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Western Sahara Conflict: Regions
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The Spanish government, which retains fervent interest in the issue of the Western Sahara (its former colony), has ... demonstrated its concerns. The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has called on Morocco to double its efforts to come up with a solution to the conflict in the region, in accordance with UN resolutions.
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The arrival of Islam in the 8th century played a major role in the development of relationships between the Saharan regions that later became the modern territories of Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Algeria, and neighbouring regions. Trade developed further and the region became a passage of caravans especially between Marrakech and Tombouctou in Mali. In the Middle Ages, the Almohads and Almoravids movements and dynasties both originated from the Saharan regions and were able to control the area.
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Successful negotiations that pave the way for a lasting solution to the Western Sahara dispute will stand as a powerful signal of a much-needed rapprochement between Rabat and Algiers. They ... would boost US-backed counter-terrorism efforts, which would be weakened without regional integration of programs in North Africa and the Sahel.
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Three decades after the Green March, Morocco has not yet managed to ‘normalise’ its presence in the Western Sahara. The image of El Aaiun and other cities in the ‘southern provinces’ is still very cloudy. The message to the Western powers from Polisario’s diplomats, who show them pictures of demonstrations and allegedly tortured prisoners, Spanish MPs protesting their expulsion from El Aaiun and critical reports from Reporters without Borders and Amnesty International, is one of increasing irony: ‘Are you really sure Morocco is a source of stability in the region?’
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The vandalism of archaeological sites in Western Sahara clearly warrants some action, in the form of measures to protect sites from future damage, and the rehabilitation of sites that have already been damaged where this is possible. All actors in the region should be cooperating to ensure that the cultural heritage is preserved. MINURSO has a duty to care for it, and Morocco and the Polisario both claim it. There really shouldn’t be too much to argue about (apart perhaps from who pays, which always generates some disagreement).
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ERC President Benzekri said the ERC cross-checked all the lists it had obtained of Sahrawi “disappeared,” reviewed relevant army and gendarmerie archives, dispatched researchers to the Western Sahara, interviewed relatives of missing persons, consulted with the U.N. Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances and with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and obtained through ICRC auspices information from Sahrawis formerly in Moroccan custody and now living in the Tindouf camps. Benzekri maintained that this research enabled the ERC “to clarify numerous cases, even if there are a lot still to be explained.” He has ... said that the number of persons “disappeared” and still missing from all regions of Morocco totaled about 260, indicating that he considers the number of confirmed cases of “disappeared” Sahrawis to be far lower than most of the estimates put forward by NGOs. Benzekri said that some of the NGO lists included persons for whom there is no available evidence that they had ever been taken into custody by Moroccan forces. He explained that these might include Polisario fighters who were killed by Moroccan forces but whose bodies were either never recovered or were buried without the next-of-kin being informed.
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