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A protester waves the Sahrawi flag in front of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid on Dec. 10, 2020. Diego Radames/SOPA Images/LightRocket
Foreignpolicy January 9, 2021
Labeling the Polisario Front a separatist insurgency rather than anti-occupation movement sets a dangerous precedent. But there’s also no strategic reason Biden can’t back away from Trump’s brash turn on day one.
On Dec. 10, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced via tweet that the United States now recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a reversal of nearly half a century of diplomatic norms pursued in return for Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel. The enormity of this apparent change in policy cannot be overstated; it appears that Morocco’s long-running diplomatic pressure campaign has finally borne fruit.
Still, there is good reason to consider the permanence of this about-face with some suspicion. Trump’s move sets a highly problematic precedent by recognizing the sovereignty of an occupying power—Morocco—over a colonized territory—Western Sahara. But the highly symbolic nature of the decision also makes it a prime candidate for foreign-policy damage control when President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.
There are three reasons why the United States’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara is a peculiar policy reversal. First, it is striking that the most substantial change in U.S. posture towards the territory conflict should has been pursued not for its own sake, but as a price paid to persuade the Kingdom of Morocco to agree to normalize relations with Israel.
Second, the decision comes as Morocco and the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi liberation movement, are engaged in active armed conflict. This is a recent change: A 29-year-old cease-fire agreement between the two groups—which promised a democratic resolution to the conflict—collapsed in November 2020 after protests escalated to an exchange of fire.
The Moroccan military responded to demonstrations blocking a road near the Mauritanian border by breaching the buffer zone between the two territories and exchanging fire with the Polisario as they evacuated civilians. Then, on Nov. 14, 2020, the Polisario’s leadership announced that the group would no longer adhere to the 1991 truce and initiated a return to armed struggle. While the November protests were the proximate cause of this breakdown, other factors—including the proliferation of Moroccan drones in Western Sahara and decades of failed diplomacy—have been brewing discontent among the Sahrawi people for years.
Third, and most importantly, the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara is illegal—a verdict long affirmed by the United Nations and many international court decisions. The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a non-self-governing territory, rendering the celebrated 1975 “Green March”—when 300,000 Moroccan civilians settled in the territory—a deliberate act of colonization.
This means that Sahrawi self-determination activists—and the Polisario Front—are not “separatists,” as both the Washington Post and New York Times have reported, but a decolonization movement. This distinction is critically important in determining what changes the United States can effect unilaterally in Western Sahara—and what their implications are for other conflicts.
The international legal record on Western Sahara has been clear
and consistent. In 1975, the International Court of Justice issued an opinion on the matter at Morocco’s own request. It stated that the future of the territory should be decided “through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the territory.” In 1982, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the government formed by the Polisario, became a founding member of the African Union’s predecessor organization, the Organization for African Unity. One of the union’s founding principles is that there can be no revision of colonial borders on the African continent; Morocco’s claims cut cleanly against this rule.
The U.N. Security Council has repeatedly tried to oversee a popular referendum in Western Sahara to resolve the conflict, as promised by the 1991 cease-fire. But those efforts have brought little to the fore. The 2003 Peace Plan, doggedly pursued by then-U.N. Special Envoy and former U.S. Secretary State James Baker, gave into significant Moroccan demands—the biggest of which was the inclusion of all Moroccan settlers as eligible voters in the referendum.
This plan won the support not only of the United States, France, and their peers on the U.N. Security Council, but also Algeria, the SADR leadership the Polisario Front, and Mauritania. It was Morocco alone that refused to accept the new terms of the referendum, instead introducing an entirely separate “autonomy plan” that would grant some rights to Western Sahara but preserve Moroccan authority over defense and foreign affairs. Morocco’s proposal would also fail to protect the locally elected government from abolition by the central government. Collectively, these restrictions fall far short of the legal definition of autonomy.
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