UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ramped up efforts to try to get Morocco and the Polisario to step back from a renewed flare up of fighting over the disputed Western Sahara territory, warning that the clashes could rupture a nearly 30-year cease-fire and have “grave consequences.”
In recent days, Guterres and other UN officials have been working the phones and been involved in “multiple initiatives to avoid an escalation” — so far unsuccessfully, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.
But “the secretary-general remains committed to doing his utmost to avoid the collapse of the cease-fire that has been in place since September 6, 1991 and he is determined to do everything possible to remove all obstacles to the resumption of the peace process,” Dujarric added.
— “Provocations” —
The Moroccan military launched an operation in the UN-patrolled Guerguerat border zone to clear a key road it said had been blockaded for weeks by supporters of the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Rabat announced Friday that its troops have launched the operation to end “provocations” by the Polisario and “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic.”
The Moroccan foreign ministry explained that Morocco had been forced to act after actions by Polisario fighters and the failure of its own appeals and those of the UN peacekeeping mission MINURSO.
“The Polisario and its militias, who have infiltrated the zone since October 21, have been carrying out acts of banditry, blocking traffic and continually harassing MINURSO military observers,” a ministry statement said.
“After having committed itself to the greatest restraint, in the face of provocations from the militias of the Polisario, the Kingdom of Morocco had no other choice but to assume its responsibilities in order to put an end to the deadlock situation generated by these actions and restore free civil and commercial movement,” the ministry added in its statement.
Rabat argued that Polisario’s “acts undermine the chances of any re-launch of the political process sought by the international community.”
Since 2016, the Polisario has multiplied “dangerous and intolerable acts in this buffer zone, in violation of military agreements, in contempt for the calls to order launched by the UN Secretary General and in violation of the resolutions of the Security Council, in particular 2414 and 2440, which ordered the Polisario to put an end to these destabilising acts,” according to the Moroccan Foreign Ministry.
A senior ministry official said that for some three weeks, around 70 armed men had been “attacking truck drivers, blocking their passage and engaging in extortion.”
Some 200 Moroccan truck drivers said on November 5 that they were stuck in difficult conditions on the Mauritanian side of the desert border.
They appealed to both Rabat and Nouakchott for help returning home after Polisario fighters blocked their passage.
They urged UN peacekeepers to “play their role in protecting the buffer zone and the border crossing, which provides a gateway for work for thousands of drivers, farmers and traders.”
Following Friday’s military development, the Polisario Front said a three-decade-old ceasefire in the disputed Western Sahara was over Friday.
“War has started, the Moroccan side has liquidated the ceasefire,” senior Polisario official Mohamed Salem Ould Salek said, describing the action by Rabat as an “aggression.”
— UN “frustration” —
Dujarric said the United Nations has been “expressing our concern about the situation in Guerguerat for quite some time.”
“We have seen over the last few weeks violations from both sides,” he replied when asked who was responsible for the latest fighting. “We have condemned, and we condemn all violations of the cease-fire.”
Dujarric said a special civilian-military team from the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, has been on the ground in the Guerguerat area “since the beginning of the crisis, and we’ve had military observers there also remain overnight.”
Friday’s developments came after the Polisario Front reportedly suggested earlier this week it would reconsider its engagement in the UN-led political process on Western Sahara’s future, threatening to withdraw from the cease-fire if any Moroccan civilian or military personnel entered the buffer zone.
Moroccan forces set up a security cordon overnight in the Guerguerat buffer zone on Western Sahara’s southern border with Mauritania, in what it called a “non-offensive operation” that would involve use of arms “only in the case of self-defense.”
The Polisario’s representative in Algeria, Abdelkader Omar, claimed Moroccan forces “opened fire on innocent civilian protesters” and Polisario fighters came to the protesters’ defence, prompting “intense clashes” Friday.
Polisario chief Ibrahim Ghali sent an urgent letter to the UN secretary general and UN Security Council about the intervention.
Ghali called it “an act of aggression and a flagrant violation of the cease-fire” that the UN Security Council should condemn in the strongest terms.
Dujarric, the UN spokesman, said he hadn’t seen the letter but confirmed the secretary-general “has been making calls to the different parties, and his people on the ground have been involved.”
Guterres has not had a personal envoy in Western Sahara since former German president Horst Kohler left the post in May 2019 for health reasons.
Dujarric said the secretary-general shared widespread “frustration” that a successor — who requires approval from Morocco, the Polisario and the Security Council — has not be appointed after 18 months, stressing that “it’s not been for a lack of trying.”
— Decades-long dispute —
The Western Sahara, a vast swathe of desert on Africa’s Atlantic coast, is a disputed former Spanish colony whose population has historically maintained allegiance ties to Morocco’s monarchy.
Rabat controls 80% of the territory, including its phosphate deposits and its lucrative ocean fisheries.
The Polisario’s forces are largely confined to the sparsely populated desert interior and refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria, the independence group’s main foreign backer.
Peacekeeping force MINURSO has patrolled a buffer zone between the two sides since a UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in 1991.
The village of Guergerat in the far south of the Western Sahara is the last village under Moroccan control.
Beyond it is a strip of desert where Polisario fighters have maintained a periodic presence in recent years.
An informal trade has grown up exporting Moroccan fresh produce to the Mauritanian coastal city of Nouadhibou but to the growing anger of Rabat it has periodically fallen foul of the Polisario.
Morocco, which maintains that Western Sahara is an integral part of the kingdom, has offered autonomy for the territory but insists it will retain sovereignty over the “southern provinces” which it considers an integral part of the country’s borders.
The Polisario has demanded a referendum on “self-determination” based on criteria favourable to its stances on the conflict, which were not accepted by Morocco.
Negotiations on the territory’s future involving Morocco, the Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania have been suspended for some time.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
