Waiting for Godot to Western Sahara

Waiting for Godot to Western Sahara

It is amazing that there is a United Nations (UN) member country for every letter in the alphabet except W and X. And it is a better bet that the next member state will come from the letter W rather than X! The W candidate for status as a potential internationally recognized UN state is Western Sahara. Like the characters in Samuel Becket's classic play Waiting for Godot, Western Sahara is still waiting. It is waiting for a final determination of its political status.

Western Sahara is one of those places that get very little media coverage, although lots is going on there in terms of a history of political conflict. Since the 1960s Western Sahara, formerly a Spanish colony, has been on the UN list of Non-Self Governing Territories. Its population is barely 400,000, but it is a vast territory consisting of 266,000 square kilometres in the south of Morocco. Its status is disputed between the Moroccan state and the Polisario Front independence movement in conjunction with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Polisario has been involved in a war of national liberation or terrorism, depending on your perspective, against the Moroccan government since 1973. It is backed by Algeria, which is a constant sore spot between the two Maghreb neighbours.

Since 1991 there has been a ceasefire in the Western Sahara. Morocco controls most of the territory, with the rest under Polisario/SADR control. Amazingly, the Polisario is recognized by 46 states, including the African Union. Morocco has the Arab League on its side in the dispute with the Polisario and Algeria. To complicate matters, Morocco's southern neigbour, Mauritania, also has a territorial claim on the Western Sahara. Yet, Mauritania ceded its claim to a part of the Western Sahara in 1979.

Will Western Sahara be the first W nation in the UN? Or, will it wait indefinitely for its state like other stateless peoples from the Kurds to Palestinians and Tibetans to Corsicans? The new king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, is playing the waiting game of intransigence. He totally rejects any referendum on independence for Western Sahara. The monarch has made this definitive statement closing the door on independence: "We shall not give up one inch of our beloved Sahara, not a grain of its sand." Since 2007 the Polisario has threatened to resume fighting to win its independence.

The human rights situation in the Western Sahara has been bleak. Morocco's treatment and expulsion of Sahrawi civilians and forced disappearances have been condemned by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Polisario, in turn, has been criticized for the sequestering of the population in the Tindouf. Algeria has been criticized for continuing the conflict by funding the Polisario and expelling Moroccan civilians from Algeria.

There is speculation that Western Sahara might have oil reserves, but this has not been confirmed and exploited. In the new millennium, US and French companies began exploiting prospects for oil in the Western Sahara. Finding proven reserves could make Moroccans even less willing to hand over Western Sahara to Sahrawis. Sahrawis are largely nomadic, Berber, and Sunni Muslims, although their Islam often functions without traditional Islamic structures. Culturally, they are not very different from other Berber-Islamic constituencies in the rest of Morocco. One more reason for the Moroccans to play the waiting game.

The status of Western Sahara has been indeterminate since Spain relinquished sovereign control of the territory in 1975. The longer Sahrawis wait without a political solution, the more likely fighting will resume. If this is the case, then like in Waiting for Godot, the characters wait, waiting for what might never come, namely, independence for Western Sahara.

Tamir Bar-On