Thursday, April 14, 2022/ BY: Thomas M. Hill
After years of stagnation in the conflict over the Western Sahara, the Russian war on Ukraine and other recent events could create openings to advance long-stalled Western Sahara peace efforts. Unprecedented parallel visits by America’s top two diplomats to Morocco and Algeria last month suggest that the U.S. is exploring this new opening. The United States should firmly grasp any new chance to end this often-forgotten conflict, which helps breed conditions for extremism and transnational crime, prevents much needed economic growth, and which risks worsened instability from the Mediterranean to Africa’s Sahel region.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, meets Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita in November as Moroccan-Algerian tensions spiked, in part over the Western Sahara conflict. (Freddie Everett/State Department)
One change is clear. After decades in which Morocco has held the bulk of the Western Sahara — and after winning recognition from the Trump administration of its claim to ownership of the territory in 2020 — the tightening of global oil and gas supplies due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has given new leverage to Morocco’s rival, Algeria, which backs the Polisario Front in its battle for the Western Sahara’s independence. Algeria in November cut gas supplies to a pipeline through Morocco that delivers gas to Spain and Portugal. In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman both held talks in Morocco and Algeria that focused at least in part on the Western Sahara. USIP’s Thomas Hill explains why these changes are important to U.S. interests and stability in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
The Western Sahara conflict has festered for decades, typically getting little public attention — and that includes these recent events. Realistically, how do they affect U.S. or broad international interests?
Indeed, this conflict goes back to 1975, when Spain withdrew from what had been its colony of Spanish Sahara. Morocco claimed the territory, leading to fighting with the Polisario Front, which seeks an independent nation for the indigenous Sahrawi people. Moroccan troops occupy the bulk of the region, and the kingdom has assiduously worked to establish Moroccan communities and develop lucrative phosphate mining and fishing industries.
In 1991, Morocco agreed to a cease-fire and a U.N. plan for a referendum over the territory’s political future. After years of dispute over who should be allowed to vote in the referendum, Morocco proposed in 2007 to offer Western Sahara autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. This proposal has recently begun to gain traction internationally, with the Trump administration recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty in 2020 and Spain endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan last month.
At the same time, tensions between Algeria and Morocco neared a boiling point in November 2021. Their decades-old rivalry — in part over the Western Sahara — has occasionally threatened to trigger violence. Algeria provides support for the Polisario Front and hosts an estimated 174,000 Sahrawi refugees near its city of Tindouf. The most recent escalation in tensions between Morocco and Algeria led to closure of their border, closure of airspace, the recalling of ambassadors, and a halt to Algerian energy exports to Morocco. The recent policy shift by Madrid will certainly increase Algerian-Spanish tensions and may ignite further rounds of escalatory behavior by all parties.
And yes, this is critical to wider American interests in Africa. The Western Sahara conflict impedes economic integration between Algeria and Morocco, which — as The World Bank and others have urged — is vital for economic growth across the Maghreb; the least economically integrated region on earth. Morocco and Algeria, with a combined 80 million people, represent 80 percent of the total Maghreb population and more than the entire Sahel from Mauritania through Niger. These economies are crucial for addressing the unmet needs of the region’s burgeoning youth population, but they have been throttled by conflicts, lack of investment, the COVID pandemic, and now by rising energy and food prices. All this fuels transnational threats: violent extremist organizations such as ISIS, human smugglers and weapons traffickers.
Russia’s behavior — not only its war in Ukraine, but the destabilizing role of the Kremlin-aligned Wagner Group mercenaries in Libya, Mali, Sudan and the Central African Republic — makes clear the risks of America taking a back seat in resolving the Western Sahara conflict. Russia has tried to play a role in Western Sahara in the past, and the Polisario Front’s increased overtures for Russian support in recent years could prov
