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Ambiguities of Sovereignty: Morocco, TheHague and the Western Sahara DisputeAbdeslam MaghraouiPublished online: 08 Dec 2010.

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ESSAY

Ambiguities of Sovereignty:Morocco, The Hague and the Western

Sahara Dispute

ABDESLAM MAGHRAOUI

An analysis of Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara and of the International Courtof Justice rulings of 1975 reveals the ambiguities that surround the principle ofsovereignty and the futility of claiming neutrality or the high moral ground in settlingdisputes involving equally sound interpretations of what sovereignty means.Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara are related to an early process of nation-statebuilding that renders untenable any attempt to grant the disputed territory a statusdifferent to that of other Moroccan provinces. The Spanish government and EuropeanNGOs would have advanced the cause of self-determination of the Sahrawi populationmore effectively if they had pressed Morocco on democracy, human rights andmeaningful regional autonomy.

During the last 15 years, the international community has overseensuccessful applications of the right to self-determination in such diversecontexts as Namibia, Kosovo and East Timor. In the Western Sahara, aformer Spanish colony administered by Morocco since 1975 and claimed bythe Polisario Front,1 a UN settlement plan has been stalled for 12 years, andthe chance that a referendum for self-determination will ever be held ishighly unlikely. Given the striking similarities between East Timor and theWestern Sahara, why has the United Nations succeeded in enforcing theright to self-determination in the former and failed in the latter?2 EuropeanNGOs, the Spanish government and the Algerian military (the main backerof the Sahrawi independence movement, claim that ‘the law of force hasreplaced international law’ in the case of the Western Sahara. They alludeto pressures on the United Nations from France, the United States and GreatBritain, to end their advocacy of a self-determination referendum, therebytacitly accepting Morocco’s illegal annexation of the territory.

Mediterranean Politics, Vol.8, No.1 (Spring 2003), pp.113–126PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

Abdeslam Maghraoui is a Moroccan political scientist and lecturer in Middle East politics atPrinceton University.

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The UN general secretary’s report of June 2001, which advanced theoption of limited Sahrawi autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, and theBush administration’s official support for this option in April 2002, seem tolend credence to the thesis that power, not principles, is the driving logic indetermining the status of the territory. Yet, while the power imbalance infavour of Morocco shaped the evolution and current status of the dispute,this hardly means that Morocco’s claims on the Western Sahara are baselessor that France and the United States have acted in total disregard ofinternational norms. The fact that sovereignty often means different thingsto different nations at different times has less to do with power per se thanwith the ambiguities that inevitably surround any evolving internationalprinciple.

Through an analysis of Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara and the1975 rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), this articleillustrates: (a) the ambiguities that surround even a universally acceptedprinciple such as sovereignty; and (b) the futility of claiming neutrality orthe high moral ground in settling disputes involving equally soundinterpretations of what sovereignty means. This investigation takes us on ajourney through notions of authority and sovereignty unfamiliar to theInternational Court or the United Nations, but not lacking juridical or moralgrounds. It links Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara to an early processof nation-state building that renders untenable any attempt to grant thedisputed territory a status different to that of other Moroccan provinces. Theconclusion is that the Spanish government and European NGOs would haveadvanced the cause of self-determination of the Sahrawi population moreeffectively if they had pressed Morocco on democracy, human rights andmeaningful regional autonomy.

Before considering the juridical and political complexities surroundingthe case of the Western Sahara, a word on the scholarly debates on theconcept of sovereignty. What is of most relevance in these debates for thecase of Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara is the idea that ‘absolute’sovereignty does not conform to the reality of international politics. Yet,attempts to abandon the principle of state sovereignty altogether, whether inthe name of self-determination or human rights, are unrealistic. The conceptof sovereignty as a fundamental organizing principle of world politics hascome under assault in theories of international relations.3 With globalization– the rapid transfer of money, information, technology, people, corporationsand values across borders – scholars believe, the notion of nationalsovereignty has become less and less relevant.

Recent international interventions in Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia andRwanda seem to lend credence to the erosion of sovereignty. Scholars suchas Stephen Krasner, Michael Fowler and Julie Bunck go further and argue

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that systematic violations of sovereignty, a fundamental principle of theWestphalian order (1648), are hardly new.4 They hold that sovereignty wasin the first place a ‘political hypocrisy’ or at best a ‘legal myth’. Ironically,these arguments reinforce the notion of sovereignty rather than weaken it.Provisional loss of control, power or authority over a territory or a peopledoes not necessarily mean loss of sovereignty. In the case of the WesternSahara, Morocco’s incomplete extension of authority over the territory andtotal loss of privileges to colonial powers strengthened the sense ofsovereignty. Even under colonial duress and juridical limitations,Moroccan sultans protested and modern kings appealed to the internationalcommunity in the name of sovereignty. It is indeed difficult to imagine thesupport of key members of the Security Council for Morocco’s claimsindependently of the principle of sovereignty. That the conflict has draggedon for three decades – even with major backing for Morocco from the US,France and Britain – suggests that the principle of sovereignty is doingquite well.

A Brief History of the Conflict

The Western Sahara, a stretch of desert land measuring over 260,000 squarekilometers and roughly the size of Great Britain, lies on the Atlantic cost ofNorthwest Africa. It is bordered by internationally recognized Morocco tothe north, Algeria to the east and Mauritania to the south. Inhabited bytraditionally tribal, nomadic populations, the territory was under Spanishcolonial administration from 1884 to 1975. When Spain conducted a censusin 1974 in preparation for a referendum to decide the future of the territory,the Moroccan government consulted with the ICJ for an advisory opinionon the legal status of the territory at the time of colonization. Moroccoargued that the Western Sahara was not a terra nullis (a no man’s land) priorto European conquest because Moroccan sultans maintained long-standinghistorical and cultural ties of sovereignty with the local population. TheCourt held that legal ties of allegiance between Moroccan sultans andSahrawi tribes did exist, but were insufficient to grant Morocco sovereigntyover the territory.

Morocco interpreted the Court’s recognition of tribal allegiance toMoroccan sultans in its favour, and shortly afterwards some 350,000Moroccan civilians and 80,000 military troops marched unopposed into theWestern Sahara. The territory became officially administered by Morocco in1975, after the signing of the Madrid Accords.5 Between 1976 and 1988, aguerrilla movement called the Polisario Front, financed and supported byCuba and Algeria, was defeated and forced into exile in western Algeria. In1991, Morocco and Polisario accepted a United Nations settlement plan

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outlining procedures for holding a referendum in the Western Sahara.Intractable disagreements on who is a Western Sahrawi and who would beeligible to vote in the referendum forced the UN Security Council, on therecommendation of former US secretary of state James Baker, to launch adifferent initiative.

The new plan, passed unanimously by the Security Council in June2001, includes the option of granting Sahrawis extensive administrativeautonomy while recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory.Under the plan proposed by Baker, the local population would elect alegislative body and a local government responsible for the administrationof the territory, including: the collection and expenditure of taxes,education, commerce, mining, the fishing industry and other vitalactivities. According to James Baker, the local government would also beresponsible for law and order. The areas where Morocco would exercisesovereignty are defence, foreign affairs and the national currency. Moroccoaccepted the plan pending clarifications; Algeria and the Polisario Frontrejected it.

Morocco as Aggressor?

In the conflict over the Western Sahara, Morocco appears in the eyes of theinternational community as the clear aggressor. The story is familiar:Morocco occupied and annexed the Western Sahara because of a deep-seated desire for territorial expansion that recalls Indonesia’s take-over ofEast Timor. The increase in phosphate prices and King Hassan’s politicalisolation after two military coup attempts in the early 1970s presumablyprovided the impetus for the 1975 occupation. This move, Morocco’sdetractors argue, was no different to Saddam Hussein’s illegal invasion ofKuwait.

Two factors have contributed to this image of Moroccan aggression.First, the Moroccan authorities pursued repressive policies and corrupttactics in the Sahara. International human rights organizations and theformer deputy chairman of the Identification Commission of MINURSO,Frank Ruddy, testified to endemic violations and serious charges of fraud,which badly damaged the perception of Morocco’s treatment of theterritory. The second factor that contributed to this image of Morocco is adifferend between Morocco and the international community concerningthe nature of the conflict. By differend, I mean an antagonistic situationwhere the protagonists speak two different languages. In the case of theSahara, it is the language of the right to self-determination versus thelanguage of national integration and national sovereignty. Both Morocco’sfriends and her critics have too readily dismissed the second dimension of

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the equation. Yet, explicitly stated or not, national integration andsovereignty remain the fundamental principles behind the Moroccanposition.

In this essay, I delineate the basis of Morocco’s claims to sovereigntyover the territory and the sense of arbitrariness that can be associated withthe upholding of self-determination.6 What Moroccans thought to be astraightforward case of decolonization and national integration has turnedinto an international juridical and political nightmare.

Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara is based on three distinctcategories: (1) historical relations of sovereignty between Moroccan sultansand Saharan tribes; (2) international treaties and colonial records thatacknowledge Morocco’s territorial integrity and which include the Saharanprovinces; (3) a national liberation movement led by Moroccans to free thesouthern provinces from Spanish colonial rule after Morocco’s formalindependence in 1956.

Allegiance to the Sultan

Before European colonization in 1912, the authority of Moroccan sultansdid not extend evenly and consistently to all the territories they consideredto be under their sovereignty. However, this inconsistency does not implythat the sultans’ authority was ignored or systematically rejected. Sometribes or confederations of tribes swore allegiance to the Sultan andaccepted both his religious and secular authority. These tribes acquiesced tothe Sultan’s representative, the Caid, provided warriors for his army andfought foreign invaders and pronounced the Friday sermons in mosques inhis name.

While some tribes accepted both the Sultan’s religious and secularauthority, there were also dissident tribes that rejected the Sultan’srepresentative and the payment of taxes, without however calling intoquestion his religious authority. That is, the Friday sermons in mosques andresistance to foreign invaders were still performed in the name of the Sultan.Dissidence was more a matter of demanding autonomy and protecting localwealth than an absolute principled rejection of the Sultan’s authority. In pre-colonial Morocco, dissidence was rarely – if ever – an all-out waragainst the Sultan’s army. Often, disputes were settled politically throughpeaceful negotiation and transaction.

The uneven and inconsistent extension of the Sultan’s authority was notrelated to proximity to the centre of power. Contrary to the prevailing viewamong opponents of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, thecontestation of the Sultan’s authority does not increase as one moves awayfrom the north to the south of Morocco. Rather, the case is quite the

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opposite. Thanks to a favourable geography, for example, tribes in theMiddle Atlas and Anti-Atlas Mountains in the North were able to sustainsuccessful dissidence even though they were close to the imperial cities ofFez, Meknes and Marrakech. In the far away but flat terrains of the Tafilaletand the Sahara in the South, on the other hand, there was more co-operationthan resistance, as will be discussed shortly.

What was the nature of the Moroccan Sultan’s sovereignty in theWestern Sahara? Beginning with Moulay Rachid in 1668, right through toMoulay Abdel Hafid in 1911, Moroccan sultans were able to establishauthority in far-away regions in the Sahara where they appointed officialrepresentatives, Caids and Chioukhs, through royal decrees called Dahirs.Many tribes declared the oath of allegiance, or Bay’a, to the Sultan.Among predominantly nomadic populations, these institutions ofsovereignty could not be achieved everywhere. But this was also the casein the North where access was difficult. Hence in 1675 Moulay Rachidsent expeditions as far away as the borders with present day Mauritania toestablish his authority. By 1676 governors and Caids were alreadyregularly appointed to administer certain sedentary tribes around oases,trade routes, market towns and trading posts along the Atlantic coast.Under subsequent sultans, the ‘pacification’ campaigns intensified, as didvisits to the Saharan territories to meet with leaders of the main Sahrawitribes.

Of course, as elsewhere in the rest of Morocco, the Sultan’s authoritywas not evenly and consistently extended. This does not mean, however,that it was not recognized or was systematically opposed. While sultansunderstood their inability to control areas of dissidence, they neverrelinquished their sovereignty. The Makhzan, the administrative apparatusof the Sultan in pre-colonial Morocco, while rudimentary, had a very preciseidea about the limits of its territorial sovereignty. Whenever there wereintrusions by foreign states or cases of mistreatment by the colonialadministration, inhabitants would immediately inform the Sultan whowould in turn protest to the European powers. In the Western Sahara, thiswas the case in 1887 for Touat, 1895 and 1901 for Tarfaya and 1905 forAdrar. Conversely, where Moroccan sovereignty did not extend, such as inneighbouring Algeria, sultans refused the oath of allegiance from their localpopulations. This was the case of Sultan Moulay Soulayman, who at the endof the eighteenth century declined an oath of allegiance from the city ofOran in today’s Algeria following an anti-Ottoman revolt.

The Saharan tribes perceived then the Sultan’s authority no differentlythan tribes in the northern parts of Morocco. The Sultan’s authority wasoften resented and resisted to maintain local autonomy, but at the same timeit was sought for protection against hostile tribes or foreign invaders, and

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ultimately recognized through negotiations and transactions whenconvenient. The Sultan’s authority was never uniformly and systematicallyopposed as an alien, invading force. Colonial literature has exaggerated anddeformed the nature of the state-tribes dichotomy in order to justify the‘protectorate’, but recent historical research has debunked this image ofendless anarchy in pre-colonial Morocco.

The similarity between the Sultan’s forms of sovereignty with the tribesin the North and the South is no coincidence, as there were strong cultural,commercial and social ties between these parts of Morocco. The largestSahrawi tribal federations are linked to the North through Sufi orders,regional markets and Moussems, or annual fairs. The largest tribe in theSahara, the Reguibat, claims affiliation with a Moroccan saint, MoulayAbdeslam Ben M’chich, who lived in Tetuoan, the most northern part ofMorocco. Another major Saharan tribe, the nomadic Ait Lahssen, are linkedto their sedentary brethren Ait Lahssen in the North. These tribes oftensought refuge or alliances with other tribes from the area. The Ait Oussatribe, whose main residence was in Oued Draa in the northern part ofMorocco where they held their regional annual fairs, also lived in theHammada plateau, considered today part of the Western Sahara.

Like northern tribes, some Saharan tribes swore allegiance to Moroccansultans and provided troops for their armies. When Sultan Hassan I namedSheik Maa al-Aynain, a prominent Sahrawi tribal leader and religiousscholar, as his deputy in the Sahara in 1887, he delegated to him theauthority to raise troops, pacify warring tribes, administer the territory andrepel European incursions all in the name of the Sultan. The nature of therelationship between Maa al-Ainaian and two other Moroccan sultans wascharacteristic of sovereignty relations with local chiefs under the Alawidynasty in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Local chiefs enjoyeda great deal of autonomy, but it was always in the name of the Sultan thatresistance to foreign invaders was undertaken.

These claims to territorial sovereignty based on particular juridical notionsand authority relations between state and tribes have proved an enigma to theInternational Court in The Hague. International legal scholars simply did notknow how to interpret these claims. When the Court gave an advisory opinionin October 1975, it did recognize the traditional juridical link between theSultan and tribes. However, the Court did not equate that juridical link withterritorial sovereignty. This opinion is questionable because it evaluates theauthority of a pre-modern state structure on the basis of modern mechanismsof sovereignty such as taxation records, voting districts or a national currency.According to this interpretation of sovereignty, most Moroccan provinceswould be considered illegal annexations, and indeed the entire Moroccan statewould be considered illegitimate.

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International Treaties and Colonial Records

The second category of Moroccan claims to sovereignty over the Sahara isinternational treaties and colonial records. Although less complicated thanthe authority relations discussed above, certain documents have been simplyignored while others were subject to conflicting interpretations. Thus theICJ dismissed the Anglo-Moroccan agreement of 1895 which recognizedMorocco’s sovereignty over districts deep in the Sahara desert becauseGreat Britain’s position was considered inconsistent with previous policies.The 1906 Algeciras Agreement under which the European powers pledgedto uphold two Moroccan demands – the independence of the Sultan andMorocco’s territorial integrity including sovereignty over the Saharanterritories – was later violated by France and Spain and not taken intoconsideration in the Sahara dispute. A letter annexed to the Franco-GermanTreaty concerning Morocco in 1911 was ignored. The letter explicitlyrecognized that Germany would not intervene in any agreement that Franceand Spain might conclude on the subject of Morocco and that Morocco wasunderstood to comprise all that part of North Africa including the WesternSahara. This is not very precise by today’s standards, but the InternationalCourt dismissed this document altogether because it reflected a division ofspheres of influence among the colonial powers rather than a definition ofMorocco’s territory.

On the other hand, the Court took into consideration an article in theFranco-Spanish convention of 1904 that placed the Western Sahara outsidethe limits of Morocco, even though the Western Saharan territories wereadministered with the other Spanish zone of Morocco. Until 1946, there wasjust one Spanish high commissioner in charge of administering SpanishMorocco. His residence was in Tetouan, close to the Mediterranean cost ofMorocco. Administratively, there was no Spanish colonial Sahara andSpanish colonial Morocco. It was only after the Spanish explorer ManuelMedina discovered phosphates in 1946 that Spain nominated a separatehigh commissioner in the Saharan territories, to be called Africa OccidentalEspañola.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Morocco signed aseries of treaties: three with Spain, two with the United States and two withGreat Britain, all of which implicitly recognized the Sultan’s authority inwhat is considered today disputed territory. These treaties contain clausesrequesting the Moroccan Sultan’s intervention to secure the return of sailorskidnapped by nomadic tribes along the Atlantic coasts of the Saharanterritories. On the basis of these treaties, the Moroccan Sultan did secure therelease of ship crews. Nine of those released were Spanish nationalscaptured in 1863. The International Court, however, dismissed the event as

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a gesture of the Sultan’s good will and the clauses in these treaties as a mereexercise of his personal, not political, authority.

This interpretation demonstrates the faulty application of modernstandards of legitimate authority to a pre-modern state formation. If wewere to dismiss personal relations as a form of authority, again noMoroccan province would be considered a legitimate entity. In fact, nostate in the Middle East and North Africa (as well as in other non-Westerncountries) would be considered a legitimate political entity. TheInternational Court’s privileging of rational-legal authority as the norm,and applying it to the pre-colonial Moroccan context, is questionable onanalytical and moral grounds. Basically, the ICJ set legal andadministrative standards that Morocco could never fulfill and deniedMoroccan sultans forms of sovereignty that allowed the absolutistEuropean monarchs to unify their states during the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.

Decolonization and the War of National Liberation

The third category of Moroccan’s claims to the Sahara derives from theprocess of decolonization and the war of national liberation. Europeancolonization of Morocco consisted of five areas: (1) the areas where Spainclaimed sovereignty and annexed at one point or another, including Ceutaand Melilia on the Mediterranean cost, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic,Rio de Oro (the current Western Sahara) and Sidi Ifni in the North of theSahara; (2) and (3) the areas of the Spanish protectorate, which weredivided into two zones, the northern zone stretching from portions of theRif mountains to the northern coastal towns on the Atlantic, and a smallprotectorate zone between the Sahara and the south of Morocco; (4) FrenchProtectorate Morocco stretching between the Spanish northern andsouthern zones; and (5) the internationally-administered city of Tanger onthe Mediterranean coast. When Morocco gained formal independence in1956, much of the territory claimed by Spain remained under Spanish rule.Tarfaya and the Tekna area in the Spanish south were returned to Moroccoin 1958. Sidi Ifni, which was considered a Spanish enclave, was reunitedwith Morocco in 1969.

To the Moroccan King, his government and the nationalist movement,Morocco’s independence was incomplete, and they never stopped protestingand demanding the return of the rest of its territories. Immediately afterindependence in 1956, the Moroccan Service of Saharan and Border Affairswas established to pursue claims to the occupied territories. In February1958, less than two years after independence, King Mohamed V gave afamous speech in Mahamid al-Gihzlan, an oasis town on the edge of the

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Sahara, where he reiterated Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara. When theUnited Nations’ Special Commission on Decolonization was established, itconsidered the Western Sahara in conjunction with Ifni, another enclave stillunder Spanish rule. More importantly, no distinction was made between thestatus of the two territories. Hence in 1964, the commission requested thatSpain liberate the Western Sahara and Ifni and engage in direct negotiationswith Morocco over procedures. In 1966, however, for no apparent juridicalreason and after no change in the territories, a distinction was introducedbetween Ifni and the Sahara.

Given this history, it is difficult to claim, as critics of Morocco oftendo, that Morocco invaded and annexed the territory because of mineralriches or because King Hassan II, who ordered the 1975 march, wanted toplay the nationalist card following coup attempts in the early 1970s. Thereis no doubt that these factors did play a role, but to reduce popularmobilization over the Sahara issue to these factors is both simplistic andmisleading.

The anti-colonial struggle and continuing nationalist activities afterformal independence further consolidated the historical and political linksbetween Morocco and the Saharan provinces. Leaders of the resistance fromthe Sahara did not distinguish between Morocco proper and the Sahara.They carried out the war of liberation deep into Morocco with fightersassembled from other regions in the North known as strong pockets ofresistance such as the Souss, the High Atlas and the Rif. After the northernpart of Morocco was granted formal independence in 1956, the Army ofLiberation led by guerrillas from the Rif, the Souss, the Chaouia and theMiddle Atlas launched a war against Spain in the Western Sahara. In fact,before independence, the Army of Liberation organized its activitiesaccording to three zones: the Rif, the Middle and High Atlas, and theSahara, which was called the South, with each zone having its owncommand. The leader of the southern zone was Benhamou Mesfioui fromthe Rif. In 1957 the Southern Liberation Army attacked seven military postsin the Sahara, forcing the Spanish authorities to withdraw their garrisonsfrom the interior, including Smara. By 1958, the guerrillas were patrollingmost of the territories.

Concerned about the boldness of the Army of Liberation, Spain andFrance finally decided to launch an attack codenamed ‘OperationEcouvillon’, which involved some 15,000 French and Spanish troops andsome 150 aircraft. The Army of Liberation was defeated and its troopsregrouped in the North, where they were disarmed by the regular Moroccanforces. Many of them, including Sahrawi fighters, joined the Royal ArmedForces. Others joined a Moroccan opposition party called the UnionNationale des Forces Populaires. Here again, nationalist guerrilla fighters,

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like their predecessors who had led resistance to European conquest, formedsingle units, moved between the French and Spanish zones and operatedwithin the two territories. It is difficult, then, to dismiss Morocco’smovement of national liberation as irrelevant evidence in relation to thequestion of sovereignty over the Sahara.

Nation Building is not Benevolent

In assessing these categories of Morocco’s claims on the Western Sahara,it is important to clarify that even if the juridical value and status of theseclaims may be contested, they are not arbitrary or illegal. If we were toapply today’s principles of international law to processes of stateformation and national integration during the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, then Spain, France and Britain would be consideredillegitimate states. Throughout these two centuries, the absolutistmonarchies in Europe consolidated their national territories byintroducing standing armies, permanent bureaucracies, unified markets,national taxation systems and codified laws. They did so, however,through violence, repression, displacement of people, weakening ofvillage structures and loss of local sovereignty. State formation was anugly process. Morocco’s political history, from at least the sixteenthcentury, with the advent of the current Alawi dynasty, to Europeancolonization in the nineteenth-century, has followed a similar pattern ofconflict between the Sultan’s central authority and dissident tribesresisting taxation and conscription in the army in Morocco proper and inthe disputed Saharan territory.

This process of consolidation, while less successful than in Europeand while interrupted by colonialism, is no more illegitimate than stateconsolidation under seventeenth-century absolutist monarchies inEurope. Yet, the process of nation-state formation in western Europe istaken for granted; it has been normalized through political and legaldiscourses that blur its origin. Hence violence and repression is called‘legitimate use of coercion’. Uprooting of communities is called‘national integration’. Administrative control is called the ‘extension ofrational-legal authority’. Destruction of local economies is called the‘establishment of unified markets’. Detached from their historicalcontext, these principles establish the norm against which other processesof state formation are morally judged and politically evaluated. Hence,the oath of allegiance to the Moroccan Sultan known as Bay’a, Fridaysermons in mosques, or religious forms of taxation appear unfamiliar,even bizarre. Yet, if rejected as a basis of sovereignty, none of Morocco’sregions would be considered ‘legitimate’ parts of Morocco. In fact, the

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Rif populations and other tribal conglomerations in the inaccessible Atlasmountains, more than the Sahrawis, have a discernible history ofresistance to the Sultan’s authority and can make a stronger case for self-determination and independence.

Democratization or Independence?

The government of Spain and European human rights organizations, in arelentless effort to uphold the principle of self-determination for theSahrawi population, unjustly undermine Morocco’s national sovereignty.There is no question that Morocco’s handling of the Western Saharaterritory is appalling as the Moroccan authorities resorted to heavy-handedtactics and gross human rights violations during the past quarter of acentury. Morocco should be held accountable for those violations and theMoroccan government should prosecute the violators in a court of law anddispense compensation to victims of repression. But pressing the issues ofhuman rights violations, regional autonomy, official recognition andrespect for cultural minorities, effective political representation anddemocratic decentralization by pressing for Sahrawi self-determination – aprocess which may lead to independence, a scenario Morocco would neveraccept – is counter-productive, unfair and impractical. The question of theWestern Sahara has retarded the process of democratization in Morocco for25 years because it created a chauvinistic national consensus to counterwhat Moroccans perceived as Algeria’s manipulation. The civil andpolitical rights of the Sahrawis, like those of women, the Amazigh, thesocially excluded, and the poor and the powerless in the rest of Morocco,would be better served by advocating more democratic rights, notindependence.

NOTES

1. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and Rio de Oro, a Sahrawiindependence movement based in Algeria, was founded in 1973.

2. East Timor was under Portuguese colonial administration from the sixteenth century andwas claimed by Indonesia after Portugal withdrew in 1975. That same year, theInternational Court of Justice issued advisory rulings upholding the right of self-determination for both peoples, in East Timor and the Western Sahara.

3. See, for example, Gelber [1997] Chopra and Weiss [1992] Wriston [1995].4. See, Krasner [1999] Fowler and Bunck [1995].5. In November 1975, Spain signed an agreement with Morocco and Mauritania that

recognized Morocco’s administration in the northern half of the disputed territory.However, Morocco took over the southern half in 1979 when Mauritania withdrew its

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claim. Morocco’s willingness to give up the southern part of the Sahara in the Madridagreement is inconsistent with its claim over all of the disputed territory on the basis oftraditional ties of allegiance between Sahrawi tribes and sultans. This inconsistencyreflects Morocco’s futile attempt to reconcile a traditional, immaterial conception ofsovereignty with the modern principle of sovereignty. But Morocco was not the onlyinconsistent player in the dispute. The Spanish government’s recognition of Moroccanadministration in the northern part of the Western Sahara and the UN reference toMorocco as an ‘interim administration’ are in many ways inconsistent with the declaredobjective of organizing a referendum on self-determination in the disputed territory.

6. Polisario supporters in the United Nations argue that Morocco, a signatory to theInternational Covenants on Human Rights, cannot be exempt from the principle of self-determination. Yet the same nations fail to see that member states cannot use moralarguments against the logic of power politics in international relations – which theyblame for retarding the process of self-determination in the Western Sahara – since theycomply with a UN structure that allocates veto power to five states only.

REFERENCES

Boubrik, R., Saints et société en Islam: La confrérie ouest-saharienne Fâdiliyya, Paris:CNRS.

Chopra, J. and T. Weiss (1992): ‘Sovereignty is no Longer Sacrosanct: CodifyingHumanitarian Intervention’, Ethics and International Affairs 6.

Chopra, J. (1994): ‘Breaking the Stalemate in Western Sahara’, International Peacekeeping1/3.

Damis, J. (1983): Conflict in Northwest Africa: The Western Sahara Dispute, Stanford, CA:Hoover Institution Press.

Durch, J.W. (1993): ‘Building on Sand: UN Peacekeeping in the Western Sahara’,International Security 17/4.

Gelber, H. (1997): Sovereignty through Interdependence, London: Kluwer Law.Fowler R.M. and J.M. Bunck (1995): Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and

Application of the Concept of Sovereignty, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversity.

Froberville, M. de (1996): Sahara Occidental: La confiance perdue: L’impartialité de l’ONUà l’épreuve, Paris: L’Harmattan.

Gaudio, A. (1993): Les populations du Sahara occidental: Histoire, vie et culture, Paris:Karthala.

Hippel, K. von (1995): ‘The Non-Interventionary Norm Prevails: an Analysis of the WesternSahara’, Journal of Modern African Studies 33/1.

Hodges, T. (1983): Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, Westport, CO: Lawrence Hill& Co.

Joffé, G. (1996): ‘Self-Determination and Uti Possidetis: The Western Sahara and the “LostProvinces”’, Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies 1.

Krasner, D.S. (1999): Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.

Mohsen-Finan, K., Sahara occidental: Les enjeux d’un conflit régional, Paris: CNRS 1997.Mohsen-Finan, K. (1994): ‘Sahara occidental: le sens d’un référendum d’autodétermination’,

Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 33.Ohmane, K. (1995): The End of the Nation-State, New York: Harper Collins.Pazzanita, G.A. (1995): ‘The Western Sahara Referendum: A Question of Deadlock’, Journal

of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 19.Pazzanita, G.A. and Y. Zoubir (1995): ‘The United Nations’ Failure in Resolving the Western

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Sahara Conflict’, Middle East Journal 49/4.Renaud, P.-C. (1993): Combats sahariens 1955–1962, Paris: Jacques Grancher.Wriston, W. (1992): The Twilight of Sovereignty, New York: Scribner.Zoubir, Y.H. and D. Volman (eds.) (1993): International Dimensions of the Western Sahara

Conflict, Westport, CO: Praeger.Zunes, S. (1998): ‘The United States and the Western Sahara Peace Process’, Middle East

Policy 5/4.Zunes, S. (1998): ‘Morocco and Western Sahara’, Foreign Policy In Focus 3/42, Dec..

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