Western Sahara Negotiations Sound the Alarm

The negotiations in New York over the Western Sahara next week will not be like those that preceded them, yet they may not be different from the latter in terms of maintaining an atmosphere of caution, in light of the absence of a mutual will to go far towards a permanent solution that would be acceptable to all parties.

As for the difference with former negotiations, it resides in the fact that the different parties have exhausted all the assets they had held in both diplomatic and on-the-field confrontations. And while some voices in the Polisario have risen, demanding a return to taking up weapons, Rabat has pulled out the card of the extended system it has ratified implementing in all of the country’s provinces, and most prominently in the Western Sahara provinces, regardless of the outcome of negotiations. Additionally, the distance between the autonomy initiative and the possibility of returning to the referendum plan has increased further, and the UN Security Council and influential capitals now favor a political solution, without neglecting the reference of self-determination, over which views, notions and considerations on the field differ. Furthermore, it will not be useful for any party to merely duplicate ready-made stances, if the latter are not coupled with complete and unconditional cooperation in seeking a sound permanent settlement. Such a settlement should be centered around an acceptable solution, one that would have realistic references and perspectives, especially that the Security Council resolutions concerned have placed a ceiling of “realism”, as a balanced margin to move on to third speed.

In this sense, the negotiations in the suburbs of New York will not be an extension of the reduced meeting hosted by Vienna in the summer of last year. Indeed, the incentives that drove UN Envoy Christopher Ross to choose this method, aimed at overcoming psychological and political obstacles, have resulted in raising the height of these obstacles as a matter of fact. The flaw here does not reside in Ross’s brilliant method for drawing parties to the negotiations table, but rather in getting closer to the more shady areas of determining stances. And perhaps what Ross had feared the most was for all of the parties to feel that heading to the negotiations would require a greater extent of flexibility, supervision and commitment to the decisions of international legitimacy. Indeed, there is no other way to end the tension but to enter into core negotiations.

As for the fact that such negotiations will bring no new added value, it is due to the fact that none of the parties have changed their stances, and that they all still believe that the element of time might impose its influence at some point in time, specifically when the objective circumstances to resolving the conflict will have matured. Perhaps the long period of coexistence with tension that can be controlled has cemented convictions that, if the battle is being managed diplomatically through United Nations channels, the lebensraum that would be able to provoke a qualitative shift in stances is connected to the situation on the battlefield, even if not necessarily in the space of the Sahrawi issue, extending between Tindouf and the territories under Morocco’s control, through regional changes that would draw the Maghreb region in its entirety to the necessities of reaching a settlement.

It is no coincidence that arousing the issue of human rights has this time taken the forefront. Indeed, at a time when some parties have considered that there was no way to embarrass Morocco but by pointing to the human rights situation, Rabat found no alternative but to put forth the humanitarian situation in the Tindouf camps, which from its point of view reinforces the accompanying human rights circumstances on the other side. Yet what is certain is that the way the United Nations is dealing with the issue is kept in check by Security Council resolutions, even if there is nothing left of these resolutions but the maintaining of the ceasefire after the collapse of the referendum plan.

Noteworthy in the instruments of the conflict is the fact that it has moved into the space of human rights and strategy to an equal extent. And it was no coincidence that international preoccupations with the repercussions of the conflict have stopped at the dangers that now threaten security and stability in the neighborhood of the Western Sahara, specifically in the southern coastal region of the Western Sahara. This means that the strategic concern nearly summed up by the ongoing war against terrorism and security breaches has become a part of precedents that impose themselves to urge the parties involved in the Western Sahara conflict to quicken the pace of resolving it.

The most important conclusion in this respect does not reside in the contradiction between stances towards the content and reference of the political solution being sponsored by the United Nations. Rather, it is shaped by an international will to frankly point to the dangers threatening the region as a result of the growth of terrorist threats and the absence of stability. This factor, which has become a new one in the issue of the Western Sahara, should negate the state of coexistence on which the parties concerned have relied over long decades.

The negotiations in New York this time sound the alarm towards not maintaining the current situation, whether at the humanitarian level or within the framework of limiting potential losses due to the continuing tension. And if the engagement of the parties concerned is coupled with certain degrees of international commitment and of the extent of complete cooperation with the efforts of the United Nations, the issue that cannot wait any longer lies in the possibilities of losing control of the neighborhood of the Western Sahara, which requires for all the parties to follow the lead of their scout, Christopher Ross, whom the Western Sahara crisis has turned into a guide, amidst moving sand dunes that could obscure the road ahead.