“It’s a very old subject. Western Sahara, then a Spanish colony, was annexed in November 1975 by its two neighbors, Morocco and Mauritania. A military occupation which, for Morocco, still lasts and has prevented a normal process of decolonization. Part of the Saharawi people have since lived in exile in Algeria while other families have remained in occupied territory.
On one side as on the other, the Sahrawis, led by their political representation, the Polisario Front, never cease to testify with courage and sacrifice their will to be independent and to regain their territory in complete freedom.
10th anniversary of the great peaceful revolt of the Gdeim Izik camp
Since 1991, the United Nations has tried with a Plan and a peace mission to apply the resolutions which since 1966 affirm that the Saharawi people have the right to self-determination. In vain. Morocco, which occupies three quarters of Western Sahara, claims to be sovereign there and is opposed to any settlement.
In this month of November, the Saharawis commemorate the 10th anniversary of the great peaceful revolt of the Gdeim Izik camp near their capital city, El Aaiun. In 2010, thousands of them gathered there to express their refusal to be Moroccans and to demand self-determination. This camp, violently dismantled on November 8, 2010 by the Moroccan army, has since symbolized the Sahrawi struggle for their freedom.
Dozens of Saharawi activists were then arrested, sometimes tortured, and twenty-five of them sentenced to heavy prison terms ranging from 20 years to life imprisonment. These sentences are aimed at preventing any public demonstration in favor of the independence of Western Sahara.
One of their leaders, my husband Naâma Asfari, sentenced to 30 years in prison, continues this fight for self-determination from his cell in Kenitra prison (Morocco). A nearly 50-year-old struggle that remains very topical.
Great uncertainty at the border with Mauritania
On the ground, everything is happening today at a place called Guerguerat, in the extreme south-west of Western Sahara. There, on the edge of the 2,500 km-long militarized wall built by Morocco across the desert, in an area under the control of the Polisario Front under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Sahrawi civil movements have since been blocking several days traffic to neighboring Mauritania.
For the demonstrators, it is a question of denouncing the plundering of the wealth of their country by Moroccan and foreign companies (including some French) and of reminding the Secretary-General of the United Nations that he has still not appointed a new Special envoy for Western Sahara after the resignation of Horst Khöler in May 2019.
They express their anger peacefully as they did in Gdeim Izik but expect the Kingdom of Morocco to send its soldiers with the risk of breaking the ceasefire. Because Morocco is no longer satisfied with the “old agreement”, it needs this passage into Saharawi territory to ensure its relations with Mauritania and Africa.
If the exasperation of the Saharawis today generates great uncertainty at the border of Mauritania, is it not the resolution of a 45-year-old dispute that will be able to ensure and freely develop this route between the Maghreb and Sahelian Africa? “
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