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Join on Telegram People get together over drinks every day. They debate on a variety of subjects, depending on the mood of the moment and on what they expect from each other. However, it happens that subjects dealt with leave the attendees speechless.
The reason is that the interlocutors are not people who have fallen from the last rain. They have a respectable capital of knowledge and know-how. However, it happens that they jump to conclusions without, along the way, putting in place safeguards. This is what happened recently during a reunion between friends who have not seen each other for months.
Out of the blue, someone raised the dividends that Morocco would have (or not) earned from the series of recognitions of its sovereignty over its Southern Provinces. He went on questioning Moroccan officials’ shouting it loud and clear. The question seemingly innocent at the beginning was basically to find out whether Morocco should not have accepted Israel’s recognition given the fact that Tel Aviv is condemned worldwide for the acts committed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
This was some sort of one-way question, which became even clearer as the discussion evolved, and a little bugging. If the question was asked the other way, it would have raised an unlimited outcry. A subsidiary question might be asked: how about the United States, Spain, and France, whose leaders took a bold step and recognized Morocco’s sovereignty on the Western-Moroccan Sahara? Someone whispered, “No starters.”
What all is about? The whole story stems from the fact that people seem at ease nurturing an amnesiac memory. They display a behavior swinging between the intrinsic ideological beliefs of each of the interlocutors and the reality of evolving geopolitical time. This reminds me of the haste of some Moroccan experts living abroad in the aftermath of the American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the so-called Western Sahara in December 2020. They stepped up to the plate to minimize the impact of this recognition by raising the question of law and effectiveness on the ground. They not only have proven that they lack insight on such a specific matter but also have shown unwillingly bad faith.
It seems that people are so afraid of losing shares in the intellectual stock in trade that they resort to self-flagellation and denial. Question: Do the recognitions definitively settle the dispute over the Sahara without going through the United Nations? Of course not, starting with Morocco. Should international law take precedence? Sure. Is the cooperation of the other parties to the conflict determinant? Absolutely? And if the main party to the conflict, in this case Algeria, refuses? What the heck? What does this mean? Let us put forward the following arguments.
Morocco recovered Western-Moroccan Sahara in 1975; that’s what matters. Algeria fought two wars against Morocco in Amgala in 1976 to oust it from the territory and lost them. An armada of hostile African countries, armaments, and military advisers from the so-called socialist or communist countries helped Algeria out in this war. Surprisingly an inexplicable restraint of even some Arab countries—allegedly friends—showed restraints. At the same time, Spain, Algeria, and France (mainly concerned with the fate of Mauritania) were in cahoots with each other in order to defeat Morocco. They failed.
One of the debaters incidentally raised a very sound question. Since Morocco was on the ground, Rabat wouldn’t need all these recognitions to continue to develop the Southern Provinces and strengthen its historical, political, and legal legitimacy. A wise observation indeed; however, it seems to imply that, at any expense, Morocco should not have accepted Israel’s recognition of its sovereignty over the Sahara. A quite astonishing statement.
In this respect, let me remind those who are short of tangible facts on the Saharan issue and those who boast of having dual allegiance, national and transnational, that they are requested to sort out which one is the most important. Unfortunately, records show that when national allegiance conflicts with transnational allegiance, they do not hesitate to choose the latter. This is their most free choice. Nevertheless, they better be careful not to sink into politico-diplomatic schizophrenia
According to the founding fathers of communism, the class struggle is structural, but class consciousness is not. The partisans of scholastic rhetoric develop almost the same argument, closing their eyes to the questions that challenge their ideological frame of reference. The indifferent, who play the benevolent neutrality, cultivate annoyance. Whatever the ideological beliefs may be, they cannot hold up forever if they vegetate in dogmatism.
However, political analysis, I assume, requires having strong evidence and hindsight that take into account the context and timing regarding the processes of the pre-decision, decision in progress, and post-decision. Logically, the aim is to defend the national interest in its community, cultural, security, and strategic sense, and not only from a theoretical standpoint
Intelligence of the moment and preemptive anticipation
Morocco is no exception to the rule that the intelligence of the moment and that of preemptive anticipation go hand in hand. There is no ethics in politics in the geopolitical sense of the term. There are opportunities to be seized because vulnerability and sensitivity—to use the paradigm of “complex interdependence,” dear to Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (1976)—load in high-flow spaces of conflict, and they do not cut corners.
Morocco had been battered between vulnerability and sensitivity while negotiating its independence. He got what he could get by playing on time to allow political actors to assess the political situation and related political game, internally and internationally. Morocco’s diplomatic easygoing was premeditated to give room to political actors to better investigate what was happening during the first years post-independence.
The internal situation was confusing, and the actors involved were busy working on how to manage the transition from the status of protectorate to the status of an independent state fully in control of its destiny. However, this easygoing way, if not naivety, so to speak, was meant in good faith towards the North African actors.
Nevertheless, the promises the participants in the Tangier Conference in 1958 bringing together the three national liberation movements (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis) were not respected, let alone the commitment to settle the issue of the Eastern Sahara in the aftermath of Algeria’s independence. Tunisia proved to be no less unfaithful, and it quickly recognized Mauritania’s independence in 1960.
On the occasion of the War of the Sands of 1963 opposing Algeria to Morocco, a sacred alliance of some Arab countries was set up to not only support Algeria but also to try to change the regime in Morocco. These were, no doubt about it, premeditated choices on the part of these countries.
Habib Bourguiba, who had supported Mauritania’s independence in 1960, refused to join the proposed union of Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia at the Kef Summit in 1972 unless the issue of his country’s borders attached to Algeria by France during the protectorate was resolved. He recalled that he had made the same request to France in 1959, precisely one year after the Tangier meeting of 1958.
The abovementioned examples were the expression of clear political realism. In this respect, when a country like Mali recognized the self-proclaimed SADR in 1980, President Moussa Traoré claimed that his country’s hands were tied because of the issue of the Tuaregs and that of the northern borders with Algeria. When Mauritania withdrew from Oued Eddahab and signed a peace agreement with the Polisario in 1979, it raised the issue of national security. This wasn’t totally true, because the decision was also motivated by tribal and politico-diplomatic considerations at a time when France had failed to get its’’ Sahara Tomorrow plan—SAD—accepted, which consisted in partitioning the Sahara region between Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, and Polisario.
All these positions have been motivated by political realism, diplomatic pragmatism, and geopolitical ascendancy. Morocco was alone, as it had been in Nairobi in 1982, when, in a gesture of geopolitical relevance, the late King Hassan II proposed the organization of a referendum on self-determination in the Sahara. He did at a time when major strikes were taking place in the country.
This was a dangerous situation that weakened the Moroccan position at the time, because in 1983, Algeria concluded agreements on border disputes with Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. Later on, Algeria, Tunisia, and Mauritania signed the Treaty of Brotherhood and Concord.
Algeria finally obtained what it was looking for from the very beginning: getting the self-proclaimed entity (SADR) to be part of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) thanks to the complicity of then the Secretary General of this organization, Edem Kodjo. Morocco had no choice but to attempt an unnatural alliance with Libya by creating the Arab-African Union in 1984. Morocco was on its own.
Morocco was still alone in 1979-1980 when the United States, under the Jimmy Carter administration and under pressure from senators described as hawks on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to sell to Rabat weapons to defend the country. Moroccan’s army faced attacks from the Polisario, supported by the Algerian army and advisors (and fighters) from Eastern European countries, Cuba, South Yemen, etc. Morocco was not used to guerrilla warfare. Who were these rare countries that provided Morocco with weapons using diversion and many artifices? If someone has a clue, he brings it in!
Morocco was always alone. For decades, the support that Arab countries expressed for his Saharan cause was, in most cases, aesthetic and cosmetic. In 1974, when Morocco asked the United Nations General Assembly to adopt a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to give its advisory opinion on the Sahara issue, it was on the verge of losing the game. This was an urgent request because Morocco wanted to prevent Spain from organizing a referendum on self-determination that would have perpetuated its presence through the artifice of an autonomy regime or that of a dependent phantom entity.
Indeed, Arab countries, presumably Morocco’s best allies, were, among others, seeking to abstain during the vote rounds. The head of the Moroccan delegation had to use all diplomatic skill to convince them to change their minds. Curiously, he joined forces with the Mauritanian representative (until then hostile to Morocco) to win his case. A resolution (3292 XXIX) was adopted to this effect, to the great displeasure of Algeria and Spain, which betted that the wind of change was blowing in their favor.
Morocco was always alone… Indeed and again, there were Arab countries that have turned a blind eye to the behind-the-scenes actions Algeria, South Africa, Nigeria, and Syria had been taking during the negotiations prior to the signing of the 1996 Treaty of Pelindaba on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in Africa. The latter were on the verge of accepting the presence, in one form or another, of the pseudo-SADR during the preliminary phases of the negotiations.
It was these same countries that adopted an indifferent position when the former Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amr Moussa, tried to include the Sahara issue in the timetable of this organization’s annual meetings at the ministerial level in 2005 and 2006.
The maneuver was dangerous insofar as it took place after the pseudo-SADR’s membership had been renewed at the new African Union (2002). Algeria, which had cleverly succeeded in weaving a flag of this failed entity identical to that of Palestine (introducing a crescent and a star in the middle), sought to checkmate Morocco by giving legitimacy to the word “Arab” in its name.
Amr Moussa played the shrewd diplomat to turn down Algerian pressure, claiming that the post of Secretary-General should be rotated and no longer be monopolized by Egypt and that the headquarters of the League of Arab States should be transferred to Tunisia or another Arab country eventually.
Now, let us take a look at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s members. Called the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC at its inception in 1969), it changed its name in 2011. Indeed, the idea of establishing such an organization dates back to 1969, when the late King Hassan II convened the first Islamic conference in Rabat, following the burning of the Al-Aqça mosque by Israeli extremists. Along the way, Morocco recognized the independence of Mauritania.
It is worth noting this recognition resulted in joining diplomatic efforts with Mauritania for the sake of recovering the so-called Spanish Sahara. But, at the same time, Morocco had to make another sacrifice by signing the Treaty of Brotherhood, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation with Algeria in 1969, paving the way for the signing of the Convention on Borders in 1972.
The OIC was born in 1969 and took shape in 1972 in Jeddah. What would some Islamic countries, especially Arab ones, do four decades later? The vast majority of them supported the initiative of the then Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu (2005-2013), a Turkish national, in his effort to reform the Charter of the Pan-Islamic Organization. This seemed like a good initiative. Not at all. The objective was, among other things, to play on the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity amidst a harsh fight over the balance of power in the Middle East and Africa. This maneuver would have been harmful to Morocco’s interests if Ihsanoğlu had won his bet on the matter.
As a matter of fact, Ihsanoğlu was serving an even more ambitious agenda: the return of Turkey in force to the Middle East to play the role assigned to it within the framework of political Islam shaped by those who would, two years later, benefit from the Arab Spring. Furthermore, Ihsanoğlu tried to make the procedure for the admission of observer states more flexible and, in the process, facilitate the upgrade of the Turkish Cypriot state from the
How about the Palestinians? The main question would be the following: why have Palestinian leaders, at all levels of responsibility, in the Gaza Strip, as in Ramallah and long before, never denounced the fact that their legitimate struggle is being diminished and that the soul of their flag is smeared as it has been by the Algerians? Why have they never been offended by taking family photos at conferences organized by Algeria alongside Polisario officials?
Can we ever forget the image of Yasser Arafat warmly shaking hands with Mohamed Abdelaziz, Polisario’s leader, on the occasion of the 19th Special Session of the Palestinian National Council that led to the declaration of independence of the State of Palestine in 1988?
Can we still close our eyes to the image of the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen, sitting next to Brahim Ghali (and Tunisian President Kaïs Saied, the Ethiopian President, the Congo Brazzaville President, and the Nigerien President) on the occasion of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Algeria’s independence in 2022?
Precisely, President Kaïs Saied, who received Brahim Ghali with pomp on the occasion of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TIGAD), which took place in August 2022. He used the pretext that the invitations to the venue were sent by the African Union Commission and Japan. This information was denied on the spot by the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs.
As a matter of fact, the Tunisian head of state made a clear politico-diplomatic choice that he confirmed by joining a stillborn Maghreb axis policy on the sidelines of a conference on gas that Algeria hosted (March 2024). It seems that attempts in order to clarify things with Morocco are reportedly underway. Once again, political and diplomatic opportunities are emerging, and it is up to enlightened decision-makers to seize them.
Let us go back to President Mahmud Abbas. It is true that during the above-mentioned celebration ceremony, he turned his back on Ghali and was a little embarrassed. But that did not prevent him from welcoming President Abdelmajid Tebboune’s decision to offer the Palestinian Authority a cheque for US$100 million as a token of appreciation for accepting Algerian mediation between the PLO and Hamas. Ironically, the cheque must, moreover, pass through Israeli banks to be cashed.
It is also true that President Mahmud Abbas has always welcomed Morocco’s commitment to the Palestinians, refusing in a speech to the Palestinians that the Palestinian cause be exploited for political or diplomatic purposes. In both cases, the Palestinian leader has shown realism and political expediency.
Can we accept the apologies for the umpteenth time presented by the ambassador representing Palestine in Geneva who twice attended meetings in support of the Polisario jointly organized by Algeria and South Africa? Certainly, the Palestinians are between a rock and a hard place, between the vulnerability and sensitivity mentioned above. Nevertheless, it is also true that Palestinians participated in secret negotiations with the Israelis to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict before and after the conclusion of the Oslo Agreements in 1993, as a result of the 1991 Madrid Conference on Middle East Peace.
By the same token, it is worth reminding that it was the Palestinians who missed the opportunity to have more than (90%) of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, following the conclusion of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979. Some would say that they were convinced that Israel was not going to live up to its commitments. Yet to their credit, it was also the Palestinians who rightly resisted the ridiculous offer made to them under the Clinton administration at Camp David and Sharm El-Sheikh in 2000.
These are examples of decisions taken in different contexts, but they denote that realism must prevail and that politics cannot be made according to the choice between the Joint Survival and Bitter End paradigms.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian people in the occupied territories suffer from inter-Palestinian dissension and the contradictory alliances—allegiances—of their political formations and armed movements that are subservient to them. What is happening there is terrible and unacceptable, but the end of the tunnel is through negotiations, mediation, and above all, through pragmatism and political realism.
Palestinians often find themselves alone. As Morocco has been, since 1767 and 1884, the dates that have been the source of all the subterfuges and stratagems conveyed by Western historians and politicians, especially the Spanish, with respect to its southern borders.
Acceptance of the acceptable and time management for the rest
In its tireless efforts to fully recover its territorial integrity since 1956, Morocco has been on its own. Morocco almost lost everything in 1963, when it was forced to end its incursion into the region of Tindouf, Touat, Knadssa, and Bashar, following a war imposed on it by leaders of the Algerian National Liberation Front reneging on their commitments made in 1958 and 1961.
France feared that Morocco’s recovery of Eastern Sahara would derail its nuclear testing program in this part of the Sahara (which continued until 1966-1967). Indeed, a deal was reached in this respect with the Algerian leaders in exchange for conditional independence. France also feared that a potential Moroccan victory would encourage it to try to recover Mauritania by force or to undermine the fragile consensus on the inviolability of borders inherited from colonization that served its interests in its former colonies.
The class struggle and class consciousness paradigms correspond to that of the organic intellectual versus the conservative intellectual. What should be prioritized in the struggle for power: the national or the transnational? Heritage allegiance or functional allegiance? The establishment of democracy from above or by working from below? And what type of democracy: consensual democracy, democracy of the clean slate, anarchy, or programmed disorder?
All the debates have failed to reflect on an important issue, which is that strategic decisions are not taken overnight. They are the result of months and years of secret negotiations. They are conducted according to the logic of accepting the acceptable and managing time for the rest.
During the debate, the issue of the game the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, played by showing twice over the three months the map of the Middle East and North Africa where Morocco is seen amputated of its Southern Provinces was raised. What meaning should be given to this gesture? Provocation? Second opinion on Israel’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over this part of the national territory? Pressure for hidden script? All these are deemed legitimate questions, but unfortunately naïve.
The question of the map of Morocco is no longer a concern, as is the fact of calling the Moroccan Sahara, Moroccan Western Sahara, or Southern Provinces. There is a region called Western Sahara in Egypt. Readers may recall the anecdote of an Algerian diplomat who went to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protest against the intention of Egyptian businessmen to make investments in Western Sahara. He was stunned when he learned that the Western Sahara referred to is in Egypt. The appellation is geographical, like that of the Moroccan Western Sahara, the Eastern Sahara, the Southern Sahara, etc.
The naivety comes from the fact that people do not take a step back from political and diplomatic decisions that have very strategic significance. Indeed, the tripartite declaration between the United States, Israel, and Morocco was also in line with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The King of Morocco made sure to call the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas Abu Mazen, to inform him of the Moroccan decision, the content of the declaration, and reiterate Morocco’s support for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
If the Israeli Prime Minister’s gesture was a form of pressure of any kind, he would have refused to allow Moroccan aid to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be delivered by land twice, Morocco being the only country that has benefited from this option. On the Palestinian side, the role of the Bayt Mal al-Quds Agency, whose budget (90%) is provided by Morocco, hasn’t been put in difficulty or challenged.
A subsidiary question jumped in the debate: why is Morocco criticized for having agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel and no other country was? Why do people turn a blind eye to the fact that since 1959, Morocco has been an important player in initiatives seeking to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Why do people ignore the fact that four Arab countries opened liaison offices in Gaza and Tel Aviv in 1994, following the conclusion of the Oslo Agreements in 1993? These offices were moved to Ramallah when the Palestinian Authority moved its government to the West Bank. These representations were closed by the decision of the League of Arab States following the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada (2000–2005) and Israel’s rejection of the Arab peace offer reiterated at the Arab Summit Conference in Beirut in 2002.
Analytical stubbornness is worse than dogmatism
It goes without saying that analytical stubbornness is worse than dogmatism. Why does one ignore the fact that all Arab countries, without exception, de facto recognize the existence of Israel? This dates back to 1982 through what was called the Fahd Plan (named after the Saudi crown prince at the time, Emir Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud).
This very recognition was endorsed, as mentioned above, by the Beirut Summit in 2002. Why not acknowledge the fact that the Palestinians agreed (or were forced) to engage in the Oslo negotiations in 1993 because they felt used (and manipulated) by some Arab countries anxious to carry out internal and external agendas by sending the Palestinians out to pasture?
Why not finally admit that the tragedy unfolding in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been influenced by actors outside the true Palestinian cause? The latter increased the pressure on the Palestinians when they realized that the normalization process with Israel would deprive them of (or end to) their geopolitical ambitions in the region.
Of course, the role of hawks in Israel, the hardliners in Palestine, and divergent interests within certain decision-making centers in the United States, Europe, and some Arab countries should be taken into account. But the move clearly smacked of perfect handling.
Why is Morocco targeted and not the other Arab countries of the Gulf, Egypt, or Jordan? Why did the Ikhwan not break relations with Israel when they came to power in Egypt in 2012? And how could we assess the mediation of the State of Qatar and Egypt in the current crisis in Gaza? The mediation is made between Israel and Hamas?
This without forgetting to mention this image during the funeral of the late King Hassan II in July 1999, where we see President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria chatting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak with the promise, one would assume at the time, to work on normalizing, in broad daylight, relations between Algiers and Tel Aviv.
Precisely, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who blurred segments of the Moroccan political leaders who nurtured the hope that he would be keen to work out a negotiated solution with Morocco on the Sahara dispute. As soon as he was at ease (striking a deal with the military institution), he went to the United States to propose the partition of the Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario. Indeed, he made such a proposal when he was received in Houston in 2002 by the Personal Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for the Sahara, James Baker.
Independent sources claimed he had promised, in the process, a donation to the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy—Rice University. An offer that would have been turned down. Yet, already Bouteflika felt that James Baker was sliding slowly towards Algerian preferences on the Sahara issue. He had to slow his expectations down in the aftermath of the latter’s resignation in 2004.
Morocco has always been on his own. But Morocco knows how to put things in perspective. He understands the delicate situation in which countries such as Mauritania and Mali are stuck. They are under unfinished pressure from Algeria and other countries sharing the same anti-Moroccan feelings. Morocco gives time to time. It takes its time, as he did with Spain and France. And Morocco continues to do so while keeping vigilance at its highest level.
Now the history of the consulates opened in Laayoune and Dakhla that keep some people perplexed. What dividends does Morocco earn? I remember what did happen in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2013 when countries opened consulates in Arbil ahead of the referendum on self-determination scheduled to take place in 2017.
Everyone was convinced that the outcome was predictable and that Iraqi Kurdistan would soon be an independent state. Geopolitics changed when the process initiated by the Arab Spring was interrupted. Democratic elections in the Palestinian territories a few years earlier brought the Hamas Movement to power (2006). A victory that was worked out, prepared, and expected, but not to the point of totally weakening the PLO (and the Palestinian Authority). Game over. The Ikhwan in Egypt believed they were in a position to act as free electrons in a strategic chessboard international decision-makers were managing. Big mistake; they were ousted of the power. There was no way to change the script.
What kind of question is that?
And what would be the take with respect to the Arab Liaison offices in the Gaza Strip and in Ramallah in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords mentioned above? What should we say about it? All the diplomatic representations mentioned were opened in strict compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963). And so did the thirty (30) General Consulates open in Laayoune and Dakhla.
It goes without saying that Morocco decided to seriously take its responsibility, leaving Samaritan spirit to John Lennon’s Imagine. He did it alone, of course, but with a well-thought-out approach: first, taking stock of the situation in Africa; second, speeding up royal tours in the continent with clear projects and a transparent win-win policy. What happened resulted in watching his opponents’ castles of lies and their hypocritical alibis falling one after the other.
What do you want, Morocco asks its African partners? And some, aware of the geopolitical shift that is taking place, jump on the bandwagon. They recall that, although Morocco left the OAU in 1984, it had worked to keep bilateral relations at the same level and even get them higher.
Toward the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Morocco accelerated the pace. The Arab Maghreb Union was born (1989). But Algeria sank into a civil war (1992-2002). The international system was shaken by the beginning of the collapse of the USSR. In 2017, Morocco sealed its return to the African Union. Right now, it feels more comfortable and at ease getting the job done. On the opposite, Morocco’s opponents are brooding.
Then, Morocco, which has witnessed the majority of brotherly Arab countries stay away or suffer the Algerian diktat with respect to its southern provinces, decides to no longer take part in the conferences of the League of Arab States at the highest level. Yet, it did not give the Algerians a free hand to resume their strategy of having their proxy state (SADR) winning a seat at the pan-Arab organization.
Morocco did right, because during the 31st Arab Summit in Algiers in 2022, Algeria tried hard to achieve this goal, but it failed. Besides, the Algerian chairmanship over the Arab League of States lasted less than eight months (8). This has never been recorded in the annals of modern diplomacy. Algeria handed over the chairmanship on the occasion of the 32nd Summit held in Saudi Arabia (2023).
Morocco again took its responsibilities when there was a crisis between some Arab members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2017. Rabat decided not to take sides against Qatar, even if this position meant irritating Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
A year earlier, King Mohammed VI had given a premonitory speech at the Morocco-Gulf Summit in Riyadh in 2016. In this speech, the King listed the dangers that lurk in the Arab world. These dangers included: first attempts to bring about “regime change and partition of states” (Syria, Libya, and Iraq); second, shaping “new alliances” aimed at creating disorder; and third, “reshuffling the cards”—no distinction made between target countries. Such a strategic reading is called having visibility and vision. This means abiding by political realism in general.
In terms of political realism, I may mention examples to dismiss plenty of light assumptions. First, I refer to President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 to establish more or less friendly relations between the United States and China. China was evolving at a high speed, and the Middle East quagmire was threatening the energy security. Second, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost in 1989-1990. He realized that his country was going to lose more than it would gain by freezing in an ideology that had had its day. Gorbachev regretted his move a little in his memoirs (1996), but he had made the choice that was unavoidable at the time. Third, China, while remaining intractable on the Taiwan issue, allows the island’s Chinese to be among the main investors in Shanghai.
I may also mention the European Union. Although currently going through difficult times, it couldn’t have been established without the Franco-German understanding and the United Kingdom’s cooperation (before Brexit, 2016). France and Germany buried decades of animosity, stemming from tragic memories going back to the Alsace-Lorraine, the Saarland wars, and the occupation of Paris, etc.
When Morocco wins its fight of perseverance and strong belief in its legitimate rights in its Southern Provinces and acts accordingly, the supporters of transnational alliances are offended. They are offended because positions based on blind ideology to the detriment of political realism are beginning to lose ground. They are offended because they share the view that diplomacy is only done à la carte and that anyone could shape it at will.
There was a time when Algeria prided itself on having succeeded in having the self-proclaimed entity recognized by seventy (70) countries, including countries that no one in the Maghreb neighborhood heard about before. Less than twenty (20) African countries keep recognizing it, including those that observe a positive neutrality in favor of Morocco. Only keep seven African countries rehearsing their outdated narrative on very seldom occasion, with Algeria and South Africa topping the list.
Today, the recognition of this self-proclaimed entity is dwindling. The number of recognitions of Morocco’s sovereignty is increasing. Those who openly support the Autonomy Plan and de facto recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara are close to 109. This is in addition to those who have never recognized the Polisario or the pseudo-SADR.
Indeed, numbers matter. Numbers, under dramatic conditions, made the pseudo-SADR accepted as a full member at the OAU in 1984. Ironically, it is through numbers that it becomes imperative that it will be ousted of the African Union.
The number will be even more important at the United Nations so that the question of Western Sahara will be removed from the list of conflicts on the annual agenda of the Fourth Committee or debated in the General Assembly and in the C-24 Special Committee on Decolonization annual meeting, now that this question is exclusively in the hands of the Security Council. Numbers always matter.
The number over again and over again. Let us remind the number of Moroccan soldiers and civilians the Polisario and the Algerian army killed since 1976-1991. Why not give credit to the former members of the Polisario who returned to Morocco and revealed facts and evidence about the true sponsors of the movement other than the Algerians? And the number of 350.000 Moroccans expelled from Algeria in 1975 in retaliation to the Green March? How about the soap opera of Gdiem Izik and the Moroccan law enforcement forces slaughtered with cold blood while they were peacefully doing their job?
Lately, people are heard wondering how one can accept that a state created from scratch in 1948 in Palestine (Israel) can be listed among the countries that have recognized Moroccan sovereignty over its southern provinces.
One can turn the question around by asking the following: how can one allow a state that was created from scratch by France in 1962 (Algeria) to bring about chaos in the Maghreb and push the absurd to the point of trying to enshrine a self-proclaimed entity in 1976?
The Algerian’s move is intended to realize a dream already expressed in 1966 before the United Nations General Assembly to—indirectly—have access to the Atlantic in cahoots with Spain at a time when Morocco was winning the bet of recovering Sidi Ifni (1969), whose fate was linked to the one of the Sahara at all.
Finally, how one cannot be offended to see the same state relentlessly trying to create a state in northern Mali, regardless of the perception we have of the Tuaregs existential issue?
My interlocutors will be amazed when they read this article: ‘’what are you talking about, dear friend, they may ask? You’re missing the point.’’ Not offense, but my answer is that in politics, sorcerers’ apprentices are always stirring up wind. The highlights of the show is on the rise, as long as there are spectators to applaud them.
The Palestinian’s existential issue would be resolved the day it was no longer a business, neither for states suffering from a lack of impact on the diplomatic and geopolitical chessboard nor for the orphans of the Cold War, and even less for those nostalgic for the ideological universalism that no longer fools anyone in the era of the information technology revolution.
Morocco has waited more than five decades to get its adversaries cool down (without convincing them, to date) and to secure the unequivocal support of its friends (still on standby for the most part). All of them played tricks on him, put a rabbit down, betrayed, as simple as that. They made the rational choice that put them at ease; no question was asked about right and wrong with respect to an issue so dear to Morocco.
At the end, when Morocco decides to take the right step to be more pragmatic than ever, the guardians of the ideological temples widen their eyes. To their defense, one would say that they might ignore turbulent facts about the history of a Middle Eastern and African geopolitical space. Indeed, a large part of whose tangible historical facts have deliberately been erased from people’s collective memory. These facts apply to the period of the Eighth and Thirteenth centuries for the Arab-Muslim world and the Eighth and Fifteenth centuries for Africa.
Once again, what dividends would Morocco have earned from the series of recognitions of its sovereignty over the Sahara, regardless of the states put on list? What kind of question is that?
