A mild case of the Kremlins

Astoundingly, still no new conspiracy theory online at Algeria-Watch after military strongman gen. maj. Smaïn Lamari died of an unexpected ... heart attack. Who will be the first to claim he was murdered? Well, perhaps everyone is too busy speculating about the health of president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Just the other day, his prime minister, the hapless FLN stooge Abdelaziz Belkhadem, held a press conference denouncing all speculation about the president's health, saying he's just fine.

[picture: can you spot the sick man?]

Then Bouteflika himself came out of the woodwork, after a mysterious three-week absence from the political scene, to visit the famous Islamist televangelist sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, who is recovering (?) in an Algerian hospital -- actually, the same one where Lamari died. He explained that he would have loved to come sooner, but if he had gone to visit a hospital, people would have started speculating about his health -- so instead, he stayed home, saying nothing, in hiding from the media.

Seeing as how that evidently didn't help, he sent his brother to visit the sheikh. That immediately started a rumour about the president being absent because he was in a critical condition. Out of other options, and with people for some reason reluctant to trust prime minister Belkhadem, Boutef was finally forced to show up in person at the hospital, to look alive in front of the cameras. (And Qaradawi also got up and wandered about.)

It's all very touching. But that's the great thing about being an aging dictator in a system known to eat its own, with a famously frail health, and a myriad of clawing military competitors who are just waiting for the great sucking sound of your death to be heard -- people care a lot about your health. And you don't even have to care about theirs!

[picture: looking out for number one]

Ibn Kafka on Morocco, part III

The third installment in Ibn Kafka's brilliant walk-through of the Moroccan political landscape (earlier post, part I, part II) has arrived over at `Aqoul. This time it is about the political parties, and it is oh so very long. And oh so very necessary for you to read.

Go make some coffee and get to it.

UPDATE: And his own blog is suddenly back online, too: Obiter dicta.

Also dead: Smaïn Lamari

So Driss Basri, that old scourge of Morocco, has died, only to be followed immediately by Smaïl Lamari. Good thing the road is wide to where they're going.

Unlike Basri, "Smaïn" Lamari, as he was also known, was neither retired nor in exile. He was at the time of his death, this Monday, probably one of the three most powerful men in Algeria, with the other two being president Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the head of the spy services, Mohamed "Toufik" Médiène -- and not necessarily in that order. With Médiène running the DRS intelligence apparatus, and Lamari as head of the influential sub-organization DCE (the directorate of counter-espionage), they were, as far as I know, the only two generals to remain in their posts since the military coup of January 1992. While the other leading "janvieristes" fell away over the years*, Toufik and Smaïn remained as fixtures of the military-dominated system. They also remained very much out of the public eye. The picture seen here is one of the few ever published of Smaïl Lamari, who for years remained a faceless power behind the scenes in Algerian politics.

As DCE head, Lamari was one of the main leaders of the army's and state's counter-insurgency campaign in the 1990s, and perhaps especially responsible for the strategy of infiltrating Islamist terrorist groups. While the swirling accusations of military complicity in the GIA-led massacres of the late 1990s have to be taken with rather more than a grain of salt, there's no denying that the Algerian security forces manipulated Islamist groups, that they used torture, killings and rape as a political tool, and that they are responsible for numerous crimes against humanity during the course of the war -- not to mention for a shameless pilfering of Algeria's wealth both in times of war and peace, and the mockery they have made of the democratic process. And on the top of that atrocious food chain you'd find general Smaïl Lamari. He was also, in fairness, a driving force behind the decision to seek a compromise victory, of sorts, with the Islamist movement, and to stop short of the "eradication" that others in the military elite argued for. That was probably one of the reasons he backed Bouteflika's ascent to the presidency in 1999, even if he may have regretted the move afterwards.**

Ech-Chorouk editor Anis Rahmani is quoted by Reuters as saying that "continuity will remain" despite the death of Lamari. Maybe, but who on earth wants "continuity" in Algeria? And somehow I don't think that empty space in the center of the spider's web is going to stay unoccupied for long, no matter how sticky the threads are.

-- -- -- --

*) The public face of the coup, defence minister Khaled Nezzar, was sickly, and left power voluntarily (it seems), although he remained hugely influential for many years, and probably still is. The army's top commander Mohamed Lamari -- no relation -- left his post after Bouteflika's reelection in 2004, in a not-so-subtle display of who's the new boss in Algeria. He was soon followed by coup mastermind Larbi Belkheir, who was shunted off to Morocco as ambassador after Bouteflika had consolidated power; whereas others, like Mohamed Touati, simply went into retirement.

**) Not since the days of Boumédiène has there been a president so effective in mopping up all independent counterweights within the system as Boutef, whether they be courts, opposition parties or military conspirators. And for good and bad: one the one hand, he's building a solid one-man dictatorship; on the other, he's ending a particularly nasty period of junta infighting. (See this recent Carnegie Paper by Hugh Roberts for more on that.)

Driss Basri is dead

Driss Basri, the late king Hassan's strongman, has passed away, aged 69.

Unlike what was the case for so many of his victims, the proof of death didn't come when a human rights group unearthed his long-missing corpse -- hands tied, bullet rattling in the skull -- from a shallow mass grave near Qalaat Mgouna, Tazmamart or any of the other hell holes he ran for dissidents. Instead, he lived his last years in comfortable exile in Paris, living off the wealth he had spent his years in power stealing from the Moroccan people. He had been exiled, or told that exile would be a wise move, by Mohamed VI and his aides, who didn't want to share their new power with this Makhzenite dinosaur.

Things have changed a great deal since then, even if they'll have to change a great deal still. But for many Moroccans and Western Saharans, this also means that the top responsible -- along with Hassan II -- for the deaths and disappearances of their loved ones has died unpunished, and taken his secrets to the grave. Sometimes death is just as unfair as life.

UPDATE: an obituary in The Times, worth the read.

With friends like these...

French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen recently visited Morocco, and was interviewed in La Gazette du Maroc. On the topic of Western Sahara, his support for the Moroccan government's position comes unexpectedly close to ... Polisario's position:

Regarding the conflict in Western Sahara, he said that he "understands" the Moroccan proposal for autonomy, because "I was myself in favor of a French Algeria". "I always had the hope that the young Muslims of Algeria would be the spokesmen of the French flag in the Arab and Muslim world", he underlined.

Le Pen, of course, started his career in French fascism as a military intelligence officer (and, it seems, torturer) during the Algerian war of independence, after which he never really got over the loss of France's, eh... southern provinces. While I'm sure political support is always appreciated, I can understand why MAP hasn't put this one up on their front page.

Conspiracy corner

A follow up on an earlier post, the Algerian daily El Khabar writes:

The founding father and former emir of the Islamic Armed Group GIA Abdelhak Laiada unveiled a chapter over his passage to Morocco in the early 90s. He revealed that Moroccans were seeking the recruitment of Polisario students in the GIA but he refused. [...]

Laiada lifted the veil over his passage to Morocco in 1993 to meet Algerian Afghans, just after he became chief of the GIA. He told EL Khabar that Moroccan authorities "have been seeking to convince me to find Islamist Sahrawi students in Algerian universities to recruit them in the GIA.

According to the same source "Moroccans have set a plan, the Sahrawi who will join GIA will be later persecuted by the Moroccan authorities for belonging to an Algerian terrorist group, they asked me to mediatize it and give the impression that the Sahrawi and the Polisario Front are terrorists."

Make of it what you will. As all involved have serious credibility problems, I shall remain officially agnostic on the matter.

[picture: abdelhaq layada, strange bedfellow extraordinaire]

Polisario: stop Moroccan elections in W. Sahara

More election news. Polisario's secretary-general, Mohamed Abdelaziz, has appealed to the UN secretary-general to stop the organization of Moroccan elections in Western Sahara. He points out that Morocco's claim to the territory isn't legally recognized, and that it can not undertake unilateral actions that will affect the status of the territory. Of course, organizing elections is such an action, and the Rabat government could hardly argue otherwise with a straight face. But with the kind of international support that has lined up behind it as of late, the Moroccan regime can pretty much ignore the provisions of the peace agreements, because no one will hold it accountable -- certainly not the US, and not the EU either, given the position taken by France and Spain, while the UN security council is prevented from protesting by these same powers. And in international politics, who else matters?

There is, quite simply, very little Polisario can do about it -- just as there is very little it can do about the Moroccan government's refusal to organize a certain other vote in Western Sahara. What is likely to come out of this is that Moroccan officials will portray the electoral participation in Western Sahara as proof of the Sahrawis' allegiance to the crown, while Polisario argues to the contrary, that it is yet another Moroccan attempt to torpedo the principle of self-determination.

Note that Abdelaziz doesn't call for an election boycott. He knows that there is very little chance of organizing one, since anyone arguing for it would be immediately arrested as a Polisario agent, and also that Morocco could still quote whatever fantasy numbers it wanted, should a boycott succeed -- international observers didn't seem overly concerned with the abnormal situation in Western Sahara last time around. Also, the large numbers of Moroccan settlers and Sahrawis from southern Morocco have made the pre-1975 Sahrawis a minority in their own country, which ensures that Morocco could still point to a decent level of voter participation, even if all of them would heed a call to boycott the polls. (Which they won't. Some are actually pro-Rabat, whatever Polisario says, while others may want to vote for a relative or friend the independence issue aside, and most of the rest know that not voting could then be interpreted as not supporting Morocco -- no small danger in Western Sahara.)

A final point: no pro-self determination candidates seem to have attempted to register for elections (look what happened last time) and so all candidates will be reliably pro-annexation, effectively running for the state rather than for any particular political party. This is something one wishes that election observers would look into, for it clearly represents a form of government intimidation and fraud, even if it is not of the ballot-box-stuffing kind. It has been said that the important thing is not who votes in an election, but who counts the ballots, and one could add that it's not entirely insignificant who screens the candidates.

Somewhat larger than a loophole

With Moroccan elections approaching fast, Ibn Kafka (of the Francophone Morocco blog Obiter dicta) has posted an excellent brief on the king's powers within the Moroccan system over at `Aqoul. A lawyer by profession, if I remember correctly, he takes us on a guided tour of the Moroccan constitution, listing the various constitutional articles that, taken together, grant the king uncontested primacy over the Moroccan system. First and foremost among them is Article 19, the "constitution within the constitution":

Article 19: The King, "Amir Al-Muminin"(Commander of the Faithful), shall be the Supreme Representative of the Nation and the Symbol of the unity thereof. He shall be the guarantor of the perpetuation and the continuity of the State. As Defender of the Faith, He shall ensure the respect for the Constitution. He shall be the Protector of the rights and liberties of the citizens, social groups and organisations. The King shall be the guarantor of the independence of the Nation and the territorial integrity of the Kingdom within all its rightfull boundaries.

But there's far more to it than that. Go read the whole post, and stay tuned for the promised part two.

Oh, and you Western Sahara buffs might want to read Ibn Kafka's analysis alongside Article 14 of the Moroccan proposal for autonomy in Western Sahara.

[picture: morocco's coat of arms has the crown on top, provoking a mixed reaction among the country's lions]

UPDATE: Part two, also great.

Interesting essay on the Sahrawi exile

UPES, how we love them, has posted a very interesting essay:

Nationalism, Identity and Citizenship in Western Sahara
By Pablo San Martin.

I remember reading it in the Journal of North Africa Studies some months ago, and that I thought it was fascinating -- a view of the conflict rarely seen. About the situation in the Tindouf camps and the way Sahrawis have dealt with semi-permanent exile through creating 'virtual' institutions of statehood, such as a symbolic currency -- and also, about how they continuously attempt to undermine and 'de-normalize' the Moroccan presence on the other side of the wall.

Mandatory reading for you too, now that it is available online.

Quit your day job

Since I haven't posted on this yet, and it seems so very significant, here's what the king's (iron) right hand, interior minister delegate Fouad Ali El Himma, was doing instead of going to Manhasset to negotiate: he resigned. And then announced that he will be running in the parliamentary elections in September -- yeah, the same elections he has been involved in preparing.

The press release of the King's office had announced that the monarch accepted Mr. El Himma's request to be "relieved of his post in order to file candidacy for the September 7 parliamentary elections on an equal footing with all Moroccan citizens."

King Mohammed VI paid tribute to Mr. El Himma for his "human, professional qualities" and for his "loyalty" to the throne, the press release added.

Fouad Ali El Himma, 44, was appointed deputy Minister of the Interior on November 7, 2002. A former classmate at the College Royal of the then Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed (now King Mohammed VI) who appointed him chief of staff in October 1998, Mr. El Himma became State Secretary to the Interior on 6 November 1999 just after the accession of the monarch to the throne. (MAP)

Think he will win? And speaking of that, who do you think will become prime minister after the elections?

UPDATE I: For another take on this, by Morocco's dissident supreme Ali Lmrabet, check ARSO's post in comments. Could it be that El Himma is being booted out as a result of internal power struggles in the Makhzen -- Lmrabet specifically suggests that El Himma might have been bested by Yacine Mansouri, another powerful confidant of the king, who has passed from head of the MAP to running Morocco's espionage services? We'll find out pretty soon.
UPDATE II: A picture is worth a thousand words, so don't miss WSO's take on the matter.

Stalemate is a victimless crime

Well, who could have guessed:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Two days of talks on the future of Western Sahara between Morocco and the territory's independence movement ended on Saturday with no breakthrough in the 32-year-old dispute, but agreement to meet again. [...]

Yes, more talks should do it.

Morocco's delegation leader, Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa, told a news conference his country preferred not to fix a time or place because elections that will bring a new government to power were approaching.

... and preferably with a long pause first. Meantime, who wants to settle in Western Sahara? And who wants to starve in a desert refugee camp? Political repression and three-hour tea sessions included; a limited amount of places are available on both sides of the berm. Zip me an e-mail, and I'll have a word with the competent authorities.

Van Walsum's brief statement described the talks as substantive, adding: "The parties acknowledge that the current status quo is unacceptable and they have agreed to continue these negotiations in good faith."

Aha. Excellent job, Peter. After 32 years, the warring parties have admitted that they are unhappy with not winning -- it is progress if I ever saw it.

Next up: whodunnit.

Imaginary friends in high places

[picture: off to work, honey]

As you surely know, Algeria is not a very well-functioning country. Rather, it is a particularly corrupt dictatorship, to a large part run from behind the scenes by ruthless security services, the by far most important being the military Département du renseignement et de la sécurité, or DRS for short. Its head, gen. Mohamed Médiène is without doubt one of the most powerful men in Algeria, even if he rarely or never appears in the news. It is highly uncertain if even the ever-more assertive president Bouteflika could reign him in, and certainly, he hasn't even dared to try yet, after eight years in power. For ordinary citizens, too, the sécurité militaire constitute an unimpeachable and frightening elite, and despite the fact that so much of the country's wealth is disappearing down their pockets, very few dare to speak out about it. So, Algerians remain poor, oil and gas notwithstanding, and also have to put up with the added humiliation of seeing DRS thugs run roughshod over their country. Things are picking up after the civil war years, but unemployment is still widespread, and for most people, it's a daily struggle to make ends meet.

So, what do you do, when you're a middle-aged Algerian ordinary Joe Schmoe who has taken this crap for all your life, and just can't seem to get a break? Well, it's pretty obvious. If you can't beat them, you've got join 'em:

Algiers: False DRS colonel arrested.

By Z. Mehdaoui -- Acting on intelligence, elements of the research section of the gendarmerie group in Algiers has managed to neutralize an individual who passed himself off as a colonel of the DRS. Indeed, following information about the behavior of the man in question, the gendarmerie followed this false colonel for several days before arresting him, last Tuesday, in the home of one of his close relativies in Garidi (Algiers). [...]

After interrogation, the 49-year old man quickly acquiesced and declared to the gendarmerie's investigators that his role was to intervene with different authorities to solve the problems of citizens, apparently using his false status. Unemployed, the man has lived for several years only with the money that he was given by people for whom he solved administrative problems, notably transportation authorifications.

[translated by WSI from le quotidien d'oran]

Considering the DRS's well-deserved reputation for, well, killing people, that's a pretty gutsy way to make money. But the best part is how well it seems to have worked. Not only would people bribe him to fix their problems -- he was also able to scare the authorities into issuing the right papers, for years and years. Algeria sure loves a man in uniform.

Blank page, full of meaning

Editorial by Ahmed R. Benchemsi, TelQuel,11 Augusti 2007:

Public secrets

Because of the text that was present on this page, the issue 285-286 of TelQuel has been destroyed on the orders of the ministry of the interior. In order not to go into further polemics, we have chosen to withdraw it, and additionally the summary of eight years under the rule of Mohamed VI, which was also a subject of the police interrogations endured by A. R. Benchemsi (details). The rest of the issue has been preserved with no changes.

[picture: mohamed vi, reading something else] - - - [telquel text translated by WSI]

A little closer to Kobina

[picture: kobina annan]

Since palatial real-estate in Morocco is something of a second purpose for this blog, and with slanderous and unsubstantiated allegations of shady wrongdoings being the first one, I shall have to pass this along:

UNITED NATIONS — A former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, recently purchased a second multimillion-dollar house, this one in a posh neighborhood in Tangier, Morocco, where his neighbors are said to include pop stars and the country’s king, sources said.

His brother, Kobina, has for a long time served as Ghana’s ambassador in Rabat, where he is considered a top player on the diplomatic scene.

Oh. Okay. And hey, he was the first Ghanaian ambassador to ever visit the "southern provinces" -- good for him! Yet, one can't help think that the media could have, you know, followed up on any ties between Kofi Annan's family and Morocco, while he was still the world's top responsible for handling the country's claim on Western Sahara. But then again, it would also be great if the media would follow Western Sahara at all. Or find it on a map even.

(It's due south-south-west of the posh villas in Tangier, past the luxurious homes of a whole series of other former UN and international officials who worked on Western Sahara, and easily recognizeable for being pretty flat and dusty. For travellers by car, follow the trail of deported journalists, and look for Africa's last remaining colony. If you still can't find it, ask Kobina.)

UPDATE: Western Sahara Online was, as usual, way ahead of me -- and I mean way ahead, as in two years. And there's plenty more to read over there, too.
UPDATE: Wait a minute, "In an unsigned e-mail, an aide in his Geneva office wrote, 'Mr. Annan has not bought a house in Tangiers.'". The plot thickens, or perhaps, evaporates entirely. (Thanks to Studentintheus for the link.)

Mauritania: freer, wetter

Now for some more good news from Mauritania: the anti-slavery proposal I recently mentioned was strengthened in parliament, and now seems to pack some serious punch. However, as always, it's implementation that matters. On the other hand, a recent Jeune Afrique piece on president Abdellahi's first 100 days in office gave a less rosy picture, painting him as discreet and undecisive, while the Mauritanian public is more used to military style commando rule. It also, troublingly, hinted at continued ex-junta interference in politics. Now, Jeune Afrique, as is well known, is in deep in the Moroccan pocket on Western Sahara, but I'm not aware that they have any particular hangups on Mauritanian politics -- please inform me, if I'm wrong.

Further compounding this poor country's problems, the erratic summer weather that just hit Algeria with a tsunami, seems to have moved southwest:

Thousands of Mauritanians have been forced from their homes by floods in the southeastern town of Tintane with water levels reaching two metres in some areas.

Two people are known to have died and 25 others are missing and feared drowned, Nicole Jacquet, deputy country director for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mauritania, told IRIN on 9 August.

Global warming and all that, okay, but honestly -- if you live in the middle of the Sahara desert, having your village drowned under two meters of water is seriously bad luck. (As is having your country taken from you, but then again, those two things aren't mutually exclusive.)

On today's negotiations

I won't be able to follow the second round of Manhasset negotiations very closely, but as usual, you can rely on ARSO to post all the news on the web, on their special page about the talks. Just as with the first round of negotiations, they post news from both pro- and anti-self determination sources, and in several languages. An invaluable resource to keep track of events.

[picture: ahmed boukhari, head of the polisario mission to the UN]

Also, here's a good background in an AP article, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune. The following paragraphs give an indication of how the negotiations are being viewed by the parties:

Ahmed Boukhari, the Polisario's U.N. representative, said Thursday that if Morocco respects the Security Council resolution and treats the proposals presented by the two parties equally "then there will be hopes for the peace process engaged in Manhasset, and this round will be positive for that process."

"However, taking account of the latest statement by Morocco officials, we have no assurance nor hopes that Morocco is going to respect the terms of the resolution, and it is going to threaten the peace process like they destroyed Mr. James Baker's efforts in 2003," Boukhari said.

Repeated calls to Morocco's U.N. Mission on Wednesday and Thursday seeking comment on the government's expectation for the talks were not returned.

At the end of the talks in June, Khalihenna Ould Errachid, the chief adviser on Western Sahara to Morocco's King Mohamed VI, said there was a need for compromise, concessions, patience, dialogue and "a renunciation to extremist positions and demands."

"Morocco has given up total integration and we expect the other party to give up total independence," Errachid said.

That's the discourse now. Both sides expect and prepare for failure (not necessarily in the form of anyone storming out of the room, but as in the end communique saying "no results, but everybody was terribly nice, and we'll talk again soon"), by already assigning the blame for it.

Morocco claims that their most recent autonomy plan is a way of compromising, and demands that Polisario do the same by accepting to negotiate about that instead of about self-determination. Polisario, for their part, points out that Morocco recently said it will not even discuss the Sahrawi proposals -- so it's really their fault that there will be no useful debate. You judge who's right on that one.

A good guess is that France and, particularly, the US, will second the Moroccan version, and try to make it the official history of Manhasset that Polisario's intransigence torpedoed the talks. Polisario and Algeria, on the other hand, will stick to the language of the UN resolution, and say that both parties are expected to discuss on equal terms, and that Morocco's autonomy proposal cannot constitute the basis of negotiations with no regard for Polisario's opinions. But alas, the US is a slightly louder voice in international affairs than even Algeria ... so, brace yourself for the blame game.

CODESA update on human rights

The Sahrawi human rights group CODESA has published this new report on human rights in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara, giving the Sahrawi version of what's happened since UN Security Council resoution 1754 was adopted. Short version: not pretty. They end up suggesting the following recommendations, though probably with little hope that they will be followed -- the fact that they are still considered an illegal organization by the Moroccan authorities, indicates that their pull with the Makhzen is somewhat limited:

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. The publication of the UNHCHR report (2006) and the implementation of its recommendations.
2. Lifting the military and media siege imposed on the Western Sahara and letting the foreign delegations in.
3. The expansion of the responsibility of the MINURSO to include the protection of the Sahrawi citizens' rights in the Western Sahara.
4. The Moroccan state has to sign the international charters of human rights (the International Agreement against Torture…).
5. Stopping the excessive exploitation of the Sahrawi natural resources.
6. Looking into the flagrant violations of human rights perpetrated by the Moroccan state against the Sahrawi citizens, and the punishment of the torturers responsible for these violations.
7. Accounting for the fate of the Sahrawi disappeared and the release of all the Sahrawi prisoners.
8. The allowance of the Sahrawi citizens' right to assembly and organization through letting the Sahrawis' human rights associations.
9. The clearing of the Western Sahara from different kinds of landmines, and the acceptance of the international Human Rights and medical NGOs to enter the territory in order to help in curing the landmines' victims.
10. The closing of the Local Prison (= the Black Jail) in El Aaiun, Western Sahara, as it lacks the simplest conditions for the protection of prisoners

Well, here's for hoping. Anyway, now that CODESA has created a neat new logo -- as seen above -- they really ought to get their own web page, like their colleagues at ASVDH. Any web editors out there with spare time on their hands?

[earlier post on CODESA here.]

From El Para to El Niño

No, really, give this poor country a break:

Algiers - A giant wave described by local residents as a "mini-tsunami" claimed the lives of 12 Algerian bathers last week on a beach in the west of the Mediterranean-rim country, officials said on Wednesday.

Algeria's civil protection agency could give no official explanation for the giant wave that struck a beach near the town of Mostaganem on Friday.

Next week: meteor crashes in Medea, a new ice age hits Tamanrasset and Hurricane Katrina makes an unexpected reappearance in Oran.

Polisario: Morocco has left nothing to negotiate

"Lauding a proposal that they are not in a position to impose, unless they are ready to flaunt international law and the international community as a whole, is not helping anybody" wrote Western Sahara analyst Anna Theofilopoulou. While we have not been able to reach the Moroccan government for a comment -- they're busy seizing newspapers -- Polisario, which has already voiced its misgivings about the upcoming negotiations, agrees:

Polisario negotiator Mohammed Khadad said a July 11 statement in which the United States threw its weight strongly behind the kingdom made negotiations intended to solve Africa's oldest territorial dispute less likely to succeed.
"Unfortunately the American position doesn't help to advance give-and-take negotiations," he told Reuters days before the scheduled August 10 resumption of negotiations near New York. [ . . . ]
"When Morocco says there's only autonomy and nothing but autonomy, that's no longer a negotiation, that's an imposition."
"That means that the problem of sovereignty, which is the basic problem, is decided unilaterally by Morocco and therefore there is nothing to negotiate."

Well, then, this seems to be over before it started. Good job, George.

Theofilopoulou: US strategy is counter-productive

A second round of UN-sponsored negotiations between Polisario and Morocco are set to start August 10, but if there are any naïve young newcomers to the Sahara conflict out there expecting results, they are most likely going to get disappointed.

The US openly embraced Morocco's autonomy plan after the last round in Manhasset, NY, and while this cheered the Moroccans, it did not make the Polisario side any more eager to continue with what they already view as an affront to their rights. They remember all too well how all previous negotiations have ended: with Morocco being allowed (or even encouraged) to step away from the results, while Polisario is expected to stay true to its word. Thus, we today have a 16-year ceasefire but no trace of the referendum on independence that it was originally conditioned upon.

Anna Theofilopoulou was a member of the James Baker negotiating team, and has written some very interesting articles before. In a piece for the US think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), something of a heavyweight in foreign policy debate, she now laments what she feels is a lack of understanding of the dynamics of this particular conflict among present American policy-makers on the issue:

As for the role of the United States, its recent moves have been anything but helpful in terms of bringing about an early, long-term resolution of the conflict. The controversy about the implication in the Secretary-General’s report that the United Nations was favoring the Moroccan autonomy proposal was damaging enough. The rush on the part of Deputy U.S. Ambassador to laud the Moroccan proposal will only make it more difficult to persuade Polisario and Algeria to go to the next round of negotiations in an open and cooperative frame of mind. [...] What is clear is that in the past, the United States has been more effective and far more helpful in promoting progress toward resolving the Western Sahara conflict when it acted as an honest broker, rather than as an impulsive supporter of Morocco. In fact, unqualified support by outsiders for either side in the Western Sahara conflict has never promoted progress, but only helped solidify the parties’ positions.

In fact, there are already signs that this is happening. The king of Morocco unhelpfully torpedoed the negotiation climate a few days ago, by stating that his delegation is not allowed to negotiate about anything except how to implement Morocco's own autonomy plan, which of course makes the negotiations completely useless. His counterpart on the Sahrawi side immediately responded that this "augurs ill" for the Manhasset talks. Such mutual mudslinging does not mean much in itself, but it does set the scene for a breakdown. Polisario's leadership is worried that they will be blamed for any failure to progress in the talks -- despite the fact that their position is of course no more intransigent than the Moroccan one; if anything, considerably less so, since a referendum allows for both annexation and independence as an end result. This could be a first attempt to preemptively shift the blame back where they feel it belongs, should it come to that.

Theofilopoulou expects such a breakdown, but hopes that it will be used for more than just the blame game:

It is to be hoped that if no meaningful progress is made in the next round of negotiations, the United Nations and Morocco’s key supporters, especially France and the United States, will reappraise their strategies on resolving the Western Sahara conflict. They might realize that their support of Morocco’s autonomy proposal is not contributing to a resolution. Lauding a proposal that they are not in a position to impose, unless they are ready to flaunt international law and the international community as a whole, is not helping anybody, least of all Morocco, which wishes and needs to resolve the conflict. Morocco could be helped if showed by its friends that ‘something cannot be had for nothing,’ and that some real sacrifices might be necessary to get out of its current predicament.

That's how you know that a peace process has been left to rot: when observers suggest that total failure in negotiations could be the best way forward. About the talks themselves, Theofilopoulou alerts us to the signs of progress, or lack thereof:

The big question now is whether in the August session the two parties will move past their positions and engage in a real conversation, which ought to start by trying to find common elements in their respective proposals, if any. If this is to happen, those who support a just solution for Western Sahara will have to accept that as in the past, there will be interruptions in the talks and other delays as each side consults with its principals in a genuine effort to move past the rhetoric. On the other hand, if the session appears to go smoothly and both sides emerge promising to meet for yet another round at some point in the future, one could easily guess that no substance was touched, or that no true effort was made to get to the tough issues.

Right. Now read it all.