[News] Struggle for liberation of Western Sahara intensifies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

peoplesdispatch.org
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/02/struggle-for-liberation-of-western-sahara-intensifies/>
Struggle for liberation of Western Sahara intensifies
Pavan Kulkarni - January 2, 2023
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

Moroccan forces illegally occupying the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
(SADR) have come under repeated bombardment by the Sahrawi People’s
Liberation Army (SPLA). Moroccan forces currently occupy over 80%
<https://theconversation.com/morocco-and-western-sahara-a-decades-long-war-of-attrition-122084>
of SADR, also known as Western Sahara, which remains classified by the UN
as among the last countries still awaiting decolonization.

On Friday, December 30, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defense
of SADR <https://www.spsrasd.info/news/ar/articles/2022/12/30/43453.html>,
the SPLA “targeted the trenches of the occupation soldiers in several areas
of the Mahbas sector.” The SPLA bombarded the positions of occupation
forces in this region, in the northwest of occupied territory, for the
third consecutive day on Friday. Attacks were also reported on December 28
<https://www.spsrasd.info/news/en/articles/2022/12/28/43435.html> and 29
<https://www.spsrasd.info/news/ar/articles/2022/12/29/43451.html>,
inflicting “heavy losses in lives and equipment along the wall of
humiliation and shame.”

This wall, called the “Berm”, runs from northwest to southeast across the
SADR territory. It separates the areas occupied by Morocco on the
coast-side from the inland territory that is under the control of the
Polisario Front (PF), recognized by the UN General Assembly
<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/17222?ln=en> as the Sahrawi people’s
international representative.

Morocco constructed the berm in the 1980s, with the help of American
companies Northrop and Westinghouse
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8AWG1tbNfA>. At 2,700 kilometers in
length, it is among the largest military infrastructures in the world, and
the planet’s second-longest wall. It is reinforced with the world’s longest
minefield consisting of seven million landmines.
[image: Western Sahara map]Map of Western Sahara

The SPLA has been engaging the occupying troops along the length of the
berm since the war for liberation of SADR resumed on November 13, 2020,
after 29 years of ceasefire. The ceasefire broke down after Moroccan troops
crossed the berm to forcibly remove unarmed and peaceful Sahrawi protesters
who were blocking an illegal Moroccan road to Mauritania through their
territory. The Moroccan troops crossed into the UN-patrolled buffer zone of
Guergarat across the southeastern tip of occupied SADR.

The ceasefire had been secured in August 1991 after the UN Security Council
(UNSC) established the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara
(MINURSO) with the promise of fulfilling the Sahrawi people’s right to
self-determination. However, backed by the US, UK, and the EU, Morocco
successfully sabotaged the referendum promised by the UN, and MINURSO was
reduced to a peace-keeping force.
*Read: Ahead of UN session, Sahrawis recollect decades of betrayal that
enabled Moroccan colonization
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/10/10/ahead-of-un-session-sahrawis-recollect-decades-of-betrayal-that-enabled-moroccan-colonization/>*

For the Sahrawis under occupation, the nearly three decades of ceasefire
are often considered wasted years. Moroccan forces continued “their
savagery and violence,” while Sahrawis “were forced by the international
community to wait for nothing. There was no war, no peace, no hope,” Hamza
Lakhal, a dissident poet from Laayoune, the occupied territory’s largest
city, told* Peoples Dispatch*.

“When the war started, it renewed hope of liberation in the people because
our brothers on the other side of the berm had again taken arms again to
free us from occupation,” he said. It is with this hope that the people
have been able to endure the increasing atrocities at the hands of the
occupying forces since the resumption of the war, Lakhal explained.

However, the interests at play in the war go far beyond Morocco’s borders.
The occupying power has received key gestures of support from Western
powers since fighting resumed, which many argue has emboldened it even
further.

On December 10, 2020, the Donald Trump administration in the US announced
<https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-recognizing-sovereignty-kingdom-morocco-western-sahara/>
that “the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire
Western Sahara territory.” Arguing that “an independent Sahrawi State is
not a realistic option for resolving the conflict,” the US declared that
autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is “the only basis for a just and
lasting solution to the dispute.”

The US government’s approval of Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara came
in exchange for its normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel
<https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-africa-israel-north-africa-morocco-4279242f6f688d242bad5c7a64e29caf>
on the same day. Since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the
endorsement of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara has been reiterated.
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-official-says-biden-not-changing-position-on-western-sahara/>

Former colonizer of the territory, Spain, which had handed over the
territory of Western Sahara to the invading Moroccan forces in 1975, once
again in March 2022 rescinded recognition of SADR and accepted Morocco’s
claim of sovereignty over the territory.
*EU’s stake in the occupation*

The European Union (EU) was quick to welcome this decision by Spain. Strong
bilateral relations between its member-states and Morocco “can only be
beneficial for the implementation of the Euro-Moroccan partnership,”
explained
<https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-backs-spains-shift-western-saharan-autonomy-2022-03-21/>
EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell’s spokesperson following the
announcement.

This partnership
<https://www.eeas.europa.eu/morocco/european-union-and-morocco_en?s=204>,
which was cemented by the establishment of a Free Trade Area in 1996,
ensures that the EU remains Morocco’s largest trading partner, accounting
for 56% of the goods trade in 2019 and for 51% of Morocco’s imports. The
“sustainable fisheries partnership” which allows European companies to fish
in waters outside the EU is a cornerstone of the partnership. Interestingly
enough, over 90%
<https://op.europa.eu/fr/publication-detail/-/publication/2d387320-b6ff-11e8-99ee-01aa75ed71a1/language-fr/format-PDF>
of the fish caught by European fleets under this “Euro-Moroccan
partnership” are extracted from the waters of SADR. This continues despite
being ruled illegal multiple times since 2018 by the Court of Justice of
the European Union (CJEU)
<https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2018-02/cp180021en.pdf>
which, reiterating the 1975 advisory opinion of the International Court of
Justice (ICJ)
<http://www.worldcourts.com/icj/eng/decisions/1975.10.16_western_sahara.htm>,
concluded that Morocco had no sovereignty over SADR’s territory.

40% of all European phosphate imports
<https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/europe-searches-for-alternatives-in-fertiliser-supply-battle/>
also come from Morocco, and this figure is predicted to increase as Europe
seeks alternatives to Russian fertilizers in the backdrop of the war in
Ukraine. At least 10% of the profits generated by OCP SA
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/20/morocco-drives-a-war-in-western-sahara-for-its-phosphates/>,
Moroccan state-owned phosphate rock miner, phosphoric acid manufacturer and
fertilizer producer, come from the phosphate extracted from the Bau Craa
mine in occupied Sahrawi territory.

“We are told this so-called ‘trade’ of our resources between EU and Morocco
also benefits our local economy. It is the big lie,” Lakhal said. “All
those tens of millions the EU has been paying in return every year goes to
Morocco. The money is used to strengthen its occupation forces,” he said.

“The Moroccan policemen outnumber all the Sahrawi civilians under
occupation. Including all soldiers and the settlers the regime has brought
in from Morocco, we are outnumbered one-to-three.”
*‘We will resist the occupation to death; we have nothing to lose – not
even our homeland’*

Lakhal claimed that all the engineering or managerial jobs in these
extractive industries go to the Moroccan settlers, while the Sahrawis only
get jobs involving physical labor. “Even these jobs are taken away from
Sahrawi workers if any of them are identified as activists. They can’t find
any other jobs once they are branded. They are either forced to depend on
others for survival or starve,” he alleged.

“Students are pulled out of schools and colleges, and denied opportunity to
complete studies when they are identified as activists,” added Lakhal, who
himself was a victim as he was suspended from college in 2002 for leading a
campaign demanding a university in the occupied territory. “I was barred
from continuing studies or holding a job. It was only with the help of
pro-Sahrawi activists abroad that I was able to survive.”

It was more than a decade later, in 2015, after his case drew international
attention following the publication of his poetry, that he was allowed to
finally travel to Morocco to complete his graduation. “We still don’t have
a university in [our land]. Students have to go to Morocco to finish their
graduation. Anyone seen as an activist is denied this opportunity,” he
said, explaining how education is used as leverage against the cause of
Sahrawi liberation.

Those who refuse to budge to these systems of control and intimidation and
succeed in organizing resistance are subjected to physical attacks, sexual
assault and torture. However, “There is no weapon of repression in the
regime’s arsenal that has not been deployed against us. And yet, we resist;
we will resist the occupation to death because we have nothing to lose –
not even our homeland,” Lakhal insists.

“There is nothing the regime can do about it. I mean, look at Sultana
Khayya. What more can they do to her?” he asks. Khayya is currently trying
to secure a safe passage back to the occupied territory
<https://www.aps.dz/monde/145153-l-aarasd-veut-garantir-a-sultana-khaya-un-retour-au-sahara-occidental-sans-crainte-de-represailles>
to continue her struggle for Sahrawi liberation in ground-zero.

“It doesn’t matter what the so-called ‘international community’ does. We
know our rights, and we will fight for them under any circumstances, with
or without their support,” Lakhal asserted, asking the UNSC to “stop its
pretense about human rights and democracy.” He also called on the
“international community” to “stop its hypocrisy”.

“They will move NATO for Ukraine because they hate Russia, but occupation
of Sahrawi against all international laws and resolutions is okay because
the occupying power here is a friend,” he remarked.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230104/ddd074aa/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 981168 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230104/ddd074aa/attachment.png>