[News] Africa’s Forgotten Colony in the Sahara

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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*Africa’s Forgotten Colony in the Sahara* 
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/orgotten-colony-in-the-sahara-/sdhgn7/1195475823?h=fCe1aIX8QLdvFmYzo-A08tAPVqrqM_BSOhUtssaaePI> 

*By Paweł Wargan - November 18, 2022*

Since 1975 <www.unocha.org/middle-east-and-north-africa-romena/algeria>, 
thousands of Sahrawi people have lived in five refugee camps in the 
Algerian Sahara. They named these camps after cities 
<reliefweb.int/report/libya/humanitarian-implementation-plan-hip-north-africa-echowwdbud201501000-last-update> 
in Western Sahara: Ausserd, Boujdour, Dakhla, Laayoune, and Smara. In a 
straight line, Smara the camp is some 400 kilometers from Smara the 
city. But a sand berm, built 
<www.reuters.com/article/us-morocco-westernsahara/morocco-pm-says-western-sahara-wall-at-centre-of-dispute-completed-idUSKBN27X2MH> 
in the 1980s by Morocco, makes the distance unassailable. At 2,700 
kilometers, the berm <twitter.com/ProgIntl/status/1589224964330491905> 
is the second-longest military fortification in the world, after the 
Great Wall of China. Reinforced with ditches and barbed wire fences, 
artillery and tanks, guarded outposts, and millions 
<www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/6/5/western-saharas-struggle-for-freedom-cut-off-by-a-wall> 
of land mines, the sand berm partitions 
<twitter.com/ProgIntl/status/1589224964330491905> Western 
Sahara—separating 80 percent of Western Sahara controlled by Morocco 
from the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic—which is recognized 
<www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/nsgt> by the United Nations as the 
last “non-self-governing territory” in Africa. In 1991, MINURSO, the UN 
Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, announced 
<peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/minurso> a plebiscite that would give 
the Sahrawi people a choice: independence or integration with Morocco. 
In April 1991, the Sahrawi people packed their belongings in boxes, 
choosing the former.

Seeking access to Western Sahara’s rich coastline, Spain first seized 
<progressive.international/wire/2022-04-27-the-history-of-western-sahara-is-a-history-of-betrayal/en> 
the territory after European colonizers partitioned 
<www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/11/15/berlin-1884-remembering-the-conference-that-divided-africa> 
Africa at the West African Conference of Berlin that took place from 
November 1884 to February 1885. By the 1970s, facing resistance from the 
Sahrawi people and increasing internal pressures, the regime of 
Francisco Franco in Spain agreed 
<mobile.twitter.com/ProgIntl/status/1589224943975165952> to hold a 
referendum on independence, which never took place 
<www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-feb-26-mn-12005-story.html>. Spain 
eventually pulled out from Western Sahara. Meanwhile, to the south and 
the north, Mauritania and Morocco had set their sights on Western 
Sahara’s resources. In November 1975, despite a judgment from the 
International Court of Justice that <www.icj-cij.org/en/case/61> neither 
Mauritania nor Morocco had territorial sovereignty over the land, 
Morocco sent <www.vice.com/en/article/yvq3ey/cold-war-in-the-desert> 
25,000 troops and 350,000 settlers to Western Sahara. On November 14, 
Spain signed the tripartite Madrid Accords 
<treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%20988/volume-988-i-14450-english.pdf> 
with Morocco and Mauritania, effectively ceding Western Sahara to its 
invaders.

The Polisario Front, a national liberation movement formed in 1973 
<www.reuters.com/article/us-sahara-polisario-timeline-idUSL2163728820071221> 
to oppose Spanish colonialism, now fought on two fronts. Supported by 
Algeria, it defeated 
<www.seguridadinternacional.es/?q=en/content/proposal-peace-western-sahara-applications-kurdish-model-regional-autonomy> 
the Mauritanians in 1978. But Morocco retained its control over Western 
Sahara—with significant backing 
<www.seguridadinternacional.es/?q=en/content/proposal-peace-western-sahara-applications-kurdish-model-regional-autonomy> 
from Western powers, including the United States and members of NATO. At 
the Museum of Resistance in the camps, the Polisario keeps 
<www.mashallahnews.com/western-sahara-in-beirut/> weapons of war 
captured during its struggle—tanks, airplanes, artillery, and armored 
vehicles from Austria, Germany, France, Spain, the U.S., Belgium, and 
apartheid South Africa.

Morocco controls 80 percent of Western Sahara. In the other 20 percent, 
the Polisario Front governs the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a 
state battling for recognition. Armed conflict continued until Morocco 
and the Polisario agreed to a ceasefire 
<minurso.unmissions.org/ceasefire-monitoring> in September 1991 overseen 
by MINURSO. “I was just coming back from Syria, a young graduate, having 
lived my entire life within this liberation process,” Oubi Bachir, a 
diplomat for the Polisario Front, told me. “I discovered not just hope, 
but jubilation. Finally, we were going home.” The Sahrawi people packed 
boxes to take their belongings back to Western Sahara. But as the boxes 
gathered dust, jubilation turned to frustration. The independence 
referendum has failed 
<www.africanews.com/2022/03/19/polisario-front-rejects-new-spain-s-stance-on-western-sahara//> 
to take place—and the possibilities for armed struggle only reemerged 
when Morocco broke 
<panafricanvisions.com/2022/01/morocco-drives-a-war-in-western-sahara-for-its-phosphates/> 
the ceasefire in 2020. The Sahrawi liberation movement, Bachir said, was 
“built on the armed struggle as the dominating pillar of action. That 
was taken away with no practical process in its place.”

*Imperialism in Western Sahara*

Western Sahara is a rich land. It has 
<peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/20/morocco-drives-a-war-in-western-sahara-for-its-phosphates/> 
some 72 percent of the world’s phosphate deposits, which are used to 
manufacture fertilizers. By the end of November 2021, Morocco reported 
<www.moroccoworldnews.com/2021/12/345803/moroccos-ocp-generated-mad-57-6-billion-in-net-revenues> 
revenues of $6.45 billion from phosphates, an amount that increases each 
year. Western Sahara’s fishing grounds accounted 
<wsrw.org/en/news/the-fishing-industry> for 77.65 percent of Moroccan 
catches in 2018, representing the majority of its income from fishing 
that year. The European Union, too, operates a fleet in these waters. In 
2018, a judgment 
<curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=FR&text=&pageIndex=0&part=1&mode=lst&docid=204281&occ=first&dir=&cid=670789> 
of the Court of Justice of the EU struck down the 2000 
Euro-Mediterranean Agreement between Morocco and the EU as “incompatible 
with the principles of self-determination.” But the EU continues 
<wsrw.org/en/news/the-fishing-industry> to act in violation of the 
judgment, funding highly destructive fishing practices in the occupied 
territory. Scientists warn that overfishing in Western Sahara is rapidly 
destroying <www.nature.com/articles/496300a> a critical biodiversity 
hotspot.

Morocco and its international backers have their sights on two other 
resources abundant in the territory: wind and sunlight. In 2018, using 
German technology, the UK firm Windhoist built 
<wsrw.org/en/news/renewable-energy> the 200 MW Aftissat wind farm in 
Western Sahara. Vigeo Eiris, a UK-French company that has been 
“investigating companies operating in occupied Palestine,” certified 
<wsrw.org/en/archive/3765> Moroccan energy investments on Sahrawi land. 
General Electric signed 
<www.ge.com/news/press-releases/ge-renewable-energy-and-nareva-to-build-200-mw-aftissat-onshore-wind-farm-extension-morocco> 
a contract to build a 200 MW wind farm in Western Sahara. Greenwashing 
<vest-sahara.s3.amazonaws.com/wsrw/feature-images/File/405/616014d0c1f1d_Greenwashing-occupation_web.pdf> 
its occupation in Western Sahara, Morocco uses the infrastructure in 
reporting toward its climate targets. Western Sahara Resource Watch 
estimates 
<wsrw.org/en/news/report-morocco-uses-green-energy-to-embellish-its-occupation> 
that the wind power plants in the territory could account for 47.2 
percent of Morocco’s wind capacity and up to 32.64 percent of its solar 
capacity by 2030.

*The People Bloom*

“We call this the desert within the desert,” Mohamed El Mamun, a 
Polisario Front representative, told me on a drive between two camps. 
The sand is so salty, the water so scarce, that few things can grow. Yet 
in the five decades since the five camps have existed, the Sahrawi 
people have made great strides toward building a dignified society in 
them. They eliminated illiteracy. They built universal education and the 
infrastructure to extract and distribute water to the people. Mass 
movements ensure the participation of women, workers, and the youth in 
the project of liberation. Health care is free, and a small experiment 
in aquaponic farming promises to grow food in one of the most arid 
places on Earth.

The camps depend almost entirely 
<reliefweb.int/report/algeria/collapse-western-sahara-ceasefire-threatens-prospect-peaceful-solution-45-year-long> 
on foreign aid, a resource that is rapidly depleting. As of November 10, 
2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Algeria 
mission, a key source of humanitarian assistance to the Sahrawis, was 
only 39 percent funded <reporting.unhcr.org/algeria-funding-2022>. The 
UN has warned 
<reliefweb.int/report/world/war-ukraine-rise-arms-spending-undermine-development-aid-world-s-poor> 
that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict risks further eroding that support. 
Here, socialist internationalism plays an important role. In the Smara 
camp, Venezuela and Cuba built <venezuelanalysis.com/news/6275> a 
school. The Simón Bolívar School is staffed by Cuban teachers. More than 
100 Sahrawis have graduated from the school since it opened in 2011. 
Some of the alumni went on to study in Cuba, returning as doctors, 
engineers, and teachers. Nearby, a man who calls himself Castro 
established the Center for Education and Integration, which prepares 
children with severe disabilities to live a dignified life. Above its 
entrance, a sign reads: “Neither plants nor trees grow here, but people 
bloom.”

/*Paweł Wargan* is an organizer and researcher based in Berlin and the 
coordinator of the secretariat of the Progressive International 
<progressive.international/>./

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these, please send us an email: info at globetrotter.media 
<mailto:info at globetrotter.media?subject=Syndication%20Inquiry%3A%20>.*
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