The information contained in this report are from public and private sources and are generally reliable although there has been no corroboration of the information. Ed
WESTERN SAHARA / SITUATION REPORT
05/04/13
Three months after his highly charged trip to Algiers, French President François Hollande was in Rabat and Casablanca on April 3 and 4 for an official visit aimed at confirming the solidity of Franco-Moroccan relations regardless of which party happens to be in power in either country. In the period immediately following Hollande’s election just under a year ago, it may be recalled, the incoming Socialist administration’s stated policy objective in the Maghreb was to establish a more ‘balanced’ relationship with France’s former possessions than had been the case under the preceding right-wing administrations, which had fairly unabashedly favoured Morocco over Algeria – prompting some suspicions that France’s new centre-left government harboured greater sympathy for Algiers than for Rabat, and for the Algerian position on Western Sahara than for Morocco’s claim to the territory[1]. After a brief period of ambiguity, however, French diplomacy began quietly to revert to form, on the Western Sahara question at least, and if any doubts lingered they will have been dispelled this month. As an unnamed adviser to François Holland put it to French journal of record Le Monde on the eve of the President’s trip to Morocco: “The French position is not reinvented every six months. We are not naive, we know that this issue is complicated, and an enormously sensitive one for the Moroccans.” Addressing the Moroccan parliament on April 4, President Hollande himself hammered home the message: “France supports the efforts of the Secretary General of the UN to achieve an acceptable political settlement. The plan presented by Morocco in 2007 provides for a status of broad autonomy for the people [of the Sahara]. Here and now, I repeat: this is a serious and credible basis for a negotiated solution.” Embattled at home in France where he faces record low approval ratings, Hollande was at least gratified with a standing ovation from Morocco’s parliamentarians.
In anticipation, Polisario General Secretary and President of the SADR Mohamed Abdelaziz published an open letter to François Hollande in Algerian daily El Watan on April 2, in which he condemned the French position on Western Sahara as “an obstacle to […] peace and justice” (adding, however, that it was “never too late” for Paris to change track). Algiers was also spurred to react to the French President’s visit, with Foreign Ministry spokesmen Amar Belani taking issue with a ‘scene-setting’ dispatch issued by French government-owned news agency AFP just before Hollande’s visit which explained that “concerning Western Sahara, fought over by Algeria and Morocco since 1975, France’s position remains the same: Paris supports the Moroccan autonomy plan.” More than the French support for the autonomy plan, what irked the Algerian Foreign Ministry spokesman particularly was the suggestion that the Western Sahara issue is a dispute between Morocco and Algeria. “To say that Algeria and Morocco compete for the Western Sahara is a disconcerting error and I am surprised by such an aberration,” Belani said in a statement to official government news agency APS. “Algeria’s position is well known. Algeria has no ambition or claim to the territory of Western Sahara, for which it seeks genuine decolonization through the exercise of the Saharawi people’s inalienable right to self-determination.”
The Algerian Foreign Ministry may have been particularly touchy on that particular point because it detects a broader trend, beyond AFP’s “disconcerting error” to reduce the Western Sahara conflict to a dispute between Rabat and Algiers. In particular, the UN Secretary General’s Personal Envoy Christopher Ross, when he suggested in his report to the Security Council last November that a phase of shuttle diplomacy with the neighbouring countries (i.e. Mauritania and Algeria) would be necessary before anything could be expected to come of renewed talks between the two official parties to the dispute (i.e. Morocco and Polisario), indicated that progress towards a solution depends on improved Algerian-Moroccan relations, thus seeming to imply that the dispute was, at base, between Algiers and Rabat. As we noted in our last report, this is not so very far removed from Morocco’s long-held position that the Sahara question is an “artificial” conflict created by Algeria that must ultimately be solved by direct negotiations between Rabat and Algiers. This position – anathema to Algiers, of course – is restated on every possible occasion by Morocco’s islamist Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, notably in an interview with French journalists on Feb. 24 (“Everyone knows that the Sahara is Moroccan and that, in the context of autonomy, a solution could be found. And if Algeria were to decide to solve this problem, it could be resolved in one day”).
These points of interpretation aside, however, it is worth underlining the practical conclusion Ross drew in his remarks back in November: that there was no point in the present circumstances in continuing with the episodic ‘informal discussions’ between Morocco and Polisario that have become known as the Manhasset process. This admission of failure led to the emergence of divergent opinions at meetings of Polisario’s National Secretariat early this year. The majority view, backed by Mohamed Abdelaziz, was that everything should be done to demonstrate that the stalemate was Morocco’s responsibility, and generally to put Rabat as far as possible on the defensive. Supporters of this position argued that Polisario’s decision to suspend family visits between Tindouf and Laayoune in late January, in protest at security measures imposed by the Moroccan police on families coming from Tindouf, could be seen as part and parcel of this strategy of exposing Moroccan intransigence; the question of human rights abuses in the Moroccan-controlled Sahara is of course another live issue which serves to maintain the pressure on Rabat[2]. On the other hand, a minority of participants in the National Secretariat meetings, among them SADR Foreign Minister Ahmed Salem Ould Salek, argued that the Front needed to push for a quick resumption of UN-sponsored talks with Morocco, since there was no other realistic way forward given the “difficult” context prevailing in the region.
Difficult, the regional situation most certainly is. At the time of the National Secretariat discussions in which such complications were invoked, France’s ‘Operation Serval’ against AQMI and allied jihadist groups in northern Mali was just getting under way, and notwithstanding the largely symbolic first withdrawal of French troops on April 8 the continuing conflict in Mali’s desert north remains an extremely sensitive issue more than two months later. With the Algerian regime unsettled by the collapse of its strategy of attempting to entice the Tuareg islamist faction Ansar Dine to break with AQMI and uncertain how to respond to the presence of French troops in its own ‘backyard'[3], Rabat has rushed to take advantage of the situation by offering its open and unambiguous support to Paris’ campaign in Mali, spelled out very explicitly by King Mohamed VI in a speech (read on his behalf by PM Benkirane) to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation[4] summit in Cairo on Feb. 6. As well as helping to restore Rabat’s ‘special relationship’ with Paris, Morocco’s support for the French-led effort to bring northern Mali back under the control of the central government has boosted its influence in Bamako, while Algeria’s influence continues to decline: in an interview in early February[5], Malian Foreign Minister Tiéman Coulibaly, was effusive in his thanks for Moroccan support, recalling that the UN Security Council resolution 2085 authorising military action to restore Mali’s territ
orial integrity was passed under the Moroccan chairmanship of the Security Council:
Morocco has always supported and continues to support Mali and its territorial integrity. We rely heavily on the support and cooperation of Morocco in overcoming the terrorist threat. We rely on the help and support of Morocco, which is a brotherly country with whom we have historic relations and was the first country from which we received humanitarian aid.
Coulibaly went on to add:
There were only 500 jihadists at the outset. Now there are between 5,500 and 7,000. These jihadi groups were joined by young people with no prospects, including young Sahrawis from the [Tindouf] camps.
This latter claim – which despite being repeated by a Malian government minister remains tendentious at best[6] – is clearly harmful for Polisario, and a boost to Rabat’s long-running black propaganda campaign. Rabat followed up its advantage in mid-March with an African mini-tour by King Mohamed, taking him (together with a large chunk of the government, foreign intelligence chief Mohamed Yassine Mansouri and numerous Palace advisors) to Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon. While Mali was a central part of discussions between the King and Presidents Sall, Ouattara and Bongo – all of whom are reported to have promised to support Morocco’s reintegration into the African Union – the Western Sahara question is also understood to have been on the menu, and a member of Polisario’s National Secretariat to whom we spoke shortly afterwards described the King’s tour as being part and parcel of Rabat’s attempts to have the process of negotiations with Polisario “buried” once and for all.
Meanwhile, the sudden outbreak of social unrest across southern Algeria that has occurred in parallel with the war in northern Mali[7], and the first premises of the emergence of a ‘Tuareg question’ within Algeria itself[8], have the authorities in Algiers all the more on edge. This adds to the difficulties for Polisario and the Sahrawis of the Tindouf camps: according to a leading member of a Sahrawi NGO, based in Algiers, the DRS intelligence and security service recently informed senior Polisario leaders that no contacts between Sahrawis and Algerian and non-Algerian Tuaregs would henceforth be tolerated without explicit prior approval from the DRS; furthermore, all travel by Tindouf-based Sahrawis to or within countries bordering on Algeria, even if arriving via third countries, will require prior authorisation from the DRS[9].
More worryingly still, for Polisario, the uncertainty in Algeria with regard to the 2014 presidential election is now beginning to affect, albeit obliquely, the Western Sahara question. According to a senior civil servant at the Algerian Presidency, Algeria’s long-held doctrine on Western Sahara – essentially the position outlined by Foreign Ministry Amar Belani (see above), namely that Algeria demands that the recognition of the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination via a referendum in accordance with existing UN Security Council resolutions – will not change one iota as long as Bouteflika is in power. But speculation in Algiers political salons that Bouteflika might not stand for re-election in 2014 has encouraged a number of political figures to begin questioning the validity of this and other shibboleths. According to the same source, among those who have begun to entertain the idea that Algeria needs to rid itself of the dead weight of the Western Sahara conflict and adopt a new approach to building a more closely integrated Maghreb are at least two members of the politburo of the left-leaning Front des Forces Socialistes[10], several heads of nationalised companies and, above all, a number of leading parliamentarians from the ruling FLN. The President’s entourage, having got wind of these private discussions, tends to see them as the beginnings of movement against a fourth term for Bouteflika; conversely, the more Bouteflika insists on the Western Sahara question in his discussions with foreign visitors[11], the more the dissenters get the message that he is inclined to run for re-election in 2014. Henceforth, the source at the Presidency concludes, in Algeria the Western Sahara question is a domestic political issue more than anything else.
It was perhaps with this in mind that SADR Foreign Minister Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, speaking at a press conference at the SADR embassy in Algiers on March 26, went even further than usual in linking the Moroccan intelligence services and AQMI-offshoot MUJAO[12], claiming that “the Algerian diplomats kidnapped in April 2012 in Gao, northern Mali, and who have still not been released, were kidnapped on the orders of Moroccan Makhzen”. For good measure, Ould Salek added that:
The Moroccan secret services want to flood North Africa with large quantities of drugs. For Morocco, drugs and terrorism are two sides of the same coin. MUJAO was created by Morocco as a vector of instability and damage against Algeria and Western Sahara. The leaders of MUJAO currently reside in Rabat and hold diplomatic passports enabling them to move freely abroad, especially to Bamako, where the Moroccan embassy as of 2006 [sic] became MUJAO’s headquarters. With drug money, Morocco is able to buy the silence of several countries, so that it can continue to violate the aspirations of the Sahrawi people to freedom.
Such claims, promptly taken up in the Algerian press, seem almost to have been calculated to make it all the more difficult for Algerian politicians to walk away from the Western Sahara question and begin the process of mending fences with Morocco.
By the time Christopher Ross embarked on his tour of the region in late March, therefore, the situation was, if anything, even more difficult. Speaking to us between Ross’ visits to Morocco (March 20-21) and the Tindouf camps (March 25-26), the Polisario National Secretariat member quoted above indicated that the Front’s leadership, while aware that the context was not particularly favourable and that Morocco was pushing in the opposite direction, would tell to Ross that there was an “urgent” need to resume direct negotiations between the two parties, and that Polisario was ready to do so without preconditions (although clearly this does not preclude exerting continued pressure on Morocco, over the question of human rights in particular[13]). Speaking to us after Ross’ meetings with the Polisario leadership[14], the National Secretariat member reported somewhat despondently that “nothing new” had come of them. Ross is said to have listened “attentively” to his interlocutors, who made a point of raising both the impasse in the negotiations process and the human rights situation in the territories held by Morocco. Without laying out his conclusions explicitly, Ross reportedly insinuated (a) that it is becoming increasingly difficult to envisage organising a referendum and that an alternative solution, which would have to be acceptable to both parties and to the neighbouring countries, is needed to unblock the situation, and (b) that for a new round of direct negotiations to be worthwhile, a rough outline of such an alternative would be required, as a basis for discussion. The Secretary General’s Personal Representative is also reported to have promised to cover the question of human rights in the report he is due to deliver to the Security Council on April 22, a week before the annual vote to renew MINURSO’s mandate.
END
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[1] See AMSR #115 (June 8, 2012)
[2] According to a Sahrawi NGO activist, Mohamed Abdelaziz described the very heavy jail sentences handed down in mid-February by a Moroccan military court
on 24 Sahrawi activists detained after the break-up of the Gdeim Izik protest camp in November 2011 as a “godsend” and ordered that a file be prepared presenting the trials as an “exemplary case of Moroccan colonial practices in the Sahara”.
[3] See AMSR #121 & #122.
[4] Formerly the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
[5] Atlasinfo.fr, 05/02/13
[6] A former Mauritanian government minister to whom we spoke in mid-March claimed that Mauritanian intelligence services have established a list of « around fifty » names of Sahrawis who have been taking part in the war in Mali, but added that these fighters are not members of Polisario or residents of the camps and had entered Mali from Mauritania, where they previously resided, rather than travelling through Algerian territory.
Reporting from Bamako, French daily Le Monde (April 7-8, 2013) indicates that the 200 jihadist prisoners captured in northern Mali by French and allied forces and held at the central prison in Bamako after being handed over to the Malian authorities include only a small minority of foreign fighters: four from Nigeria, four from Niger, two from Burkina Faso, one Gambian of Malian origin, one Tunisian, one Somalian, one Mauritanian, two Algerians and “one Moroccan who identifies himself as Sahrawi”. Around 80% of the prisoners are Malian nationals.
[7] See AMSR #122
[8] On March 29, the heads of the 30 Tuareg tribes of the Hoggar (southern Tamanrasset) met at the home of their Amenokal (or traditional leader) Ahmed Edabir to adopt a platform of demands for the Tuaregs of Algeria. While stressing their commitment to national unity, the Tuareg tribal leaders set up a ‘Council of the Tribes of the Hoggar’ and signed a lengthy letter to President Bouteflika demanding, amongst other things, that the central authorities reserve quotas for Tuaregs in government ministries, the diplomatic corps, the security services etc.
[9] Prior to this new regulation, Sahrawi residents of Algeria wishing to travel abroad were only required to give prior notification of their departure to the Gendarmerie (for inhabitants of the Tindouf camps) or the police (for those residing in Algiers or other cities), according to the same source.
[10] The FFS, which has of late toned down somewhat its once strident opposition to the regime as a whole, is a sister party of François Hollande’s PS, both being members of the Socialist International.
[11] When Bouteflika received French National Assembly Speaker Claude Bartolone and the French ambassador to Algiers on March 11, for example, the bulk of his comments reportedly concerned the Western Sahara.
[12] As we have noted in earlier reports, Polisario spokespeople, notably Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, have for some months been pushing the claim that MUJAO (the Movement for Monotheism and Jihad in West Africa, an AQMI splinter group which first emerged in late 2011) is a puppet, and perhaps even a creation, of the Moroccan security services. See WSSR 11/01/2013.
[13] Hence for example Mohamed Abdelaziz’s unusual open letter to King Mohamed at the end of March, condemning the abuse by Moroccan security forces of Sahrawi women protesters in Laayoune during Christopher Ross’ visit.
[14] Ross met with SADR President Mohamed Abdelaziz, MINURSO coordinator M’hamed Khaddad, parliamentary speaker and head of the delegation to the Manhasset talks Khatri Addouh, members of the Sahrawi National Council (the SADR’s quasi-parliament), and members of the National Secretariat.
