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Thirty-four years after the so-called Green March laid Morocco’s claim to the neighboring Western Sahara territory in a spectacular fashion, Rabat has yet to secure its prize in the eyes of the international community.
Militarily, it prevailed at the time as Mauritania backed down over its portion agreed with the outgoing colonial power, Spain; and then the pro-independence Polisario Front was forced back across the monumental, and monumentally expensive, wall of sand that Morocco had built up to create a de facto border between its “southern provinces” and the landlocked redoubt of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
However, Morocco’s diplomacy during these more than three decades has been wide off the mark. The country’s political initiatives have been regarded by many in the international community merely as an effort to stonewall the United Nations decolonization and self-determination process, even as Morocco has failed to build meaningful friendships beyond its former European masters: primarily France, but also increasingly in recent years Spain, where conservatives mistrust Moroccan intentions in Ceuta and Melilla, while leftists tend to repudiate the Franco-era abandonment of the Sahrawis to Rabat’s control.
Out after Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero came to power in 2004, a new Madrid-Rabat relationship was forged. The Socialist, self-styled post-9/11 peacemaker seemed eager to invest part of his political capital in lauding the “reformist” tendencies of King Mohammad VI, and showing more of a willingness to exchange the emotional Sahrawi ties for security, anti-immigration cooperation, and other tangibles once considered the exclusive preserve of France. But now, and over an incident that seems relatively trivial in the scheme of things, Morocco has blundered into a dust-up with Spain, as a veteran Sahrawi protester keeps up a public hunger strike at an airport in the Canary Islands.
Aminatou Haidar has been recognized by fellow human rights defenders and was even nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. But she has never been as well known as today thanks the high-handed approach of Morocco’s security apparatus. Flying home to the Western Saharan capital of Laayoune after having won a prize in the United States, Haidar allegedly committed the treasonous act of inscribing her nationality as Sahrawi rather than Moroccan on the immigration form. This was the kind of act of defiance the 43-year-old mother of two could be relied on to deliver after spending decades struggling against a state she perceives to be an occupying power, through periods of imprisonment in horrendous conditions, hunger strikes and other acts of civil disobedience.
In retaliation, the Moroccan police took away her passport and placed her on a flight to Lanzarote in the Canaries, a show of meat-headed arrogance that immediately put Zapatero in a pickle, as his government happens to have a free and curious media scrutinizing its every reaction in such circumstances. Indeed, the leading Spanish daily El Pais revealed that the Moroccan security forces had already booked a seat on the Lanzarote-bound plane for Haidar before she was detained and accused of writing what they took to be the insulting inscription on her entry form.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has found no easy way out of the dilemma. He first suggested that the whole thing was a problem that Haidar and Morocco needed to resolve between themselves. Then he offered the increasingly publicized hunger striker Spanish nationality, before finally asking for assistance from Rabat, the United Nations, and even Washington.
The extraordinary power of Aminatou to shame her hosts, whom she has accused of connivance with Morocco in failing to defend her rights and helping to have her sent home, led a Foreign Ministry representative to tell her in the hall of Lanzarote airport that the Spanish authorities did not actually recognize the 1975 Madrid Accords, which saw her territory carved up without any consultation with the local people.
After five years in which many a Spanish leftist has despaired over what is perceived as a betrayal of the Sahrawi cause by the Socialist government, all the bets are suddenly off in terms of any legitimacy the Moroccan claim might have. As Haidar prepared to enter the fourth week of her protest fast (she does take sugared water) a senior Spanish Socialist Party figure seemed to confirm this, warning that “with this attitude, Morocco runs the risk of undoing all the good work done since 2004.” That was a day before the Moroccan authorities declined to allow a plane complete with medical assistance to fly the ailing Haidar back home.
Despite the increasingly thuggish tones of Morocco’s rhetoric, musing on whether it was still in Spain’s interests to keep the “plagues” of illegal immigrants and terrorist threats south of the Gibraltar Strait, Madrid has shown remarkable patience with its neighbor. Haidar, however, may have just days to live, according to doctors in Lanzarote.
The plight of Aminatou Haidar has not only become a rallying call to Sahrawi supporters, who have visited her at the airport and have written letters of support in the Spanish press; she has also succeeded in shaking the seemingly sure foundations of the Madrid-Rabat understanding built up over recent years. Morocco expelled a nuisance but must now digest another diplomatic debacle.
James Badcock is editor of the English edition of the Spanish daily El Pais. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
Militarily, it prevailed at the time as Mauritania backed down over its portion agreed with the outgoing colonial power, Spain; and then the pro-independence Polisario Front was forced back across the monumental, and monumentally expensive, wall of sand that Morocco had built up to create a de facto border between its “southern provinces” and the landlocked redoubt of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
However, Morocco’s diplomacy during these more than three decades has been wide off the mark. The country’s political initiatives have been regarded by many in the international community merely as an effort to stonewall the United Nations decolonization and self-determination process, even as Morocco has failed to build meaningful friendships beyond its former European masters: primarily France, but also increasingly in recent years Spain, where conservatives mistrust Moroccan intentions in Ceuta and Melilla, while leftists tend to repudiate the Franco-era abandonment of the Sahrawis to Rabat’s control.
Out after Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero came to power in 2004, a new Madrid-Rabat relationship was forged. The Socialist, self-styled post-9/11 peacemaker seemed eager to invest part of his political capital in lauding the “reformist” tendencies of King Mohammad VI, and showing more of a willingness to exchange the emotional Sahrawi ties for security, anti-immigration cooperation, and other tangibles once considered the exclusive preserve of France. But now, and over an incident that seems relatively trivial in the scheme of things, Morocco has blundered into a dust-up with Spain, as a veteran Sahrawi protester keeps up a public hunger strike at an airport in the Canary Islands.
Aminatou Haidar has been recognized by fellow human rights defenders and was even nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. But she has never been as well known as today thanks the high-handed approach of Morocco’s security apparatus. Flying home to the Western Saharan capital of Laayoune after having won a prize in the United States, Haidar allegedly committed the treasonous act of inscribing her nationality as Sahrawi rather than Moroccan on the immigration form. This was the kind of act of defiance the 43-year-old mother of two could be relied on to deliver after spending decades struggling against a state she perceives to be an occupying power, through periods of imprisonment in horrendous conditions, hunger strikes and other acts of civil disobedience.
In retaliation, the Moroccan police took away her passport and placed her on a flight to Lanzarote in the Canaries, a show of meat-headed arrogance that immediately put Zapatero in a pickle, as his government happens to have a free and curious media scrutinizing its every reaction in such circumstances. Indeed, the leading Spanish daily El Pais revealed that the Moroccan security forces had already booked a seat on the Lanzarote-bound plane for Haidar before she was detained and accused of writing what they took to be the insulting inscription on her entry form.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has found no easy way out of the dilemma. He first suggested that the whole thing was a problem that Haidar and Morocco needed to resolve between themselves. Then he offered the increasingly publicized hunger striker Spanish nationality, before finally asking for assistance from Rabat, the United Nations, and even Washington.
The extraordinary power of Aminatou to shame her hosts, whom she has accused of connivance with Morocco in failing to defend her rights and helping to have her sent home, led a Foreign Ministry representative to tell her in the hall of Lanzarote airport that the Spanish authorities did not actually recognize the 1975 Madrid Accords, which saw her territory carved up without any consultation with the local people.
After five years in which many a Spanish leftist has despaired over what is perceived as a betrayal of the Sahrawi cause by the Socialist government, all the bets are suddenly off in terms of any legitimacy the Moroccan claim might have. As Haidar prepared to enter the fourth week of her protest fast (she does take sugared water) a senior Spanish Socialist Party figure seemed to confirm this, warning that “with this attitude, Morocco runs the risk of undoing all the good work done since 2004.” That was a day before the Moroccan authorities declined to allow a plane complete with medical assistance to fly the ailing Haidar back home.
Despite the increasingly thuggish tones of Morocco’s rhetoric, musing on whether it was still in Spain’s interests to keep the “plagues” of illegal immigrants and terrorist threats south of the Gibraltar Strait, Madrid has shown remarkable patience with its neighbor. Haidar, however, may have just days to live, according to doctors in Lanzarote.
The plight of Aminatou Haidar has not only become a rallying call to Sahrawi supporters, who have visited her at the airport and have written letters of support in the Spanish press; she has also succeeded in shaking the seemingly sure foundations of the Madrid-Rabat understanding built up over recent years. Morocco expelled a nuisance but must now digest another diplomatic debacle.
James Badcock is editor of the English edition of the Spanish daily El Pais. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
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