Amb. Malainin Lakhal
In a strange and unprecedented move, at least since Spain’s betrayal of the Saharawi people in 1975, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, came out with a statement in support of the proposal for Moroccan autonomy, considering it “the most serious basis , realistic and credible for the resolution of the conflict” in Western Sahara. In other words, in clearer language, Sánchez recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara and considers that the Moroccan proposal is the solution, although said proposal is completely illegal, since the Rabat regime does not have any legitimacy or sovereignty to grant autonomy to a territory that is not its property.
With this position, Sánchez has finally succumbed to pressure from Rabat and has separated Spain, the country responsible for the suffering of the Saharawi people since it abandoned its duty to decolonize it according to international law, from efforts to find a serious solution, since Spain has lost all credibility by violating a sacred principle of international legality with its support for the Moroccan proposal that clearly contradicts all the requirements of international law related to the right of peoples to self-determination and the right of peoples to sovereignty over their lands.
However, on the other hand, all the Spanish political and trade union forces, from right and left, and even within the governing coalition, stood up to this dangerous change in Spanish position and demanded that the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence, calling on the Spanish State to maintain its previous position and support the efforts of the United Nations to resolve the conflict within the framework of international legitimacy.
In any case, this shameful Spanish position cannot give Morocco what it does not deserve, since Madrid does not have any sovereignty over Western Sahara to give it to whoever it wants. It has though, the responsibility of Spain is to correct the mistake and the historical crime that it has committed with premeditation against the Saharawi people in the seventies, demonstrating for decades that it is a weak, fragile State, capable of surrendering to the simplest Moroccan pressure and submitting to blackmail.
In addition to blackmail, the successive governments of Spain have allowed Morocco to successfully use immigration, drugs, terrorism and the threat of expansion at the expense of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands to prevent the Saharawi from benefiting from their right to self-determination as a former Spanish colony.
The Saharawi people and their leaders are well aware of the extent of Spanish involvement in the repeated and continuous acts of betrayal against Western Sahara by all Spanish governments of the right and left, since 1975, although we always separate from them the historical, cultural, politicians and humanitarians who unite the Saharawi people with all the peoples of Spain and we are sure that the Sánchez government will pay the price of this shameful betrayal sooner rather than later, because any Spanish government that succumbs in this humiliating way to the pressures of the Majzen is a danger not only to international legality, but even to the strategic interests of Spain and does not deserve to continue in power.
This position of Sánchez directly threatens, not only the strategic interests of Spain, its territorial integrity and its security in the face of Moroccan ambitions, which will surely increase once the absorption of Western Sahara is completed, but also calls into question the credibility and the image of Spain, already shaky, as a country incapable of protecting the sovereignty of its political decisions, which are immediately affected by the first threats of factors that Morocco would never stop using to achieve its objectives and threaten the security and the stability of the region and the world.
Finally, this position also threatens the credibility of the Spanish State before many countries in the world, which have good relations with Spain, but want it to assume its responsibilities in a more reliable and strict manner towards the issue of Western Sahara, a conflict that has become a kind of test or indicator of the classification of countries into States that respect international law and the principles of human and peoples’ rights and those countries that do not attach any importance to these principles and want to sow chaos and a law of the jungle in international relations, such as Morocco and Israel, as well as any other country that practices military aggression against others, regardless of the justifications, unless it is to defend itself against aggression.
Original article in Arabic, published on March 21, 2022 in the Algerian newspaper Alkhabar.
