Polisario Confidential
by Khalid Ibrahim Khaled
Coordination meetings have gathered, on the eve of the UN General Assembly, officers of the Algerian military intelligence services (DRS) and leaders of the Polisario separatist Front.
According to an informed source from the Polisario headquarters in Tindouf, the main objective of the meetings was to try to undermine the Morocco-proposed autonomy plan for Western Sahara, and to put pressure on France, which supports the project.
The meetings decided to undertake lobbying operations on the diplomatic and media levels. Besides these Algeria-approved moves, Algerian officials attempted to involve the African Union in the Western Sahara issue. But Algeria’s Foreign Minister, Ramtane Lamamra, harbors no illusions about the AU’s ability to make a difference. And for a reason, the AU has been discredited by its successive failures in the settlement of conflicts in Africa, whether in the Central African Republic, Mali, South Sudan…
The Algerian Foreign Minister, being aware of the inability of the AU to influence the course of events, decided to use his trump: bilateral contacts in the corridors of the UN in New York. His aim? Present Morocco as the one and only responsible of the Western Sahara issue current deadlock and France as the only country that supports the Moroccan autonomy plan. The argument is all the more flimsy as the UN envoy, Christopher Ross, who visited the Tindouf camps and Algiers earlier this September, failed to achieve any breakthrough.
For these reasons, Ramtane Lamamra considers his mission as a real race against the clock, says the same source. He seems to forget that major Western capitals reject the solution advocated by Algeria, which consists in creating a tiny independent state in Western Sahara under the control of the Polisario Front.
In Europe as well as in the United States and elsewhere, this solution is viewed as the worst scenario that can happen in a region already destabilized by the proliferation of terrorist groups and jihadi and secessionist movements, including in Mali, Libya or even in Algeria, the same source stressed.
