[chasli]

Andalousi,

The Tingis article really doesn' clarify anything. If this article is the best "proof" you can come up with, I'd have to say that there is still hope for a free Western Sahara. Just a few comments on the varuious points made:

a) "In 1958, Prince Hassan chaired a conference whose goal was the liberation of the Sahara."

I'm not altogether sure what this is supposed to show. In 1958 Mohammed V/Hassan and the Istiqlal Party were in the middle of their silly game of trying to outdue the other in claiming increasingly large parts of northwest Africa. The greater Moroccan Thesis of 1958 also envisioned the "liberation" of Mauritania, and parts of Mali, Senegal, and Algeria -- in addition to the Spanish Sahara.

b)"In 1961, the African revolutionary leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Tour, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Modibo Keita, the Algerian Ferhat Abbes and others met in Casablanca with Mohammed V to form the Casablanca Group and "discuss the Congo crisis, the liberation of Palestine, the war in Algeria, Morocco's claim to Western Sahara and Mauritania" and African unity."

And of course the Casablanca Group was one of the forerunners of the Organization of African Unity. I'm sure in 1961 they did discuss "Morocco's claim to Western Sahara; but unfortunately for Morocco the OAU ultimately concluded that Morocco had no rights to sovereignty over the Western Sahara and they admitted the Sahrawi ARab Democratic Republic (SADR) as a full member. If this 1961 meeting proves anything it is how weak the Moroccan case was.

c)"After independence, the Rif-based Moroccan Liberation Army branched out into the Saharan Liberation Army (SLA) as it redirected its focus to the still-occupied southern zone. They reached Layoun and Dakhla (Villa Cisneros), but as happened with Abdelkrim al-Khattabi in the Rif, they were repelled by a combined French-Spanish military operation code-named Ouragan. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)"

Again, I'm not sure what this is supposed to show. Under the logic of the greater Moroccan thesis, Morocco wanted to grab as much land as possible -- especially with the discovery of oil next door and the already evident huge phosphate and fishing wealth of the area.

d)"In 1969, Frank E. Trout, a Harvard academic published a book showing in meticulous detail how Morocco's eastern Saharan provinces were systematically annexed by the French when they were creating Algeria from scratch. The Larousse of 1888 defined the size of Morocco as 812,000 square kilometers, but in its 1897 edition, it reduced the size to 800,000 and in 1956 to only 430,810, without giving any idea how Morocco's landmass shrank to its present dimensions.
"

Please reference the name of the Trout book; I'd love to read it. As to the figures from the Larousse, who knows what might be the reason behind Morocco's shrinking landmass? Maybe the Larousse of 1888 included Algeria in Morocco; I don't know; or maybe the 812,000 figure was a mistake. But to take the Larousse figures as some proof of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara in 1888 just doesn't hold water. And of course the International Court of Justice looked into all of this and concluded that no rights to sovereignty existed. In addition I have searched far and wide for maps from the nineteenth century that show the Sahara as part of Morocco and I can't find any.

e)"There were indications that France wanted to negotiate with Morocco the return of some of its lost provinces, including Tindouf, before it gave Algeria to the Algerians. But Mohammed V who, like all Moroccans, had been supporting the Algerians' war of independence, rejected the offer, so confident was he that his Algerian brothers would give back Morocco's land upon independence.

I've always found this story incredibly suspicious: Come on -- Mohammed V trusting that brother Algeria "would give back Morocco's land upon independence." This truly strains credibility.

f) "Cuba's support of Algeria and the Polisario cost it a good customer--Morocco stopped buying sugar from Cuba and now produces more than half of its needs!"

This it seems to me supports the Sahrawi side. Given Cuba's anti-colonial credentials, Cuba must have sincerely and deeply agreed with the Sahrawi cause if they were willing to forgo so much sugar income to support the Sahrawi.

g)" Virtually all the early leaders of the Polisario started out as student revolutionaries in Morocco....There is proof that in the 1980s Moroccan religious extremists were trained by the Polisario."

Again, what does this prove. Maybe that there weren't any universities in the Spanish Sahara. And after all Stalin was from Georgia and Alexander Hamilton from Nevis in the Caribbean. And Polisario involvement with Moroccan religious extremists must be a joke. The Polisario has shown so little interest in religiouis extremism of any sort that apparently El Qaeda hasn't even bothered to try to infiltrate the Tindouf camps

h) "Many who oppose Morocco say that African nations decided to live within colonial frontiers so as not to create a new mess. That may be great for countries that didn't exist before, but this policy is absurd in the case of Morocco. If colonial borders were to be inviolate, then Morocco would have to be divided into seven parts!"

In 1975 the International Court of Justice was called on by Morocco, Mauritania and Spain to rule on the status of the Western Sahara. Morocco claimed that the territory had been under their sovereignty before Spanish colonialism and should be returned to Moroccan sovereignty based on the principle of territorial integrity. The Polisario claimed that the territory had never been under Moroccan sovereignty and thus decolonization gave them the right to choose their own fate via a referendum. My point here is that the ICJ was NOT saying that colonial borders were inviolate. If evidence was presented that showed that the territory had indeed been part of Morocco in 1884, the ICJ appeared ready and willing to advise that it revert back to Morocco. Of course, the ICJ found that "no tie of territorial sovereignty " in fact existed before the Spanish.

j) "There is no difference between Morocco's Sahrawi people and the Algerian ones. Why, then, shouldn't Algerian Sahrawis have their own country?" This doesn't seem to have much to do with anything. Algerian Sahrawis? Does he mean the ones in Tindouf or are there others that I've missed.

k) "The Green March was the most powerful event in Morocco's modern history. "Never before or since in modern times," writes Hughes, "has an idea so galvanized the whole country. It grabbled the emotions and imagination of the people."

If the Green March is indeed the most powerful even in Morocco's modern history, that's not saying too much about Morocco's recent history.

I've gone into some detail here on the Tigris magazine article because most of the assertions there just don't make sense, are blatantly untrue, or else support the Polisario side. Moroccans brainwashed on the greater Moroccan thesis appear to be the only people anywhere who really believe that Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara is justified. No country on earth officially recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. International law unambiguously supports the Polisario. The African Union and some 70 countries recognize the SADR. Morocco gets away with its land grab only because its good friends France and the US refuse to put pressure on their good friend Morocco. EAst Timor had its day. The Western Sahara's day will come.