Out of sight, out of mind

We get plenty of reports of the conflict in Iraq - too many for some, perhaps, though still not as many as we ought to get - and quite a few from Afghanistan. We hear occasionally - though not nearly as often as it deserves - from Darfur. But there are many other places around the world where wars, disputes and civil insurrections happen and only those with an interest in that particular area ever hear what's going on. Those are the places of no strategic importance in the Great Game, and possessing no resources worth exploiting - or where the exploiters do a thorough job of hushing things up. This blog will try, in its own small way, to illuminate one or other of these dark corners from time to time.

We start today with the Western Sahara. At least it's easy to find on the map, as the name says it all. It is a shining example of places with no strategic importance and with no resources worth exploiting. It's just got sand. Miles and miles and miles of it. If ever anyone works out how to run cars on sand it will be up there with the big boys, but until then it's the smallest of small beer. Nevertheless the 275,000 or so people who live there, the Sahrawi (or Saharawi) love it and call it home. You wouldn't think anybody else would covet such a place, but the minds of people who rise to be rulers of countries are strange places.

It was colonised by Spain in the early years of the twentieth century. As the trend towards de-colonisation spread in the 70s the Sahrawi population formed a resistance movement called the Polisario Front (PF). Following the death of Franco it succeeded in winning independence of a sort in 1974-5, but in a hasty and chaotic manner. Both Morocco to the north-east and Mauritania to the east claimed sovereignty, while Algeria - Morocco's rival – promised to assist the PF.

The UN intervened, and a case was brought at the International Court of Justice, which ruled that the Sahrawis had the right of self-determination. Spain, as it withdrew, promised a referendum. However, in November 1975 a ‘Green March’ of 350,000 unarmed Moroccans gathered at the border to claim Western Sahara for ‘Greater Morocco’. Most of them never crossed the border, but Morocco nevertheless annexed two-thirds of the country, while Mauritania took the other third. The PF, with help from Algeria, resisted fiercely and eventually forced out the Mauritanians in 1979, but that only led to the advance of Morocco to claim the whole country bar an enclave surrounded by a series of walls.

There was a ceasefire in 1991 and the long-promised referendum was to be held in 1992, offering the options of independence or inclusion in Morocco. It has still not been held 15 years later. The USA proposed in 2000, in a document known as the ‘Baker Plan’, that there should be an autonomous Western Sahara Authority under Moroccan sovereignty, leading to a referendum in five years. A third option for an unspecified ‘autonomy’ would be added to the ballot. This was rejected by both sides, though a second version of the plan has been accepted by the PF, but not by Morocco.

Meanwhile most of the population - 200,000 people, mostly women and children - live in refugee camps. Should they ever get their land back they will find it sown with more than a million landmines - four landmines for every person. Does anybody care? It doesn't look like it.

Explore more about the people and their history here.

Comments

[Will]

Thanks for spreading information about this issue. Far too few people know about Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara.

I was impressed that you pointed out the problem of Moroccan landmine in the Western Sahara. Although I've followed the issue for some time, I've never written about the hazards a post-independence Western Saharan state would face from millions of undetonated landmines.