by Morocco, it will be produced from within a context, an illegal context, of occupation.

And unfortunately, the international climate system, the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, is receiving those data that have been submitted by Morocco, and we think it is not the right thing to do. It is illegal because this energy has been produced in a context of violation of international law. The European Court of Justice, General Court of Justice, just issued this decision last month, on September — on the 29th of September, annulling two agreements that have been passed between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco, because there is no legal basis of that, because the consent of the people of Western Sahara was not achieved by the European Union and Morocco in this regard. And the abuses of human rights are largely and widely denounced by all international humanitarian organizations. So this is the real ugly face of the Moroccan occupation to our territory.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to bring in Nick Brooks. You’ve been a climate consultant traveling to Western Sahara for about 20 years or so. Could you talk about the report that Oubi mentions? It notes that the World Bank puts the offshore wind power potential of Western Sahara at 169% greater than that of Morocco. And so, could you talk about the importance of Western Sahara in terms of renewable energy? And also, where is the African Union in all this? What’s its stance in recent years on the continued occupation of the territory?

NICK BROOKS: OK. Thank you. I think, on the African Union question, I’ll probably ultimately defer back to Oubi. He knows this issue much better than I do.

But on the importance of the report and the role of Western Sahara in combating climate change, certainly the potential for renewables is enormous there, and we’re already seeing Morocco beginning to exploit that. And as Oubi mentioned, one of the key issues here is the issue of climate justice. What we’re seeing is a lot of the principles that are embedded in the Paris Agreement on climate change actually being ignored or essentially abused. When we’ve got a situation where Morocco’s performance against its own climate targets is going to be dependent on the exploitation of renewable energy from an occupied territory, then that is contrary to the Paris Agreement principles of transparency, of accuracy, of inclusion and of equity. So, that in itself is very important. So Western Sahara can play a role in combating climate change and producing clean energy, but at the moment that’s happening through the mechanism of Moroccan occupation and colonialism.

So, one of the roles of the report is to try and highlight this issue and to try and amplify, give the Sahrawi a voice, because, as Oubi said, they have been completely and systematically excluded from international processes of climate governance and climate finance. If we take the finance, for example, we can look at the amount of finance going to neighboring countries in 2019. Just in terms of formal multilateral climate finance to Morocco, we’re looking at about $300 million. If we look at Mauritania, it’s about $17 million, a little less for Algeria — sorry, $75 million for Mauritania and about $17 million for Algeria. Western Sahara received nothing. So, this is public money from donor countries to climate funds, formal climate funds, that gets channeled to help developing countries address the impacts of climate change and develop low-carbon societies and economies.

So, again, Western Sahara is completely excluded from this, and so they’re denied the resources with which they could adapt and with which they could — and I think we’re emphasizing mitigation here, but — mitigation being reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and, you know, transitions to clean energy, but adaptation is also hugely important.

Most of the Sahrawi live as refugees in the Algerian desert, in the refugee camps, and these are areas that are already really, really harsh and will suffer some of the worst impacts of climate change. We’re talking about a big increase in the number of days where the temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius, for example. That zone, in a recent report, was classified as being at the edge of a region of extreme risk from heat extremes with real consequences for sort of human welfare, human mortality and morbidity.

We talked about the floods, as well. The Sahrawi refugee camps, while we’re looking at a general reduction in water availability and increased heat, what rainfall that is coming is coming in more intense and more extreme bursts, and so this is causing devastating floods. And one of the robust findings about the impacts of climate change is that we expect more of these intense rainfall events increasing flood risk.

OUBI BOUCHRAYA BACHIR: Let me respond to the question on the African Union. As you know, the Sahrawi Republic is a member of the Organization of the African Unity since 1984, and Morocco withdrew as a sign to — as a position to protest against our admission. But then Morocco tried from outside to influence on our position and failed because of the commitment of all African countries behind the cause of the Sahrawi people, the cause of the people that are struggling in what is known inside the African Union as Africa’s last colony, which is Western Sahara.

And in 2017, Morocco decided to submit a petition to be admitted in the African Union and now is sitting side by side to the Sahrawi Republic. We thought that we are, by then, in 2017, in a similar scenario like the one that Morocco was doing with Mauritania by the end of the ’60s and the beginning of the ’70s, where it started contesting the membership of Mauritania in the Organization of the African Union but ended up accepting it. We thought that after the era of contestation, Morocco would have been now in the era of wisdom.

But, unfortunately, that was not the case, and Morocco is still in the same policy of not only occupying Western Sahara, military occupying, abusing the human rights of the people, plundering the natural resources of the territory, but at the same time defying any international attempt to decolonize the territory and to organize the referendum of self-determination that has been promised to the Sahrawi people and constitutes until now the only way to settle the conflict in conformity with the international law.

The African Union in March this year, after the resumption of the armed struggle in Western Sahara as a result of the Moroccan violation of the terms of the ceasefire — in November last year, the African Union, the Peace and Security, at the summit conference passed a resolution asking the two member states, the Sahrawi Republic and the Kingdom of Morocco, to engage in direct negotiations and maybe looking for a new ceasefire between them. But the settlement should be on the basis of the African Union charter, and especially the Article number 4, that insists on the necessity to fully respect the inherited boundaries from the colonial era, which means Morocco in its internationally recognized boundaries and Western Sahara on its own. The next day, the Moroccan government declared that it is not concerned with this and it will never accept it. So, the African Union is very clear. It’s behind the Sahrawi Republic as a founding member of it. And now we are really expecting, within the U.N. system, within the Security Council, that the voice of the Africans will be heard. Now, on your question.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, Oubi Bachir.

OUBI BOUCHRAYA BACHIR: Of course, with this plan, the Sahrawi Republic has —

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, Oubi Bachir, but just let me ask —

OUBI BOUCHRAYA BACHIR: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the U.N. accepting the Moroccan climate commitments that include the occupied Western Sahara? And are you calling on these commitments, the U.N. to stop accepting these?

OUBI BOUCHRAYA BACHIR: Exactly. That is one of the major calls that we are making here, that the United Nations Conference on Climate Change should exclude and refuse to give credit to any data, any projects that are generated in Western Sahara, because they are generated within a context of a military occupation that the U.N. has refused to endorse. That’s the position of the international community. That’s the position of the U.N. And that is what the international legality is saying. So the international climate system shouldn’t operate in a different way from the international system. Justice is indivisible. It goes for the political settlement of the conflict, but also it goes for the legal status of the territory. And we are asking for climate justice. Climate justice will involve that Western Sahara — the data on Western Sahara should be excluded from the Moroccan reports, because Western Sahara has never been part of Morocco. That’s the U.N. stand.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Oubi Bachir, the Polisario Front’s Europe representative, and climate change consultant Nick Brooks, who has worked with Western Sahara on its climate plan. We spoke to them at the U.N. climate summit last week.
That does it for our show. If you want to see our documentary Four Days in Occupied Western Sahara: A Rare Look Inside Africa’s Last Colony, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Polisario Front ups the ante in Western Sahara conflict - The Africa Report.com

With Algeria’s help, can the Polisario follow through on its threats against Morocco?

www.theafricareport.com

Polisario Front ups the ante in Western Sahara conflict​

By Nina Kozlowski
Posted on Thursday, 25 November 2021 18:56

A Polisario Front soldier holds an AK-47 after a National Unity Day event in the Dajla refugee camp, Algeria, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
After the recent deaths of three Algerian nationals in the disputed territory, the Polisario Front has vowed to step up its fighting and announced plans to carry out attacks in Morocco. An inside look at why the separatist group is issuing new threats.
In the Western Sahara conflict pitting it against Morocco, is the Polisario Front coming out of a lull and beginning to escalate its war?

READ MORE Algeria accuses Morocco of ‘murdering’ three Algerian civilians
More than a year after the Moroccan military intervention in Guerguerat, which led Polisario to end the ceasefire it had observed with the kingdom, and some two weeks after three Algerian nationals were killed in Bir Lahlou by ‘Moroccan bombardment’, as the country’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, claims, the separatist movement appears to be growing increasingly radical.
On 6 November, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI delivered an address to the nation to mark the 46th anniversary of the Green March and reaffirmed that there was no room for negotiation on the Western Sahara issue.
READ MORE Algeria-Morocco: ‘Western Sahara is non-negotiable,’ says Mohammed VI
That same day, Polisario leader Brahim Ghali was not far from the now-infamous town of Bir Lahlou, where he led a handover ceremony for Mohamed Wali Akeik, the Sahrawi army’s new chief of staff.

‘All targets are fair game’​

As Ghali vowed to “increase hostilities”, The Economist reported that Akeik “want to pursue other tactics, such as attacking deeper in Moroccan-occupied territory”.
According to Akeik, such attacks are “much more than a possibility” and are neither “empty threats” nor “bluster”. He told the British weekly that “companies and consulates, airlines and other sectors are all potential targets”.
A few days later, on 13 November – the anniversary of the clashes in Guerguerat – Taleb Ammi Deh, commander of the 7th military region of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, or SADR, and member of Polisario’s National Secretariat, warned that fighting would take place outside Morocco’s defence wall and that “all air, sea, and land targets” were “fair game (…) since the territory is at war”.
Africa Insight
Wake up to the essential with the Editor's picks.
Sign up
Also receive offers from The Africa Report
Also receive offers from The Africa Report's partners
READ MORE Algeria – Morocco: crisis loading
He proceeded to call on all foreign companies operating in Western Sahara – representing a total of 70 firms, 14 of which Spanish – to leave the region or face retaliation.
Algiers seems to have set the tone for Polisario’s fresh threats. On 5 November, during the television programme Crisis on the channel Al Hayat TV, Mokhtar Mediouni, a retired senior military intelligence officer, urged Polisario forces to carry out attacks in Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakesh.
What’s more, the Algerian army has provided the separatists with military equipment, including Russian-made all-terrain vehicles. Are these latest developments mere posturing or do they signal a genuine escalation in tensions between Morocco on one side, and Polisario and Algeria on the other?

A return to old ways​

“Is something new going on here? No, none of the above represents a break with the past,” says Bachir Dkhil, one of the founders of Polisario at the time of Spain’s occupation of the territory in the early 1970s.
He has since left the organisation. “Under pressure from Algiers, Brahim Ghali is now putting all his stock in the Polisario’s most radical wing. Things are going back to how they were in the first years of the conflict. The SADR is in the midst of a deep political and institutional crisis. Polisario’s leadership is made up of 100 people, 20 of whom have been playing musical chairs for years.”

Saharan demonstrator wave their flags as they take part in a rally along the Concha beach support Brahim Gali, leader of the Polisario Front and a Sahara free, in San Sebastian, northern Spain, Sunday, May 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)
As Dkhil points out, army chief of staff Akeik has held a variety of roles, such as security chief, minister of ‘occupied territories’ and prime minister (in 2018). He has also “played a leading part in the first operations to cripple the economic activity and management of [H4] Spain’s phosphate mines in 1974 in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune”. “Basically, Polisario is returning to its ideological roots,” he says.

Polisario leaders are reduced to creating pointless jobs within the National Secretariat in order to please one tribe or another or to ease tensions, but things aren’t working. It’s a total failure.

In short, Polisario is no longer rousing members to action, whether at home or abroad. The situation has become so dire that the so-called ‘war’ the organisation says it has been waging against Morocco for a year now has yet to be recognised as such by the UN.

Worse still, Polisario continues to suffer major losses. The Royal Moroccan Armed Forces, or FAR, is reported to have killed the commander of the 5th military region in a drone attack launched near the defence wall, in the town of Gleibat El Foula on 14 November. In another blow, Spanish authorities extradited Faysal Bahloul to Morocco on 16 November. The Sahrawi separatist stands accused of ‘incitement to murder’.

READ MORE Western Sahara: A who’s who of the SADR’s leading figures
Meanwhile, in the SADR refugee camps, unity seems a distant memory: tribal conflict and clan rivalries are raging, and young members are more preoccupied with their future than with a Cold War -era political struggle.

Sahrawi youth either dream of attending university abroad or leaving the camps to join jihadist groups in the Sahel. “Polisario leaders are reduced to creating pointless jobs within the National Secretariat in order to please one tribe or another or to ease tensions, but things aren’t working. It’s a total failure,” Dkhil tells The Africa Report.

This extremely frustrating impasse has seemingly driven the Polisario to stir trouble ahead of two important diplomatic meetings, one with the UN envoy to Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, and another with Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, in Morocco on 24 and 25 November, at a time when Algerian-Moroccan relations have reached a low point.

How far could the conflict escalate?​

The dynamics of the situation are clear: Algiers is pressing Polisario to step up its military operations against Morocco and giving it carte blanche to do so, while Sahrawi leaders want the Algerian government to deepen its involvement in the conflict.

READ MORE Western Sahara: Senate looks to block funding for US consulate
Perhaps their goal is to arouse more attention from the UN and get the multilateral body to change course, such as by reducing concessions to Morocco and organising a referendum on Western Sahara self-determination.
Nevertheless, Dkhil says: “It isn’t in Algeria’s interest to become embroiled in an open, direct and full-frontal military conflict with Morocco. As for Polisario, they don’t have the resources to fight Moroccan forces, which is why I don’t they will attack targets outside the defence wall.”

READ MORE Algeria - Morocco : Is cultural heritage the new battleground?
In the near term, the conflict could be fought on several fronts, but in a less overt way and across a wider geographic area. Energy warfare is already being instrumentalised, as Algeria stopped supplying natural gas to Morocco on 1 November.
The conflict is also playing out on the diplomatic stage. “It’s plain to see that Algiers is trying to get Mauritania, which it views as a weak state, to join its camp. We’ve already witnessed Algeria attempt to get Mauritania mixed up in the Bir Lahlou incident in early November. The Algerian government will do everything in its power to draw Nouakchott into the conflict and gain its support,” Dkhil tells us.

Algiers is redoubling its efforts because it perceives the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Cheikh el-Ghazouani, as being cosy with Morocco, which wasn’t the case of his predecessor, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Western Sahara Fight Threatens to Expand - Africa Defense Forum

ADF STAFF The decades-old dispute over Western Sahara is causing rivals Morocco and Algeria to edge closer to conflict. The disagreement reignited when a cease-fire collapsed in November 2020 between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence movement known as the Polisario Front. Polisario leader...

adf-magazine.com

Western Sahara Fight Threatens To Expand​

By ADF On Dec 8, 2021
Moroccan forces patrol near the Western Sahara village of Guerguerat in November 2020 after the Polisario Front blocked a key highway for Moroccan trade with the rest of Africa. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Share
Reading Time: 3 minutes
ADF STAFF
The decades-old dispute over Western Sahara is causing rivals Morocco and Algeria to edge closer to conflict. The disagreement reignited when a cease-fire collapsed in November 2020 between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence movement known as the Polisario Front.

Polisario leader Brahim Ghali says they are at war. His group, backed by Algeria, has threatened to launch attacks against “air, land and sea targets” in Morocco.

“The Sahrawi people has made up its mind and taken the sovereign decision to escalate its just war of liberation with all legitimate means — first and foremost the armed struggle,” Ghali told Polisario leaders on November 19, 2021, according to the Sahrawi press agency.

Valued for its Atlantic coast fisheries and inland phosphate mines, Western Sahara has been bitterly contested since it was annexed in 1975. The Kingdom of Morocco controls roughly 80% of the territory and constructed a 2,700-kilometer security wall of sand, known as “the berm.”

The past year has seen persistent skirmishes. The United Nations has logged more than 1,000 incidents of Polisario weapons fired, according to Moroccan reports. In another sign of escalation, Ghali in November named a battle-tested veteran, Mohamed Wali Akeik, as the Sahrawi army’s new chief of staff.

When asked by The Economist magazine about attacking deeper in Moroccan-occupied territory, Akeik called it “much more than a possibility” and said “companies and consulates, airlines and other sectors” could be targets.
Morocco has accused Algeria, which shelters more than 170,000 Sahrawi refugees, of supplying Polisario with weapons, ammunition and training.
Algeria closed its border with Morocco in 1994 and cut diplomatic ties in August 2021, citing “hostile actions,” including allegations of spying and support for Algerian separatist movements.

So what is next? Observers believe it is in the interest of both countries to ratchet down tensions.
“No one benefits from starting a war because it will have dramatic consequences for the region, for the populations and for the regimes that have declared it,” said Pascal Boniface, director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs in a webinar.

Morocco and Algeria are two of the largest and most well-funded militaries in Africa. Between 2010 and 2020, Algeria spent $90 billion on defense, and Morocco spent $35.6 billion.

“The two countries are rearming,” Emmanuel Dupuy, president of l’Institut Prospective & Sécurité en Europe, told TV5 Monde. “This is a recent phenomenon, but it is a phenomenon where they are responding to each other. It’s more or less a sort of strategic parity.”

Morocco has built close defense ties with Israel since its normalization of relations with the country in 2020. Israel, in addition to France and the United States, have supplied Morocco with military equipment. This has left Algeria looking for its own partnerships. In July, Algeria announced a $7 billion arms deal with Russia.

The Algeria-Morocco dispute also is drawing in regional countries. In November, Mauritania set up three surveillance radars along its northern border to monitor Polisario movements.

Boniface said that to avoid war, trusted outside mediators need to help. “At the moment, it’s not clear how they will walk this back or who will be the first to reach a hand out to the other side,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t see partners from Algeria on one side or Morocco on the other who will help them get out of the hole of hostility that they are stuck in.”
In late October, days after the United Nations appointed a new envoy for the conflict, Algeria ruled out returning to roundtable talks.

The U.N. Security Council on October 29 extended its peacekeeping Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for another year, calling for the sides to “respect” the cease-fire and resume of negotiations with a goal of “self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.”
Kenya, the current president of the Security Council, expressed support for eventually organizing the referendum vote and said it is every formerly colonized nation’s right.

“We must be honest and admit that this goal is being obscured and frustrated,” the Kenyan mission said in a statement.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Western Sahara: Sahrawi Army Ready to Liberate All Occupied Territories (Chief of Staff)

The Chief of Staff of the Sahrawi Army, Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik, affirmed that the Saharawi army is fully prepared to liberate all occupied Sahrawi territories and regain independence, calling on all commercial companies not to invest in the occupied territories "being a war and insecurity zone".

allafrica.com

Western Sahara: Sahrawi Army Ready to Liberate All Occupied Territories (Chief of Staff)​

FacebookTwitterWhatsAppFlipboardLinkedInRedditEmailShare

13 NOVEMBER 2021
Sahara Press Service (El Aaiun)
Algiers — The Chief of Staff of the Sahrawi Army, Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik, affirmed that the Saharawi army is fully prepared to liberate all occupied Sahrawi territories and regain independence, calling on all commercial companies not to invest in the occupied territories "being a war and insecurity zone".
In a statement to APS on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of the violation of the ceasefire by Morocco on November 13, 2020 in El Guerguerat, Mr. Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik said that the Sahrawi army celebrates this anniversary as a "winner" and this since the resumption of the 2nd liberation war where it inflicted on the occupation forces considerable human and material losses.


He affirmed that the Sahrawi army is ready to continue the armed struggle until the recovery of independence, pledging to "extend the battle beyond the separation wall".
The Saharawi military official, who took office at the head of the Sahrawi army almost a week ago, said that the latest resolution of the UN Security Council was "a great disappointment" for the Sahrawi people, as it showed that there is no will to decolonise the last colony in Africa. Thus, the Saharawi people have no choice but to continue the military escalation," he added.

After affirming that the Sahrawi army is, more than ever, ready to "make sacrifices for its country and fight the occupier whatever the strength of its alliances or the performance of weapons and technologies it holds, the same official said: "the worst is yet to come for the Moroccan army of occupation which accumulates defeats.


The Polisario Front announced last February that 3 Moroccan soldiers had been killed in attacks carried out by the Saharawi army in the region of Djbel Ouarkziz (southern Morocco).

Mr. Akeik expressed surprise that Morocco continues to deny the existence of a war in Western Sahara, while the international media has reported, with pictures and videos, the battles taking place in Western Sahara.

"The occupation army is in a real stalemate because of the losses it suffers daily and has been forced to call on its historical allies, notably France and Israel, which provide it with the most modern technologies, information and financial support," the Sahrawi official said, stressing that despite this, Morocco has failed to confront the Sahrawi struggle.
062/T


Read the original article on SPS.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Youth yearning for independence fuel Western Sahara clashes

MAHBAS REGION, Western Sahara (AP) — As a glowing sun sank behind the sandy barrier that cuts across the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Sidati Ahmed's battalion launched two missiles that sizzled through the air and then followed with an artillery attack.

apnews.com

By ARITZ PARRA
October 21, 2021

MAHBAS REGION, Western Sahara (AP) — As a glowing sun sank behind the sandy barrier that cuts across the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Sidati Ahmed’s battalion launched two missiles that sizzled through the air and then followed with an artillery attack.

Within minutes, a barrage of mortar shells flew in the opposite direction, from Moroccan positions, landing with a thick column of smoke in the barren desert of what is known as Africa’s last colony.

“Low-intensity hostilities,” as a recent United Nations report describes them, have raged for the past year along the 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) berm — a barrier second in length only to the Great Wall of China that separates the part of Western Sahara that Morocco rules from the sliver held by the Polisario Front, which wants the territory to be independent. Both sides claim the area in its entirety.


A soldier from the Polisario Front fires a rocket toward Morocco, near Mehaires, Western Sahara, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Polisario Front soldiers carry a rocket during an attack against Morocco, near Mehaires, Western Sahara, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Polisario Front soldiers look at a Minurso helicopter, not pictured, near Mehaires, Western Sahara, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

For nearly 30 years this swath of North African desert about the size of Colorado — that sits on vast phosphate deposits, faces rich fishing grounds and is believed to have off-shore oil reserves — has existed in limbo, awaiting a referendum that was supposed to let the local Sahrawi people decide their future. Instead, as negotiations over who would be allowed to vote dragged on, Morocco tightened its control of the territory, which was a Spanish colony until 1975.

Last year, the Polisario Front announced that it would no longer abide by the 1991 cease-fire that ended its 16-year guerilla war with Morocco.

The decision was fueled by frustration among younger Sahrawi — many of whom were born in refugee camps in Algeria, have never lived in their ancestral homeland, and are tired of waiting for the U.N.-promised referendum.

“Everybody is ready for war,” said Ahmed, who spent more than half of his 32 years in Cuba before returning to enlist for battle when the truce ended last year.

“We are fed up. The only thing that is going to bring our homeland back to us is this,” Ahmed said pointing at his AK-47 weapon, as he stood on the front line in Mahbas. The region, at the crossroads of Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria, is where most of the exchanges of fire take place.


A Polisario Front soldier holds an AK-47 after a National Unity Day event in the Dajla refugee camp, Algeria, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Polisario soldiers sit on a cliff in the Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Ahmed is typical of a generation of Sahrawi youth, most of whom traveled abroad to study — from Spain to Libya — but returned to the camps to form families. And they’ve told their elders that they don’t want to die in exile, with no future to offer to their own children.

“Life abroad can be tempting,” said Omar Deidih, a baby-faced soldier and cybersecurity student who on a recent visit to the front line organized by the Polisario spoke to foreign reporters in fluent English. “But the most important thing is that we have fresh blood in this new phase of the struggle.”


The possibility, however remote, that clashes could escalate into a full-out regional war may be the Polisario’s only hope of drawing attention to a conflict with few known casualties in a vast but forgotten corner of the desert. Many in the camps feel that efforts to finally settle the status of Western Sahara have languished since Morocco proposed greater autonomy for the territory in 2004.

The front’s hopes for independence suffered a major blow last year when the U.S. in the waning days of the Trump administration backed Morocco’s claim to the territory, as part of efforts to get Morocco to recognize Israel. Other countries, including the Polisario’s main ally Algeria, recognize Western Sahara as independent, while still more support U.N. efforts for a negotiated solution.



A Sahrawi flag is wrapped around a post in a closed school in Bir Lahlou, Western Sahara, Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Polisario Front elderly soldier prays during a shooting exercise, near Mehaires, Western Sahara, Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)


Soldiers from the Polisario Front pack after a National Unity Day event in the Dajla refugee camp, Algeria, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
The rising tensions have gotten the attention of the U.N., whose Minurso force oversaw the cease-fire and whose secretary-general recently appointed Staffan de Mistura, a seasoned Italian diplomat and former U.N. envoy for Syria, to take charge of the negotiations.

The Polisario’s leader, Brahim Ghali, last week warned that de Mistura must be given a clear mandate from the Security Council to carry out a referendum. Western Sahara will be before the Council on Oct. 28, when members vote on whether to extend the Minurso mission.


Brahim Ghali, head of the Polisario Front and the self-declared Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic, poses for a portrait in Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Achieving progress is also a matter of legitimacy for the Polisario. After years of internal division, the new hostilities have rallied pro-independence supporters around its leadership, but many fear that the lack of results could lead to more radicalization.

In the camps, the live fire from the front line reverberates strongly among refugees, who were forced to confront the precariousness of their existence when the humanitarian aid they rely on slowed to a trickle during the pandemic.

Medical missions were halted, medicine was in short supply and prices of camel, goat and chicken meat all went up, said 29-year old Dahaba Chej Baha, a refugee in the Boujdour camp. On a recent morning, the mother of a 3-year-old was sheltering in the shade while in her third hour of waiting for an Algerian truck to deliver gas canisters.

“Everything is so difficult here,” Chej Baha said, adding that those who would typically find ways to work overseas and send money back have become trapped because of pandemic-related travel restrictions. “I don’t like war, but I feel that nothing is going to change without it.”

Meima Ali, another mother, with three kids, said she was against the war, but that her voice was not listened to in a community dominated by men.

“My husband has to decide between finding work or looking like a traitor for not going to the front,” she said. “How am I going to survive without him? Here, we live as if we were dead.”


A Sahrawi refugee boy stands in the shadow in the Boujdour refugee camp, Monday, Oct. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A Sahrawi refugee girl picks-up the laundry in the Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A Sahrawi family prepares breakfast inside their tent in the outskirts of Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)


Morocco denies that there is an armed conflict raging in what it calls its “southern provinces,” where about 90,000 Sahrawi people are estimated to live alongside 350,000 Moroccans. Morocco has told the U.N. mission that its troops only return fire “in cases of direct threat” and “always in proportion to actions” of the Polisario.

In a response to questions from The Associated Press, the Moroccan government said that there have been “unilateral attacks” by the Polisario but no casualties on the Moroccan side.

It called any effort to portray the conflict as something bigger “propaganda elements intended for the media” and “desperate gesticulations to attract attention.”

Intissar Fakir, an expert on the region for the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said that a full-fledged conflict — which could pit Morocco and Algeria against each other — wasn’t in anyone’s interest. But she said that negotiating a lasting solution wouldn’t be easy either.


Sahara refugee Abdasalam Mostafa, 37, teaches Quran, Islam's holy book, at a madrasa in the Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
“Maybe in terms of international law, the Polisario have their standing, but I think Morocco here is the strongest it has ever been with the U.S. recognition and de facto control over most of the territory,” she said. But the Polisario, she added, “is more entrenched in their own position because they really have kind of nothing to lose at this point.”

Although many interviewed by the AP at the camps or on the front line expressed frustration with the years of negotiations that the Polisario defended until last year, open criticism is hard to come by in such a tight community.

Baali Hamudi Nayim, a veteran of the 1970s and 1980s war against Mauritania and Morocco, said he had been against the 1991 cease-fire.

“If it was up to me, the time for a political solution without any guarantees, through the U.N. or others, is over,” said Hamudi, who is back in his guerrilla attire to oversee battalions in the restive Mahbas. “For me, the solution is a military one.”


Polisario Front soldiers warm themselves by a fire near Bir Lahlou, Western Sahara, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
___

Associated Press journalists Bernat Armangué in Sahrawi refugee camps and Tarik El Barakah and Mosa’ab Elshamy in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.

ADVERTISEMENT

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Western Sahara: Sahrawi Army Ready to Liberate All Occupied Territories (Chief of Staff)

The Chief of Staff of the Sahrawi Army, Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik, affirmed that the Saharawi army is fully prepared to liberate all occupied Sahrawi territories and regain independence, calling on all commercial companies not to invest in the occupied territories "being a war and insecurity zone".

allafrica.com

Western Sahara: Sahrawi Army Ready to Liberate All Occupied Territories (Chief of Staff)​

FacebookTwitterWhatsAppFlipboardLinkedInRedditEmailShare

13 NOVEMBER 2021
Sahara Press Service (El Aaiun)
Algiers — The Chief of Staff of the Sahrawi Army, Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik, affirmed that the Saharawi army is fully prepared to liberate all occupied Sahrawi territories and regain independence, calling on all commercial companies not to invest in the occupied territories "being a war and insecurity zone".
In a statement to APS on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of the violation of the ceasefire by Morocco on November 13, 2020 in El Guerguerat, Mr. Mohamed Al-Wali Akeik said that the Sahrawi army celebrates this anniversary as a "winner" and this since the resumption of the 2nd liberation war where it inflicted on the occupation forces considerable human and material losses.


He affirmed that the Sahrawi army is ready to continue the armed struggle until the recovery of independence, pledging to "extend the battle beyond the separation wall".
The Saharawi military official, who took office at the head of the Sahrawi army almost a week ago, said that the latest resolution of the UN Security Council was "a great disappointment" for the Sahrawi people, as it showed that there is no will to decolonise the last colony in Africa. Thus, the Saharawi people have no choice but to continue the military escalation," he added.

After affirming that the Sahrawi army is, more than ever, ready to "make sacrifices for its country and fight the occupier whatever the strength of its alliances or the performance of weapons and technologies it holds, the same official said: "the worst is yet to come for the Moroccan army of occupation which accumulates defeats.


The Polisario Front announced last February that 3 Moroccan soldiers had been killed in attacks carried out by the Saharawi army in the region of Djbel Ouarkziz (southern Morocco).

Mr. Akeik expressed surprise that Morocco continues to deny the existence of a war in Western Sahara, while the international media has reported, with pictures and videos, the battles taking place in Western Sahara.

"The occupation army is in a real stalemate because of the losses it suffers daily and has been forced to call on its historical allies, notably France and Israel, which provide it with the most modern technologies, information and financial support," the Sahrawi official said, stressing that despite this, Morocco has failed to confront the Sahrawi struggle.
062/T


Read the original article on SPS.

Morocco has claims not only on the Western Sahara, but also on Algeria, Mauritania, Spain, Mali and Senegal.

Morocco is the only country in the world that has difficulty figuring out where its borders start and where they end.

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

An unjust transition | Transnational Institute

Extractivism, just like colonialism, comes in many different shapes and sizes. In the case of Western Sahara, it takes form in not only phosphate extraction, fishing, and sand and agricultural industries. Today, extractivism in Western Sahara is also sustained through renewable energy projects...

longreads.tni.org

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Reversing Course on Western Sahara Serves US National Interests - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

gjia.georgetown.edu

Reversing Course on Western Sahara Serves US National Interests​

Author: Djaouida Siaci
Date Published: March 29, 2021
ShareFacebookTwitterEmail
The former Trump administration’s persistent pattern of violating international law has put the United States on the same level as the rogue nations that subvert international consensus and the rules-based international order.

This pattern is most profound in former President Trump’s last foreign policy act: a tweet in which he recognized Morocco’s claim of alleged sovereignty over occupied Western Sahara— a territory long defined by a stalled process of decolonization and referred to as Africa’s last colony. Issued as part of a series of agreements brokered by the former president at the end of his tenure known as the Abraham Accords, this proclamation is inconsistent with settled international legal principles. The move, indeed, condones the forced seizure and de facto control of a disputed territory by an occupying power and denies the indigenous people of Western Sahara the right to self-determination in blatant violation of fundamental principles of international law: the prohibition on threat or use of force, the prohibition on acquiring territory by force, and the right of peoples to self-determination. Further, the declaration represents a heedless approach to a complex international dispute with far-reaching consequences. A reversal by the Biden administration of the United States’ unilateral recognition of Morocco’s claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara will condemn forcible territorial changes as a violation of international law. In addition, the move will signal the return of the United States to principled international leadership, multilateralism, and a rules-based world order. But in a period of receding belief that a strong moral and legal-based approach to foreign policy is what the United States needs now, reversing this decision will, most importantly, guard America’s interests, security foremost among these, in a strategic region of the world.

Formerly colonized by Spain and bordering the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania to the northeast, Western Sahara is a vast area boasting abundant natural resources: phosphates, iron ore, sand, fishery, potential off-shore oil drilling, and uranium reserves. In 1975, without any concern for the wishes of its original inhabitants, Madrid ceded its colony to Morocco and Mauritania. Following its invasion and unilateral annexation of Western Sahara, Morocco tried to tip the population balance in its favor encouraging Moroccan settlements and investments in the annexed territory. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of native Sahrawis have been forced to live in the uninhabited and harshest fringes of the territory or flee to desert refugee camps in neighboring Algeria.

In 1976, under the leadership of the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y Río de Oro, known as the Polisario—a genuine national liberation movement and the Sahrawi people’s legitimate representative—the Sahrawis mobilized to proclaim independence and declared the Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic (SADR). War ensued between Morocco and the Polisario Front. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict renouncing definitively all claims over Western Sahara and recognizing the SADR. Morocco saw its chance. It promptly annexed Mauritania piece of the territory. In 1991, the warring sides agreed to a UN-brokered and monitored ceasefire and an independence referendum, but they remained deadlocked over how the referendum should be carried out. In 1995, disagreement over eligibility criteria brought the voter identification process, core to the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), to a standstill. Controlling most of the territory and exploiting Western Sahara’s natural resources to the detriment of its indigenous people, Morocco refused to allow the vote to take place. Instead, it proposed some form of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, without full de jure independence. However, the proposal has never been implemented. Since 1991, negotiations have failed to reach a compromise, thus maintaining the status quo ante. On November 14, 2020, the nearly three-decade cease-fire broke down, sparking a new wave of violence between Moroccan armed forces and the Polisario front. Amid a resumption of active fighting, the former Trump administration announced that it unilaterally recognizes Morocco’s claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara.
Morocco has no legal claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara. The UN General Assembly and UN Security Council resolutions which have recognized Western Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory” pursuant to Chapter XI of the UN Charter—that is a colony—whose people have the right to decolonization through an act of self-determination, with the Polisario Front as its legitimate representative. This right has been confirmed in a landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice. In addition, the European Court of Justice ruled that Western Sahara has a separate and distinct status from Morocco. And in 1984, Africa’s regional organization, the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), admitted the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as a full member state which has been recognized by many African countries.

Former President Trump’s sudden shift from a mostly neutral US stance towards Western Sahara prompted Morocco’s re-engagement with Israel, becoming the fourth Arab nation to do so as part of the Abraham Accords. Driven in part by US-led efforts to counter Iran and curtail its successful influence in the region, the Abraham Accords mark formal normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel — the first peace agreement between an Arab nation and Israel since Jordan recognized Israel in the 1990s and Egypt in the 1970s. Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco shortly followed in the UAE’s footsteps by thawing relations with Israel. The four countries have no geographic proximity to Israel; none of them were ever at war with Israel; and all played a minor role to none in the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict.

In Trump’s signature transactional diplomacy, some of the inducements offered for the normalization deals were not only an aberration but an affront to binding international legal norms. For the UAE, the US-brokered deal included a promise for the UAE to acquire American weaponry from the United States. For Sudan, the price for reluctantly signing a peace deal with Israel was immunity in American courts from terrorism lawsuits. Bahrain appears to have been driven by a desire to strengthen its relations with Washington. As to Morocco, this “deal” orchestrated by the Trump administration sweet-talks the Moroccans to embrace Israel by endorsing Morocco’s decades-long quest to affirm its assertion of sovereignty over the territory of colonized Western Sahara. The quid pro quo reportedly also includes a planned arms sale to Morocco, as well as a promised three billion USD in commercial investments in the North African kingdom, a déjà vu Trump playbook.

The United States’s abrupt change in its long-held policy concerning the Western Sahara conflict—a largely bipartisan issue in Washington until the former administration’s decision— upends years of international consensus. Until Trump’s tweet neither the United States nor any other country formally recognized Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over the bitterly disputed territory. In fact, as early as October 2020, the United States supported the UN Security Council resolution that renewed the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for a year. Further, in the words of Professor Stephen Zunes, a leading scholar of US Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action:

The fate of Western Sahara is a rare issue that does not fall neatly along partisan lines, and senators ranging from Democrat Patrick Leahy to Republican James Inhofe have pushed successive U.S. administrations to support Sahrawi’s right to a referendum on independence.

Trump’s decision represents, therefore, a renegade act intended only to bolster a flawed Middle East policy, recklessly endangering peace in the process. As such, it must be denounced as a tendentious and unlawful interference by a former self-interested US administration prepared to put peace at risk for short-term geopolitical gain.

Trump’s declaration had the unintended consequences of bringing a thorny conflict—largely unknown to many and obscure on the global front—to the forefront of the US foreign policy debate. The Western Sahara question combines a number of difficult global issues—it is a humanitarian crisis; it is located in a part of the world that is of increasing strategic relevance, and it pits questions of colonization and decolonization. Indeed, the worst part of the decision relates to the hundreds of thousands of Sahrawi people who suffer because of Morocco’s illegal seizure of Western Sahara. In addition, the collapse of the nearly three-decade ceasefire could lead to an escalation of violence in a volatile corner of North Africa critical to US security interests. This escalation could reopen the long-standing tension in the region, particularly between Morocco and Algeria, important allies of the European Union and the United States in the fight against terrorism and the containment of migration flows to Europe Moreover, it could exacerbate instability in North Africa and the Sahel after the war in Libya and insurgencies in Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso.

In the short to medium term, beyond damaging US credibility to resolve an international conflict through UN-based diplomatic efforts, a decision by the Biden administration not to change course on Western Sahara could have the potential of upsetting other influential African Union members supportive of the Sahrawis’ right for self-determination. This is even more important at a time when the United States is striving to gain a stronger foothold in Africa and reorganize its priorities to counter Russia and China’s growing footprint on the continent. In the long term, apart from hindering any chance for political and economic unity of the Maghreb countries, a non-reversal of Trump’s policy could antagonize Sahrawi youth and push them to resolve the conflict through arm struggle. If the violence goes unchecked, it could lead the region to become a fertile ground to extremist groups, fueling criminal networks in the Sahel, potentially making the broader region more volatile as a result. Finally, a non-reversal of this precedent-setting decision could embolden potential aggressors to conquer territory by force, “and have those conquests legitimatized by the international community.”

In his first major foreign policy speech intended to send a clear message to the world that “America is back,” President Biden spoke about values-led engagement to reset relations with the world. He pledged to “start with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom; championing opportunity; upholding universal rights; respecting the rule of law; and treating every person with dignity.” Reversing course on Western Sahara will signal the Biden administration’s foreign policy orientation, its commitment to deploy principled diplomacy, and return to a UN-based, comprehensive, and diplomatic approach to the conflict. Reversing this decision will also condemn forcible territorial changes, compelling the Kingdom of Morocco to live up to its international obligations and allowing the people of a nascent nation-state to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and national independence. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, revoking this decision will guard and strengthen US national interests, security foremost among these, in a strategic region of the world.
. . .
Djaouida Siaci is an international lawyer specializing in international litigation and arbitration, and cross-border criminal investigation with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. As part of her pro bono work, Mrs. Siaci has been engaged in efforts to pursue international justice and accountability on behalf of victims of human rights violations and mass atrocities. She is the founder and vice-president of the Rohingya Support Group (RSG). Mrs. Siaci holds a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School; a postgraduate degree in Public International Law and Law of International Organizations from the University of Paris, Sorbonne; and a law degree from the University of Algiers, Faculty of Law.
Image Credit: Michele Benericetti, Creative Commons License

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

2021 year of achievements, 2022 will be that of independence | archives sps

www.spsrasd.info

2021 year of achievements, 2022 will be that of independence​

SPS 01/01/2022 - 19:18

Algiers, 1 January 2022 (SPS) - Minister of Occupied Territories and Sahrawi Community Abroad, Mustafa Ali Sid Al-Bachir said that if 2021 was a year of " achievements," 2022 will be the year of " escalation " against Moroccan occupation until independence.

In an interview to APS, the minister said that the new year will witness "an escalation" in all directions, militarily, politically and diplomatically, "until the establishment of the sovereignty of the Sahrawi state over all the occupied territories.

The Sahrawi people are "peaceful," but the war was " imposed" after the violation by Moroccan forces, on November 13, 2020, of the ceasefire agreement in the area of El Guergarat, and the violence committed against Sahrawi civilians, said the minister.

The minister further praised the popular momentum observed by the Sahrawis around the world, during which young people, from the liberated territories, the Sahrawi camps, in the occupied cities and the diaspora have flocked to the training centers to participate in the fight against the colonizer.

In this regard, Ali Sid Al-Bachir mentioned the "effective participation" of the Sahrawi community in favor of their cause.

062/700

 

[Knowledgeseeker]

2021 year of achievements, 2022 will be that of independence | archives sps

www.spsrasd.info

2021 year of achievements, 2022 will be that of independence​

SPS 01/01/2022 - 19:18

Algiers, 1 January 2022 (SPS) - Minister of Occupied Territories and Sahrawi Community Abroad, Mustafa Ali Sid Al-Bachir said that if 2021 was a year of " achievements," 2022 will be the year of " escalation " against Moroccan occupation until independence.

In an interview to APS, the minister said that the new year will witness "an escalation" in all directions, militarily, politically and diplomatically, "until the establishment of the sovereignty of the Sahrawi state over all the occupied territories.

The Sahrawi people are "peaceful," but the war was " imposed" after the violation by Moroccan forces, on November 13, 2020, of the ceasefire agreement in the area of El Guergarat, and the violence committed against Sahrawi civilians, said the minister.

The minister further praised the popular momentum observed by the Sahrawis around the world, during which young people, from the liberated territories, the Sahrawi camps, in the occupied cities and the diaspora have flocked to the training centers to participate in the fight against the colonizer.

In this regard, Ali Sid Al-Bachir mentioned the "effective participation" of the Sahrawi community in favor of their cause.

062/700

Which achievment have polisario gained in 2021?

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Which achievment have polisario gained in 2021?

List of Nations that have recognized the Western Sahara Republic as a Sovereign Nation:

1	Algeria		African Union member Arab League member
2	Angola		African Union member
3	Belize
4	Bolivia
5	Botswana		African Union member
6	Cuba
7	East Timor
8	Ecuador
9	Ethiopia		African Union member
10	Ghana		African Union member
11	Honduras
12	Iran
13	Kenya		African Union member
14	Laos
15	Lesotho		African Union member
16	Libya	Libyan Arab Jamahiriya supported the Polisario Front but did not recognize Western Sahara as a state.[116]	African Union member Arab League member
17	Mali		African Union member
18	Mauritania		African Union member Arab League member
19	Mauritius		African Union member
20	Mexico
21	Mozambique		African Union member
22	Namibia		African Union member
23	Nicaragua
24	Nigeria		African Union member
25	North Korea
26	Panama
27	Peru
28	Rwanda		African Union member
29	Sierra Leone		African Union member
30	South Africa		African Union member
31	Syria		Arab League member
32	Tanzania		African Union member
33	Trinidad and Tob
34	Uganda		African Union member
35	Uruguay
36	Vanuatu
37	Venezuela
38	Vietnam
39	Zimbabwe		African Union member
—	South Ossetia

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

Which achievment have polisario gained in 2021?

Countries (Im Green) That recognize the Sovereignty of the Western Sahara Republic

 

[CEZAYIRLI]

SPLA attacks Moroccan occupation forces in the sectors of Mahbes and Auserd | archives sps

www.spsrasd.info

SPLA attacks Moroccan occupation forces in the sectors of Mahbes and Auserd​

SPS 30/12/2021 - 10:51

Bir Lehlu (Sahrawi Republic), Dec 30, 2021 (SPS) - The units of the Saharawi People's Liberation Army (SPLA) bombed Wednesday several positions of the Moroccan occupation forces in the Mahbes and Auserd sectors.

According to War Report No. 412 issued by the Ministry of National Defense, units of our army once again bombarded enemy forces positioned in the Rus Udei Adamran regions, in Mahbes, and the Adeim Um Ajlud region, in Auserd.

Likewise, the War Report adds that the units of the Saharawi People's Liberation Army had concentrated their artillery fires Tuesday on the positions of the Moroccan occupation forces in the Adeim Um Ajlud regions, in Auserd, on two consecutive occasions, and the Rus Asabti and Acheidmiya regions, in the Mahbes sector.SPS
125/090/TRA​