Western Sahara: Independence for Africa’s last colony?
Many African countries have been independent for 50 years or more. In fact, there is only one colony left on the African continent: Western Sahara. Looking at the Western Sahara conflict today, it seems like Gordian knot, a mission impossible, an arch-typical case of realpolitik. So will Western Sahara ever become an independent country, as promised by the UN and international law? And if so, will it at least have gained its independence when many of the other African countries are celebrating their 100th anniversary as independent countries, in other words in 50 years’ time?
Western Sahara was a Spanish colony for a hundred years, but in 1975 Morocco struck a deal with Spain that meant that Moroccan (and initially Mauritanian) troops and hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians colonized Western Sahara instead. Western Sahara’s indigenous population, the Saharawis, yet again had to go to war with a colonizer – a war that ended with Morocco colonizing the majority of Western Sahara, and with tens of thousands of Saharawis fleeing the bombardments and atrocities committed by the Moroccan army to Algeria, where they set up refugee camps that are still there today.
This is because powerful countries such as the USA and France (both permanent members of the UN Security Council), and the EU, are either blocking a solution, doing nothing or making matters worse by making trade agreements that include goods from occupied Western Sahara, thus legitimizing the occupation and giving Morocco an incentive to keep it up. And if oil is found off the coast of Western Sahara – and American company Kosmos Energy is drilling for it with the blessing of the Moroccans – there will be even less incentive for Morocco to leave.
While this is happening, both the Saharawis living in the occupied territories and the refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria live in a kind of personal and national limbo. Those in the occupied territories experience discrimination and daily human rights violations that are so bad, that Amnesty in their new anti-torture campaign has chosen to include Morocco / Western Sahara as one of the “five worst” countries in the world. Those in the camps live in one of the most inhospitable areas in the world, the so-called “Devil’s Garden” – a part of the desert where temperatures rise above 50 degrees C during the summer. There is a shortage of pretty much everything, including food, medicine, water and jobs.
http://stiffkitten.wordpress.com/2014/06/08/western-sahara-independence-for-africas-last-colony/
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