By Dr. Emboirik Ahmed
PUSL.- Less than two months after the twenty-ninth anniversary of the signing of the Peace Plan between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan government that started with the signing of the ceasefire between both parties and that was to result, after several stages, in a consultation to the Saharawi people through a self-determination referendum where they would choose the option of independence or annexation to Morocco, most of the political analysts familiar with the process confirm that the United Nations has failed in its task.
The actions of the Security Council and MINURSO have been characterized by passivity and the lack of firmness to condemn Morocco for the continuous obstructions to the process, allowing it to violate all the commitments it has made. Aware of the impunity of their actions, they have dared to expel from the territory the civilian component of the UN mission.
Verifying the paralysis of the United Nations, and the lack of will of the Security Council in the solution of the Saharawi conflict, requires a deep reflection on the part of the Saharawi political leadership and a critical analysis to reverse this situation that slows and delays the path to independence in its action of active collaboration with the occupier, unjustifiably giving a determining political power to the international organization with serious negative geopolitical implications for the Saharawi cause at a general level.
The Realpolitik is not a divine curse that has fallen like a heavy slab on the head of the Saharawi people, but a bare sample of the intention of the actors who use all means, without any ethical considerations, to impose their objectives through diplomacy, economy, arms, terrorism, allies, social networks, corruption … and the weaknesses of the adversary.
All these issues make up a certain geopolitical scenario that does not depend on subjective wishes or wills, but on a concrete work of strengthening one’s own strength and of suitable alliances to unbalance the scale in favor or against the contenders.
However, Realpolitik is the reflection of a certain correlation of force that has been constructed in the last two decades, used by Morocco to block positive initiatives and redirect the situation in a direction favorable to its interests, represented in the maintenance of the status quo in the hopes to create future conditions that will allow it to completely detach itself from its commitments, leaving the Polisario Front in a political wasteland and in an absolute strategic disorientation. Faced with these considerations, the Saharawi side can design a new dynamic to transform, to a large extent, the described scenario. For this, it is necessary to carry out a global critical analysis that allows us to clearly understand why a force that triumphed over an adversary and forced the other to hide behind a wall, is in this situation of uncertainty in the middle of a diplomatic spider web that hinders action and prevents progress.
The critical attitude allows us to visualize vectors, without any complexes or stigmatizations, that configure the current political universe that do not exhaust existence or possibilities. We must appeal to the imagination, the cunning and the audacity that was, not so long ago, an identity sign of the Saharawi liberation movement, beyond political concessions and freezing of achievements and structures. Whoever does not dare to break imposed paths, cannot find new paths.
In order not to run unnecessary dangers, it is a priority to decipher and interpret the correlation of forces and their different tendencies and variables by exploring in detail the structure on which Moroccan power and its allies are sustained, without fear of introspection to identify our weaknesses and real possibilities.
MINURSO has become a passive observer who in practice legalizes the occupation of our country and the Security Council in an important pillar of that builder called Realpolitik. A one-way policy in the wake of the decisions of these organizations, only serves to maintain the status quo as a path of degradation of the rights of the Saharawi people to impose in the future a pseudo solution in the “sacred” name of the “possible”.
The Moroccan power and its friends have created their own referential framework by monopolizing the language, excluding and emptying of content the terms that referred to the great political issues such as “inalienable right, colonial situation, people, legitimate representative, human rights”, supplanting them by “serious and credible solution, mutually acceptable, stakeholders, populations, group of friends …” This new discourse space, increasingly widespread, is the product of a deep reflection of important think tanks that seeks to create a new identifying framework that refers to the adversary’s proposals to try to create a parallel diplomatic reality without a foothold in international law. Paradoxically, it is not unusual to observe that some Sahrawi diplomats naturally see this framework and that speech as a test of flexibility, pragmatism and diplomatic finesse, arguing and defending with absolute indifference and coldness that the territory is in dispute and a referendum is necessary to know the definitive status of it, without, apparently, realizing that they legitimize this new framework that they are trying to impose on us in exchange for mentioning an indefinite right to self-determination that loses the name independence along the way. Forty-seven years of struggle are testimony to the determination of the Saharawi people. The territory is not in dispute, it has been stolen from us. We cannot allow the discourse to be taken from us.
Meanwhile, in this endless years of lead, as an eternal axiom, the fighters for democracy and freedom have in their horizon prisons and exile.
Makhzen despair does not exclude any realm as a battlefield in its ideological work to impose a unique thought. The religion that in Morocco has always been at the service of power and has been a brake on the rebellion of the excluded, has become a weapon to prop up official policy by attacking, from the mosques, its religious brothers. Imams, led by the security services, manipulate and violate religious precepts exhorting believers in Friday’s homilies (jotba) in European countries to carry out the orders of the “emir of believers”, in their duty to get involved in the fight against the Saharawi people, becoming active political actors.
The terrible and unjust condemnations of human rights activists and defenders by the Alawite justice, remote-controlled from the palace, is not only the expression of hatred that the system has for our people and our cause, but also a brutal warning against any type of empathy that can arise from the interior of Morocco.
Close vigilance is imperative in the face of the banalization of discourse and the spreading of the ideas that sustain it, without excluding adapting them to the new historical times, always preserving the essence of our demands, avoiding an opaque drift that dangerously brings us closer to that postmodern no-man’s-land. where the global narratives necessary to locate ourselves in the world are diluted, especially when existence is in danger.
The construction of the singularity of the Saharawi National liberation process is the product of a long-lasting social dynamic, whose peculiarities are based on sacrifice and struggle, which makes it an unquestionable reality and a power factor capable of destroying the alliances. that at one time tried to make us disappear as a people, and change the regional political map. The sacrifices of the Saharawi people made these plans impossible.
We must not lose sight, particularly the young people, that the blood of our brothers and sisters is sown from the Senegal border to TanTan and Mhamid El Gazlan. This is too serious to accept, in the name of moderation and the eternal will to cooperate, foreign impositions that do not facilitate or contribute to shortening the path to independence.
In uncertain times, any positioning must take into account new factors that are not yet sufficiently valued. However, the attitude of the United Nations imperatively pushes us to seize the necessary will to power to adopt new formulas that allow us to clearly retake the initiative autonomously, where collaboration with that organism is only one more of our global action, using most of our energies in more transcendental aspects of our action.
Our potentialities must be used to retrace certain paths and internalize that more people and less United Nations are needed. The solution will not come from New York but from the territory. The transformation can only be born of an action of force in various directions as a means of upsetting this imbalance imposed on erroneous premises.
