CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
by ANB-BIA, Brussels, September 1998
THEME = An ANB-BIA DOSSIER
Western Sahara voters will have to choose between
independence or linking up with Morocco
at the referendum which is to take place under United Nations auspices.
It had originally been scheduled for 7 December 1998,
but has now been postponed until the first months of 1999.
Since 1975, Morocco and the Polisario Front
(which is fighting for the independence of Western Sahara [Sahraoui])
have been fighting over this former Spanish colony's sovereignty
Western Sahara covers approximately 266,000 sq.km and stretches along the Atlantic coast between Morocco and Mauritania. It is a desert but is rich in phosphates, and along its coastal waters, with fish. Since 1884, the country was under Spanish rule although effective occupation by the Spanish authorities only really got off the ground about fifty years later. In 1976, Spain decided to leave the territory.
Sahraoui's three neighbouring countries, Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria, all claim rights over the country. Shortly before independence, Morocco adopted its "Greater Morocco" theory, which King Hassan II made his own. According to this theory, Morocco claimed both Western Sahara and Mauritania (which Spain refused to recognise as an independent country during the first nine years of independence).
By 1964, the UN had declared itself in favour of the principle of self-determination for the people of Western Sahara. From 1969, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania appeared to be coming round to the same opinion. In July 1973, they confirmed they were in agreement with Western Sahara's self-determination.
But then General Franco died in Spain and the country went through a period of crisis. Morocco's King Hassan II took advantage of Spain's succession crisis and on 14 November 1975, induced Madrid to sign the Madrid Agreement which handed over Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania. This victory, preceded in Morocco, by a campaign to build up a jihad (holy war) atmosphere that culminated in the epic 350,000-strong "Green March", at last gave King Hassan's regime real popularity and stability. Already in 1975, Morocco had occupied the northern part of Western Sahara and, from then onwards waged war against the Sahraoui guerilla movement (the Polisario Front).
The Spanish left on 26 February 1976, and immediately the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio del Oro (Polisario), which had been founded in 1973, proclaimed the Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic (RASD). Algeria helped to arm the Polisario guerillas and provided Sahraoui refugees facilities in the area around Tindouf, in the far west of Algeria. Originally Spain had handed over Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania, but Mauritania soon realised it could ill afford the huge cost of holding its share of the territory, especially in view of the on-going Polisario guerilla action. So, in 1979 Mauritania withdrew from the territory and handed it over to Morocco.
For years on end, and in varying degrees, Polisario managed to pose a continual threat to the Moroccan army. Morocco constructed a defence line ("The Wall") to secure most of Western Sahara, and especially, to guarantee the unhampered extraction of phosphates in the Bou-Craa region. Morocco also instituted various administrative measures to integrate the local population into Moroccan public life and launched important development projects. Over the course of years, the Moroccan government enticed tens of thousands of Moroccans to settle in the region.
In the realm of diplomacy, Polisario initially achieved notable success. By October 1979, 34 nations had recognised Sahraoui, of which 20 were African. By 1982, 26 of the 50-member states of the Organisation of African Unity OAU) had recognised the Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic and in February 1982, it was admitted to the OAU. Whereupon Morocco took umbrage and left the OAU.
There seemed to be no way out of the conflict, and as the years went by, especially during 1996 and 1997, initial sympathy for the new country began to fade between 1996 and 1997. And, in recent years, Morocco has scored a number of clear diplomatic successes - nine African countries one after the other suspended recognition of Sahraoui: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Togo, Sao Tome e Principe, Swaziland.
Already at the 1979 Monrovia Summit, the OAU had advocated a referendum in Western Sahara as there was no bilateral or regional solution at hand. King Hassan II accepted this "in principal" at the Nairobi Summit in 1981. But it was postponed again and again, as the drawing-up of the voting lists proved to be a major obstacle.
Over the last ten years, there has been growing pressure to find a solution to the conflict. On 29 April 1991, the UN Security Council voted in favour of a plan to establish a force to be known as "The United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), for overseeing a referendum in the territory. This mission would be in charge of monitoring the ceasefire and holding a referendum, but little progress was made. By 1992, Morocco was already talking about its "Saharan province" This met with energetic protests by Polisario, which accused Morocco of prejudging the results of the referendum. About the same time, several Polisario Front members defected to Morocco. They were tired of the endless fighting and argued that a country with so few inhabitants was not viable.
The dispute went on. In July 1995, the United States threatened to withdraw its support from the UN operation if the referendum was not organised. Polisario, which had respected the peace for five years, threatened to resume hostilities. But the UN decided to pursue their referendum operation.
On 17 March, 1997, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, appointed James Baker, former US Secretary of State, as his personal representative in Western Sahara, with the aim of reaching a comprehensive agreement. Mr. Baker was convinced that both Morocco and Polisario wanted to end the fighting. For Polisario: Living conditions in the refugee camps were getting increasingly harder. For Morocco: The costs of occupying the territory military were rocketing. Direct negotiations between the two parties led to the signing of an Agreement in Houston, Texas, USA, in the autumn of 1997. This Agreement brought varying points of view closer and was scheduled to lead to a referendum for self-determination by the end of 1998. There remained, however, the difficult problem of identifying genuine voters.
Who is entitled to take part in the referendum? What constitutes a Sahraoui citizen? Once the basic agreement on the referendum was reached, a major problem was to identify prospective voters in view of drawing up an electoral roll. Both parties to the Agreement hold diverging views on the criteria to be used for defining who can vote in the referendum.
Before withdrawing from their former colony in 1974, Spain organised a population census. 25 years on, in spite of its shortcomings, this document remains the only official population list available. Polisario wanted to restrict the voting population to the 73,500 people recorded at that time, plus their direct relatives, the major part of whom live in refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania. Polisario also agreed to add some forgotten tribes, but contested the figures put forward by Morocco.
Over the years, Morocco had encouraged an integration policy in its "Saharan provinces". They held the view that every Western Saharan citizen aged 18 and more - whether recorded or not in 1974 - had a right to take part in the referendum.
Eventually, MINURSO persuaded both parties to agree on five criteria for identifying possible voters. Some of these criteria leave no possible doubt as to the genuineness of the prospective voter; others leave room for doubt. Each person to be registered on the voting lists must be in a position to justify that he/she belongs to one of the following groups: 1) Having been recorded by the Spanish authorities in 1974; 2) Having lived in Western Sahara at the time of the Census, but not having been recorded; 3) Being a parent (grandparent etc) or child (grandchild etc) of one of the aforementioned groups; 4) Being a child (grandchild etc) of a Sahraoui father born in the territory; 5) Having lived in the territory for six years without interruption, or at least intermittently for twelve years.
From the end of 1997, MINURSO set up offices for registering voters. Their number progressively increased to five in Western Sahara, seven in Morocco, four in Tindouf, Algeria, and two in Mauritania. In addition to MINURSO officials, tribal chiefs representing both Morocco's and the Polisario's interests are present. They are the ones who finally decide that the necessary criteria have been met by prospective voters. A mixed Commission chairs the whole procedure. The whole process is extremely slow and the closing date for final registrations has had to be extended several times.
According to MINURSO, by 29 May 1998, 121,221 Sahraoui people had been identified. But according to the UN Secretary-General, nearly 50,000 people from "uncontested tribal groups" and approximately 65,000 from "contested tribal groups" remained to be identified by Polisario.
Undoubtedly, many objections will be raised by both parties when the top-secret lists are officially published. From time to time, MINURSO publishes the number of people accepted as voters. The May 1998 figures were challenged by Morocco, which accused MINURSO of not taking into account all the criteria laid down for identification.
Tension is mounting on both sides. Sahraoui's very survival depends on the vote of less than 200,000 people. In February 1998, a Moroccan official stated in Le Monde: "If the vote goes in favour of Western Sahara's independence, the Moroccan monarchy is done for. Morocco's present regime has invested too much at all levels - political, economical and military - in trying keep the Saharan provinces within its sphere of influence. Morocco simply can't afford to be beaten". From Sahraoui's point of view, if the vote goes for joining the territory to Morocco, Polisario will lose everything, including its reason for existing, and there'll be no more Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic. With no nation they can call their own, many refugees are likely to move to Mauritania, thus opening the door to destabilisation in that country.
June 1998: Western Sahara's present situation was one of the stumbling blocks during the debates at the 34th OAU Summit in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 8-10 June 1998. As only a minority of countries have as yet recognised the Sahraoui Republic, member nations of the OAU assumed that Sahraoui would now be excluded. They were also hoping that this would encourage Morocco to return to the OAU. But some countries (notably Algeria, Madagascar and the Southern African countries) opposed Sahraoui's exclusion from the Organisation. It was not even possible to put the question to a vote, because there's no article in the OAU's charter providing for the exclusion of a member. The African heads of state finally decided to delay any decision and allow time for in-depth thought at the Foreign Affairs Ministers' meeting, scheduled to take place in February 1999.
September 1998: The 12th Summit of Non-Aligned Countries, meeting in Durban, South Africa, adopted a resolution, expressing the member countries' satisfaction at progress made in view of solving the problem of Western Sahara, and again expressed support for efforts made by the UN for a free and impartial referendum as provided for in the Houston Agreements.
The end of the identification exercise? On 4 September 1998, MINURSO announced the identification of future voters for the self-determination referendum had now been completed, that is, with the exception of the three contested tribal groups. MINURSO officials had interviewed over 200,000 people, 147,000 of whom had been registered to take part in the referendum. (61,000 in Western Sahara, 34,800 in the refugee camps around Tindouf, 5,400 in Mauritania, 45,800 in Morocco).
But there's still the problem of the three contested tribal groups (65,000 people): Morocco wants them to take part in the referendum; Polisario is opposed.
Further negotiations. On 24 September, Morocco's Interior Minister, Driss Basri, said that Mr Baker is going to meet in Lisbon, with representatives from Morocco and Polisario to hopefully find a solution to remaining problems. This means that the referendum could, yet again, be re-scheduled (to April 1999?...).
END
CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
PeaceLink 1998 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement