Morocco vs Western Sahara, a continuous and never ending war

(To Antonino Lombardi)
02/02/22

The conflict that has lasted for decades between Morocco and the population Sahrawi it always receives little media attention and sometimes even from supranational institutions. In that part of Africa, however, the tensions that very often result in more or less prolonged armed attacks do not help the pacification process that began thirty years ago.

The last news of a series of bombings by theSahrawi People's Liberation Army (SPLA), aimed at the trenches of Moroccan occupation soldiers, first in the Sahb Shedida region in the Farsia sector and subsequently, some detachments, in the Kalb Nasnella region and in the Fadret Tamat region in the Hawza sector.

On the same day, Moroccan groups banned the president of theSahrawi body against the Moroccan occupation (ISACOM), Aminatou Haidar to leave for Spain because he does not have a Moroccan vaccination passport, even if he is in possession of the European vaccination passport.

The government had long ago started a massive vaccination campaign to better deal with the pandemic situation, inviting all citizens to go to the vaccination centers and strictly follow the rules, also introducing the vaccination passport, but for travel, in the previous days, they had also been European vaccination passports accepted, therefore the complaint against Aminatou Haidar is strange.

In reality, the reason that would have prevented his departure would have been of another nature, that is because of his intervention in the field of human rights, as in the coming days he would have participated in a conference in Madrid and Vitoria together with the Saharawi Committee for Human Rights and all 'Association of Families of Sahrawi prisoners and the missing.

The president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Brahim Gali1, accused Morocco of threatening regional peace and security due to the aggressive expansion policy, as stated in his speech on January 27, 2022 and, therefore, called on the United Nations Security Council to intervene in the name of peace and security in the world.

In this regard, Morocco, on 29 January, was invited by the 306 organizations of the Geneva Support Group for Human Rights to abandon its expansionist aims and to implement international law towards the peoples of the Sahara, Maghreb and Sahel. .

Il Movement for Sahrawi political prisoners, therefore, he launched an appeal to the Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albares, to mediate and intervene, so that all Sahrawi political prisoners could be released from Moroccan prisons.

On the same January 29, Sahrawi Prime Minister Bouchraya Hamoudi Bayoun said that the government plans for 2022 a strengthening of the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

Following these declarations, the words of the former president of the United States of America still resound, who had recognized the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara in 2020, but the former US secretary of state, James Baker III2, called it a rash move and an attack on "Principles of international law and diplomacy that the United States has espoused and respected for many years" and indeed the president's stance contributed to the longstanding conflict between Morocco and the people of Western Sahara.

This could cause not only the exploitation of these tensions by terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, but also the crumbling of relations with Algeria, which supports the autonomy of the peoples of Western Sahara, as well as damage to commercial relations with Europe.

It is hoped that the current US president will be able to take a more cautious line than his predecessor did.

1 general secretary of the POLISARIO Frente

2 James A. Baker III was the 61st Secretary of State of the United States from 1989 to 1992 and the United Nations Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara from 1997 to 2004.

Photo: web