Credit: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The conflict in the Western Sahara has lasted decades. In 2006, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI gave a speech asking leaders to reflect on an autonomy plan.
By: ALI O. AMAR | Times-Dispatch
Published: March 18, 2012
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Sometimes the follies of Congress reach far and beyond our shores. It sometimes seems that our nation’s representatives consider it their duty to complicate life equally and absurdly for all people. They mess with the lives of those of us who elected them, and they tinker with the daily existence of people who have never heard of them.
And because Congress feels entitled to its own diplomacy, our elected officials abuse their constitutional powers of the purse and wreak havoc with America’s foreign-policy plans and objectives. This congressional interference runs from the politically self-serving to the diplomatically harmful.
The 2012 Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act (S.1601) contained excellent examples of the ventures of Congress into foreign affairs.
The act, for instance, withheld a portion of the funding for military assistance intended for Morocco until the secretary of state “submits a report on steps taken by the government of Morocco to respect the rights of individuals to peacefully express their opinions regarding the status and future of the Western Sahara, and to provide unimpeded access to human-rights organizations, journalists and representatives of foreign governments to the Western Sahara.”
So when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Dr. Saad Eddine Othmani, Morocco’s first Islamist foreign minister, to Washington this week, the two will have much to talk about: the Arab Spring, the violence in Syria, the surge of political Islam and Congress’ venture into the Western Sahara. For Clinton, this venture creates a vast and impossible mandate. For Othmani, it represents an unfair judgment about his country — and a simplistic approach to a highly complicated issue.
* * * * *The Western Sahara conflict is a 36-year-old dispute over land that Morocco recovered from Spain in 1975 — land that the Polisario Front, a secessionist movement created with support from Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya and Fidel Castro’s Cuba, claims for its followers.
The Polisario Front is currently hosted, supported and guided by Algeria, which Morocco considers a full party to the conflict. Algeria is also the main power behind the stalemate and impasse that has plagued the conflict since its beginning.
The paralysis afflicting the Union of the Arab Maghreb — an economic union in North Africa — and the state of disunity and instability hovering over the region are direct consequences of the intractable conflict over the Western Sahara.
In 2007, Morocco introduced an autonomy plan granting the Sahrawi the right to self-government within Morocco’s sovereignty. The autonomy plan was described as a credible breakthrough by the Bush administration, and it is the main pillar of the Obama administration’s position on the Western Sahara.
For three days last week, representatives from Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania gathered in suburban New York City for a ninth round of informal talks led by Ambassador Christopher Ross, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for the Western Sahara.
The punitive language of S.1601 puts undue burdens on Morocco, a reliable and cooperative ally of the United Sates for centuries, and it risks the disruption of a peace process that has been in place for several years.
“We have 10 to 14 sanctioned protests daily. … We have a sit-in which lasted more than two months” declared Abdelmajid Belghzal, a Sahrawi human-rights activist from Laayoune, the Western Sahara’s largest city.
Belghzal called the congressional action an “uninformed interference that overlooks the remarkable efforts of Morocco to reform itself and to resolve the conflict.” And he asked if Congress knew about “the financial compensation for victims of past violations, their rehabilitation and re-integration, the regular visits by Sahrawi activists to the Tindouf camps in Algeria, the teaching of Sahrawi culture in schools and the high voter turnout during the last election.”
* * * * *The Arab Spring and the political transformation that it brought to Morocco present Washington with a great opportunity to reconsider its vision for North Africa and examine its strategy toward this most sensitive of regions.
The Obama administration should make the resolution of regional conflicts such as the Western Sahara a top priority. The promotion of political reform, good governance and economic development sound hollow if the region remains paralyzed and disunited because of this conflict.
Instead of passing uninformed laws, Congress should fund the expansion of technical assistance for good governance, the rule of law and anti-corruption in the Western Sahara. Strengthening the legal system and promoting the practices of good governance in this region will improve the performance of its government and will make it more responsive to the demands and needs of its people.
A renewed and serious interest in the Western Sahara conflict by the Obama administration will encourage all parties involved to work harder to resolve this old and costly conflict.
Strong and consistent U.S. leadership is required to make this a policy priority for all involved, because having an unresolved conflict in a boiling region where the population is constantly protesting is in the interest of no one but al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb — Osama bin Laden’s nefarious and threatening legacy to North Africa and to our world.
Ali O. Amar is a democracy and governance consultant based in Alexandria. He can be reached at aamar22314
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