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Features Rumblings in Western Sahara
January 6th, 2005 -- While diplomats continue to stare down a cul de sac at the UN, Sahrawi activists in Western Sahara are busy working to hasten change as November’s Green March marked the 30th year of the dispute. In November 1975, Hassan II, with the connivance of Madrid, the former colonial power, ordered a token march by Moroccan civilians across the border into the territory. The symbolic assertion of Moroccan sovereignty veiled the military invasion of the territory further to the east. A large proportion of the native Sahrawi population fled to southwestern Algeria, where they still remain in refugee camps. For many years contact between the exiles and the occupied scarcely existed. Some families were able to meet up in Mauritania or pass messages through contacts in Europe. The mobile phone and the internet, however, changed everything; families are now able to maintain at least a rudimentary flow of news. It was, perhaps, recognition of this reality that prompted the start-up of UN-sponsored family visits earlier this year. Thousands of Sahrawis registered to participate and hundreds have benefited so far. A new phase of visits should have started by now but has been delayed for “technical reasons”. Rabat plan back-fires Activists in Laayoune say the two-way visits have both strengthened the resolve of nationalist Sahrawis and encouraged those who have accepted Moroccan rule to reconsider. The Moroccan authorities brought in herds of journalists to see the arrival of the first batch of visitors from the camps but thereafter discouraged on-the-spot coverage. Sahrawi activists say this was because Rabat had convinced itself of its own story and expected the visitors to defect in droves. In the event they did not, and the two halves of the Sahrawi community, say the activists, reinforced each other’s steadfastness. Seeing and hearing that the Sahrawis in the camps were not being held prisoner by Polisario, as Moroccan propaganda has long held, has edged Sahrawis who had accepted integration with Morocco closer to the nationalists, activists argue. Held up as circumstantial evidence of the effect of the visits is an invigoration of the campaign to build a Sahrawi civil society, the main plank of open activist work in the occupied territories since 1999. Since the family visits, a human rights committee has been established in Dakhla in the south of the territory, demonstrating a new confidence in the relatively isolated Sahrawi community there. School student activity appears to be on the increase, with, for example, a demonstration by secondary school pupils in Laayoune in early December. A new university student grouping has begun issuing communiqués. In the Sahrawi town of Assa, which lies inside the internationally recognized borders of Morocco, there have been sizeable demonstrations in support of Ali Salem Tamek, one of the highest-profile activists. Resistance at a crossroads The protests have been becoming more openly political. Less than two years ago it was extraordinary when students displayed a picture of El Ouali, Polisario’s first leader. Now, it may be notable but it is no longer extraordinary. The recent school student demonstrations and the Assa protests were openly pro-Polisario. This poses issues for the civil society movement. Some activists, such as Tamek, are impatient to politicize the movement. He argues that denial of civil rights is a symptom of national oppression. Campaigning for the release of prisoners should simply be a transitional phase ahead of organizing mass demonstrations calling for an independent Sahrawi state, he believes. Repression of such demonstrations would demonstrate the nature of the Moroccan state to the world. No one can deny that Tamek leads by example. Released from prison less than a year ago having been jailed after he tried to present his candidature papers for Moroccan parliamentary elections, he has been on no less than 17 hunger strikes. He openly calls for an independent Sahrawi state — which is illegal — and says the current impasse may lead to violence inside the occupied territories — which is dangerous. Tamek is a sick man who needs to rest. He has just regained his passport after a series of high-profile protests and, despite calls in the Moroccan press for him to be expelled, has left for Europe for medical treatment. Meanwhile, both Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and southern Morocco witnessed a number of protests by Sahrawis in December. International Human Rights Day on 10 December saw an attempt by demonstrators to reach the Minurso building in Laayoune. The same day a newly formed group in Dakhla organized a protest, while another took place in Smara. The Moroccan press has been expressing concern at the growth of Sahrawi activism in southern Morocco. Early December saw school students protesting in Zak as well as unemployed graduates and students in Assa, while sit-ins were reported in Goulmime and Tantan. But some other activists are wary of Tamek’s approach, believing he undervalues the very type of organization that trained him — he first emerged as a trade unionist. They believe that while campaigns aimed at creating a Sahrawi civil society may offer a necessary training ground for political activists, they are valuable in themselves. Sahrawi sentiment, they agree, is overwhelmingly nationalist and so while it would be easy to transform civil rights groups into overtly pro-independence groups, it would invite repression and possibly be counter-productive to the Sahrawi cause. A return to arms A return to armed struggle by Polisario is under discussion in the occupied territories to far greater extent than it has been for years. With Morocco rejecting the United Nation’s current Peace Plan after turning its back on the Settlement Plan signed in 1991, there is broad agreement that the 13-year-old cease-fire is redundant. It was part of a political process on which Rabat has turned its back, the argument goes. That is a long way from advocating a return to arms, but many are moving in that direction or have already got there. And despite Kofi Annan’s call in his last report to the Security Council for a retreat from bellicose rhetoric, Polisario leader Mohammed Abdelaziz told the Spanish press a return to arms was now a probability. Should Polisario recommence attacks on Moroccan positions along its defensive wall, let alone relax its opposition to violence on the part of its supporters inside the occupied territories, there is a clear danger to the civil society movement that the Moroccan security forces would have the pretext they need to crush it. But a return to combat would almost certainly require the acquiescence of Algeria and President Bouteflika would be playing for very high stakes if he gave the nod. Relations with the US, France and Spain would all be strained. Breaching the taboo If Morocco’s diplomatic stance over Western Sahara is ossified, the same cannot be said of the press. Debate is burgeoning, albeit within the restrictions of a law forbidding the questioning of Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. Driss Basri, the strongman who ran the Interior Ministry for Hassan II but was humiliatingly dismissed by Mohammed VI, pointed out the intransigence of the current regime by referring in interviews (with a Spanish daily, Al Jazeera and Algerian television) to “Western Sahara” rather than the “Moroccan Sahara”. This, he knew, would be picked up by the Moroccan press and it was, as was his highly embarrassing reiteration of his rejection of Rabat’s notional “third way” — regional autonomy for the territory under Moroccan sovereignty — and his call for a referendum offering independence or integration. Everyone knows Basri has a lot of axes to grind but for someone who controlled the Western Sahara portfolio for so long to speak out now was significant. Then Ali Lmrabet, a renowned Moroccan journalist who was imprisoned for breaching the press laws, interviewed Abdelaziz for a Spanish paper shortly after the small Moroccan newspaper al-Bidawi had run a pared-down interview with the Polisario leader. The independently minded Journal Hebdo has led two recent editions with series of articles on Western Sahara that clearly invite questioning of official versions of the situation there. For its part, Rabat announced a plan for a regional television channel in the territory targeting Sahrawis rather than the majority settler population and, according to the loyalist press, intended to counter the impact of Polisario’s radio broadcasts, which, Sahrawis in Laayoune say, have been jammed in recently. |
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