Anton Ferreira |
The US has made radical proposals in its Security Council draft resolution on resolving the decades-long conflict in the Western Sahara, endorsing without ambiguity a Moroccan autonomy plan as the “only” option and prompting an immediate threat by the Polisario Front to quit the peace process if the resolution is passed.
The zero draft resolution was circulated to the 15 Council members on Oct. 22, only nine days before the expiry of the current 12-month mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which was created in 1991 as part of a ceasefire between Moroccan forces and Polisario. The short time frame for negotiations suggests pressure by the US for a decision by the Council to be made quickly to endorse the proposal, giving it a legal seal of approval, according to experts.
Featured Picture: A military observer from Pakistan working for the UN peacekeeping mission, called Minurso, in Western Sahara, 2024. As the mandate renewal for the mission looms on Oct. 31, the US, which oversees the agenda item in the UN Security Council, is proposing radical changes to Minurso’s operations, including a new name and ending the current form in six months. MINURSO/IG
Among other aspects, Washington — the penholder on the issue — wants the name of the mission changed to erase the reference to a referendum, so it would be known as the UN Mission for a Political Solution in Western Sahara (MINUSO). The new name would signify a major political shift for the 35-year-old mission.
The resolution, which would affirm that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only feasible solution to the question of Western Sahara,” would also place the UN’s imprimatur on Rabat’s control of the territory, which it invaded in 1975 when Spain withdrew as the colonial power. The US recognized Moroccan sovereignty in 2020, during President Trump’s first term.
The draft text would also end the UN’s peacekeeping mandate after six months, “and from 1 May 2027 the Mission shall continue as a special political mission until 31 October 2027.”
It also refers to the three rounds of US-led discussions that Morocco and Polisario, with neighbors Algeria and Mauritania, held in January and February on ending the conflict. The talks ended inconclusively, however, and may have been meant to give the appearance that efforts were made to find a solution among all parties.
Indeed, the new text says: “Morocco’s expanded and updated Autonomy Proposal . . . would be the only basis for continuing these discussions.” It “calls upon the parties to cooperate fully with the facilitators, to engage actively and constructively using Morocco’s Autonomy Proposal as the only basis for negotiation, and to put forward responses on the basis of the Autonomy Proposal.”
Polisario, which still demands that the original UN-agreed plan be carried out for a referendum among the Indigenous Sahrawi population of about 500,000, reacted with outrage to the zero draft.
“[It] is another extremely dangerous, unprecedented departure not only from the principles of international law underpinning Western Sahara as a question of decolonization, but also from the basis upon which the Security Council has addressed Western Sahara,” Sidi Omar, the Polisario ambassador to the UN, wrote in a letter to the monthly rotating president of the Council, Greece’s Aglaia Balta.
“It also contains elements that strike at the heart of the foundations of the UN peace process in Western Sahara and constitute a grave violation of the international status of the Territory.”
Council members have until Oct. 26 to comment on the text before a vote will be scheduled, possibly on Oct. 30.
Omar said the draft could not be the basis for deliberations on MINURSO or the peace process. “If the zero-draft were to pass without any substantive and meaningful changes, the Frente Polisario would have no choice but to disengage from the peace process as a whole.”
In remarks to PassBlue the day after the zero draft was circulated, Omar said: “It wasn’t that surprising to us, knowing that Morocco has sold out its soul to the US and others to get something in return, and they’re in a hurry to get it before US midterm elections.”
Return to war?
Analysts said the US proposals were a recipe for a return to conflict.
“This is a radical departure from a resolution-oriented path, which suggests the negotiations that the US succeeded in convening were in bad faith all along,” said Hannah Rae Armstrong, a policy adviser who specializes in North Africa and the Sahel region, referring to the talks earlier this year held in Madrid and Washington.
“The zero draft immediately and sharply raises the risk of an escalation in the conflict,” Armstrong told PassBlue.
Erik Hagen, a board member of the Brussels-based Western Sahara Resource Watch, a nongovernmental organization, said that the current draft “is in violation of the UN Charter and is therefore an invalid resolution.”
“It’s in the DNA of the UN to try to prevent situations of aggression and occupation,” Hagen told PassBlue in a phone call. “That’s why we have the UN in the first place. What we’re seeing now is that we’re going towards a UN acceptance of occupation. This is bigger than Western Sahara, this has to do with the principles of international law. If it can happen here, why not in other occupations?”
Hagen said that imposing a solution under Moroccan sovereignty would not solve the conflict.
“The Sahrawis have rights to self-determination irrespective of what the Security Council decides. The Sahrawi people do not want to be Moroccan, they will keep opposing, they will still be prisoners in Moroccan jails, and they will still feel [alienated from] Morocco, a country that caused so much trauma for them.”
In a report to the Council on Oct. 1, Guterres stressed that Sahrawis had an “inalienable right to self-determination.” He added that “I wish to underscore that any proposal must be subject to a meaningful process of consultation with the people of Western Sahara, such that they have a free and voluntary choice to accept or reject it.”
The draft notes “with deep concern the protracted nature of the displacement and the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the Tindouf refugee camps, emphasizing that this situation cannot responsibly be sustained.”
The Tindouf camp
Waltz referred to Tindouf in a post on X after he met with Omar and other Polisario representatives at the end of September, at the US mission to the UN, saying that the plight of the refugees was a reason for urgency. They “deserve real options, not another decade of waiting,” Waltz said.
In what appears to have been a response to US pressure on Tindouf, Polisario issued a statement on Oct. 14 saying “the protracted nature of the displacement or the difficulty of the situation” was being used as a pretext to force the refugees to move back to the Western Sahara with or without a settlement.
“Any proposals to organize a return process prior to the elimination of the root causes of displacement would amount to a reward for Moroccan occupation and a violation of the Geneva Convention regarding the protection of refugees,” said a document titled “The Legal and Humanitarian Situation of Sahrawi Refugees and Durable Solutions” that was submitted to the Council by the South African UN delegation on behalf of Polisario.
De Mistura warned Council members during closed consultations in early October that negotiations among the four sides involved had reached a stalemate.
“Although I remain convinced that a solution to this dispute is possible, I must now acknowledge that we have hit a wall in the negotiations,” de Mistura said, according to a transcript of his remarks seen by PassBlue. “I believe that . . . autonomy should be the basis for our next discussions.”
At the time, Omar condemned de Mistura’s remarks, saying in a statement that he had “seriously compromised his mandate of strict neutrality and his role as an impartial mediator by, inter alia, openly endorsing ‘autonomy’ as the basis for future discussions, thereby adopting a stance that aligns completely with the position of Morocco, the occupying state.”
Omar said that de Mistura’s approach raised “questions regarding his credibility, impartiality and independence as well as the viability of his mediatory mandate.”
In a call with PassBlue before the zero draft was circulated, the Polisario ambassador said: “MINURSO was established implement a very clear mandate, indicated in one of the letters of its name, ‘referendum.’ Morocco, of course, has a different position and is against a referendum. They know for sure they will lose it, the Sahrawi people will choose to be independent. That’s something of course they do not like, and unfortunately, they are being backed in this by the US and France, so they have no incentive to go forward for a genuine lasting solution.”
Omar added that the talks in January and February — the first time the foreign ministers of the four sides had all met in one room — had created momentum. “That process should be given time, and patience should reign; frankly, we are concerned about the views of those who think you can fix a conflict of over five decades in three or four rounds of talks. That short-cut kind of approach doesn’t work.”
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