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Our parcel has arrived, and our 19-day enforced rest in Laayoune (in Western Sahara) is over. We’ve eaten camel, accidentally gatecrashed a wedding and generally pottered around this strange Saharan city. Now a tailwind is calling and we’re ready to jump back on the bikes for the next 500 kilometre stretch through the Sahara to Dakhla. This update, on our time in Laayoune, should keep you busy until we get there…

Our first sight in Laayoune – late that night when we limped into town exhausted – was of a European-looking woman sitting in the middle of the road at a busy crossroads. A Moroccan policeman directed traffic around her while a crowd of people looked on from the pavement, rapt. Their heads briefly turned to take in the sight of two filthy European cyclists emerging from the desert before they decided the spectacle in front of them was more interesting, and we were left to walk on into the city centre alone – bar a group of children whose shorter attention spans had already been exhausted by the woman.

We never found out who she was, why she was sitting in the road or why the policeman thought it better to direct traffic around her than help her to the pavement. And our time in Laayoune since then have been characterised by the same sense of unreality, or surreality, and the same unnerving feeling that we don’t have a clue what’s really going on around us here, in Africa’s last colony.

This used to be “Spanish Sahara”, and Laayoune was built by the Spanish to administer the phosphate industry. It’s now Western Sahara’s biggest city. For our first couple of days here, we assumed the 200,000-odd population was entirely made up of Moroccan immigrants, encouraged to move here by a Moroccan government wanting to make its illegal occupation of Western Sahara harder to oppose through the de facto colonisation of the territory. As I’ve mentioned, the relocation of Moroccans to Western Sahara began with the Green March when Spain abandoned this territory 34 years ago, and continues today with tax incentives.

There are certainly enough signs of wealth amongst the Moroccan people here – men in suits, women wearing Western-style clothes, bank guards carrying semi-automatics with the safety catches off… – to suggest that Morocco’s professional class is firmly entrenched here. But slowly, starting to recognise the traditional dress of the Sahrawi, we realised that many of the people we were speaking to, buying food from, sitting next to, were Sahrawis – the indigenous “desert people” of the region.

This explained something of the city’s odd atmosphere to us – a statement which itself probably needs a bit of explaining. So here’s a brief background on the situation in Western Sahara – a situation which doesn’t seem to hit the world’s headlines. (I’ll come to the wedding soon, honest.)

When Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975, a violent war between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence organisation Polisario followed, ending with a ceasefire in 1991. In the same year, the UN’s MINURSO mission arrived, deployed for one year, to monitor a referendum on the future of the territory.

MINURSO is still here. The referendum still hasn’t happened. While neither side is angelic, Morocco has, over the years, led the Sahrawis – and the international community – on a merry dance of delay tactics, including what some have called the serious undermining/controlling of MINURSO – which Morocco, with the help of its security council friends (especially France and Bush’s US), has helped to ensure remains the only UN peacekeeping force in the world without a mandate to monitor human rights.

According to those who know, human rights monitoring is desperately needed. From Human Rights Watch: “The government bans peaceful demonstrations and refuses legal recognition to human rights organizations; the security forces arbitrarily arrest demonstrators and suspected Sahrawi activists, beat them and subject them to torture, and force them to sign incriminating police statements, all with virtual impunity; and the courts convict and imprison them after unfair trials.”

Sahrawi families and communities have also been physically separated by the conflict. Some live in this Moroccan occupied part of Western Sahara, others live in the Polisario controlled zone east of the 2000-kilometre, land-mined wall Morocco built to partition the country – a Berlin wall in the desert. Others still live in refugee camps in Algeria – and some of those refugees, only a year younger than I am, have known nothing else; this is one of the world’s longer running conflicts.

So Laayoune has baffled us a bit. The most confounding thing, to us, has been the appearance – despite the UN forces, despite the military presence, despite the torture – of total normality. Life carries on. The occupiers and the occupied live side by side, walk the same streets, pass by each other thousands of times a day without anything happening – at least nothing that three weeks here as tourists has revealed. (I’m not old enough to know, but I wonder whether this has always been the way with colonies: whether, in day to day life, the minds of both colonisers and colonised perform all sorts tricks to avoid acknowledging reality. Especially the colonisers, I suspect.)

In some ways, we’ve been playing the same game. Too nervous to mention politics, we’ve carried on as usual and just wonder quietly to ourselves – without daring to ask anyone – whether the man in the shop who told us the “local” word for rice rather than the Moroccan word was making a political point, or whether the stream of cars that drives through the city most days, horns blaring, passengers cheering, Sahrawi women waving their veils out of the window is a protest or a wedding party.

This was the mindset we were in when, walking through Laayoune one night, we heard loud, live music blaring from behind a wall. Seeing an open gateway, we decided to poke our heads in to see if it was a concert. At the gateway, I noticed waiters carrying platters of food to groups of Sahrawi women sitting at tables. They were sitting under an open tent and outside, in the car park, a camel lay alongside the Toyota Landcruisers.

Realising it was a private event, I called out to Huw to stop. It was too late. Huw had reached the outer edge of the vortex of Sahrawi hospitality, been spotted, surrounded and, finally, drawn into the warm whirl of patterned veils and hennaed hands. Instants later, I was also discovered, held by the hand, offered food, given a seat, brought fruit juice, told I was welcome (”all Europeans are always welcome”), invited to dance, welcomed again and engaged in several conversations at once. It turned out to be a wedding. The bride and groom and most of the men were nowhere to be seen and the only people left – women and musicians – were enjoying themselves immensely.

It’s easy, in cities, to forget where you are physically, what landscapes surround the concrete bubble. At the wedding though, suddenly we were back in the desert. The rhythm of the music – drums and strings and singing – reminded me of the pace of a walking camel. The women danced, turning in circles on the same spot, with their arms and henna-painted hands doing most of the moving and their eyes – if they didn’t pull their veil completely over their heads when they started dancing – doing most of the communicating. Sometimes they danced in groups and sometimes alone, but they were always encouraged to keep dancing by rhythmic clapping from other women sitting or standing around them.

Huw and I narrowly escaped the dancing, and the eating (we’d just gorged ourselves in a restaurant). Instead we sat, while a stream of women came to talk to us. We were welcome, we were told (in fluent Spanish). We must stay. And, from one woman raising her hand in a fist and staring emphatically into my eyes: “We are not Moroccans. We are Sahrawis.”

It was the first time we’d heard the word Sahrawi in Western Sahara (we didn’t hear it once in Morocco). And with the look in her eye, Laayoune’s mask slipped a little for me, and I felt my first glimmer of understanding about the passions running under the surface here.

As I say, it was just a glimmer, and this blog is just our attempt – as relatively uninformed tourists – to make some sense of the situation here, which is obfuscated by propaganda on both sides. We don’t have strong preconceptions about the situation here, but we do have some: specifically, a belief in the rights of all people to self determination.

If you want a better understanding of what’s happening in Western Sahara, here are some links to people and organisations far better informed than we are:

Amnesty International
Global Voices
Human Rights Watch
Mahgreb Politics Review
One hump or two
Sand & Dust
The Moor Next Door
Western Sahara Info

Source : Listen to Africa , 03 juillet 2009 (Foto copyright Listen to Africa)

By Nicolaj Nielsen

Ahmedou Ould Soueilem a regagné, dernièrement, l’autre côté: le Royaume du Maroc. Le gouvernement marocain a célebré cette défection en grande pompe jusqu’au point de le montrer assis, sur la même table, à côté du roi du Marocet un groupe d’anciens transfuges.

Le retour à la «mère partie », comme aime l’appeler les marocains, est demeuré un outil de propagande depuis que le Maroc et le Front Polisario ont signé le cessez-le feu en 1991. Le Maroc avait, en effet, ouvert ses frontières devant les sahrouis et, quelques fois, devant les mauritaniens et autres maures afin de mettre l’ensemble de la population sous son contrôle.

L’opinion nationale sahraouie observe, non sans amertume, ces individus qui la trahissent au nom du confort matériel. Si cela relevait d’une dynamique constructive, cela aurait été salué avec unanimité. Mais sachant que c’est juste la soif du gain personnel, cela n’a jamais attiré l’attention de quiconque.

Ceux qui suivent de près les évènements au Sahara Occidental savent que ces transfuges sont toujours poussés par des raisons d’ordre personnel. Pour assurer leur confort matériel et financier mais pas pour un quelconue combat d’idées. Ce triste phénomène peut être décrit comme du pure égoïsme. Ce type de carriéristes font de la politique leur métier et donc, une fois hors de circuit, ils ne savent rien faire.

Ahmedou a expérimenté toutes les fonctions possibles : représentant, ambassadeur, ministre, conseiller présidentiel… Il a brillé par son incompétence, son arrogance et son égoïsme. Depuis longtemps, nous savions qu’il allait trahir. C’est mieux ainsi puisqu’il gênait plus qu’il en apportait à la cause. Ce n’est pas une mauvaise chose pour notre pays. Bien au contraire, nombre de sahraouis, en apprenant la nouvelle, ont poussé, de concert, un ouf de soulagement. Ils ont crié : Bon débarras! Il n’est pas plus gros qu’Omar Hadrami comme poisson. Et il finira comme celui-ci : Enfermé chez lui en train de déprimer comme tous ceux qui ont vendu leur cause en échange d’un villa et un salaire.

Ayant pour première raison d’être leur ventre, ces traîtres sont prêts à accepter n’importe quelle offre pourvu qu’un positionnement personnel soit garanti. C’est leur ventre qui compte, rien d’autre. Ils sont aussi prêts à utiliser tous les artifices pour expliquer leur trahison, quittes même à vendre leurs âmes et leur personnalités, s’ils en avaient une.

Ahmedou Ould Ould Soueilem a trahi ses principes, ses engagements, ses camarades. Il n’y pas lieu d’insister sur ce point pour une raison aussi simple que désagréable à entendre : l’arbre ne doit pas cacher la forêt. Il sera récomppensé non pas pour son mérite, mais pour sa trahison.

Lui et ses semblables ne se sentiront jamais bien dans leurs peaux. Le Makhzen les fait defiler dans des conferences de presse, des colloques au Maroc, en Europe… pour faire valoir la farce qu’on appelle plan d’autonomie. Leurs consciences sont torturees. Ll faut les voir s’exhiber sans conviction aucune, avec une honte qui se lit facilement sur leurs visages surtout en face de la population sahraouie qui les méprisent pour leur geste.

Les traîtres ont existé en tout lieu et en tout temps. Au lieu de s’intéresser sue leur sort d’un guignol, il faut plutôt se pencher sur le sort du peuple sahraoui et défendre ses droits legitimes. L’histoire a montré que les causes justes ont toujours triomphé quelles que soient les embuches qui se posent devant. Le peuple sahraoui, tôt ou tard, vaincra.

Les dépêches folkloriques que ne cesse de distiller cette caisse à raisonance du Makhzen,connu sous le nom de « MAP » n’ont pas rechigné a fabriquer de toute piece des histoires aussi abracadabrantes que ridicules sur la trahison d’un individu. Histoire de cacher les multiples échecs sur le plan diplomatique, le dernier en date, la lettre du Président Obama dans laquelle il déclare ouvertement son soutien à une entité indépendante au Sahara Occidental.

When Kofi Annan in 2005 appointed Peter van Walsum , a very low-profile Dutch diplomat, as his Personal Envoy for Western Sahara to replace the very high-profile James Baker, most Western Sahara watchers were struck by the obvious down-grading of the Envoy position. It was as though Mr. Annan was throwing in the towel. After all, if Mr. Baker, the negotiator extraordinaire with the clout of the lone superpower behind him, couldn’t get the job done, who imagined that a relative unknown from a second tier country could make any headway with the wily, intransigent, and well-connected Moroccans?

What remained therefore was a recourse to direct negotiation, which should be held without preconditions. Their objective should be to accomplish what no “plan” could, namely to work out a compromise between international legality and political reality that would produce a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution, which would provide for the self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara.

Perhaps the most interesting observation to come from Van Walsum’s declarations is his belief that the UN Security Council should have used Chapter VII powers (ie, coercion) to stop Morocco’s 1975 invasion of what was then the Spanish Sahara. Indeed, he notes that the Security Council treats the Chapter VI (ie, non-coercive) nature of its intervention in Western Sahara since 1988 as ‘holy’. In other words, it’s not just Morocco and Polisario who have ‘red lines’ in this conflict, but also Paris and Washington.

In the NRC interview, he further clarified his position, which is clearly empathetic towards Western Sahara’s right to independence: ‘The moral dilemma is that Polisario is more on the right side than Morocco. But because the Security Council will never force Morocco into a referendum on independence, they actually choose for the status quo’. He then criticizes Polisario for choosing exile over autonomy.

So this is the world we live in: In the same interview, a lead UN negotiator simultaneously acknowledges Western Sahara’s right to independence and the illegality of Morocco’s annexationist move. Only to conclude by suggesting that the Security Council — in the name of realism! — should force Western Sahara to accept, for a brief trial period, an illegal occupation.

So where does all this leave the Western Sahara. Mr. Annan is probably correct when he says that doing nothing is a “recipe for violence.” But, as I argue above, the alternative that he offers, direct negotiations without preconditions, is no recipe at all. Unfortunately, this leaves the Polisario with their backs up against the berm. The logic of the Report is that the Polisario will never get their referendum on independence as long as they pursue legal and non-violent means. By throwing the territory to the wolves, the Secretary-General is telling the Polisario that their only recourse is a return to violence.

In these conditions, it is difficult to understand the optimism of the new UN Envoy, Christopher Ross.

By Carne Ross

Il y a peu d’actes de diplomatie plus frappants qu’un ancien président américain atterrissant dans le pays le plus interdit au monde pour sauver deux femmes d’années d’emprisonnement et de travaux forcées . Si Hollywood l’avait produit, cela semblerait presque banal. Même les gens les plus critiques envers Bill Clinton devraient célébrer ce sauvetage comme triomphant et humain. Mais au même temps que les familles des deux femmes font un soupir de soulagement, une question tenace reste à poser : Bill Clinton vient-il de faire du monde un endroit plus dangereux?

Pour les gouvernements, où j’ai exercé en tant que diplomate, aucune crise est plus grande que celle de la prise d’otages. C’est l’appel téléphonique que tous les officiels craignent, d’habitude l’enlèvement est annoncé par l’ambassade locale. Un système bien lubrifié se lance dans l’action : hauts fonctionnaires – et d’habitude le président lui-même – seront informés dans les plus brefs délais. Les réunions de crise sont immédiatement convoquées ; la façon dont un gouvernement répond dans les premiers moments peut être crucial.

Les enlèvements se passent aujourd’hui en Somalie, Irak, Colombie, tout comme en Corée du Nord. Partout où les otages sont pris, les gouvernements doivent afrronter le même dilemme désespéré et intraitable. Au moment où les gouvernements décident frénétiquement comment réagir, les familles des otages seront dans un état de détresse imaginable. Si la Presse se saisit de l’histoire, la pression sur les gouvernements pour répondre – de toutes les façons possibles – devient immense. Devrions-nous répondre publiquement, mais aussi immédiatement en prêtant aux preneurs d’otages l’attention qu’ils cherchent ? Devrions-nous essayer de les libérer par la force ? Mais l’action militaire est d’habitude évitée parce trop risquée : rappelez-vous la tentative américaine désastreuse de libérer les otages de l’ambassade à Téhéran en 1980.

Les rançons posent des dilemmes semblables. Il est facile de déclarer qu’aucune rançon ne devrait être payée quand ce n’est pas votre mari ou votre fille qui est dans la captivité, parfois menacée de mort. J’ai demandé, une fois, un compte rendu sur un otage européen qui avait été séquestré pendant des années par un gang terroriste au Liban. Sa souffrance était immense. Il a pleuré pour exprimer sa gratitude envers le fonctionnaire qui avait organisé le paiement secret pour le libérer. Des meilleures options absentes, les gouvernements chercheront souvent une sortie embrouillée et insatisfaisante. Ils peuvent offrir quelques concessions, et si c’est possible dans le secret, dans l’espoir que cela ne se répand pas et encourage d’autres. Kim Jong Il a été récompensé pour son kidnapping avec la visite d’un notable leader américain. L’Administration peut insister sur le fait qu’aucune concession politique importante n’ait été faite (et il est possible que nous ne le saurons jamais), mais la visite en soi était une sorte de paiement de rançon. Nous pouvons être sûrs que la Corée du Nord continuera à prendre « des prisonniers », de la Corée du Sud ou, encore mieux, de l’Amérique et cherchera des concessions pour leur sortie. Dans le monde entier, les preneurs d’otages, s’il s’agit d’états, des terroristes ou des pirates, sont régulièrement payés, dans le secret total, sans fanfare. Le message est clair : la prise d’otage obtient des résultats. Téhéran, Hizbollah et Pyongyang et d’autres groupes violents à travers le monde, en prendront note.

D’une façon ou d’une autre le monde entier est dans la prise des kidnappeurs : personne n’a de bonne solution. Nous avons cruellement besoin d’un débat sur la façon de changer les termes de la diplomatie des otages, en réduisant la récompense pour ceux qui utilisent de telles techniques coercitives – et en encourageant ceux qui ne le font pas. Le but devrait être de refuser ceux qui utilisent l’enlèvement et la violence pour attirer l’attention qu’ils demandent. L’idéal serait une sorte d’interdiction volontaire – sa légifération produirait l’effet contraire – pour réduire au minimum l’attention aux motifs et buts des kidnappeurs et des terroristes, s’il s’agit des groupes comme Al Qaeda ou des états comme la Corée du Nord.

Une autre mesure pourrait, à temps, commencer à diminuer la force de ceux qui utilisent de telles méthodes viles et repréhensibles pour attirer l’attention sur leurs besoins : commencer à récompenser ceux qui n’utilisent pas la violence, comme le Front Polisario, au Sahara Occidental. Leur pays a été envahi par le Maroc en 1975. Depuis le cessez-le-feu en 1991, ce groupe a refusé de prendre des otages, tuer des civils ou utiliser une quelconue sorte de violence. Au lieu de cela, ils continuent à utiliser les moyens pacifiques et diplomatiques pour arriver à l’autodétermination pour le peuple de cette terre occupée. Mais, en absence d’enlèvements ou de violence dans les titres des journaux, ils continuent à être ignorés dans les cercles politiques, abandonnés dans le désert pour décider si un retour aux armes servirait mieux leurs buts.

Une nouvelle doctrine s’offre, avec laquelle les EU peuvent envoyer un message fort et positif au monde : ceux qui embrassent la violence recevront une récompense politique plus grande que ceux qui ne le font pas.

٭ Carne Ross est un ancien diplomate britannique et directeur de Independent Diplomat, un groupe consultatif diplomatique à but non lucratif, qui conseille aussi le Front Polisario.

Hostage Diplomatie

By Carne Ross٭

There are few acts of diplomacy more striking than a former American president swooping in to the world’s most forbidding nation to rescue two women from years of imprisonment and hard labor. If Hollywood produced it, it would almost seem trite. Even Bill Clinton’s harshest critic should celebrate this rescue as triumphant and humane. But as the women’s families breathe a sigh of relief, a nagging question remains : has Bill Clinton just made the world a more dangerous place? Inside government, where I once worked as a diplomat, no crisis is greater than a hostage crisis. It’s the phone call that every official dreads, usually from the local embassy saying that nationals have been taken. A well-oiled system swings into action : senior officials — and usually the president himself — will be urgently informed. Emergency meetings are immediately convened ; how a government responds in the first moments can be critical.

Kidnappings are going on today in Somalia, Iraq, Colombia, as well as North Korea. Wherever hostages are taken, governments face the same desperate — and intractable — dilemmas. As governments frantically decide how to react, the families of the hostages will be in all-too-imaginable distress. If the press get hold of the story, the pressure for governments to respond — in any way possible — grows immense. Should we respond publicly, but thereby immediately giving the hostage-takers the attention they seek? Should we attempt to free them by force? But military action is usually discarded as too risky : remember the disastrous US attempt to free the Tehran embassy hostages in 1980. Ransoms pose similar dilemmas. It’s easy to declare that no ransoms should be paid when it’s not your husband or daughter who’s in captivity, sometimes under threat of death. I once debriefed a European hostage who had been held for years by a terrorist gang in Lebanon. His suffering was immense. He wept to mention his gratitude to the official who had organized the secret pay-off to get him out.

Absent better options, governments will often seek a messy and unsatisfactory way out. They may offer some concessions, and ideally in secret, in the hope that this doesn’t leak and encourage others. Kim Jong Il was rewarded for his hostage-taking with a visit by a prominent American leader. The Administration may insist that no substantive policy concessions were made (and we may never know), but the visit alone was a kind of ransom payment. We can be sure that North Korea will continue to take « prisoners, » whether from the South or better yet, America, and will seek concessions for their release. All over the world, hostage-takers, whether states, terrorists or pirates, are being regularly paid off, hush-hush, without fanfare. The message is clear : hostage-taking gets results. Tehran, Hizbollah and Pyongyang, and other violent groups across the world, will be taking notes.

Somehow the whole world is in the grip of the hostage-takers : no one has a good solution. We badly need a debate on how to alter the terms of hostage diplomacy, by reducing the rewards for those who use such coercive techniques — and increasing them for those who don’t. The aim should be to deny those who use kidnapping and violence the attention they crave. The ideal would be some kind of voluntary prohibition — to legislate it would produce the opposite effect — to minimize attention to motives and goals of kidnappers and terrorists, whether groups like Al Qaeda or states like North Korea.

Another measure might, in time, start to diminish the force of those who use such vile and objectionable methods to draw attention to their needs : start to reward those who don’t use violence, like the Polisario Front of the Western Sahara. Their country was invaded by Morocco in 1975. Since a ceasefire in 1991, this group has refused to take hostages, kill civilians or use violence of any kind. Instead, they continue to use peaceful and diplomatic means to pursue self-determination for the people of this occupied land. But, in the absence of headline-grabbing kidnapping or violence, they continue to be ignored in policy circles, left in the desert to ponder whether a return to arms would better serve their purposes.

A new doctrine offers itself, with which the US can send a strong and positive message to the world : those who foreswear violence will receive greater political rewards than those who do not.

٭ Carne Ross is a former British diplomat and director of Independent Diplomat, a non-profit diplomatic advisory group, which also advises the Polisario Front.