Krystian Kamiński on X.
Emmanuel Macron sent a letter to the king of Morocco Muhammad VI. In his message, as announced on July 30, the French president declared that "the autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the framework in which this issue must be resolved", thus accepting Morocco's unilateral plan for the region occupied by it. Macron declared that this position was now determined by France's interior and abroad policies.
The letter was welcomed by King Mohamed IV. His press service regarded this as "a crucial advance in supporting Morocco's sovereignty over the Sahara".
The Western Sahara area is Africa's last area which, after decolonization, inactive has unclear legal and global status. For the UN, it is the last non-colonized territory. It was originally inhabited by the Sahrawi tribes – a wandering people mostly formed from a mix of local Berbers with the coming from the 11th century arabian Bedouin tribes. Their culture was originally nomadic. In 1884, their lands were occupied by Spain, which made them its colony. Madrid ruled the region little than a century old.
In 1973, a group of Sahravia students founded the People's Liberation Front of Sakiji al-Hamry and Río de Oro (Front Polisario) in Algeria. Transforming after the death of General Franco Spain relinquished power over Western Sahara in 1975 in the context of which Front Polisario proclaimed in 1976 the Sahara arabian Democratic Republic (SADR). However, Sahrawi did not have independency after the Spanish retreat, the area was occupied by armies of neighboring Morocco and Mauritania. This happened under a Madrid agreement signed by 3 states six days before Franco's death. The surrounding caudillo was manifested by a force of Moroccans – 350 000 inhabitants of the kingdom invaded Western Sahara in that year as part of an event known as "green march". It was besides condemned by the UN safety Council Resolution.
The Polisario troops have taken up conflict with both interventions. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara and recognized the statehood of SADR. It was subsequently recognised by 84 countries of the world, mostly in Africa and South America. For almost half a century, however, 38 countries have already withdrawn or suspended designation for SADR. Currently, 36 countries have relations with SADR. Poland does not recognise the republic of the desert people, like no EU country, but, with the exception of two, no EU country recognises Morocco's sovereignty over the region, which is contrary to the assumptions of the UN peace process. Nevertheless, the Warsaw elites politically support Morocco's aspirations.
In 1991, the UN just negotiated a ceasefire and established a peace mission in Western Sahara to monitor the truce and aid prepare a referendum on the future of this territory. The referendum never happened. Morocco and Polisario do not agree on who has the right to vote in a referendum: whether only the first inhabitants of the region and their descendants, or the people who came during Moroccan control and their descendants. A dispute akin to the 1 at the time of organizing the advanced Silesia plebiscite in 1921. Moroccans have never made the impression that they treat their authority over the region temporarily and that they intend to always leave.
Since 1975, the number of many Sahrawich have escaped to Algeria, while among the people on site, at least 2 thirds are already people coming from the internationally recognized territory of Morocco. Much of them are Moroccan soldiers and officers. The Moroccan authorities have there, according to many commentators, a dense hand – Polisario accuses her regularly of administrative detention, torture, discrimination.
Morocco did not control the most inhospitable areas of the region, located along the Mauritanian border, from which it separated by a peculiar barrier of the wall, forts and minefields. This space for years has been a region of Operation Polisario. Most Sahrawich and Polisario are based in Algerian camps in the Tindufu area, which protegizes them. No wonder, then, that it was Algeria that the strongest criticism of the Macron movement, confirmed by an ambassador's call in Paris for consultations, came. Algerian-Marocan relations were always poor, or rather bad, as in 1963, erstwhile a short-lived "war on sand" occurred on the border. Now the Ministry of abroad Affairs of Algeria has declared that France refuses Sahrawi the right to self-determination, and its arrangement with Morocco is simply a collusion of the “old and fresh colonial power”.
The conflict has and an additional ideological subject – Polisario is simply a organization to leftist, Republican nationalism, the formation besides derives from the ruling elite in Algeria, while Morocco remains a monarchy in which the king continues to exercise real power and in which influences stay Islamists.
FRANCE LOSSES IN AFRICAN
Emmanuel Macron sent a letter to the king of Morocco Muhammad VI. In his message, as announced on 30 July, the French president declared that "the autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the framework in which this issue must be resolved", accepting this... pic.twitter.com/KJnbbOTWr1
In November 2020, the Moroccan authorities sent an army to unlock the road leading to the only border crossing with Mauritania on which the Sahrawi set up blockades. The Moroccan Army entered the alleged demilitarized region in this way, causing an detonation of clashes with Polisario troops – the first in 29 years. The Polisario Front then announced a break-up of a truce lasting for almost 3 decades, although there were no major armed attacks. In 2021, relations between Algeria and Morocco besides worsened. Algiers broke diplomatic relations with Rabat. In November, there was an attack on Algerians in Western Sahara.
Morocco was very successful in obtaining designation of its sovereignty over Western Sahara from the US in 2020. Donald Trump appreciated the decisive pro-Americanity of the royal government of Morocco, but even more crucial was the extremist pro-Israeli course of this president of the United States. Trump then appealed to effort to accomplish normalization for Israel in the region. Along with the United arabian Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, Morocco turned out to be another arabian country that established relations with the Zionist state. For Morocco, it was a double “something for something” due to the fact that its power over Western Sahara was besides recognized by Tel Aviv. In 2022 the sovereignty of Morocco over the region was recognised by its erstwhile colonial metropolis, Spain, which was already an crucial accomplishment for Rabat.
Control over Western Sahara allows Morocco to exploit its natural resources, including a crucial expansion of the maritime economical zone. These are large fisheries where the European Union has authorised Moroccans to operate. Moroccans besides extract phosphorites from 1 of the world's largest discovery mines of this mineral in Bukron. In the territory of Western Sahara and below its sea zone, gas and oil deposits are discovered. In the second case, exploration and exploitation licences were granted by the Moroccans to French TotalFinaElf and American Space Energy. The lobbying of the mining sector is likely to have influenced president Macron's step.
However, I consider this movement to be a signal of France's weakening in the region. Antagonizes a partner as crucial to Paris and to Maghreb and the Sahel as Algeria. By explicitly agreeing to the terms of 1 side, the French close for themselves the option of playing 2 states, lavender, mediating, they cease to be a player for which Algerians and Morocco must and want to pursue. The stakes have been made. All of this takes place against the background of the reiterade of the French of the Sahel, where soldiers from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger drove their soldiers and invited Russians, while breaking up the economical Community of the West African States (ECOWAS) by creating a fresh confederation. In this context, France simply enters the railroads designated by the US.
