Western Sahara: Africa’s last colony, yearns for peace
The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR) commonly known as Western Sahara is Africa’s last remaining colony, yet most Africans don’t know about it!
Not only is this state of ignorance among fellow African states a “pity” but it’s also an indictment on them because colonialism is Africa’s common heritage. SADR is the only African nation still colonised by surprisingly, its neighbour, Kingdom of Morocco!
Sensing the lack of knowledge about his country, SADR’s Ambassador to Botswana, H. E Malainin Mohamed, has made it his singular mission to sensitise Batswana about the occupation; the hardships of the ordinary Saharawi and the continuing efforts by the country’s liberation movement, Frente Por la Liberacion de Saguia- Hamra y Rio de Oro ( POLISARIO) to free the country
In a bare- all interview with Botswana Guardian at Ocean Basket Restaurant, Airport Junction Mall, Mohamed lamented the impunity with which Morocco has treated Western Sahara, a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity ( OAU) now African Union ( AU).
Western Sahara is located in Northwest Africa and covers an area of 266,000 square kilometres. It is bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast and Mauritania to the East and South and has a 1,200- kilometre- long Atlantic Ocean coastline.
The SADR was proclaimed on 27 February 1976. Its provisional capital is Bir Lehlou.
He also roundly exposed Morocco’s chicaneries and compulsion to deny Saharawis their inalienable right to self determination through its clear contempt of international legality, as enshrined in various United Nations General Assembly, UN Security Council resolutions and decisions of the African Union regarding the holding of free and fair referendum in Western Sahara.
Worse still, Morocco, in cahoots with the European Union, Japan, Korean and other nations which he
accuses of double standards on the issue of human rights and democracy - continues to plunder Western Sahara’s marine resources in the rich 1400kmlong coast.
This, in stark violation of the European Union Court of Justice rulings of 21 December 2016 and 27 January 2018 in which Western Sahara and Morocco were clearly identified as “two distinct countries” and therefore any trade deals between Morocco and the European Union ( EU) “cannot be applied to the territory of Western Sahara”.
of Further, Justice ruling the European of February Union 2018 Court held that a longstanding fisheries agreement between Morocco and the EU “does not apply to the waters off the coast of Western Sahara”.
“Western Sahara is rich in natural resources, that’s why they are not willing to let us live in peace,” Mohamed says, explaining further that the country is well endowed with phosphate and has great potential for oil and gas exploitation as well as pastoral nomadism.
Just Wall like that the separated notorious Communist Berlin Germany from West Germany, Morocco has also built the world’s longest wall that separates Western Sahara. The land is to this day littered with land mines, which get washed away in the desert terrain during storms and thereby posing a constant danger to inhabitants.
SADR was a Spanish colony from 1884. It was close to being liberated by POLASARIO Front in 1975 when Spain “secretly signed an illegal agreement” with Western Sahara’s neighbours – Morocco and Mauritania, the terms of withdraw which were leaving that Western Spain would Sahara just under the clutches of two armies – Morocco attacking from the north and Mauritania from the south.
At that time, were it not for the valour and gallantry of Polasario Front, the small population - maybe 300, 000 Saharawis - could have been “exterminated” in the Moroccan invasions that killed “thousands of Saharawis and their livestock”, impoverishing them and forcing them
to flee to cities where the coloniser could control them.
Mohamed explains that to this day, they still find lots of “mass graves” of people who were shot and killed by Moroccan armies during those 1975 invasions. “We don’t know who they are, we have to do DNA testing to establish their identities,” he says. Other people disappeared.
In 1991 some survivors were released after the United Nations intervened in the Western Sahara by brokering a Peace Plan through which Western Sahara would eventually be liberated. They narrated their gruesome ordeals under Morocco’s persecution and told stories of disappearances.
Mohamed accuses Morocco of using its might as a big country to wage war and crimes against humanity on the occupied territories of Western Sahara, where refugee camps are littered with political refugees whose human rights are violated on a daily basis by the occupying force of Morocco.
Last week Friday, Mohamed took his campaign to the University of Botswana where he hosted a screening of the film, ‘ Life is Waiting: Referendum in Western Sahara’ to a group of students and some members of the public and thereafter gave a lecture on the goingson in his country.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WESTERN SAHARA AS NARRATED BY AMBASSADOR MOHAMED:
Western Sahara is the last African decolonisation case, and it has been on the agenda of the United Nations since 1963 when the Territory, known then as Spanish Sahara, was placed on the UN list of Non- Self- Governing Territories under Chapter XI of the UN Charter thereby recognising the Saharawi people as a colonised people and accordingly their inalienable right to self- determination and independence.
The UN General Assembly has consistently called for the exercise by the Saharawi people of that right in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 1514 ( XV) of 1960 containing the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
Owing to delaying tactics by Spain,
the colonial power, to hinder the decolonisation of the Territory, which the UN had repeatedly called for, the Saharawis continued their peaceful resistance to the colonial presence.
Although the first Sahrawi nationalist movement was brutally crushed by the colonial authorities on the 17th of June 1970, it paved the way for the creation of the Frente POLISARIO on the 10th of May 1973 as a liberation movement with the declared objective to use armed struggle to achieve independence from colonial domination. The movement immediately gained overwhelming support among the Saharawis and was later recognised by the United Nations as the sole and legitimate representative of the Saharawi people.
by Despite the increasing the pressure armed brought resistance to bear of the Frente POLISARIO and the UN’s successive calls for the decolonisation of the Territory, it was not until August 1974 that Spain finally declared that it was prepared to organise a referendum on self- determination in Western Sahara in early 1975.
From 8 May to 14 June 1975, a UN fact- finding mission of the Committee of the 24 led by Ambassador of Cote d’Ivoire to the UN, Simon Ake, toured the region. In its report, the UN visiting mission underlined that there was a major agreement among the Saharawi people on the issue of independence and on total opposition to the territorial claims of both Morocco and Mauritania, and that the Frente POLISARIO appeared to be the dominant political force in the Territory and enjoyed unprecedented support among the Saharawi people.
The decolonisation process of Western Sahara however was interrupted violently when Morocco invaded and occupied parts of the Territory by force on 31 October 1975 in violation of its own obligations under the UN and OAU Charters and in complete disregard for the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice ( ICJ) issued on the 16th October 1975, which unequivocally affirmed that:
“The materials and information presented to it [ the Court] do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity. Thus the Court has not found legal ties of such a nature as might affect the application of General Assembly resolution 1514 ( XV) in the decolonisation of Western Sahara and, in particular, of the principle of self- determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the Territory.”
In this regard that Morocco’s move to invade Western Sahara was mainly driven by the expansionist ideology of the so- called “Greater Morocco” and the territorial claims that Morocco subsequently laid on all its neighbours based on fake historical claims. Advanced in the late 1950s by the Moroccan ultranationalist Istiqlal party, shortly after Morocco gained its independence in 1956, this ideology was immediately embraced by the Moroccan ruling monarchy as a central element of its domestic and regional policy.
It asserted that the then Spanish Sahara, all of Mauritania, a large part of western Algeria, Louis of Senegal as well as an important part of northern Mali ( including Timbuktu) all belonged historically to Morocco.
It took Morocco nine years to recogni s e Maur i tania as an independent country, and it tried to occupy a part of the Algerian western desert by force in 1963.
Morocco’s drastic move was also driven by a domestic legitimacy crisis since the rule of King Hassan II of Morocco was challenged by two coup d’état in July 1971 and August 1972. Although the king survived both attempts, the mounting discontent in the country, particularly within the Moroccan military, made the situation even more difficult for the monarchy.
Apart from Morocco’s increased interest in the abundant natural resources of Western Sahara as well as the Cold War geopolitical game at the time, the monarchy’s dire need for an outlet for its legitimacy crisis and growing domestic problems was the real reason behind Morocco’s move to invade and occupy Western Sahara.