FOR forty years Muhammad Abdelaziz led his exiled people in the wilderness, promising to take them across the 1,600-mile-long Morrocan wall that bisects their homeland, and onwards to an independent Western Sahara. He died on May 31st as far from his goal as when he began. Neither 15 years of guerrilla war nor 25 years of UN-mediated talks reversed their exodus. Mr Abdelaziz leaves behind 100,000 refugees encamped in the world’s harshest desert, and perhaps four times that number under a repressive Moroccan thumb.
For most of his time as leader of the Sahrawis, the world ignored their plight. Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, had never been a state. The UN first promised the Sahrawis a referendum on self-determination in the 1960s and has often repeated that promise, but never kept it.
Morocco sent 300,000 settlers into Western Sahara after the Spanish withdrew in 1975, chasing out large numbers of Sahrawis and annexing the territory. A UN peacekeeping mission was established in 1991 to count voters, but otherwise outsiders have largely looked the other way. For Europe, Morocco’s assistance in suppressing terrorism and...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/285RLFN
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