KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One of Africa’s longest wars shifted toward a conclusion in July when France recognized Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over the Western Sahara. That action, alongside Morocco’s military advantage, effectively will leave the indigenous Sahrawi independence movement with no choice but to eventually settle for some form of autonomy within Morocco. While this reality will be unsatisfactory for the estimated 173,000 Sahrawis living in refugee camps, their best option, and that of their backer, Algeria, is now to seize the opportunity to negotiate for best-possible peace terms with Morocco. Ending a war that keeps so many stateless and living in squalor while also removing a major irritant to the Moroccan-Algerian relationship will improve regional stability.
The region’s indigenous Sahrawi population and its political-military leadership, the POLISARIO Front, have been fighting for independence since the 1970s when Spain controlled the territory. Following Spain’s withdrawal in 1975, Morocco ultimately claimed, occupied and began to develop the territory under its sovereignty. With the help of neighboring Algeria, the POLISARIO has waged an unsuccessful effort to liberate the territory and establish the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. In 1991, the United Nations was engaged to resolve the conflict, establishing a peacekeeping mission charged with organizing and ensuring a popular referendum on the territory’s status. That referendum has never occurred, and the territory remains under Moroccan control with many of the region’s former inhabitants exiled to refugee camps inside Algeria.
In 2020, President Trump proclaimed U.S. recognition of “Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara” as Morocco recognized Israel under the Abraham Accords. That U.S. shift supported a 2007 Moroccan proposal for Western Saharan autonomy as “the only basis for a just and lasting solution” to the Western Sahara dispute. At the time, many supporters of Sahrawi independence, including Algeria, saw Trump’s proclamation as a damaging but inconclusive turn. However, 37 nations have since followed the U.S. lead and France’s recognition is decisive.
As the Maghreb’s most recent colonial power, France is arguably the region’s most influential foreign actor. It clearly sees its economic future tied to Morocco (not Algeria). France’s decision to end its neutrality on the Western Sahara question reflects and strengthens a growing international consensus in support of Morocco’s sovereignty claims. The de facto control that Morocco now enjoys will become the permanent status unless the POLISARIO moves quickly to negotiate more concessions than Morocco offered in its 2007 autonomy plan.
European opposition to Morocco’s sovereignty claims has waned in recent years, partly because of increasing trade between Morocco and Europe, but also because of the U.S. precedent. Most Arab League states and many African Union states have also fallen in line. Influential states like China, Russia, Turkey, Britain and Italy remain officially neutral but for how long?
As the United Nations has made no real progress toward a peaceful settlement, Morocco controls more than three-quarters of the territory, which it continues to economically develop and settle, increasingly integrating the land and its inhabitants into the Moroccan state.
The POLISARIO rejected Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan, which foresaw Moroccan control over the entire territory but offered to let its people “run their affairs democratically, through legislative, executive and judicial bodies enjoying exclusive powers.” Seventeen years later, the POLISARIO’s inability to win independence militarily raises the question: What additional Moroccan concessions does the POLISARIO need to accept autonomy?
One issue is the right of return for 173,600 Sahrawi refugees living in five camps near the southwestern Algeria town of Tindouf. While Morocco’s plan promises “full integration, into the nation’s fabric, of persons to be repatriated,” the Sahrawis will certainly want more specificity on who will be welcome to return. They will want clear options for those who would choose not to return — some having never set foot inside the territory. Would the U.N. refugee agency or other aid organizations help resettle such people?
What compensation would the Sahrawis seek from Morocco for property inside the territory that they would not be able to (or would choose not to) repossess? Is there a coalition of donor states that would reimburse displaced Sahrawis? In 1948, the United Nations asked member states to provide financial support to compensate Palestinian refugees, but similar instances are rare and governments could prove reluctant to set a new precedent. Could the Sahrawi refugees be compensated through payments from proceeds of natural resources extracted from the territory?
For Sahrawis who decide to return, might they consider additional forms of autonomy within the Moroccan state? Democratic political arrangements in the MENA region like Lebanon’s confessional system or Iraq’s ethnonational quotas afford special considerations that guarantee minority representation at the national level; the Sahrawis would do well to propose appropriate accommodations. For example, could the Sahrawis demand a specific number of seats in Morocco’s parliament for Sahrawi representation? Could the Sahrawis demand that Morocco’s prime minister, who is appointed by the king, always be a Sahrawi?
The autonomy proposal offers a blanket amnesty “precluding any legal proceedings, arrest, detention, imprisonment or intimidation of any kind, based on facts covered by this amnesty.” But the plan is not specific about which Sahrawis would be covered. Would they include Sahrawis living outside the territory or those incarcerated in Morocco? Morocco holds Sahrawi pro-independence and human rights advocates in prison but does not recognize them as “political prisoners” because Moroccan courts have convicted them of criminal offenses. Surely, the POLISARIO would want to have most if not all of such Sahrawi prisoners released as part of any agreement.
Alongside demands by the Sahrawi people for ethno-national recognition and protection, other interests would need to be accommodated in any negotiated solution to the conflict: specifically, those of the current Sahrawi leadership and the Algerian government.
After 50 years of struggle for independence … a new generation of Sahrawis … agitates for a more violent approach.
After 50 years of struggle for independence, the POLISARIO leadership faces enormous pressure to achieve that goal — and many Sahrawis describe that leadership as too old and ineffective. A new generation of Sahrawis — many of whom have never lived in the territory — agitates for a more violent approach. For POLISARIO leaders to formally give up on independence, and prevent a putsch, they must be able to claim a victory otherwise defined. It’s not immediately clear what “off ramp” can be developed for POLISARIO leadership to walk back from its maximalist objectives to something short of independence.
For Algiers, perpetuating the Western Sahara conflict is a means to irritate its rival, Morocco. While Algeria has long emphasized the importance of decolonialization, especially in Western Sahara, POLISARIO’s acceptance of Moroccan autonomy would provide Algeria with the domestic cover to also accept Moroccan sovereignty. In private, Algeria could — and probably would — discourage POLISARIO from accepting autonomy without also extracting concessions from Morocco that directly benefit Algiers. Morocco and Algeria have been reluctant to link the conflict in Western Sahara to other bilateral conflicts, but that opposition could be overcome if the Algerians thought the Sahrawis were moving towards unilateral acceptance of Morocco’s autonomy plan.
In such a scenario, what concessions would Algeria seek from Morocco? Might Algeria seek to restart gas delivery through the Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline under more favorable terms? Might Algeria demand a formal declaration expressly denouncing cross-border support for groups and individuals that seek to undermine or destabilize the other’s respective regimes? Would Algiers see these concessions as sufficient?
International momentum is entirely on Morocco’s side. In the not-so-distant future, the conflict over the Western Sahara territory will be effectively finished, with only a handful of states continuing to argue for Sahrawi independence. Given Morocco’s qualitative military advantage over POLISARIO, the Sahrawi people have no option other than a negotiated settlement. The Moroccan autonomy plan will become the de facto settlement unless POLISARIO is able to negotiate something more. Coming to terms with this reality is a bitter pill to swallow for the Sahrawi people and their international backers but continuing to deny this reality only ensures a less-favorable final settlement. It is in the best interests of the Sahrawi people and their supporters to seize the opportunity to negotiate a settlement with Morocco that includes more than what was offered previously. To do otherwise would be a denial that one of Africa’s longest running conflicts is finally reaching its conclusion.