Polisario releases last Moroccan POWs
The Western Sahara is one of the world's forgotten conflicts. When the Spanish colonizers left the territory in 1976, it was annexed by both Morocco and Mauritania. By 1979, the Mauritanians withdrew and Moroccans now occupy the entire territory and claim it as its own. The occupation provoked a long independence struggle by the armed group the Polisario Front. Self-determination is supported by a civilian group known by its French acronym ARSO, which wants a referendum.
(Part of me has always wondered why the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza long provoked vicious hostility and was used as the excuse for anti-Israeli vitriol but other regional occupations like Syria of Lebanon and Morocco of the Western Sahara, barely registered on Arab consciousness)
The Moroccan regime has long resisted calls for a self-determination referendum because it knows it would lose. I suppose if I'd lived under oppressive foreign occupation for nearly 20 years, I wouldn't be too friendly toward my occupiers either.
Yet, the Morrocan regime is also ham-strung by the fact that the Western Sahara has become such a cause for nationalist elements that the very survival of the country's monarchy might be threatened if the king ever agreed to Saharawi independence.
A provisional Western Sahara government proclaimed the independence of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (known by its French acronym RASD).
The Moroccan annexation has never been recognized internationally and has even been explicitly rebuked by both the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council. However the RASD government was admitted to the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) in 1984. Morocco promptly resigned from the OAU in protest and has never joined the AU.
Resolution to the conflict has long resisted international efforts at mediation, largely due to Morocco's refusal to agree to a fair referendum. The kingdom wants its own manipulated voter rolls used as the basis for such a vote while the Saharawi want a fair census conducted by outside observers.
However, despite the impasse, there has been a positive step recently. This week, the Polisario unilaterally release the last Moroccan prisoners of war it was holding. Hopefully, the Moroccans will respond with a similiar gesture of good faith. But given the domestic pressure on the monarchy to not cede an inch, it's hard to fathom where any progress on the conflict can be made.