The Western Sahara Dispute: All Over But the Shouting

The 12 June 2009 municipal elections in Morocco turned out to be a national-level referendum with international ramifications. It marked the end of the dispute over Morocco’s Sahara territory (Moroccan Western Sahara: MWS). The election process in the Sahara showed an absolute, unfettered commitment of the Saharan people to Morocco.

Your blogging correspondent was in Morocco for the election and spent the build-up to the election, and election day itself, in Sahara, in the urban areas of Laayoune and Dakhla, as well as in villages, and with nomadic travelers. Nowhere was POLISARIO evident: not in candidates for the elections; not in protests or pressure groups or posters; and not in any evidence of POLISARIO’s arguments in the platforms of the local candidates.

Everyone to whom I spoke expressed amazement that even the subject of POLISARIO and its Algerian-backed campaign for independence should be discussed. That was a war long since gone, and long discredited for the foreign interference it represented in the lives of the locals. The Sahara, like the rest of Morocco, is moving rapidly ahead in economic wealth, social and economic possibilities and freedoms, and in self-awareness like nowhere else in Africa. Indeed, it is an extension in many ways of Europe, but with its historical and distinct personality. And where Europe remains to some extent bogged down in economic crisis, Morocco is vibrant and enthusiastic.

In MWS – which POLISARIO propaganda, blasted forth with Algerian funds, describes as violent and dangerous – the people are safe and increasingly prosperous. The cities and towns are abuzz with building and commercial activity, and in home-building. There are no curfews, contrary to POLISARIO claims, and no threats of violence at night. I walked the night streets and saw no evidence of danger, or even of fear among people. Women, in ones and twos, or in groups, went about their business without fear for their safety.

At a time when elections in Lebanon and Iran were taking place with very real security concerns, and concerns over the validity and transparency of the polling, Morocco was a festival of optimism and painstaking attention to the sanctity of the election process. It was a privilege to see Morocco set a new standard in electoral mechanics, which could serve well as a model for the developing and the developed world.

Clearly, Morocco is increasingly becoming the intersection of the vital triangle of Europe and the Mediterranean, the Atlantic societies, and Africa. Neighboring and seething Algeria, meanwhile, has mired itself in old-style socialist politics and antique geographic expansionism. Morocco, under King Mohammed VI’s remarkable reform process (this writer has not seen anything like it around the world), is opening to new technology, the devolution of social responsibility and opportunity to all levels of society, and to the creation of a balanced economy. Indeed, this balance is evidenced by how well Morocco has protected itself from the ravages of the global economic downturn.

We will now see Morocco take center-stage in helping to create a new Africa as well as a new Mediterranean matrix. The African Union will either embrace this, and woo Morocco as an AU member, abandoning the laughable suggestion that POLISARIO and its so-called Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) – a country without a territory – should be recognized as a member instead of the Kingdom of Morocco, or the AU itself will begin to lose any teeth it has left.

In the meantime, it is worth looking at the official report on the 12 June elections in Morocco undertaken by the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), the US-based worldwide group, along with the American Center for Democracy (ACD).

Go to www.StrategicStudies.org, and the story there has a click-through to the remarkable and enlightening full report.

Now, with the substance of the debate over the will of the Saharan people resolved, it can be expected that the shouting will begin from Algiers. Indeed, it has already begun. When substance is absent, it is replaced by shouting. We can only hope that the international community, and the United Nations, will do their own “due diligence” and force an end to Algeria’s constant manipulation of the world media.

Indeed, the UN security forces in Sahara saw the same election which I observed. The UN saw no need for “extra protection” for Saharans going to the polls. Indeed, in another life I would welcome the chance to serve as a UN “peacekeeper” in MWS: a blissful time in a beautiful location, with no threat of violence to disturb a hard-working and friendly society.