Western Sahara Info.

Mauritania, Qadhafi, and the Arab world

2009-03-13T18:08:00.010Z

[Cross-posted to Maghreb Politics Review] -- At The Moor Next Door, MPR's fearsome strongman, Kal, adds up the results of Muammar el-Qadhafi's recent visit to Nouakchott, where he tried to mediate the Mauritanian crisis by unreservedly siding with the putschists. This didn't quite pan out, and his blatant partisanship surprised those who had seen Libya's previously intensive and consistent effort to come across as a possible bridge-builder -- the deposed president Abdellahi was given a head-of-state welcome in Sirte, and so on, to signify that Qadhafi was on good terms with both sides.

As Kal argues -- and I agree -- the end result of Libya's move from the middle to the fringe seems to be that the US/European position is strengthened. Washington has been militantly against the coup, while Europe under French leadership was equally vocal, but also hinted openly at a search for whatever pragmatic exit existed. If they would pool their resources to push hard for a solution alongside those local players that agree, they could probably make a real difference.

The Arab world, with a couple of prominent exceptions, remains negative or indifferent to the junta. Mauritania has gained some rare popular acclaim among Arabs for cutting ties with Israel, but on balance it didn't help to swing Arab states. Among the so-called 'radical' Arab states, Algeria (not terribly radical, under Bouteflika) was already firmly invested in the anti-coup camp, while Syria and Sudan have been too preoccupied with their own troubles to notice, and are unable to extend any help anyhow. (Yemen is also habitually railing against Israel, but I don't think Mauritania can expect any financial contributions from there...) It gained some limited applause from Qatar, and now there is this with Libya, although it's not obvious that the cut ties with Israel were behind Qadhafi's swing to full-blown partisanship. Among the so-called 'moderate' Arab states, the non-Qatari Gulf crowd, where the money is, all viewed this radical grandstanding very negatively, since they are presently under KSA leadership engaged in promoting a compromise line on Israel. For Egypt and Jordan, it's an absolute embarrassment -- it increases pressure on them to break their own ties with Israel. In Morocco, the government must have been quietly upset about the cut ties with Israel, given the back-breaking acrobatics that Rabat is presently performing to please Riyadh & Washington. But the government is, like Algeria's, much too invested in the situation to change sides or even punish the junta for the move.

Summing the Arab scene up, it's possible that Mauritania's Israel move was designed only to gain Qadhafi's total backing. If so, it seems to have succeeded (for what it's worth). If the embassy closure was designed to break its larger isolation, it's a failure, since it further alienated the West and a couple of Arab heavyweights, and didn't bring about change anywhere else. Finally, however, one shouldn't ignore the domestic factor: the Mauritanian public has opposed Israel's embassy since the day it opened, and despite the segmented nature of the Mauritanian polity, there's still a good political buck in wielding the Israel card.

At any rate, Qadhafi's first international action as head of the African Union ended in a serious anti-climax for him, depriving Libya of the swing role it had hoped for but adding a semi-powerful -- if double-edged -- support for the junta. With Qadhafi at the head of the AU, its previously stiff legalistic stand on the coup could also be in danger, given the flimsyness of its institutions and the Brother Leader's general disregard for, precisely, institutions. This could prove important, since the AU has so far been used as the international community's sanction canary, moving one step ahead of the rest. (About the AU, see also Ibn Kafka on MPR detaling the world of difference between a coup and a coup.)

Now, the ball is in the court of the US and Europe, and the quest to find another mediator is on. Let me guess that someone will sooner or later call on either Qatar, the UN or some African country to step in and work something out. It's either that or to wait for another coup, which given today's logjam would risk seriously destabilising the country, and also spoil the slim but intriguing chance that there could actually be a day when an African/Arab coup is overturned peacefully by foreign and internal pressure.

To read: great, long, and detailed sum-up of the whole Mauritanian coup story by Mohamed Lemine ould Bah at the Arab Reform Initiative.

Angry Berbers & Loony Libyans

2009-03-10T20:55:00.003Z

That is what i discuss in one, two posts at Maghreb Politics Review.

Libya calls for referendum in W. Sahara

2009-03-05T13:34:00.005Z

[picture: muammar al-qadhafi, exiting the mos eisley cantina]

The Libyan General Popular Congress is the closest thing that country has to a parliament. It has just held its session, and out of the steaming heaps of praise for the Brother Leader, one can extract the following:

- "The GPC hopes that reason, logic, geographical unity and historical ties will prevail between the brothers in Algeria and Morocco. It calls for the return of normal brotherly relations between the two brotherly countries and to the consolidation of ties of fraternity which bond their people through the opening of borders to facilitate the movement of people and the flow of goods and services."
- "The GPC maintains that a referendum for the population of the Western Sahara is the only practical solution for this crisis which had a negative effect on the efforts of the region's countries to realize a broader integration."

Libya was one of POLISARIO's strongest backers until 1984, when it joined in a short-lived union with Morocco designed partially to extract itself from the whole Western Sahara affair. Since then, it has ambiguously wavered to and fro, and tailored its Sahara-related messages to the audience, but when now calling for a referendum -- as opposed to some vague exhortation of self-determination -- that effectively aligns the country with POLISARIO's and Algeria's position on how the process must work. On the other hand, the GPC also calls for open borders between Algeria and Morocco, which Algeria is presently refusing.

Of course, Libyan policy is always subject to the whims of Qadhafi, so this need not be taken as a firm and final decision in either direction.

Pax Algeriana

2009-03-03T20:03:00.002Z

Read my post on the Touareg business in Mali, and Algeria's involvement with it, on Maghreb Policy Review.

The Sahrawi Republic turns 33

2009-03-01T10:39:00.009Z

Front POLISARIO, the Western Saharan independence movement, has held its annual celebrations of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The SADR was announced on February 27, 1976, and so this is its 33rd anniversary; that most dangerous year. The celebrations seem to have been unremarkable, or in fact indistinguishable from earlier years -- a military parade in the "liberated territories", combined with some political and social stunts to make the yearly journalists' trek pay in pictures and headlines. But three things caught my eye:

1. Troop levels: "Bashir Mustapha Saeed, the deputy leader of the exiled Saharawi government, based in neighboring Algeria, said the Polisario Front had 12,000 to 18,000 regular troops and could mobilize many more reservists if needed." -- It is very rare to hear POLISARIO announce troop numbers for their armed wing, the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army. 12,000 to 18,000 seems too high to be credible, with most observers putting the figure closer to 6-7,000 active troops, but that figure is also guesswork. El Bashir's number was probably accurate during the 80s, but since the cease-fire in 1991, training has slipped, and is no longer universal in the camps. At the same time, POLISARIO claims to have stepped up preparations for war again, and training apparently continues to churn out hundreds of new fighters every year -- 500 graduated during the celebrations alone, some of them seen here.

2. El Bashir Mustafa El Seyyid ran the event. This is not significant in itself, if it were not for the fact that there's a line of argument in Morocco that this man -- El Ouali's brother, and a chef historique -- is in fact held as prisoner by the leadership of Mohammed Abdelaziz. Allegedly he wants to make up with Morocco, and is therefore held under strict surveillance by POLISARIO authorities. This may or may not be true, but there's very little or no evidence to back it up; even so, it's slowly becoming an established fact that "everybody knows". TelQuel, the Moroccan magazine, presented its interview with El Bashir in 2008 as a groundbreaking event with a virtual prisoner. In fact, and whatever the level of marginalization he may be suffering, he has been highly involved in politics in the movement both before and after that interview. He was among the top vote winners at the POLISARIO's congress in 2007, and now schmoozes with journalists on the Feb. 27 celebrations. I can't claim to know anything of POLISARIO's inner workings, but that's hardly behavior befitting a dissident in house arrest.

3. Repopulation of the "liberated territories": This strategy, begun discreetly a couple of years ago, is now fully public. POLISARIO wants to establish a permanent civilian settlement at Tifariti (pictured right) in its section of Western Sahara, to bolster its infrastructure there and make the semi-permanent division of the territory more of a political and psychological embarrassment for Morocco. (Until now, there have only been military camps and nomadic movement in the areas held by POLISARIO, while Morocco's part has all the settled population.) It's actually quite clever, since it pokes a hole in Morocco's propaganda to its population about these areas being a UN-patrolled "buffer zone", rather than territory legally -- if not in any way physically -- on par with Smara and El Aaiún (for this argument in more detail, a PDF document by Nick Brooks). On the other hand, it totally undermines the sabre-rattling that POLISARIO habitually engages in. If you think war is the least bit likely, you don't spend your precious resources building civilian housing on the front line.

US DoS human rights reports

2009-02-26T14:11:00.005Z

The US State Department has issued its yearly human rights reports. Here's Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Niger. Don't read them immediately before going to bed.

Otherwise, I'm still mostly posting at Maghreb Politics Review, and at a splendid pace too.

Maghreb Politics Review

2009-02-21T05:21:00.007Z

Is this the end? As I mentioned earlier, I'm transferring to the new Maghreb group blog, Maghreb Politics Review. It really seems like it's going to be a good one, so I recommend you follow it whether or not for my ramblings. As for WSI, I may continue to post stuff here, or I may not.

On MPR, I haven't quite figured out the wonderful complexities of WordPress, so layout is bound to be spartan for a while. But disregard that, and you can still read my first posts:

Tamed or Broken?, a long descriptive rant about today's Algerian politics, with a focus on Islamists and the system of governance that has emerged under Bouteflika. Faithful readers of WSI will recognize most arguments, and note a curious resemblance to this post.

Ross tours the region, a brief note to point out that Christopher Ross, the new UN envoy for W. Sahara, is making his first official rounds in the Maghreb.

WSI: the blog of record

2009-02-18T12:37:00.011Z

Slow going, I know. But here: The New York Times runs a piece about Mauritania and tensions between U.S. anti-terror and pro-democracy commitments that perhaps you should read (h/t Justin). And, darn it, I do think that's my translation of an al-Qaida communiqué that they've used on page 4, even if slightly edited. Google agrees.

That's unfortunate. Because now, while checking if it was really my translation they'd swiped, I stumbled upon a claim in another al-Qaida statement, saying that the communiqué I translated was a fake, although there is of course no guarantee that it isn't that later statement that is in fact the fake one.

The truth of it I don't really care about, but it adds up to the doubly depressing realization that Jihadis suck at public diplomacy and that neither WSI nor NYT is careful enough about checking sources.

Previously on blog theft: Will turns into a Washington power broker, and the fake consultancy outfit Sahel Intelligence first lifts my Algeria posts and then, when caught red-handed, copies someone else instead.

Great moment in US-Algerian relations

2009-01-29T00:04:00.004Z

Not quite the under cover operation he was hired for:

The CIA's station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

Expect all hell to follow when this breaks in Algeria. Already before, many Algerians viewed their country's relationship with the US as being on precisely the terms here formulated my Mr. Date Rape:

The alleged victim said she remembers being in Warren's bed and asking him to stop, but that "Warren made a statement to the effect of 'nobody stays in my expensive sheets with clothes on.'"

For more sad and sensationalist detail, here's a search warrant affidavit as PDF document

No country for old men

2009-01-25T00:55:00.006Z

He's an affable little fellow, but not everyone loves Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Here, for example, Rachid Benyelles lambasts the president in a long column in El Watan, one of Algeria's biggest French-language private dailies. Not only is the president a gangster and a corrupt police-state dictator, he's also old, sick and almost dead. Criticism of Bouteflika is of course par for the course in Algeria, but here, at the end, Benyelles breaks every conceivable taboo by essentially calling for a coup d'état:

The constitution and the political parties must be suspended, the parliament dissolved, and power be handed to a transitional government. During its six to twelve month mandate, it would be tasked with managing daily affairs and installing a National Council for the Installment of Democracy (CNID).

[picture: rachid benyelles]

This Benyelles, born 1935 and no youngster himself, is a retired general. In the mid-80s he briefly served as secretary-general of the Ministry of Defense under Chadli Bendjedid (meaning he was in effect the country's minister of defense, since he answered directly to the president). He was sidelined later on, by being moved to the post as minister of transport, and has not been of much importance since the end of the 1980s. Unless he's writing with backing from someone else, this should not be taken as anything other than an old man's angry rant. On the other hand, Benyelles's military background is interesting; not least because the article largely absolves the military of responsibility for the country's situation (and it doesn't even mention the DRS).

Even with the rather brutal tone of Algerian political commentary, this piece stands out for openly demanding total regime change. Such seems to be the mood as Bouteflika gears up for a third term, having eliminated all opposition and rewritten the constitution -- one of anger and desperation among his enemies, and raw bulldozer determination among his allies.

Two new blogs!

2009-01-24T20:48:00.004Z

Hannes Bahrenburg -- The first one is run by Hannes, who has been commenting a lot on Mauritanian issues here. Seems like he's going to continue doing that on his own new website.

Maghreb Politics Review -- A nascent group blog started by Kal from The Moor Next Door, which will hopefully include a lot of other Maghreb-centered bloggers soon, among them me. If it works out well for me there, I'll probably kill WSI.

Embassy enigma

2009-01-18T11:26:00.009Z

[picture: no hostility there]

Why is Morocco closing its embassy in Venezuela? The government claims it is because the Chavez government in Caracas is "hostile" to the kingdom's "territorial integrity", i.e. supportive of POLISARIO and Algeria. And sure, it is. But that's not a new thing. There has long been a Sahrawi embassy in Caracas, the highest level of diplomatic support possible.

So what has happened to cause a rift in relations now, all of a sudden? Perhaps the government has decided on some sort of active support for POLISARIO (aid, training, scholarships), or perhaps Chavez was planning some public humiliation for Morocco that has now been avoided. Or perhaps Morocco was just planning to shut down a low-importance embassy anyway, and used the opportunity for some Sahara grandstanding? (On second thought, that doesn't sound very likely, since the embassy is moved to the Dominican Republic -- for all its virtues, hardly a regional powerhouse.)

And it gets more mysterious. Instead of parading this as a diplomatic victory, or a demonstration of its influence, POLISARIO denies that Western Sahara is the root of the problem. The Sahrawi Republic instead claims that Morocco is breaking with Venezuela due to Chavez's tough stand on Palestine, rather than Western Sahara. Chavez recently cut ties with Israel, and is wildly popular in the Arab world for his outspoken public diplomacy on the issue.

That this would be about Palestine sounds very unlikely, to me, but what do I know. Seems more likely that POLISARIO wants to exploit Arab nationalist ill-will towards the Moroccan government, after it boycotted the pro-Gaza summit in Doha. But most of all, I figure this must be an attempt to ride the Gaza media wave -- whereas a closed embassy due to the Sahara issue could easily drown in the wall-to-wall Palestine coverage in Arab media, this way, the Sahrawis hope to ensure that the news are picked up.

Sahrawi youth x 2

2009-01-18T02:52:00.003Z

The French think-tank IFRI has two essays on the political upbringing of Sahrawi youth, under Moroccan rule (by Omar Brouksy) and in Tindouf (by Cédric Omet). Both are in French, both seem very interesting, and both are available as PDF files here.

Gaza summit, Ross, rumors & more

2009-01-17T19:37:00.006Z

The slow pace of posting is likely to continue, but comments are always welcome in the meanwhile. Here's some catch-up.

Arab diplomacy: It's Gaza, Gaza, Gaza. On the fringes of that, Gen. Mohamed ould Abdelaziz, the Mauritanian junta leader, attended a special Arab League summit on the crisis in Doha. This marked a PR victory for the junta, since many/most Arab states have been reluctant to recognize the legitimacy of the coup. Also, the junta has upped its "Arab" standing by suspending relations with Israel (which it recognized in 1999) in protest over Gaza, after first recalling its ambassador. That's a very popular move domestically, and it carries less cost than it used to, now that Western donor nations have broken with Nouakchott since the coup. It was Western pressure that initiated and maintained the relationship with Israel, and if Western nations aren't going to be of any help anyway, Gen. Abdelaziz faces no penalty for catering to his domestic constituency.

[picture: gen. mohamed ould abdelaziz, leader of the mauritanian junta]

The summit itself was called by Qatar, against the wishes of major US-aligned Arab players such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who prefer to see Hamas stew for a little longer in the fires of Gaza. In consequence, Riyadh and Cairo boycotted the summit, officially in favor of a less prestigious gathering on the margins of a prescheduled economic summit in Kuwait. The Saudis and Egyptians also in the end managed to prevent a substantial number of smaller pro-US states from attending, which meant it didn't count as a legitimate summit -- that requires the attendance of 2/3 of the total League membership, meaning I think 14 governments. This is presumably also why the Nouakchott junta found it so easy to get in: the organizers desperately wanted to reach quorum.

Among the other Maghreb states, Algerian Pres. Bouteflika went in person, and apparently exchanged greetings with Gen. Abdelaziz -- without Algeria signalling any relaxation of its opposition to the coup. Libya and Morocco instead announced they would send only their foreign ministers. In Morocco's case, it seems even this didn't hold up, and that Morocco abstained completely from the summit, in deference to sugar daddy. As for the motivations of the Brother Leader for not going himself -- who the hell knows.

Western Sahara: Some Moroccan newspapers are claiming that POLISARIO Sec.-Gen. Mohamed Abdelaziz suffers from cancer, and will be replaced by Mohamed Lamine ould el-Bouhali, the current SADR minister of defense. Apparently, all the papers are using the exact same source, and there's no evidence whatsoever to back this up, so I wouldn't put much faith in it. Also, Abdelaziz is still pretty young (well, early sixties) despite leading POLISARIO for over 30 years, and he hasn't shown any obvious signs of being ill. So unless something more credible pops up, I'm going to go ahead and call this psyop spin.

Oh, and Christopher Ross, the UN envoy and successor to van Walsum, has finally been approved. Moroccan objections were holding him up, for whatever reason. Officially, Morocco indicated that it wanted negotiations to be based on the autonomy plan, but that never seemed likely. It could just have been an attempt to play hardball, so Western nations do not get the idea that Morocco is ready for more compromise; also, it's worth bearing in mind that Morocco is rather comfortable with the status quo, and would rather extend it than enter unknown diplomatic territory.

Algerian-Moroccan relations: I posted on the border issue here, including some apparently uninformed lines on border closure & economy, and was duly molested in comments by The Lounsbury. More on his blog, which is always worth listening to on Maghreb issues (and for sheer enjoyment).

Gas: Algeria and Spain recently finished a second gas pipeline project. Unlike the older one, this pipeline goes across the Mediterranean, without passing Moroccan territory. Also in gas news, the Russian-Ukranian spat of course heightens European interest in Algerian gas, although it's not as if the two suppliers are exchangeable: not only are Algeria's export volumes much smaller, they also go to southern European states that generally do not import from Russia, with limited possibilities of filling the gap left by Gazprom. Kal has some thoughts on Algerian-Russian relations in this context.

The Timbuktu Twist

2008-12-26T00:21:00.010Z

Following the Mali peace process? Well, you should. It's much more exciting than Iraq or Palestine or whatever other intractable slow-motion conflict you may be wasting your days with.

Super-brief recap: the old on-off Touareg rebellion in northern Mali blew up again in 2006, following which Algeria intervened and mediated peace on terms that, as of by accident, secured a lasting role for it in the region, which is of prime importance for smuggling and anti-terror operations (it is the presumed HQ of the Maghrebi al-Qaida's Saharan wing, among other things). However, when unrest then restarted, Libya also showed up to mediate, initiating a process parallel to Algeria's. To the visible irritation of the Bouteflika government, Qadhafi actually managed to calm things down by organizing some major hostage releases from the hardline group of one Ibrahim ag Bahanga. He, along with the Tripoli-backed MNJ, Niger's main Touareg rebel group, went on record as saying that only Libyan intervention could solve the conflict. Algeria pretended not to notice and re-activated its old deal, bringing the hostilities to a formal halt again, even though violence continued to simmer sporadically.

Now, the Tripoli-based Bahanga has torpedoed both the Libyan-initated status quo and the Algiers Agreement, which actually reinforced each other, by a major attack on Mali government forces (killing somewhere around twenty). Algeria says that it will "continue to mediate". Clearly, however, Algerian-Libyan rivalries are by now an important factor on the perpetually fragile and splintering Touareg side of the conflict. There are competing peace strategies and -- presumably -- competing sponsorships of factions on the ground, with violence variously interpreted as a Libyan attempt to muscle out Algeria, or, conversely, as a ploy to invite renewed Algerian mediation, or something else entirely. All the while, both countries are wooing Bamako, too, and Libya is highly active in the closely intertwined Niger unrest, where France is also a major player. Add to that all sorts of conspiracy theories concerning the hidden agendas of various smuggling networks, terrorist groups, rebel units, and so on, and the different security services that are alleged to puppeteer them (Algeria, USA, Libya, France, Mali, etc). While these claims are often grotesquely overblown, it is true that it can be hard to tell where rebel/criminal groups begin and state security organs end -- and the mere fact that these rumors exist and are widely if selectively believed, both inside and outside of the region, tends to complicate everything so much further.

To sum up: It's getting really messy, soon to pass the point of no sense -- but it's great fun for us casual onlookers and conspiracy theorists. Sort of like Lebanese politics minus the media coverage.

And: Only somewhat related, but: Algerian military planners must be spending an ever-increasing amount of time thinking of their eastern and south-eastern border. Qadhafi has been arming like crazy ever since he slipped out of his boycott, and it's not only with the sort of guns he could use for his usual Saharan/Sahelian chaos-mongering: he's buying heavy tanks, cruisers, radars and fighter jets faster than factories in Moscow and Paris can churn them out. Sure, there has been not a hint of aggressiveness from Tripoli towards Algeria so far (not counting a one-off call for Algerian Touareg to secede), but Libyan politics in the longer term, five or ten years from now, are as unpredictable as the Brotherly Leader himself -- and so is Libya's internal stability, post-Q. Not to be alarmist, but prudence calls for some attention to this.

Official reactions to the HRW report

2008-12-21T19:56:00.008Z

Having now skimmed the new HRW report, it seems to me to be a very thorough piece of work. It presents a nuanced picture of repression on all sides in Western Sahara, and gives the most complete picture I have seen so far of the present human rights situation. (It does not deal with past violations.)

For example, police repression in Moroccan-held Western Sahara is portrayed in all its unpleasantness, with several political trials examined in detail. But the report also notes significant improvements since the 1990s: "Despite the persistent enforcement of laws repressing advocacy of Sahrawi
independence, Morocco has gradually and unevenly opened the door to wider debate on this issue." And "[i]n contrast to twenty years ago, Sahrawi activists conduct [pro-independence] activities and return home most nights without being disturbed. However, sooner or later most of them encounter various forms of harassment that can include travel restrictions, arbitrary arrest, beatings, or trial and imprisonment on trumped-up charges. In recent years, courts have generally imposed on Sahrawi activists sentences of three years or less, sentences generally much shorter than those imposed during the earlier period." This nuanced but critical view, of course, shatters both the stalinesque propaganda of official Morocco, according to which All Is Well In The Southern Provinces, but also pokes a hole in POLISARIO's claims that nothing has changed -- or can change -- for the better under Moroccan rule.

HRW also notes that power remains centralized to a small core of decision-makers in POLISARIO's Tindouf camps, with the refugee community dependent on their political leadership for jobs and provision, rather than the other way around; a situation which naturally encourages corruption and abuse. However, the report also points out that the political climate has been much liberalized since the ceasefire in 1991, and that "[t]oday, political detentions are rare or nonexistent in the refugee camps." It provides the first serious investigation of the slavery allegations, noting that "vestiges of slavery" and traditional racist social stratification remains in the camps, primarily in such a way as to affect marriage customs; but also, that POLISARIO has tried to fight these phenomena, and that they are present throughout Sahrawi/Moorish society, including on the Moroccan side. It clarifies that refugees aren't "forcibly held" or "sequestered", as Morocco claims, and that they are quite able to leave the camps -- but also that people fear POLISARIO's reaction if they were to announce a willingness to resettle in Moroccan-held territory. These descriptions run totally counter to POLISARIO's fantastical claims of a blossoming little refugee democracy, but also undermine Rabat's equally absurd depiction of the Tindouf camps as a sort of desert GULAG archipelago for kidnapped Moroccans.

Finally, HRW points out the anomaly that there is no party formally responsible to the international community for human rights protection in Tindouf: Algeria has abdicated rule over the area to the Sahrawi Republic, which in turn is not internationally recognized, and the UN mission, MINURSO, has no human rights-monitoring component. The report argues that Algeria's responsibility should be defined and recognized (something Algeria wants to hear nothing of, preferring its ambiguous role on the sidelines), and also demands that MINURSO get the same right and duty as other UN missions to monitor human rights in all of its areas of responsibility, i.e. all of Western Sahara and the POLISARIO-administered territories in Algeria (something which Morocco is rigidly opposed to, and which its ally France blocks in the Security Council).

All in all, this report is the best I've read so far, by far, on Western Sahara's human rights issues. So how was it received by its intended recipients, the ruling circles in Rabat, Rabouni and Algiers? Quite predictably, by a barrage of shrill and one-sided propaganda:

In Morocco, some officials denounce the report, which is harshest on Morocco (for the simple reason that Morocco has on the whole been much more abusive to Sahrawis). For example, Istiqlali parliamentarian Hamid Shibat explained to al-Jazira that the report is a product of, you guessed it, Algerian intelligence.* And the palace mouthpiece Le Matin is shocked to its very core after reading this "perfidious" document: "One falls backwards, one must be dreaming, one thinks that one is hearing an Algerian delegate in front of an assembly". However, the paper then catches its breath again, to summarize the report in another article in quite different tones. Now it suddenly states that "Polisario and Algeria are responsible for human rights violations in the Tindouf camps."

This is also the line taken by the official news agency, MAP, which spews out a steady stream of articles on the report, like one headlined "HRW urges Algeria to assume responsibility for Polisario barbaric acts in Tindouf" or its sister piece, which claims that "HRW's assessment is almost a scathing denial of the vain allegations that the polisario and its mentor Algeria throw out whenever a handful of separatists strive to disrupt public order and whenever Moroccan authorities exercise their right to restore order and reprimand violent rioting demonstrators and thieves." Almost!

Algerian and Sahrawi media is no better. The Sahrawi news agency, SPS, somehow twists HRW criticisms of POLISARIO rule in Tindouf into "HRW welcomes the role of the Polisario Front for the protection of human rights" and the writers' union UPES obediently follows suit: "Human Rights Watch accused Morocco on Friday of beating and torturing independence campaigners in Western Sahara and said U.N. peacekeepers should start monitoring human rights in the territory." And APS, the Algerian state news agency, sums up the report as "Morocco is in the eye of the storm because of its repression in Western Sahara." Meanwhile, the Algerian state newspaper El Moudjahid sums up the situation in Tindouf as simply one of "freedom of movement, no political prisoners, and where criticism against the management of Front Polisario is permitted," and the other state newspaper, ech-Chaab, headlines with "Morocco violates rights of free expression in Western Sahara," and that's about it.

The expression "dialogue of the deaf" doesn't capture the scope of the problem here. It's more like a drooling, spitting, eye-rolling rant of the mentally retarded. All the peoples involved deserve so much better than these pitiful governments.

( * ) Paranoid delusions? Why no. Have you already forgotten how the
UN report of 2006 was ghost-written by Algeria's "invisible hand"?

Merry Christmas: a HRW must-read!

2008-12-20T19:45:00.008Z

Human Rights Watch has released a 216-page report on the human rights situation in Western Sahara, including both the Moroccan-controlled areas and areas under the control of POLISARIO, notably the Tindouf camps. It is appropriately called "Human Rights in Western Sahara and the Tindouf Camps" (it's an update to their 1995 report on Western Sahara, "Keeping it Secret"). I just started reading it, and so far it seems excellent, destined to become the point of reference for the Western Sahara human rights debate for some years to come.

So print it out, and I'm sure it will make a perfect Christmas present for all your relatives. Happy Holidays!

UPDATE: Official reactions to the HRW report.

Le Clézio: Desert

2008-12-20T17:18:00.012Z

As promised, some time ago I dug up a copy of the 2008 Nobel prize for literature winner J. - M. G. Le Clézio's Desert and read it (in translation). Time for a belated review.

First of all, let's note with a snobbish hrrmph that the Swedish Academy, which hands out the prizes, apparently hasn't read the book very thoroughly. The Nobel Committee's bio of Le Clézio states that

His definitive breakthrough as a novelist came with Désert (1980), for which he received a prize from the French Academy. This work contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants. The main character, the Algerian guest worker Lalla, is a utopian antithesis to the ugliness and brutality of European society.

Fair enough as a three-sentence review, but Lalla -- one of the two protagonists -- is not Algerian. If they paid attention, they would have realized that she is living in southern Morocco (not Western Sahara), while her family came from a zwaya tribe in the deep deserts of today's Mauritania -- or maybe Mali, maybe Algeria, but that's less likely. She is, therefore, of Moorish or Sahrawi heritage, but now in any event a Moroccan citizen. While the story is therefore set in the areas in and surrounding Western Sahara, it makes no reference at all to the modern conflict about the territory, but digs deep into the precolonial and colonial history of the region.

Lalla, sometime presumably in the 1970s, lives a poor orphan's life in her village in southwestern Morocco, eventually migrating to France. Her story is intertwined with a parallel storyline about her ancestor, Nouri, which recapitulates his march as a young boy with the nomad following of Sheikh Ma el-Ainin in the early 1900s. The details are well researched, and real names of obscure places, tribes, Sufi brotherhoods and events will crop up throughout the novel. Occasionally, a reference will seem out of place, such as talk of the Mauritanian border (with Algeria or Mali) in the story of Nouri -- that border was not even marked on maps at the time, if I recall correctly, and much less a landmark for local nomads. But this is rare.

Sheikh Ma el-Ainin's revolt against France is a historical event here depicted in literary form. The arduous journey of the nomad tribes following the sheikh, including Nouri and his family, goes from Smara in Western Sahara towards southern Morocco, in an attempt to seize the Moroccan throne from Sultan Moulay Hafiz, who had cut off support to Ma el-Ainin and was about to hand the country to the French. For this final Jihad against the invaders, nomads had gathered from all corners of the western Sahara Desert, whether Arab Moors escaping the simultaneously approaching French forces in southern Maruitania, or Berbers coming down from the Atlas Mountains to join the passing Muslim army. The final battle was short and bloody, crushing all pretensions of Ma el-Ainin and his sons, although the latter would continue to launch sporadic uprisings for years after (they are today coveted as nationalist symbols by both Polisario and Morocco, uncomfortably squeezed into two equally nuanceless and ahistorical official narratives).

The story of Nouri captures the desperate, existential push of a culture threatened on all flanks by incomprehensible and unsurmountable foreign forces -- a suicidal last grand stand, perhaps the Wounded Knee of Moorish tribal history. Ma el-Ainin's character as religious leader and living saint is beautifully portrayed, with hypnotizing passages depicting his dhikr sessions. The disastrous nature of an absolute faith (his own, or only that of others?) in his magical abilities, such as the promise of divine victory and green pastures in the north for his people, gradually unfolds to the reader. Even so, the exact nature of the Sheikh's abilities is left for the reader to determine, and the mythologies and folk magic of Moorish Sufi Islam are described not as reality nor as fraud, but as an uncertain, but lived and recognized reality -- as they would be seen from the believer's viewpoint. Nouri's final chapters in Desert convey a gripping sense of finality: after the slaughter of their army at the hands of the French, the nomads disperse and filter back into the deserts, nameless men of the wastelands once again, their place in history lost for now, perhaps for ever.

Lalla's story deals with what comes after, the story of a culture crushed but not vanished, and of how memories of the past keep informing the present. She grows up a dreamer and loner, in poverty and isolation, in a small village or city on the coast of southwest Morocco. There she experiences the pull of, on the one hand, the desert, where her ancestors came from, and on the other hand, Europe and the stories she has heard of fantastic wealth and amazing cities. After emigrating, she finds France a strange and fascinating, but ultimately cruel, cold and inhospitable place, where her previous rootless poverty is simply replaced by a new and more violent kind of deprivation, in the slum life of African migrants.

Some sections of Desert can at times seem tediously reptetitive, especially the descriptions of natural scenery. On the other hand, this also adds some flavor of the desert itself, a main subject. It is pictured in terms of wind, light, heat and precisely endlessness -- and some of these scenes are high points of the novel. Ultimately, the novel portrays not events, but feelings, moods and tries to evoke a sense of the grinding clash of colonialism and native culture as a force shaping both history and individual destinies. The story sides uncompromisingly with native culture, at times leaving the reader with a taste of polemics, from subject and structure. But that is perhaps the point: it is an attempt att telling the other side of the story, from within a conquered culture; to give a brief taste of what was lost as Western Modernity rolled over the northwest corner of the Maghreb, guns rattling.

-- -- --

Also: read Le Clézio's Nobel lecture.
And: do not miss Ibn Kafka's massive post on Le Clézio (in French).

Amnesty on Mauritanian torture

2008-12-05T12:06:00.004Z

Amnesty International has released a 36-page report on torture in Mauritania, of which there is, unsurprisingly, quite a lot. Practices and perpetrators are analyzed, and if aspiring to become a prison guard, you learn fascinating details about where to best put your baton, as well as where to put out your cigarette, when in the company of an uncooperative prisoner. Rather unpleasant reading, so be advised. Torture has been an ongoing phenomenon throughout the transition process since 2005, but the report does note the general implosion of civil liberties since the 2008 coup (a ban on demonstrations, political arrests, etc) as well as state that the new military rule has in fact "led to the increased use of torture," despite its promises to the contrary.

Read it in English as HTML or PDF, or in Arabic and French as PDF only.

As an added treat, Amnesty reveals the involvement of Moroccan security personnel in torturing detainees. Moroccan-Mauritanian security cooperation is nothing new, with Morocco always having shown a keen interest in what goes on in Mauritania's north -- for a variety of good reasons -- but this is, to my knowledge, the first time that more direct evidence of involvement in abuses has been published. It will surely add fire to the political dispute in Mauritania, where some already resent the ties of the military junta to Morocco, and fear that the country will tilt towards Rabat in a way that would undermine its traditional neutrality, and, hence, stability.

[thanks to van kaas]

Algeria's and Morocco's closed border

2008-12-05T01:03:00.010Z

The Moor Next Door has an interesting post up on the controversy about the closed Algerian-Moroccan border, with some equally interesting comments at the end. (Also see his latest Mauritania monthly.)

[picture: open sesame]

For a brief recap, the Algerian-Moroccan border was shut as a consequence of the Sahara war, and remained closed into the eighties. In 1994, the border was shut again, after an shady affair which began with a terrorist strike on a hotel in Marrakech, where two French Algerians were among the perpetrators. Algiers quickly offered condoleances, but Rabat announced that the Algerian secret services had directed the attack. Crisis followed, and visas were imposed, borders shut, and thousands of Algerians tourists expelled manu militari. The expulsions, in particular, sent the Algerian public into a fit of jingoist rage, thus belatedly joining the Moroccans who were already roaring with righteous anger since the hotel attack. So everything was finally back to normal: borders closed, arms rattling, and everyone blaming everyone else. Recently, however, Morocco began publicly asking Algeria to reopen the borders, which Algeria refuses to do, and, indeed, generally avoids to even comment on. Why? Well:

Regarding Morocco's insistence on the border issue, unlike TMND, I think it is less an attempt to escalate the conflict than an attempt to profit from the present status quo. Publicly asking Algeria to open the border is a win-win gamble for Morocco, since:

1. If Algeria agrees to open the border, removed constraints on tourism and trade will boost the Moroccan economy, which is in dire straits. It will also easen one of the most significant costs of the Saharan conflict -- namely the block on trade and Morocco's geographic isolation. A closed Algerian border cuts Morocco off from any plausible land route to the rest of North Africa and the Arab world, so it's not just Algero-Moroccan trade that is at stake. Also, since it comes on Moroccan request, a border opening would score a political point. In that sense, the public and challenging nature of the requests may well make it less likely that Algeria will open the border. The Moroccans realize this, of course; it's part of the gamble.

2. If Algeria refuses to open the border, it comes off as the unreasonable party. That is true both internationally, in the US and Europe, where politicians are exasperated with the petty rivalries of the Maghreb; and in the Arab world, where the Algerian-Moroccan spat has always been seen as one of the most pointless examples of Arab disunity; and in Morocco; and to some extent in Algeria. Many Algerians are angered by Morocco's demands and tone, and want a thorough apology for 1994. But others -- I think a rather significant percentage -- believe that Morocco's proposal to decouple the issues of the Sahara and the border is an excellent idea (and a smaller percentage want to abandon Algerian involvement with POLISARIO altogether). Part of the attraction for Morocco in raising the border issue is, then, that it helps to drive a wedge between Algerians and the Sahara issue, if the Algerian commitment to POLISARIO starts being seen as a detriment to the country's economy -- especially, of course, in the Oran-Tlemcen regions, where trade and family ties with Morocco are strongest.

This perception is not very prevalent yet, for the simple reason that the Sahara question isn't expensive to Algeria. Western Sahara was always a war on the cheap for Algeria, while at the same time costly beyond belief for Morocco -- that was the whole point of it. The only serious Algerian expense was to keep a standing army tough enough to deter Moroccan cross-border responses. Even then, Algerian military spending has always been much smaller than Morocco's, proportionally -- and that includes significant expenses to guard against Qadhafi's antics on the eastern border. As for arming and hosting POLISARIO and the refugees, it was a minor expense even during the war years, and now in oil-flush peacetime it is absolutely negligible, while Morocco remains forced to pour billions into settling Western Sahara and buying off discontent. Even politically, Algeria expends just a fraction of the energy that its rival puts into Western Sahara. For Algeria it's enough do some casual lobbying to keep the issue going and put it on the agenda of international forums, which then forces Moroccan diplomats to rush there to put out the fire. As a result, Morocco has virtually given up on having a foreign policy outside of the Sahara, while Algeria can afford to remain heavily involved in African affairs, and to a lesser extent in Arab and Third Worldist circles.

This imbalance is also the main reason for keeping the border shut. In brief, Algeria's Saharan strategy is to bleed Morocco into submission, or into an acceptable compromise -- whichever happens first. The post-2000 arms race is part of this, which seems more and more to be a sort of a Reagan-style strategy of aggressively outspending your opponent; feasible or not, it fits neatly with the recent price increases and oil shock. Part of the idea is also that if Algeria shows total intransigence, the argument for the US and other nations to side with Morocco is severely weakened (it won't solve the conflict anyhow). Displaying any inclination to compromise, in turn, works against that objective.

Finally, as a wildcard influence on all of this, one sholdn't discount the tendency of corrupt elites to be, well, corrupt. Military-political cliques in both Morocco and Algeria are feeding off of trade and smuggling in various areas, giving them a vested interest in keeping borders shut as a crude instrument of directing trade. In Algeria, for example, today you have lots of tourists and trade going east towards Tunisia. Surely, some people who know people would be upset if half of that suddenly veered west across an opened border. And in Morocco, there is heavy military involvement in smuggling towards Mauritania and even across the Sand Wall that divides Western Sahara, as well as across the Moroccan-Algerian border. (However, it could work the other way as well: watch out for Algerian generals investing in Moroccan hotels...)

Opening the borders, for all these reasons, would be seen in Algiers to undermine a basic pillar of the strategy towards Morocco. However, the burden of keeping it shut grows heavier every day Morocco is on the airwaves asking nicely for it to be opened. Someone, somewhere, is probably making cost-benefit calculations on that as we speak.

The state of Algeria, 2008

2008-12-04T20:13:00.012Z

Third term for Bouteflika

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has slammed a constitutional amendment through parliament, enabling him to run for a third term. Soon thereafter, the tripartite presidential alliance of the FLN, RND and MSP decided to launch him as their "consensus candidate". There can be no serious doubt that he will win at the polls next year. While there are questions about his relations to powerbrokers in the army -- most importantly Gen. Mohamed Médiène, the military security chief -- this remains speculation. Had some army-political faction seriously wanted to derail his third term (and: been able to), they would have had a better shot at doing it in parliament than in the elections, so now it looks very unlikely to happen.

Whatever the case, both of Bouteflika's earlier victories have been marked by gentle purges in the military pouvoir, as he shunted competitors to the side. Bouteflika may be a mediocre character in many ways, but when it comes to subtly amassing personal power, he is top of the class. Thus, the Boutef presidency has been remarkable for the way the army top brass has, not so much retreated from politics, but been overwhelmed by and submerged in Bouteflika's rapidly swelling power structure. If he started as a puppet, by 2004 he very publicly cut his strings, with the "retirement" of Army Chief of Staff Mohamed Lamari, and the subsequent dethronement of Gen. Larbi Belkheïr and others. In this way, the country has come to resemble a more straightforward dictatorship, instead of a military-run shadow republic, and Bouteflika to resemble a more straightforward Arab president-for-life. Cynical as it may be, I believe most Algeria watchers have considered this a basically healthy process, in that it normalizes the political scene to some extent. That, on the other hand, is of course most revealing of the sorry state of Algerian politics. But, the downside of this "neo-Boumédièneism" -- apart from authoritarianism in itself -- is that when Bouteflika dies, and he will soon enough, a giant power vacuum could open up, with unpredictable consequences. The West is then highly likely to back whatever strongman (= military security) looks set to gain control the easiest. Whatever happens, a serious contender for the post as future president is and remains Ahmed Ouyahia, of the RND party in the presidential majority, but the question is perhaps less who will be the next president, than what the next president will be able to control.

The most vocal opposition to the constitutional amendment has come from the RCD party, whose leader Said Saadi says he will run against Bouteflika. Let us state it as a matter of fact: Said Saadi has no chance of winning, even in a free and fair election. First of all, while ordinary Algerians are deeply unhappy with the state of the country, Bouteflika is still quite popular (he did end the civil war, and things are better now than before), and he plays the role of nationalist-populist caudillo with considerable skill -- not to mention that he and his allies control the major patronage networks, in the state, the army and even business. Second, the RCD is a small and organizationally limited liberal party whose voter base is restricted to about a third of the Kabyle population, with its Arab constituency limited to a tiny number of mainly Francophone ultrasecularists. Even if he should be bolstered by a powerful protest vote and serious cross-party opposition backing, Saadi is highly unlikely to ever get more than 30% of a fair Algerian vote, not to mention an unfair one. (It looks as if it's going to be the latter, since the government is now on the record as opposing international observers.)

There may be other challengers, though, who could theoretically scrape up a majority backing. But, short version: this time around, they don't stand a chance, and they know it. Running in the elections now is solely about profiling yourself with future political schemes in mind, not about seriously trying to get into el-Mouradia.

Islamists in disarray

[picture: ali belhadj]

In another somewhat significant development, the MSP has suffered an internal split. The conflict is said by some to stem from reactions to the Bouteflika candidacy, which the MSP is backing, but mostly it seems to be about internal opposition to the overbearing party leader, Boudjerra Soltani.

The MSP, also Hamas, is the Algerian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has its roots in the Islamic reformist movement founded by the late Sheikh Mahfoud Nahnah. The Algerian Brotherhood tendency, through MSP, participates in government, and has -- contrary to much uninformed belief -- not been involved with the country's insurgency or with the banned FIS party. Their strategy is to stay out of any unwinnable confrontation with the army or Bouteflika, and instead pragmatically strengthen the Islamic character of the state and build their movement's capacity to govern. In this, they have been reasonably succesful; but it has also cost the party some standing with the public, as it is increasingly seen as part of the ruling elite. It's quite likely that the regime will pounce upon the split, to weaken the MSP and make Soltani more dependent on the presidency than he already is; on the other hand, they wouldn't want to destroy the party, and leave Islamist voters without any credible pro-regime option.

The Islamist opposition, to which the MSP defectors are likely to gravitate, is in a sorry state. On the one hand, you have the ex-FIS, which is now completely in disarray. Its leading lights are either disconnected from Algerian politics (Abassi Madani), or angling for favors from the regime (Rabeh Kbir, Madani Mezrag), or bitterly rejectionist, monitored, harassed, and reduced to railing against the powers that be in the Friday Khutba with no parliamentary leverage (Ali Belhadj). On the other hand, you have the anti-regime wing of the reformist Islamist trend, led by sheikh Djaballah. His party (el-Nahda) has been split through no little amount of state meddling, and he was himself ousted by the regime-backed wing of the party. This effectively deprived him of any chance to participate on fair terms in the political game, which spares the regime a nasty critic, but on the other hand risks alienating his supporters from parliamentary politics altogether. Lastly, there's the potential challenge from Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, a much-respected Islamic nationalist, who previously attempted to challenge Bouteflika's election in 1999. He then, however, had his party (el-Wafa) banned, for allegedly serving as a vehicle for reintroducing FIS into politics, but more likely because he seemed to be serious competition. Given his advanced age, he is not likely to give it another go.

Now, if credible Islamist opposition personalities like those mentioned above could congregate into a somewhat efficient political alliance -- a big if, given the size of the egos involved -- they would stand a good chance of assembling street power, since Algerian Islamist populism remains as potent a force as ever. However, this is something the authorities have made it very clear that they will not allow, like with the banning of el-Wafaa. With demonstrations still banned under the state of emergency, even non-party attempts to build an overtly political Islamist popular movement are doomed to failure, or at least to being outlawed and persecuted. For all their failures, the MSP seem best placed to capitalize, in the somewhat distant future, on their strategy of collaboration, than any of the groups that have tried a more confrontative approach.

Finally, the al-Qaida rebellion: nothing really new there. Fighting continues in the Kabyle mountains, occasional skirmishes elsewhere, a bombing now and then. The two Austrian tourists that were kidnapped in Tunisia a while back, have been released some time ago, unscathed. It seems rather obvious that someone paid a ransom, and it seems rather likely that "someone" is either Austria or Libya, with Algerian or Tunisian authorities as second-rate contenders, and the families involved a distant third. Regardless, the important point to take away is that the southern wing of the Maghrebi al-Qaida is still essentially a desert mafia, working in the grey zone between Saharan tribal trade and organized crime, with global Jihad as a pet hobby project on the side. They were not interested in killing kuffar, nor even in upsetting the Tunisian tourism business or shaming the infidel governments of Algeria and Mali: they wanted hard cash.

Oil prices slipping

Also worth noting is the slip in oil prices, following the global financial crisis. Algeria is of course completely dependent on hydrocarbon income (oil & natural gas). It has no significant economic activity apart from that, or at least not one that would survive without it. However, prices right now (50-60 USD/barrel) are still way above where they were a few years ago, and they don't seem likely to slip much further (Saudi Arabia now openly advocates 75 USD/b as a "fair price"). While Boutef may have to go through his checkbooks again, there seems to be no reason to fear major drawdowns in state spending. The earnings from the post-2003 oil bonanza have actually been used rather wisely (after subtracting for corruption and the Morocco-Algeria arms race), on infrastructure, paying off loans, and saving up huge reserves. So all in all, while Algeria's economic position is no longer great, it is still pretty good.

Even so, the population hasn't seen much of all this money, but plenty of the global price increases. The cost of living has skyrocketed, and people who were already on the margins now find it completely impossible to make ends meet. The state has not been able to effectively counteract this, and of course, poverty was pretty dire already before the price explosion. Accordingly, this year has seen an upsurge in political and social unrest especially in rural areas, with demonstrations, riots, road blocks, crime, state repression, and plain unfocused violence all around -- as well as growing numbers of harraga, young Algerians who risk their lives to flee across the Mediterranean in search of jobs, money, women and all the other things they've seen on MTV. This social crisis is certainly the most serious threat to Algerian stability, even including the sputtering al-Qaida rebellion.

The only credible solution to these issues, a program for systematic economic reform, is still in its infancy -- and what an ugly, misfit baby it is. Bouteflika's darkest legacy will undoubtedly be the failure to use his ten years of reasonable political and economical stability to develop and diversify the country's economy. I see no reason to hope for change in his third term, and what little exists of opposition tends to be even worse than the present regime on these issues. Also, today's (unworkable) system is so cemented and change resistant as to make any serious attempt at reform likely to be a very painful experience for ordinary Algerians, and possibly also upsetting to political stability, because it necessitates a challenge to entrenched bureaucratic and political-military interests. Therefore, even if almost everyone who is someone in Algeria agrees that reforms are necessary, they are ever put off for the future, since the hydrocarbon rent seems to be enough to keep the country afloat for the time being. But is it really?

Apologies...

2008-10-29T21:05:00.003Z

As you can tell, I'm not able to properly keep up posting right now. Sorry!

If you're into Algeria or Mauritania, however -- and sure you are, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this -- I suggest you check out The Moor Next Door regularly. Kal has promised to put out twice-monthly updates of recent events in those two countries, and whatever else he posts also tends to be well worth a visit.

A triple: Mauritania, Manhasset, Le Clézio

2008-10-11T22:40:00.004Z

I.
Mauritania's parliamentary speaker Messoud ould Boulkheïr, a prominent leader in the anti-coup opposition, has openly come out in favor of the compromise solution that seems to quietly have gained currency: that President Abdellahi is reinstated, but then voluntarily announces premature elections, and that some informal arrangement will guarantee the interests of junta members whatever happens next. The entire FNDD opposition coalition has come out in support.

[picture: messoud ould boulkeïr]

Something like this seems to be the most realistic way out of conflict, and it has the great advantage of preserving both face and formal constitutional legitimacy, although it is hardly a safe route: so much could go wrong. Of course, the most major problem is that the junta is presently on record as opposing such a solution, in spirit if not in words. In their recent negotiations with the African Union, the military argued for what sounded like a similar procedure, but with one crucial added condition: that they themselves maintain full power until the day the elections are held. A child could figure out the impact of that on the electoral process.

II.
The Manhasset negotiations process between Morocco and Front POLISARIO has again made a little noise. Good news: it is still moving. Bad news: it is moving backwards. A Moroccan delegation recently spoke to Ban Ki-moon, saying that from now on, any talks must focus on how to implement the king's autonomy plan, not whether to do it -- the Moroccan autonomy plan must be the "sole platform" for future discussions, leaving aside any proposals from POLISARIO. That is of course unacceptable to the Sahrawis, who respond that in such a case, there would be no point in having negotiations at all. (POLISARIO Sec.-Gen. Abdelaziz will be delivering his own message to Ban soon.)

[picture: christopher ross]

In connection to this, there is some sort of quiet tussle going on about Ban's new envoy-elect, Christopher Ross. POLISARIO is loudly repeating its support for his appointment, aiming to underscore that it is Morocco that still hasn't given the go-ahead. Why? Presumably, the Moroccan negotiators are trying to secure some sort of concession, or just to reentrench themselves in a position of strength, by dragging their feet a little longer. POLISARIO, conversely, is trying to make that position as uncomfortable as possible, by framing Morocco as the obstructing party both on content (what to negotiate about) and procedure (the appointment of a new envoy). They have the not insignificant advantage of actually being correct about that, but, in any event, if the talks stall again, they will be fine with that too -- as long as Morocco takes the fall for it. The process wasn't going Tindouf's way anyhow, and as much as the Front may shower these talks with verbal support, making Morocco squirm is its primary goal in the absence of a fair shot at independence.

III.
A follow-up: Le Clézio has indeed written about Western Sahara. Not only does Désert -- just dug up a copy -- deal with the Ma el-Ainin uprising, and feature a Sahrawi protagonist. He has also written a book with his wife, Jemia, called Gens des nuages, "People of the Clouds." It is about the couple travelling to the lands of the Laaroussiyine tribe, to which she belongs -- apparently she was born in Rabat, and considers herself a Moroccan Sahrawi.

[picture: jean-marie gustave le clézio]

Le Clézio's Désert

2008-10-10T18:03:00.005Z

J.-M. G. Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the biography provided by the Nobel Foundation mentions that:

His definitive breakthrough as a novelist came with Désert (1980), for which he received a prize from the French Academy. This work contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants. The main character, the Algerian guest worker Lalla, is a utopian antithesis to the ugliness and brutality of European society.

Haven't read it, but from what I understand, Désert starts off in present-day Western Sahara and Morocco -- although blissfully removed from contemporary politics. The protagonist, Lalla, appears to be not Algerian at all, as the bio claims, but from Río de Oro, i.e. Western Sahara (described in the review linked above as South Morocco).

The time frame, 1909-1912, points to the failed Ma el-Ainin revolt. Sheikh Ma el-Ainin was a major figure in the history of the Hassani tribal territories, who is today claimed as a nationalist forerunner by both Morocco and Polisario,* but who was in fact perhaps most connected to the tribal emirate in Adrar and Qadiri sufi politics in today's northern Mauritania. After leading a religiously based Moorish resistance to the French commander Coppolani's forces advancing northwards from Senegal, he retreated into the Spanish Sahara. There, built the city of Smara, out of reach of the French forces -- it is today controlled by Morocco. When fighting the French, Sheikh Ma el-Ainin claimed fealty to the Moroccan Sultan in exchange for arms and financial backing for his revolt; but when the support dried up and the Sultan distanced himself from these troublesome tribals, he turned on his former benefactor and proclaimed himself Sultan of Morocco (and most of the rest of western North Africa). In 1912, his forces were routed by the French, and he died soon thereafter, but tribal jihads against the French led by his sons went on for some time.

All in all, a fascinating story and a fascinating period, although there seems to be better reasons to pick up a copy of Désert than the historical setting. If anyone has read it, feel free to comment below, or I will whenever I get around to doing so.

* ) His descendants are scattered on both sides of the political divide, some of them in very high positions: one is secretary-general of CORCAS, while another is POLISARIO's chief representative to the EU.

UPDATE: Some more.

Twenty years ago today

2008-10-05T14:33:00.010Z

General Nezzar taught the band to play.