Morocco has preferred to remember without overflowing the massive human mobilization with which it forced Spain’s departure from Western Sahara, its last African colony. One week after the approval, without any vote against, of a resolution that establishes the autonomy plan for Rabat as a basis for the solution of the territorial conflict, King Mohamed VI has chosen to cancel his traditional speech at the Green March festival, held this Thursday. He has also traveled to the United Arab Emirates instead of presiding over the commemorative ceremonies in Laayoune, as he did 10 years ago on the occasion of the 40th anniversary.
In , the capital of the Sahara, the holiday atmosphere was evident this Thursday in the central Mechuar Square (headquarters of official Moroccan centers), with entire families crowded before musical performances and historical reenactments among closed businesses. Meanwhile, the activity seemed like any other weekday in Sahrawi nationalist neighborhoods such as Casa Piedra and Colominas, which emerged under Spanish colonial administration, amid a reinforced deployment of security forces.
Only a few ministers have attended the commemorative ceremonies in El Aaiún these days. He has established October 31, the date of the vote favorable to the interests of his country at the UN, as the new national holiday of Unity. Incidentally, he has decided to suppress the speech of the Green March holiday, in which each year he commemorated the decision of his father, Hassan II, to advance more than 350,000 Moroccans towards the Sahrawi border defended by the Spanish army on November 6, 1975. Eight days later, an agreement signed in Madrid put an end to the Spanish colonial presence in the Sahara.
Currently, the territory is 80% under Rabat’s control. , who from exile in Algeria defends the independence of the territory through self-determination.
Amid a sea of red and green pennants and flags, the Moroccan national flag, and portraits of King Mohamed VI in the capital of the Sahara, the main attraction of the 50th anniversary seems to have been the symbolic recreations of the Green March, where citizens take photographs in front of old British Bedford trucks used in transporting the 1975 mobilization. These same vehicles still continue to transport water tankers to the municipal tanks of El Aaiún.
At night, a recreation of the Green March, accompanied by a drone show and named Nostalgiaplanned to bring together thousands of people in the center of the city.
Unionist sectors
From the openly unionist sectors, in favor of pure and simple annexation to Morocco, the mayor of El Aaiún, Hamdi Uld Errachid, has assured that “the latest resolution of the Security Council definitively settles the Sahara conflict, and establishes that Moroccan sovereignty is indisputable” in statements collected by Cadena SER. Tribal leader of the Ergueibat, the largest nomadic group in Western Sahara, Errachid, 78, maintains that those who demand self-determination “are not from the Sahara.”
The president of the Municipal Administration has also asked Spain to follow in the footsteps of other countries and open a consulate in his city, as well as to approve investments in the territory of its former colony.
The pro-Moroccan Sahrawi authorities of El Aaiún assure that they are reaching out to the exiles of Tindouf (southwest of Algeria) to return to the Sahara, where more than 80% of the current population has arrived from Morocco in the last 50 years. From underground, supporters of the independence of the Sahara and sympathizers of the Polisario Front question whether the recent Security Council resolution puts an end to the right to self-determination.
“Legitimate fight”
“As long as the Moroccan occupation continues, which deprives the Sahrawi people of their right to self-determination and sovereignty over their resources, the Sahrawi people will continue their legitimate struggle,” said Ali Salem Tamek, president of the human rights organization Codesa, quoted by the Efe agency. The same source insists that the “only legitimate representative” of the Sahrawis remains the Polisario Front.
In recent years, Rabat’s investments in Western Sahara have been recorded for more than 8 billion euros. This has resulted in rapid demographic and urban expansion in Laayoune. From the roof of a hotel on the Smara highway, where the new hospital under construction, the Faculty of Medicine and other educational centers are located, the growth of the city seems to have no end, while new works are undertaken, such as a new bridge on the north-south axis of the Sahara.
With this horizon, the Sahrawi Larbi Enas, 60 years old, proposes a third way. He was military chief of the Polisario before returning to El Aaiún after the ceasefire with Morocco in 1991. Founder of the Saharawi Movement for Peace, an autonomist organization from which he has already disassociated himself, he currently directs the Center for Peace for Political and Strategic Studies. “From civil society, I believe that self-determination is now a utopia. We were nomads and never had a State,” he argues. He considers that Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan can be a starting point, but believes that the proposal “must evolve.”
“Morocco has to reform its Constitution to recognize historical autonomy for the Sahara,” he warns. “Meanwhile, reality shows changes,” he points out the new neighborhoods from the hotel rooftop. “The city that the Spanish left in 1975 after the Green March now has a population 10 times larger, of about 500,000 inhabitants,” he says.
The UN special envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, is now awaiting proposals from the parties to develop a “broad agenda of negotiations” based on the Moroccan autonomy plan. In statements to the press, the United Nations mediator warned on Wednesday that now “the work begins to achieve a mutually consensual solution.”
De Mistura, experienced in complex UN missions such as Syria, also points out that the recent Security Council resolution “provides a framework for negotiations,” but “does not automatically prescribe an outcome.” “Only consent serves to comply with the principle of self-determination,” concludes the diplomat who must direct the negotiations on Western Sahara.
