The sands of the Sahara desert in Tindouf, Algeria, were the scene of massive protests this week. Thousands of Sahrawis from the refugee camps in that Algerian region, where they have lived poorly since they fled the Spanish Sahara after the Moroccan invasion half a century ago, came out to protest with flags of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and a cry: “No autonomy, only self-determination.”
They intended to make their voices heard thousands of miles away, in New York, where the Security Council was going to vote this Friday on a resolution drafted by the United States on its future. In it, Washington put in black and white its intention for Morocco’s will to prevail in the solution to the conflict: for the Maghreb country to incorporate de jure the territory it already controls de facto in exchange for giving it a certain degree of autonomy.
TINDUF, 10/28/2025.- Hundreds of people demonstrated this Tuesday in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian region of Tindouf, for the second consecutive day, against the US resolution proposal, which prioritizes Moroccan autonomy for Western Sahara and which is expected to be voted on in the UN Security Council on Thursday, October 30. / Mahfud Mohamed Lamin Bechri / EFE
“Tempers are quite heated among the Sahrawis. They are demanding the authorities respond with military escalation. There is a lot of criticism of the Polisario Front because all this time of low-intensity war has not met expectations,” a Sahrawi official who prefers to speak anonymously told EL PERIÓDICO. “They are asking for the abandonment of a political process that, after 35 years, has led to this draft resolution that leaves no other option than autonomy under Morocco, which no one even knows what it consists of.”
United Nations Resolution
He UN Security Council has finally given the green light to a resolution proposed by the Donald Trump Administration, which establishes the autonomy proposal under Moroccan sovereignty as a basis for negotiations. In exchange, it allows the renewal of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara for another year. It is established that the Rabat proposal “could constitute the solution more viable”.
The vote has ended with the result of 11 favorable votes, three abstentions, (China, Russia y Pakistan) and no contrary vote.
He, who defends the self-determination of the Sahara, already warned, before the vote, that he would not negotiate a proposal that did not include a referendum. Algeria has decided not to participate in the vote, its representative has taken the floor to criticize the resolution, they consider that the text “goes against the principles of the UN”, he has spoken of “missed opportunity” and that “this resolution does not create the momentum and the necessary conditions for your success.”
The vote reflects a trend: the West is increasingly turning against the Sahrawis. Spain has taken a Copernican turn under the Government of Pedro Sánchez and also favors the Moroccan proposal. Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron have proclaimed that the United States and France “recognize” Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory.
Morocco’s “autonomist plan”
In the so-called Green March of November 6, 1975, Moroccan soldiers and civilians, led by King Hasan II, conquered what was then province number 53 of Spain. The dictator Francisco Franco was dying in bed and the Alawite king saw his historic opportunity to keep the territory. “They caught us by surprise,” acknowledges the then ambassador in Rabat Amaro González de Mesa in the book “Ambassadors of Spain.”
Tens of thousands of Moroccans have since settled in cities such as El Aaiún or Dakhla, the former Villa Cisneros. Many Sahrawis fled to Algeria, and they remain there to this day.
Since then, the United Nations has tried to promote a self-determination referendum. He even created MINURSO. But the problems in defining the census and the obstacles put in place by Morocco have made it impossible.
In 2007, Rabat presented its proposal for a solution to the conflict, the so-called “plan autonomist”: legally incorporate Western Sahara into the Kingdom of Morocco, providing it with certain guarantees of self-government. But the details remain to be defined beyond the few pages made public and, for the United Nations, Western Sahara remains a region to be decolonized.
Trump’s coup
The conflict over Western Sahara has been frozen for decades. The United Nations has appointed one special envoy after another without achieving results or rapprochement between the parties. The current manager, since 2021, is Staffan de Mistura. He has made numerous tours around the region, including Algeria, Morocco and the Tindouf camps, to dialogue with all parties involved. But it has seen its negotiating work very limited, especially on the Moroccan side.
(FILE photo) View of the invasion by Morocco of the Spanish territory of Western Sahara after the process of abandonment by its colonizing power. / Europa Press / Europa Press
Everything began to change in December 2020. A few days before leaving the presidency, Donald Trump unexpectedly proclaimed the United States’ recognition of Morocco’s “sovereignty” over Western Sahara. It was the reward to the Maghreb country for joining the Abraham Accords. Morocco joined the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain and normalized its relations with Israel, despite the fact that the country continues to occupy the territory of Palestine.
Two years later, and by surprise, the president Pedro Sánchez acknowledged in a letter sent to the king of Morocco -and published by Mohamed VI himself- the autonomy plan presented by Morocco as the “most serious, realistic and credible basis” to resolve the Western Sahara conflict.
Spain, the former metropolis of Western Sahara, a territory where Spanish was spoken and the inhabitants had DNI, abandoned its neutrality in the dispute between Morocco and the Polisario.
The Sánchez Government has not yet clarified whether it continues to support a self-determination referendum as such, although it insists that it continues to support MINURSO, which promotes it. Maybe a referendum with one question in which one of the answers is the “autonomy” proposed by Morocco And another is independence? Rabat would not accept this second option, and Sánchez has decided to prioritize the relationship with the uncomfortable neighbor, with a land border with the Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla and a buffer for sub-Saharan migration to Spain.
The movement of the Sánchez Government unleashed a chain of similar recognitions in other countries, from the United Kingdom to Germany or Denmark. Just a year ago, the French president went even further and proclaimed before the Moroccan Parliament that, according to France, Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara corresponds to Morocco.
“Casus belli” between Algeria and Morocco
Formally, Morocco and the Polisario Front are at warafter the ceasefire reached in 1991 was broken four years ago. It is a low-intensity conflict, with few injuries and fewer deaths, but with occasional violent incidents.
On June 27, for example, the Polisario Front launched four rockets that hit the city of Smarawithin the territory of Western Sahara controlled by Morocco (three-quarters of the total, separated from the rest by a wall in the desert). Morocco responded with a drone attack against members of the Polisario.
The fear is that all of this will at some point escalate to a guerra regional. Algeria, supporter of the Polisario Front, is in conflict with Morocco for regional hegemony. Both countries have had their border closed since 1994. Algeria broke diplomatic relations with Morocco in August 2021 due to the “hostile acts” of its neighbor.
Donald Trump seems to want to add the resolution of this conflict to others that he believes he has resolved, from the war in Gaza to the clash between Pakistan and India. Make it part of a kind of global peace campaign, half real and half imaginary.
On October 20, the American president’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, assured that his country would try to achieve un “peace agreement” between Morocco and Algeria within 60 days. In reality, the countries are not at war. But for Washington, a negotiation between the Polisario Front and Rabat would ease tension between its Maghrebi partner and the Algerian neighbor. Both, however, maintain many other differences, such as border disputes and an arms race with an uncertain outcome.
The position of the Polisario Front
The Court of Justice of the European Union has officially recognized the Polisario Front as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people in the 2024 rulings. It annulled the EU’s fishing agreements with Morocco because they did not take into account the opinion of the Sahrawis in exile represented by that independence movement.
Seeing the movements in Washington to launch the resolution prioritizing Morocco’s autonomous option instead of the rself-determination eferendumthe Polisario Front launched a proposal for “a mutually acceptable political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara and restores regional peace and stability.”
He offered to negotiate in a letter addressed to the Secretary General of the UN, to which this newspaper has had access. I wanted to take advantage of the renewal of the MINURSO mandate, which ended this October 31, by carrying out a “gesture of good will”. The president of the Sahrawi Republic (SADR) and secretary general of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, sent António Guterres an expanded proposal “to allow the Sahrawi people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination through a referendum supervised by the United Nations and the African Union and to convey the willingness of the Sahrawi State to negotiate with the Kingdom of Morocco the establishment of strategic and mutually beneficial relations between the two countries.” Those of the Front claimed to be willing to share “costs of peace” with Morocco, that is, to make concessions.
Should the referendum lead to independence, the Polisario Front proposes that the new “Sahrawi State” negotiate with Rabat “strategic relations of cooperation” in political, economic and security matters, in addition to formulas for “temporary distribution of income from natural resources”, guarantees for resident Moroccan citizens, and an “agreed and orderly transition” process. It is also committed to building a democratic State, respectful of the rule of law and human rights, open to foreign investment and regional cooperation.
When they saw that the United States was circulating a draft insisting on the Moroccan route, they changed their tone. They threaten to break their participation “in any political process or negotiation based on the content of the draft resolution.”
