Hmmm…Would an “autonomous region” merger be a possible compromise the Polisario and Moroccan govt. would accept? Has it been proposed in those terms?
- Tamerlane
Absolutely. In fact, I’m back now 'cause I’m trying to figure out what the drooling moron of a tech who set up my new laptop did to my excel. Idiot left off int’l options I think. I think I’m going to have to build a macro for the data, stupid fucker.
Oh absolutely, it is simply the Moroccan claim is among the less dodgey and more viable in the modern era. Else they are Somali, a bunch of anarchic tribes, which nowadays with AK-47s is a very bad deal.
Well, neither side seem to be actually willing to abide by it. Polisario keeps getting its leash yanked by the Generals in Algiers who hate the Moroccan throne for reasons best known to them.
Hard to say per se.
First, you can’t easily tell the difference between the Sahraouine and southern Moroccans. Other than the Sahraouine have stayed more tribal and more of them speak wierd ass dialects of Arabic (Hassaniyah).
Second, to my observation, the Sahraouine get no worse treatment in Moroccan society than southerners in general. There are real problems of color prejudice --well not 100% color prejudice, but color linked with region. The old imperial cities, Fes especially provide the elite. They tend to be lighter, but even when dark, if you’re from Fes and the right family…
I don’t think the Sahraouiine would be less integrated than the rest of the south, and at least they would have the escape valve of work in Casablanca, etc. Frankly, that is more important than anything as the population is already far above any reasonable carrying capacity for the desert areas. Far above.
As for the autonomous region idea, I’ve seen it floated. What really counts is if Algiers decides it gets more out of making peace with Morocco than fucking with them in the South. That is the real driver, leaving aside all that drivel about self-determination and so forth. If le pouvoir decides to cut a deal, Polisario is going to suck it up and like it. If not, they get to play liberation movement for another decade.
And the Aoulad Mohammed, the Beni Hassan etc. get to suffer in camps.
Integration at least gets a ball rolling.
(And Guin, not everything falls into the LA-America analytical rubric, so let’s not drag that in gratiutiously.)
Thanks Collounsbury. Food for thought, anyway.
Speaking of which, time for lunch.
- Tamerlane
Well, I must be missing something and the refugees must be missing it too. I guess they just like camping in the refugee camps rather than going home. It is still my view that the US should not be a party to this abuse and should pressure for the referendum which has been delayed for so long now it is becoming a bad joke.
It is a bad joke, sadly enough.
And yes, we should pressure for a referendum, but let’s not be innocent about the actors.
What you are missing is that it’s not the decision or free will of the Aoulad Mohammed, the Beni Hassan etc, the decisions about where to go are made by young men with guns. Young men with guns who get their marching orders from old men in Algiers and Rabat. This sadly has never been a real liberation struggle. It has always been a game of hard men engaging in the most cynical of realpolitik such that even Guin might be ashamed to pretend America is a bad actor in this.
I do love this region, I am one happy little unstressed bastard when I am there, but it is not a playground.
>> And yes, we should pressure for a referendum
That is my whole point, the US has been playing along the game of delaying it and now wants the UN to scrap the idea and just recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. I think that is wrong and the US (as well as European countries who can exert some influence) should push for the referendum and a peaceful solution to the situation. It is not fair to have people living in refugee camps for generations.
BTW, Mauritania who claimed the southern part, very soon gave up their claim.
Playing along? There’s only so much pressure one can put, realistically.
Frankly, I don’t think the real obstacle is a referendum. It’s the power politics behind the scenes. Get le pouvoir in Algiers to stop its bloody games and you’ll get a resolution.
Mauretania is a joke of a country, of course they gave up, they have enough problems with their slaves and their Muslim Toucouleur brothers in the South in the Senegal valley who don’t take kindly to the Arabo-Berber elite’s pretensions to monopolizing the state.
By the way, I ran across this article by accident.
POLITICS-MOROCCO: ACTIVISTS WANT SAY IN WESTERN SAHARA STRATEGY:
Pushing for a just solution. Serfaty is an important figure, met him once. No more straight up player than Abraham.
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm?id=113w2994
There you have it. I rather agree. BTW, there was some mention of this on the Arabic news so at least the idea hasn’t been slammed. As of yet.
Well, as the Animaniacs put it in “Wakko’s World”, “… the Spanish Sahara is gone …”
But anyway, sailor, you were asking if might does make right. I’m sure we all feel qualified to answer that, and so do I. You’re not gonna like it, and I’m not at all happy about saying so either, but the answer in the long run is essentially yes.
Offenses committed against a nation or a people and their sovereignty can be reversed in the lifetimes of those affected. In the short term (historically), might does not make right, and right can prevail with a little help.
Longer term, though, might may or may not make right, but certainly it makes reality, and reality deserves some respect of its own, of course. As the generations roll on, and those affected by the original offense are gone and forgotten, the offense itself just takes its place in the huge pool all the other things people have done to each other throughout history. The choices are then to nurse ancient grudges, continuing conflicts uselessly, or to make the best of getting on with life and making the future better. There’s just no way to fairly pick out which present-day people are going to get their ancestors’ slights righted, and at whose expense. We all just have to deal with the world as we find it, and leave the past in the past once it truly becomes the past.
And so do the Saharaouis. Both of them.
My point is that the US should not use its influence for something bad. For years the resolution was that a referendum should be held in the Western Sahara and now, the USA, the country that admonishes every country everywhere that they should have free elections, the USA is trying to stop the referendum and just recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara because that is what is in its interests. Can they do it? Yes. Should they do it? No, not if they want to claim any moral authority.
Now, if the USA is content with losing any moral authority and just being a big bully that uses force without regard to any moral considerations, then they can go ahead and act like that… and prove their enemies right.
Jeez, I don’t know. I think there should be minimum requirements for statehood, among those are economic viability.
Sailor notes, “It is rich in phosphates…”
Just what the world needs, another one-commodity national basket case. Chile is/was rich in phosphates as well, and found that the invention of artificial fertilizer pretty much killed that market.
Morally, I think humans have a right to self-determination. That means that you should be able to participate in free and fair elections. It does not mean that statehood should be automatic. (Morocco, BTW, was considered “partly free” by Human Rights Watch in the mid 1990s FWIW).
>> you should be able to participate in free and fair elections
Yes, and the USA should not be in the business of preventing that as is the case here. The UN resolved many years ago a referendum should be held. Morocco, with the complicity of the USA, has managed to delay it indefinitely and now the USA proposes to do away with that requirement and just recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory.
Nest time the USA claims the right of some people to have fair elections we can bring this case up.
Well, yeah, sailor, you’re right that there should be a fair referendum there. Nobody here is suggesting otherwise.
But GW Bush, unlike any other president since 1880, is not in a strong position to proclaim the need for national leadership to be chosen in free and fair elections in other countries, and he seems to know it. Venezuela is a good recent example. Like many other presidents, though, he considers economics and power politics as well as, or often instead of, the principles of democracy. Yes, I’m embarrassed by that too.
Gotta admit, the events in Venezuela concern me a lot more. The latter involved a recognized and viable government. Furthermore, GWB was bucking world (and Latin American) opinion by expressing support for the coup and taking reports of Chavez’s supposed resignation at face value. And this is a sympathetic reading of events: we can’t rule out the possibility of the W administration’s active support for the Venezuelan plotters.
Now that I’m back, though, I should acknowledge that oil exploration (not drilling) increases the chances of the Western Sahara achieving viability as a state. But it doesn’t sound like they are quite there yet. And frankly I see little evidence of Polsario’s democratic inclinations. If nothing else, the fact that Algeria is less democratic than Morocco can be documented.
But the bottom line is that if the Western Sahara doesn’t have sufficient economic scale to be a viable country, it should be absorbed by someone else, preferably a quasi-democratic neighbor. Ridiculously weak countries tend towards misrule.
The world is full of countries that are even less “viable” due to political instability , tiny size or whatever. At any rate, as I understand it, the referendum did not guarantee independence but was meant to be a poll of the Saharawis and used as a basis for further negotiations.
If the last 27 years are any indication, Morocco will never accept the Saharawi people and they will remain in refugee camps for the foreseeable future. That the US in an accomplice in this is quite disturbing. You cannot favor elections when they favor your interests and oppose them when they don’t. (Or maybe you can.)
I think the whole thing stinks and it is a shame the US has a part in it. The US could exert more pressure on Morocco to hold the referendum etc. Instead the US is helping Morocco do the dirty deed.
My understanding is that this is not the case. But when I say, “viable” I am putting a low weight on political instability, because that can change. And a tiny landlocked city-state can certainly be viable, given the proper agreements with its neighbor.
But if the Western Sahara is a land of sand and phosphates with no manufacturing base, it seems wise to hand it over to a more varied economic unit.
Your point on the referendum seems well taken. But I’ve reached the end of my knowledge here; I can’t honestly evaluate some the realpolitic questions that arise in this context.
This is really amazing. Let me try to break through the thicket of ignorance and to get to the point such that sailor may grasp why reliance on nationalist propaganda leads one to skewed and frankly absurd positions (as we find so often on Middle Eastern topics, although the obsession is rather usually located further east).
(a) Polisario is more or less a creature of the military dictatorship in Algeria (as no serious analyst thinks the government, regardless of the nature of elections, themselves suspect, is anything but a creature of the generals). It is not a democratic organization and is at least as guilty as the Moroccan government of sabotaging a referendum, especially in regards to its own stalling.
(b) There are plenty of Sahraouine in Morocco. Back in the day I studied with some in University. There are even Ministers – well were, I don’t know about current make up – in the government of Sahraoui extraction. The people in the Polisario camps are not all Sahrouine, largely they come from tribal groups with heavy Polisario membership – underneath the veneer of modernity in these political groups is in fact tribal politics.
© In 27 years I don’t believe one can say that the Sahraouine are substantially worse off than the 100% Moroccan Saharaouine (That is from the undisputed Saharan territories). All are afflicted by poverty. Frankly there are little to no resources in the region and population is far above carrying capacity. Your assertions of non-integration fly in the face of what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, as well as official data. I am well aware of the suspect nature of official data – I’ve had to work with it upon occasion, however comparing what I’ve seen in Dakhla and Boujdour and al-Ayoune, I think I can make adjustments.
(d) You rather neglect the fact Morocco has poured massive capital investments into the Western Sahara. Frankly I don’t think it was worth it, but much of coastal Moroccan Sahara has better infrastructure (and I exclude the phosphates related development) than its 100% Moroccan equivalent. Of course they’ve also tried to settle Moroccans de souche in the area – without much success and to my eye largely folks from the Moroccan south who don’t mind the fact that the entire province is a complete god damned wasteland (nice beaches though, good windsurfing). Too much hamada desert, the most depressing sight you can imagine. No genuine sources of surface water, and the subterranean sources are being depleted rapidly (as in the rest of the Sahara).
(e) The entire oil thing is a fucking red herring. The oil deposits to my reading are not expected to be major finds, may cover Moroccan consumption plus some small margin, easy pressure on the current account, but not much more. The Moroccans also have apparent finds in their undisputed territory farther north, but guess what? Near the Algerian border. Those of us with devious minds, and knowing that (a) the Algerians themselves want to explore that area –oddly neglected since initial surveys by Total back in the 1960s I am told – and of course deposits often cross borders and (b) the degree to which the generals like to fuck with their neighbors rather suspect that until some accord is reached, Polsiario’s ‘demands’ will be hostage to le pouvoir’s machinations.
It strikes me that the Bush administration, who I largely regard as incompetent ninnyhammers in foreign policy (going to show experience does not equal competence as they piss-away more and more diplomatic capital on dead-letters and neo-con revenge fantasies), is simply looking for a way to move the issue forward.
Morocco gets precious little aid from the US – some but hardly enough to leverage any decisions when to be frank the issue has real popular grassroots support, I was surprised to find when I first went there back in the bad old days – and has the capacity to hold the territory.
Insofar as
(a) Morocco since the arrival of the socialist and liberal Youssoufi government in the last years of Hassan II and then in the 1999 ascension of Mohamed VI (King of the Poor as they call him, with genuine warmth) has made amazing strides towards some real semblance of democracy, in name and in term of a real civil society
(b) Polisario remains the creature of a bloody, murky dictatorship in Algeria likely to be involved in some truly heinous crimes – e.g. not all the Islamist violence and atrocities is really from the Islamists
© The Western Sahara is a complete wasteland – I mean a complete wasteland – whose population will be forced to seek work in the North—be it Algeria or Morocco or Europe, by virtue of being too large for any reasonable carrying capacity from the old nomadic lifestyle (dead, dead, dead)
It strikes me as utterly reasonable to support the fusion of Western Sahara in to a liberalizing Morocco, which most of the tribal groups there had long historical ties with before Spanish colonization (whether Moroccan rule was effective in that day, well….).
(In any case, a referendum in a tribal culture is not as meaningful as Westerners seem to think. Ingrained blinders I suppose.)
So what we have here is some very complex and possibly untanglable peoples runnning around with no clear goal or leadership and no actual resources. Plus Morrocco.
In any event, the fact remains that we cannot go around fixing every problem in the world, nor forcing people do our bidding. The Morroccans, right or wrong, have won.
Ah, that should have read, “all of the Sahrouine” – I have no knowledge one way or another in re the citizenship, although frankly since these people are or were almost 100% nomadic, assigning ‘real’ origin is a big problematic.(*)
(*: thus the problems with the referendum voter lists, based on old Spanish colonial census. Some anti-Spanish tribes just didn’t want to be counted… There are, behind the political maneuvers, real problems)
I am completely ignorant of the situation in the WS (that’s why I’m reading this thread) but I did run across one thing I’d like to nitpick if I may:
Posted by sailor:
No, If the Saharawis set up a lousy government we’d be expected to send them millions of US $'s to prop up said crappy government and feed their starving children. If we let them govern themselves and kept our political and monetary influence the hell out of it half the fu@%*ing world would be up our ass about that.
Nobody’s ever satisfied, and it’s always MY fault.
Sgt. J, your post exudes that tone of arrogance which makes so many people around the world hate the US. People like you are not any help in making things easier for the US abroad.
>> No, If the Saharawis set up a lousy government we’d be expected to send them millions of US $'s to prop up said crappy government and feed their starving children
So it is the job of the USA to play world nanny and prevent peoples around the world from having elections which may lead to bad government? Hundreds of countries around the world have bad governments and the US and other rich countries are kind enough to send some help but in no way does this argument justify preventing democracy anywhere whether it be Venezuela, Chile or Africa. The US is entitled to not send help but it is not entitled to impose regimes which make people refugees.
The rest of the world endorsed the referendum and the US is now opposing it. The US is entitled to stay out of conflicts if it so prefers, it is entitled to help bring about peace, freedom… but it should not be in the business of helping other countries prevent elections and create refugees. When it does that kind of thing its reputation suffers and it loses moral credibility.
Of course the blame is not only for the US as the UN and Europe also turn a blind eye to this situation. Spain has a special responsibility as the last colonial power. Say what you want about colonialism but I believe Spain had a duty to help ensure freedom for their ex-colony. I am not saying independence was or is the only solution, I am saying they should have ensured an outcome that did not lead to 30 years of war and refugee camps. Rich countries could have imposed on Morocco a settlement where the WS would be integrated in Morocco and have a certain degree of autonomy which would ensure their well-being. Just walking away has led to this mess.