The Western Saharan conflict has seen most of that country occupied by Morocco for the last 35 years. It is often perceived as a “forgotten conflict”, although recently it's been receiving slightly more attention in the global media. But this hasn't resulted in any increased pressure from the international community, with individual countries seemingly content to protect their financial and strategic interests. By PETER KENWORTHY.

“I don’t like this phrase ‘forgotten conflict’,” Konstantina Isidoros tells me. “The primary concern here is that the Western Sahara conflict is very simple to solve, but no one is solving it. It simply perpetuates its ‘forgotten-ness’ and major newswires miss the point that the Western Sahara is actually a geopolitical hot potato that has the US and France fighting over regional superiority and valuable untapped natural resources, with Spain squirming between the two.”
Isidoros is a doctoral researcher at Oxford University, but lives most of the year in the Sahara desert where she conducts anthropological and political science research, with a special focus on the Western Sahara region.

Morocco has occupied the more fertile and resource-rich three-quarters of the Western Saharan territory for the past 35 years. The Moroccans have brutally clamped down on the indigenous people, the Saharawis, within this occupied territory who dare dispute their rule, however peacefully. Many of those Saharawis who do not live in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara live in the camps near Tindouf in the Algerian desert. They fled there in 1975 when Morocco invaded their country.

Although Isidoros spends much of her time in these camps, she insists she is not pro-Saharawi or pro-Polisario (the Saharawi national liberation movement). She says she simply accepts the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Western Sahara is not Moroccan and that the Saharawi, therefore, have a right to return to their homeland, Western Sahara – and do so with full independence from Morocco’s illegal territorial violation.

As to whether Western Sahara is a “forgotten conflict” or not, Isidoros seems to have a point. In fact, last November’s Gdeim Izik events in the Moroccan occupied territories – where more than 10,000 Saharawis protested against Moroccan occupation – was the first widely covered uprising in the current wave sweeping the Arab world. (A point US author and activist Noam Chomsky also made in interviews with Democracy Now and with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman).

“Since Morocco’s brutal dawn raid on Gdeim Izik in November, major news outlets have begun covering the story,” she says, “and with persistent lobbying from the international community, are covering it accurately and compassionately. One disappointing, but interesting exception is Al Jazeera. Its Qatar roots mean one king is not going to allow damaging coverage of his fellow kings’ countries.”

Isidoros mentions the “vast body of respected publications on the Western Sahara conflict, of which all support the rule of international law” as another example of the worldwide interest in the Western Sahara conflict.

This year’s 35th anniversary celebration of the exiled Saharawi government, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic based in the Tindouf camps in the Algerian desert, was also a well-visited success. “The anniversary celebration in Tifariti was attended by numerous distinguished international dignitaries, NGOs, scholars and many other foreign groups,” says Isidoros. “The Saharawi hold many different anniversary celebrations during every annual calendar, and these form extremely important symbolic and political statements to the outside world. So yes, without question the world is listening.”

But if the world is listening, why isn’t it acting? According to Isidoros, this is because those countries that have it within their power to pressure Morocco and solve the Western Sahara conflict – primarily the US, France, Spain and the UK – have tended to listen only to the Moroccans, and because these countries benefit from the status quo, financially or strategically.

“Over the last 35 years, Morocco has built up a sophisticated propaganda machine, and wooed the US and French governments (both permanent members of the UN Security Council) to wipe out all criticism of its defiance of international law. To this day, Morocco treats all outspoken challenges with aggressive hysteria. Morocco would never have been able to get away with it without the geopolitical collusion and greed of Spain, US and France,” she insists.
The real hope is that the Saharawis, and those who sympathise with them in the West and elsewhere, can muster enough media coverage, sympathy and action in favour of the Saharawi cause to force the governments of these key countries to act.

“There is actually a vast chasm between what governments and their populations think and do in regards to Western Sahara,” says Isidoros. “The current Spanish leadership has a pro-Morocco stance, while the majority of its population has a long history of compassionate solidarity with the Saharawi struggle. The US is standard, habitual hegemonic interests overseas, although there is a strong tradition of respected US academics analysing the conflict.”

But the media in other of the key countries do not cover the conflict at all, or cover it very one-sidedly. “France has an emotional colonial history with Morocco,” Isidoros says. “Leading French politicians and elites have homes and vacations in Morocco, and Morocco courts France with avaricious charm so the majority French population receives little media coverage on any non-Moroccan stance. The UK has little history in the region and takes a refrained stance. The British population are mostly unaware of the conflict although parliamentary, NGO and academic circles are outspoken and growing rapidly.”

Isidoros believes if the Western leaders could be bothered to listen wholeheartedly to what the Saharawis had to say, they might change their minds and agree to give Western Sahara its independence, as called for bymany ordinary people around the world. “I wish these world leaders would come to visit the Saharawi refugee camps near Tindouf,” she says. “To see how these people resolutely stand by their right to self-determination. To see that these refugee camps are nothing like the disgusting propaganda websites that Morocco produces. This is why the Saharawi have so many international supporters and why there are so many foreigners who live in the camps all year round – we do so because the people are decent and dignified and because their political cause is a just one.” FAM

Mohamed Abdelaziz, president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, speaks during celebrations for the 35th anniversary of the Polisario Front's independence movement for control of the Western Sahara from Morocco, in Tifariti February 27, 2011. REUTERS/Juan Medina