Western Sahara

Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since the 60s when it was a Spanish colony.

The Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front's Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) dispute control of the territory.

History

The earliest inhabitants of the Western Sahara in historical times were black agriculturalists called Bafour.

The arrival of Islam in the 8th century played a major role in the development of relationships between Western Sahara and the neighbouring regions.

The Beni Hassan were the Arab bedouin tribes, that invaded the northern border-area of the Sahara in the 14th and 15th century.

Spanish province

During the first decade of the 20th century, after an agreement among the colonial powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884, Spain took possession of the Western Sahara and declared it to be a Spanish protectorate.

However, the territory's neighbours also showed interest in the Spanish Sahara.

The UN attempted to settle these disputes through a visiting mission in late 1975, as well as a verdict from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which declared that the Sahrawi people possessed the right of self-determination. On November 6, 1975 the Green March into Western Sahara began when 350,000 unarmed Moroccans converged on the city of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and waited for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara, in order to claim it for Greater Morocco.

Demands for independence

After the death of Franco in November, the new Spanish government abandoned Western Sahara in December, repatriating even Spanish corpses from its cemeteries. Morocco then annexed the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara as its Southern Provinces, while Mauritania took the southern third as Tiris al-Gharbiyya.

Stalling of the independence referendum

The referendum, originally scheduled for 1992, was planned to give the indigenous population the option between independence or inclusion to Morocco.

Baker Plan

A United States-backed document known as the "Baker peace plan" was discussed by the United Nations Security Council in 2000, and envisioned a future Western Sahara Authority (WSA), to be followed after five years by the referendum.

In 2003, a new version of the plan was made official, with some additions spelling out the powers of the WSA, making it less reliant on the Moroccan devolution.

Western Sahara today

Today the Baker II document appears politically dead, with Baker having resigned his post at the UN in 2004. In the same time, he supports, through his advising Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS), a self-governing Western Sahara as an autonomous community within Morocco.

The UN has put forth no replacement strategy after the breakdown of Baker II, and renewed fighting may be a possibility.

Morocco has repeatedly tried to get Algeria into bilateral negotiations, receiving vocal support from France and occasionally (and currently) from the United States. These negotiations would define the exact limits of a Western Sahara autonomy under Moroccan rule, but only after Morocco's "inalienable right" to the territory was recognized as a precondition to the talks.

Demonstrations and riots by supporters of independence and/or a referendum broke out in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara in May 2005, and were met by police.

Demonstrations and protests are still occurring in late 2006, after Morocco declared in February that it was contemplating a plan for devolving a limited variant of autonomy to the territory, but still explicitly refused any referendum on independence.

Politics

The legal status of the territory and the question of its sovereignty remains unresolved;

The government of Morocco is a formally constitutional monarchy under Muhammad VI with a bicameral parliament.

The exiled government of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) is a form of single-party parliamentary and presidential system, but according to its constitution, this will be changed into a multi-party system at the achievement of independence. It presently controls only the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, and the part of Western Sahara east of the Moroccan Wall, which is more or less unpopulated.

Human rights

The Western Sahara conflict has resulted in severe human rights abuses, most notably the displacement of tens of thousands of Sahrawi civilians from the country, the forced expropriation and expulsion of tens of thousends of Moroccan civilians by the Algerian government from Algeria as well as violations of human rights and serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions by the Polisario Front and Algerian government.

Both Morocco and the Polisario accuse each other of violating the human rights of the populations under their control, in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara and the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, respectively.

Morocco has been repeatedly criticised by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the World Organization Against Torture, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for its actions in Western Sahara.

Polisario has received criticism from the French organization France Libertes on its treatment of Moroccan prisoners-of-war, and on its general behaviour in the Tindouf refugee camps in reports by the Belgian organization ESISC, or European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center..

Administrative division

Currently, Western Sahara is largely administered by Morocco. The official Moroccan government name for Western Sahara is the "Southern Provinces", which indicate Río de Oro and Saguia el-Hamra.

The remaining area is administered by the SADR, as liberated territory.

During the joint Moroccan-Mauritanian control of the area, the Mauritanian-controlled part, roughly corresponding to Saquia el-Hamra, was known as Tiris al-Gharbiyya.

Geography

Western Sahara is located in Northern Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Mauritania and Morocco.

Economy

Aside from its rich phosphate deposits and fishing waters, Western Sahara has few natural resources and lacks sufficient rainfall for most agricultural activities.

Western Sahara's economy is centred around nomadic herding, fishing, and phosphate mining. These heavy subsidies have created a state-dominated economy in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara, with the Moroccan government as the single biggest employer.

Exploitation debate

After reasonably exploitable oil fields were located in neighbouring Mauritania, speculation intensified on the possibility of major oil resources being located off the coast of Western Sahara.

In 2002, Hans Corell, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and head of its Office of Legal Affairs issued a legal opinion on the matter.

In May 2006 the remaining company Kerr-McGee also left following sales of numerous share holders like the National Norwegian Oil Fund, due to continued pressure from NGOs and corporate groups.

Despite the UN report and the development regarding the exploration of oil, the European Union wants to exploit fishing resources in waters outside Western Sahara and has signed a fishing treaty with Morocco.

Demographics

The indigenous population of Western Sahara is known as Sahrawis.

As of July 2004, an estimated 267,405 people (excluding the Moroccan army of some 160,000) live in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara.

The Polisario-controlled parts of Western Sahara are barren and have no resident population, but they are travelled by small numbers of Sahrawis herding camels, going back and forth between the Tindouf area and Mauritania.

The Spanish census and MINURSO

A 1974 Spanish census claimed there were some 74,000 Sahrawis in the area at the time (in addition to approximately 20,000 Spanish residents), but this number is likely to be on the low side, due to the difficulty in counting a nomad people.

In December of 1999 the United Nations' MINURSO mission announced that it had identified 86,425 eligible voters for the independence referendum that was supposed to be held under the 1991 Settlement agreement and the 1997 Houston accords. These 86,425 Sahrawis were dispersed between Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara and the refugee camps in Algeria, as well as smaller numbers in Mauritania and other places of exile. These numbers cover only Sahrawis 'indigenous' to the Western Sahara during the Spanish colonial period, not the total number of "ethnic" Sahrawis (i.e, members of Sahrawi tribal groupings).

The Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, home base of the Polisario, hold approximately 165,000 Sahrawi refugees from the area according to the last count made by the UN.

Culture

The major ethnic group of the Western Sahara are the Sahrawis, a nomadic or Bedouin tribal or ethnic group speaking Ḥassānīya dialect of Arabic, also spoken in much of Mauritania.

Physically indistinguishable from the Hassaniya speaking Moors of Mauritania, the Sahwari people differ from their neighbors partly due to different tribal affiliations (as tribal confederations cut across present modern boundaries) and partly as a consequence of their exposure to Spanish colonial domination.

The originally clan- and tribe-based society underwent a massive social upheaval in 1975, when a part of the population was forced into exile and settled in the refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria.

The Moroccan government considerably invested in the social and economic development of the Moroccan controlled Western Sahara with special emphasis on education, modernisation and infrastructure.

To date, there have been few thorough studies of the culture due in part to the political situation.

Notes and references

Cited references

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Moroccan Governmental site

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