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Calls Grow to Boycott 'The Odyssey,' Filmed in Moroccan-Occupied Western Sahara
One critic noted that Sahrawis "are beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and have their equipment confiscated for trying to make their own films of life under occupation."
Jul 15, 2026
Sahrawi activists and filmmakers are leading renewed calls to boycott the big-screen adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic The Odyssey over filmmaker Christopher Nolan's decision to shoot the film in the Western Sahara, whose people have suffered Moroccan occupation for over half a century.
"It is deeply disturbing that while Sahrawi journalists are imprisoned for exposing abuses, an international film production can use our homeland as a cinematic backdrop without addressing the reality of the occupation," Sahrawi journalist and filmmaker Mamine Hachimi told Middle East Eye (MEE) in an interview published on Wednesday.
Hachimi, who co-directed the short documentary Three Stolen Cameras about the oppression of people who document human rights crimes committed by Moroccan occupiers, told MEE's Alex MacDonald that calls to boycott The Odyssey—which was filmed in the Western Saharan city of Dakhla and opens on Friday—"is not a campaign against cinema or artistic freedom, it is a call for ethical responsibility."
"Two of my colleagues, Abdallah Lhafaouni, who is serving a life sentence, and Bachir Khadda, who is serving a 20-year sentence, are political prisoners simply because they documented human rights violations in occupied Western Sahara," Hachimi said.
Another Sahrawi filmmaker, Mohamedsalem Werad, told MEE that "choosing to film in occupied Western Sahara was not a politically neutral production decision—it meant operating with the permission of the occupying power in a territory where the Sahrawi people have long been denied the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination."
"A boycott sends a clear message that filmmakers cannot expect audiences to overlook decisions that risk legitimizing an occupation," he added.
Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote last week that The Odyssey "has a colonialism problem."
"For Morocco, the territories that make up Western Sahara are referred to as the 'southern provinces' and are an indisputable part of the kingdom," Yerkes noted. "But... Dakhla is part of what is considered the occupied and non-self-governing Western Sahara under existing international law."
"The Sahrawi people, who are indigenous to the region and currently have no meaningful self-determination, have not consented to the film’s production—and the Moroccan government is reaping the rewards at their expense," she added.
The renewed calls to boycott The Odyssey follow last year's appeal, led by the Western Sahara International Film Festival and signed by hundreds of artists, journalists, activists, and other human rights defenders, urging Nolan, Universal Pictures, and producers of the film "to break their silence and cease to be accomplices to Morocco’s 50-year illegal occupation."
The government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which claims sovereignty over Western Sahara but is not recognized by the United Nations, has also condemned what it called "an attempt to film a cinematic work in occupied Dakhla, considering it a violation of international legitimacy and the ethics of cultural and artistic work."
Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975, when Spanish forces withdrew from their former colony in the dying days of longtime dictator Francisco Franco's regime. Moroccan warplanes bombed Sahrawis, many of whom fled into neighboring Algeria as the government under King Hassan II orchestrated a “Green March” of hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians into the phosphate- and fishery-rich territory.
Western Sahara is today known among locals and human rights advocates as “Africa’s last colony.” Moroccan forces have brutally oppressed the Sahrawi people under their rule, severely restricting freedom of expression, movement, association, and the press, and utilizing arbitrary arrest and torture as tools of repression, according to human rights groups.
Moroccan occupation forces also built a 1,700-mile mostly sand wall to keep Algerian-backed Sahrawi militants led by the Polisario Front out of the territory, while denying people inside their occupied homeland a United Nations-backed referendum they’ve been awaiting for decades.
During his first term, US President Donald Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, essentially in exchange for Morocco’s decision to normalize relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords.
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By Supporting Putin’s Land Grab, Trump Is At Least Being Consistent
Trump’s insistence that it was in fact the Ukrainians who started the war with Russia, and that the fighting would end if they simply gave up, echoes the long-standing position of both U.S. political parties toward Palestine.
Mar 12, 2025
In the aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday, a number of United States lawmakers, world leaders, and political commentators have expressed outrage at their defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as their victim-blaming rhetoric toward Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian resistance effort.
Their stance, however, is not unique: For decades, the United States has held similar positions regarding military conquests and occupations by Morocco and Israel.
The critical response to Trump’s willingness to allow Russia to annex parts of Ukraine has centered on the dangerous precedent of allowing a country to hold onto lands seized by military force. Former President Joe Biden, citing the “rules-based international order,” repeatedly noted the illegitimacy of any nation unilaterally changing international boundaries and expanding territories by force during his presidency. But in practice, the United States has not only tolerated similar illegal irredentism by allied governments, but has formally supported them.
In certain respects, Trump’s support for Russia’s war and occupation creates an opportunity for those who believe that Palestinians, Syrians, and Western Saharans have as much right to resist foreign conquest as Ukrainians to advocate for the self-determination of all occupied peoples.
Trump’s insistence that it was in fact the Ukrainians who started the war with Russia, and that the fighting would end if they simply gave up, echoes the long-standing position of both U.S. political parties toward Palestine. And every presidential administration since 1993 has insisted that the Palestinian Authority allow Israel to annex large swathes of the West Bank territory seized in the 1967 war as part of any potential peace agreement, and has then blamed the Palestinians for their alleged failure to compromise.
During the first Trump administration, the U.S. also became the first and only country to formally recognize Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights—which had been condemned and declared “null and void” by the United Nations Security Council—as part of Israel, in a decision that Biden later upheld. In the past few months, Israel has seized additional Syrian territory and has vowed to remain there, and has maintained occupation forces in southern Lebanon in defiance of its cease-fire agreement.
Similarly, in 2020, the United States became the first country to formally recognize Morocco’s annexation of the entire nation of Western Sahara, a full member state of the African Union, in defiance of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in 1975. Biden upheld that decision as well.
During the Biden administration, these endorsements of illegal annexations by Israel and Morocco hurt the U.S.’s credibility in marshaling support for Ukraine, particularly among the Global South. At the United Nations, the U.S. was repeatedly called out over its support for Morocco and Israel’s takeovers by critics who argued that the U.S. opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine out of geopolitical interests rather than principle, in a move they called hypocritical. Now, the U.S. is showing consistent support for territorial conquests, including those of Russia.
Opposition to ongoing U.S. military support for Ukraine is not limited to Kremlin apologists, however. Pacifists, neorealist international relations experts, and others have argued that while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unjustified, the prospect of extending a potentially unwinnable war of attrition in the hopes of recovering the 19% of Ukrainian territory under Russian control is simply not worth the human and financial costs. The likely possibility of additional casualties in the tens of thousands—and the risk, however remote, of nuclear exchange—has led even some of the most bitter critics of Russia’s actions to call for a negotiated settlement.
The strongest argument against such a compromise is that it would reward Russia’s aggression and tempt Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in further territorial expansion, endangering the Baltic Republics and other areas once controlled by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. However, given how the U.S. has formally recognized illegal annexations of territories seized by force by Morocco and Israel, allowing Russia's illegal expansionism to remain in place, at least temporarily, would not establish a precedent: The precedent has already been set. And like Russia, Israel and Morocco have expressed expansionist ambitions beyond their current occupied territories as well.
In any case, Trump’s opposition to supporting Ukraine is neither pacifist nor utilitarian. He is supporting Putin and blaming Ukraine for the war. He is siding with an authoritarian aggressor against a democracy fighting for its very survival. The backlash against Trump’s support for Russia’s invasion, occupation, and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory is therefore quite appropriate.
The denial of agency to the Ukrainians, including the false charge that the 2014 Maidan uprising was a U.S. coup and that Ukrainians are simply fighting a proxy war rather than defending their nation from a foreign invasion, runs parallel to claims that Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian resistance to the Israeli occupations is a proxy war on behalf of Iran and that the Western Sahara struggle against the Moroccan occupation is a proxy war on behalf of Algeria. No one under foreign military occupation needs to be forced by a foreign power to defend their homeland.
In addition to his consistent support for the occupying forces of Israel, Morocco, and now Russia, Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire for the United States to become an occupying power in its own right, as exemplified by his plan to forcibly relocate all remaining Palestinians in Gaza and annex it as U.S. territory. Similarly, his recent threats to seize Greenland, Panama, and even Canada harken back to the U.S. expansionism of the late-19th century.
In certain respects, Trump’s support for Russia’s war and occupation creates an opportunity for those who believe that Palestinians, Syrians, and Western Saharans have as much right to resist foreign conquest as Ukrainians to advocate for the self-determination of all occupied peoples. To allow any of these illegal occupations to become permanent puts the entire post-World War II international legal order in jeopardy and seriously threatens international peace and security. Uniting the international community to force an end to these occupations, preferably through nonviolent means, is imperative. The “rules-based international order” must be upheld regardless of the geopolitical orientation of the parties involved.
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Middle Eastern Governments Are Drilling Their Own Graves
Some of the countries facing the biggest threat from the climate crisis seem all too intent on making it far worse.
Apr 17, 2024
Last September witnessed what used to be a truly rare weather phenomenon: a Mediterranean hurricane, or “medicane.” Once upon a time, the Mediterranean Sea simply didn’t get hot enough to produce hurricanes more than every few hundred (yes, few hundred!) years. In this case, however, Storm Daniel assaulted Libya with a biblical-style deluge for four straight days. It was enough to overwhelm the al-Bilad and Abu Mansour dams near the city of Derna, built in the 1970s to old cool-Earth specifications. The resulting flood destroyed nearly 1,000 buildings, washing thousands of people out to sea, and displaced tens of thousands more.
Saliha Abu Bakr, an attorney, told a harrowing tale of how the waters kept rising in her apartment building before almost reaching the roof and quite literally washing many of its residents away. She clung to a piece of wooden furniture for three hours in the water. “I can swim,” she told a reporter afterward, “but when I tried to save my family, I couldn’t do a thing.” Human-caused climate change, provoked by the way we spew 37 billion metric tons of dangerous carbon dioxide gas into our atmosphere every year, made the Libyan disaster 50 times more likely than it once might have been. And worse yet, for the Middle East, as well as the rest of the world, that nightmare is undoubtedly only the beginning of serial disasters to come (and come and come and come) that will undoubtedly render millions of people homeless or worse.
Failing Grades
In the race to keep this planet from heating up more than 2.7°F (1.5°C) above the preindustrial average, the whole world is already getting abominable grades. Beyond that benchmark, scientists fear, the planet’s whole climate system could fall into chaos, severely challenging civilization itself. The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), which monitors the implementation of the Paris climate accords, presented its alarming conclusions in a late March report. The CCPI crew was so disheartened by its findings—no country is even close to meeting the goals set in that treaty—that it left the top three slots in its ranking system completely empty.
For the most part, the countries of the Middle East made a distinctly poor showing when it came to the greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that are already heating the planet so radically. Admittedly, Morocco, with longstanding and ambitious green energy goals, came in ninth, and Egypt, which depends heavily on hydroelectric power and has some solar projects, ranked a modest 22nd. However, some Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hit rock bottom in the CCPI’s chart. That matters since you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that the region produces perhaps 27% of the world’s petroleum annually and includes five of the 10 largest oil producers on the planet.
Ironically enough, the Middle East is at special risk from climate change. Scientists have found that it’s experiencing twice the rate of heating as the global average and, in the near future, they warn that it will suffer, as a recent study from the Carnegie Institute for International Peace put it, from “soaring heatwaves, declining precipitation, extended droughts, more intense sandstorms and floods, and rising sea levels.” And yet some of the countries facing the biggest threat from the climate crisis seem all too intent on making it far worse.
Little Sparta
The CCPI index, issued by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute, and the Climate Action Network (CAN), ranks countries in their efforts to meet the goals set by the Paris agreement according to four criteria: their emissions of greenhouse gases, their implementation of renewable energy, their consumption of fossil fuel energy, and their government’s climate policies. The authors listed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 65th place, calling it “one of the lowest-performing countries.” The report then slammed the government of President Mohammed Bin Zayed, saying: “The UAE‘s per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are among the highest in the world, as is its per capita wealth, while its national climate targets are inadequate. The UAE continues to develop and finance new oil and gas fields domestically and abroad.” On the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula, the UAE has a population of only about a million citizens (and about 8 million guest workers). It is nonetheless a geopolitical energy and greenhouse gas giant of the first order.
The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, or ADNOC, headquartered in that country’s capital and helmed by businessman Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (who is also the country’s minister of industry and advanced technology), has some of the more ambitious plans for expanding petroleum production in the world. ADNOC is, in fact, seeking to increase its oil production from 4 million to 5 million barrels a day by 2027, while further developing its crucial al-Nouf oil field, next to which the UAE is building an artificial island to help with its expected future expansion. To be fair, the UAE is behaving little differently from the United States, which ranked only a few spots better at 57. Last October, in fact, American oil production, which continues to be heavily government-subsidized (as does that industry in Europe), actually hit an all-time high.
The UAE is a major proponent of the dubious technique of carbon capture and storage, which has not yet been found to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions significantly or to do so safely and affordably. The magazine Oil Change International points out that the country’s carbon capture efforts at the Emirates Steel Plant probably sequester no more than 17% of the CO2 produced there and that the stored carbon dioxide is then injected into older, non-producing oil fields to help retrieve the last drops of petroleum they hold.
Moving away from fossil fuels can make humanity more prosperous and safer from planetary catastrophe rather than turning us into so many beggars.
The UAE, which the Pentagon adoringly refers to as “little Sparta” for its aggressive military interventions in places like Yemen and Sudan, brazenly flouts the international scientific consensus on climate action. As ADNOC’s Al Jaber had the cheek to claim last fall: “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C.”
Such outrageous denialism scales almost Trumpian heights in the faux grandeur of its mendacity. At the time, Al Jaber was also, ironically enough, the chairman of the yearly United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) climate summit. Last November 21, he boldly posed this challenge: “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.” (In the world he’s helping to create, of course, even the caves would sooner or later prove too hot to handle.) This year the International Energy Agency decisively answered his epic piece of trolling by reporting that the wealthier nations, particularly the European ones, actually grew their gross national products in 2023 even as they cut CO2 emissions by a stunning 4.5%. In other words, moving away from fossil fuels can make humanity more prosperous and safer from planetary catastrophe rather than turning us into so many beggars.
“Absolutely Not!”
What could be worse than the UAE’s unabashedly pro-fossil fuel energy policy? Well, Iran, heavily wedded to oil and gas, is, at 66, ranked one place lower than that country. Ironically, however, extensive American sanctions on Iran’s petroleum exports may, at long last, be turning that country’s ruling ayatollahs toward creating substantial wind and solar power projects.
But I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that dead last—with an emphasis on “dead”—comes that favorite of Donald (“drill, drill, drill“) Trump, Saudi Arabia, which, at 67, “scores very low in all four CCPI index categories: Energy Use, Climate Policy, Renewable Energy, and GHG Emissions.” Other observers have noted that, since 1990, the kingdom’s carbon dioxide emissions have increased by a compound yearly rate of roughly 4% and, in 2019, that relatively small country was the world’s 10th largest emitter of CO2.
Worse yet, though you wouldn’t know it from the way the leaders of both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are acting, the Arabian Peninsula (already both arid and torrid) is anything but immune to the potential disasters produced by climate change. The year 2023 was, in fact, the third hottest on record in Saudi Arabia. (2021 took the all-time hottest mark so far.) The weather is already unbearable there in the summer. On July 18, 2023, the temperature in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, al-Ahsa, reached an almost inconceivable 122.9°F (50.5°C). If, in the future, such temperatures were to be accompanied by a humidity of 50%, some researchers are suggesting that they could prove fatal to humans. According to Professor Lewis Halsey of the University of Roehampton in England and his colleagues, that kind of heat can actually raise the temperature of an individual by 1.8°F. In other words, it would be as if they were running a fever and, worse yet, “people’s metabolic rates also rose by 56%, and their heart rates went up by 64%.”
Unfortunately, on a planet they are helping to overheat in a remarkable fashion, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have largely taken steps—huge ones, in fact—toward ever more carbon dioxide emissions.
While the Arabian Peninsula is relatively dry, cities on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden can at times be humid and muggy, which means that significant increases in temperature could sooner or later render them uninhabitable. Such rising heat even threatens one of Islam’s “five pillars.” This past year the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, took place in June, when temperatures sometimes reached 118°F (48°C) in western Saudi Arabia. More than 2,000 pilgrims fell victim to heat stress, a problem guaranteed to worsen radically as the planet heats further.
Despite the threat that climate change poses to the welfare of that country’s inhabitants, the government of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is doing less than nothing to address the growing problems. As the CCPI’s authors put it, “Saudi Arabia’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are rising steadily. Its share of renewable energy in total primary energy supply (TPES) is close to zero.” Meanwhile, at the 2022 U.N. climate summit conference held in Egypt, “Saudi Arabia played a notably unconstructive role in the negotiations. Its delegation included many fossil fuel lobbyists. It also tried to water down the language used in the COP’s umbrella decision.”
At the next meeting in Dubai last fall, COP28, the final document called only for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” Avoided was the far more relevant phrase “phase down” or “phase out” when it came to fossil fuels and even the far milder “transitioning away” was only included over the strenuous objections of Riyadh, whose energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman, said “absolutely not” to any such language. He added, “And I assure you not a single person—I’m talking about governments—believes in that.” His assertion was, of course, nonsense. In fact, some leaders, like those of Pacific Island nations, consider an immediate abolition of fossil fuels essential to the very survival of their countries.
Abandoning the Logic of Small Steps
Although Saudi Arabia’s leaders sometimes engage in greenwashing, including making periodic announcements about future plans to develop green energy, they have done virtually nothing in that regard, despite the kingdom’s enormous potential for solar and wind power. Ironically, the biggest Saudi green energy achievement has been abroad, thanks to the ACWA Power firm, a public-private joint venture in the kingdom. The Moroccan government, the only one in the Middle East to make significant strides in combatting climate change, brought in ACWA as part of a consortium to build its epochal Noor concentrated solar energy complex near the ancient city of Ouarzazate at the edge of the Sahara desert. It has set a goal of getting 52% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. Though critics pointed out that it missed its goal of 42% by 2020, government boosters responded that, by the end of 2022, 37% of Morocco’s electricity already came from renewables and, just in the past year, it jumped to 40%, with a total renewables production of 4.6 gigawatts of energy.
Moreover, Morocco has a plethora of green energy projects in the pipeline, including 20 more hydroelectric installations, 19 wind farms, and 16 solar farms. The solar plants alone are expected to generate 13.5 gigawatts within a few years, tripling the country’s current total green energy output. Two huge wind farms, one retooled with a new generation of large turbines, have already come online in the first quarter of this year. The country’s expansion of green electricity production since it launched its visionary plans in 2009 has not only helped it make major strides toward decarbonization but contributed to the electrification of its countryside, where access to power is now universal. Just in the past two and a half decades, the government has provided 2.1 million households with electricity access. Morocco has few hydrocarbons of its own and local green energy helps the state avoid an enormous drain on its budget.
In contrast to the pernicious nonsense often spewed by Saudi and Emirati officials, the Moroccan king, Mohammed VI, is in no doubt about the severe challenges his poverty-ridden country faces. He told the U.N. COP28 climate conference in early December, “Just as climate change is inexorably increasing, the COPs must, from here on, emerge from the logic of ‘small steps,’ which has characterized them for too long.”
Large steps toward a Middle East (and a world) of low-carbon energy would, of course, be a big improvement. Unfortunately, on a planet they are helping to overheat in a remarkable fashion, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have largely taken steps—huge ones, in fact—toward ever more carbon dioxide emissions. Worse yet, they’re located in a part of the world where such retrograde policies are tantamount to playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.
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Netanyahu Shows Map of 'New Middle East'—Without Palestine—to UN General Assembly
"Netanyahu made clear with his little map today what normalization really seeks: eliminating Palestine... from the region and legitimizing greater Israel, all with the blessing of Arab regimes," one critic said.
Sep 22, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders Friday after presenting a map of "The New Middle East" without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Speaking to a largely empty chamber, Netanyahu—whose far-right government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—showed a series of maps, including one that did not show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. These Palestinian territories have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, with the exception of Gaza—from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining an economic stranglehold over the densely populated coastal strip.
Middle East Eye reported Netanyahu also held up a map of "Israel in 1948"—the year the modern Jewish state was established, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—that erroneously included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel.
Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is "no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a 'map of Israel' that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about 'peace' in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today's world."
As Middle East Eye noted:
The inclusion of Palestinian lands (and sometimes land belonging to Syria and Lebanon) in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael—Greater Israel—a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.
Earlier this year, Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke from a podium adorned with a map that also included Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria as part of Greater Israel. In the same event, he said there was "no such thing as Palestinians."
The use of such maps by Israeli officials comes at a time when Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government has taken steps that experts say amount to the "de jure annexation" of the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu used the maps in an attempt to illustrate the increasing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
"There's no question the Abraham Accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace," the Israeli prime minister said. "But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East."
Critics have countered that peace between apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has come at the cost of advancing Palestinian rights. In the case of Morocco, the United States recognized the North African nation's illegal annexation and brutal occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for normalization with Israel.
Netanyahu's props on Friday reminded numerous observers of the time during his 2012 General Assembly speech when he used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate Iran's progress on advancing a nuclear weapons program that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies said did not exist.
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Over 1,000 Dead From Devastating Earthquake in Morocco
Death toll expected to climb as emergency workers search for survivors in Marrakesh and other impacted villages and cities.
Sep 09, 2023
This is a developing story... Check back for updates...
The strongest earthquake to hit the country of Morocco in more than 120 years has left over 800 people dead and many thousands more trapped, missing, or injured.
The quake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale with the epicenter located in the Atlas Mountains and not far the city of Marrakesh where historic buildings—many built of mortar and stone not designed to withstand such tremors—collapsed and the streets filled with people overnight trying to flee the destruction and danger.
"The problem is that where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse resulting in high casualties," Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, told the Associated Press. "I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known. As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue."
Morocco's interior ministry put the death toll at 822 as of Saturday morning, with 672 injured, but later revised those numbers to reflect that over 1,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 1,200 injured. Both numbers are almost certain to keep rising. Though the stronger impacts were closer to Marakesh, the earthquake was felt across the country, including in Casablance, Essaouira, and the capital city of Rabat.
Large nations, including both the United States and China, sent their well wishes to the people of Morocco.
"I am deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the earthquake in Morocco," said U.S. President Joe Biden in an overnight statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this terrible hardship."
Biden said his administration as in contact with Moroccan officials and willing to send whatever help might be necessary. "We are working expeditiously to ensure American citizens in Morocco are safe," Biden said, "and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people."
"On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I would like to express my deep grief for the victims and sincere condolences to the families," said China's President Xi Jinping.
Dr. Mohammad Kashani, associate professor of structural and earthquake engineering at the University of Southampton, spoke with the Guardian to offer his analysis of the disaster.
"The earthquake was magnitude 6.8 with 18.5km depth, which is quite shallow," explained Kashani. "The shallow earthquakes are normally more destructive. The location is at the boundary of the Eurasian and African plates. Almost all earthquakes occur at the boundary of tectonic plates due to their movement."
"It is too early to see the extent of damage," he continued. "However, from what I’ve seen in photos and videos this very similar to the earthquake that occurred in February in Turkey. The area is full of old and historical buildings, which are mainly masonry. The collapsed reinforced concrete structures that I saw in the photos were either old or substandard."
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The Price of Morocco Betraying Palestine by Normalizing Israeli Relations
The fact that Moroccans are mobilizing in large numbers against their country's normalization with Israel only two years after the agreement is a sign of things to come.
Jan 02, 2023
Two years ago, Morocco and Israel signed the U.S.-brokered "Joint Declaration," thus officially recognizing Israel and instating diplomatic ties. Though other Arab countries had already done the same, the Moroccan official recognition of apartheid Israel was particularly devastating for Palestinians.
Years ago, a close Moroccan friend told me that the 'first time' he was arrested was during a solidarity protest for Palestine in Rabat which took place many years ago.
Solidarity with Palestine in this country goes back generations, and hundreds of activists have paid a price for confronting their government on its failure to stand up to Israel or to challenge Washington.
The reference to the 'first time' indicated that he was arrested again, though mostly for other political activities, suggesting that Palestine, in many ways, has become a local struggle for many Moroccans.
Whenever Moroccans protest for Palestine, they would do so in large numbers, sometimes in their millions. Such solidarity has historically served as the foundation of regional and global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Though ordinary Arabs have always considered Palestine a core struggle, the relationship between North Africans and Palestine is, in many ways, unique and rooted.
Despite a strong push for normalization between Arab countries and Israel, countries like Algeria and Tunisia made it clear that no diplomatic ties between their respective capitals and Israel would be declared anytime soon.
Credit for this goes mostly to the Algerian and Tunisian peoples who have made their rejection of Israeli racism and support for Palestinian freedom akin to local or national struggles. Palestinian flags have always accompanied flags of these countries during any large gathering, be it a political protest or a sports event.
Morocco is no exception. Solidarity with Palestine in this country goes back generations, and hundreds of activists have paid a price for confronting their government on its failure to stand up to Israel or to challenge Washington for its support for Tel Aviv.
The normalization agreement between Rabat and Tel Aviv in 2020 was falsely assumed to be an end to popular solidarity with Palestine. In fact, such acts of normalization, rightly considered a betrayal by Palestinians, were also meant to be the final delinking of Palestine from its Arab and regional environs.
However, this was not the case. Normalization with apartheid Israel is still strongly rejected by the vast majority of Arabs, as opinion polls indicate. Moreover, the pouring of love for Palestine during the Qatar World Cup demonstrated, beyond doubt, that Israel cannot possibly be accepted by Arabs while still an occupying power and a racist apartheid regime.
The little political gains achieved by the Moroccan government in exchange for sacrificing the rights of Palestinians shall prove irrelevant in coming years. In fact, signs of this are already on display.
The Moroccan government, led by the Development and Justice Party of Saadeddine Othmani, which had taken part in the normalization efforts, was rejected en masse in the September 2021 elections. Only nine months earlier, Othmani was signing the "Joint Declaration" with Israel's national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat.
The U.S. recognition of Rabat's claim over Western Sahara as the political barter between Rabat and Washington, which led to the normalization with Tel Aviv, shall eventually prove meaningless.
The U.S. and Western superiority is increasingly being challenged throughout the African continent, especially in West and Central African regions. Powerful new players, like Russia and China, are gaining geopolitical ground, in some regions entirely replacing the West's dominance. Thus, the U.S. support for any country's territorial ambitions is no longer a guarantor of political gains, especially as the African geopolitical spaces have become greatly contested.
When Morocco normalized with Israel, many Moroccans were taken by surprise. The assumption was that Morocco, like other Arab nations, was too consumed by their own problems to notice their government's foreign policy shifts, whether regarding Palestine or anywhere else.
Whether that was the case or not, it matters little now. On the second anniversary of the "Joint Declaration" agreement, tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against normalization in 30 different cities, including Rabat, Agadir, Tangier, and Meknes. The protests were mobilized by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization.
The Front is reportedly a network that includes "over a dozen political and human rights organizations," The New Arab reported. Their chants included, "The people want to bring down normalization," a slogan that is reminiscent of the pan-Arab popular slogan of a decade ago, "The people want to change the regime." The latter resonated throughout many Arab capitals during the years of political upheaval in 2011 and upward.
This popular movement and its chants indicate that Palestine remains a local and national struggle in Morocco, as well as other Arab countries.
But why Morocco, and why now?
The self-serving and limited gains of normalization are likely to turn into a political liability in coming years.
The popular association of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags throughout the World Cup had an invigorating effect on the collective psyche of Moroccans, who were empowered by their national team's impressive showing against legendary teams such as Belgium, Spain, and Portugal. It was a matter of time before this confidence translated to actual solidarity on the streets of Rabat and other major Moroccan cities.
The fact that Moroccans are mobilizing in large numbers against their country's normalization with Israel only two years after the agreement is a sign of things to come.
2022 was a particularly bloody year in Palestine, according to U.N. Mideast Envoy Tor Wennesland, who said that it was "on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since… 2005."
Moroccans, like other Arab nations, are following the news with alarm, especially following the swearing-in of Israel's new extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right fascist ilk—the likes of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
These two individuals' constant targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, has a great emotional impact on Moroccans, especially since Morocco serves as the chair of the Al-Quds Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is tasked with the protection of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel wants to normalize with the Arabs and tap into their massive markets and economic largess without having, in return, to relinquish its military occupation or grant Palestinians basic freedoms. Politically engaged Arab masses understand this well, and are growingly mobilizing against their governments' betrayal of Palestine.
The self-serving and limited gains of normalization are likely to turn into a political liability in coming years. It is time for Morocco and others to reconsider their ties with Israel, as they risk political isolation and social instability, a far greater price to pay than the empty promises of Washington and Tel Aviv.
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Biden's Continuation of Trump's Western Sahara Policy Is Deeply Troubling
Trump recognized the wholesale annexation of one country by another. If Biden lets that stand, the global implications are deeply troubling.
Jan 22, 2022
In his final weeks in office, President Donald Trump stunned the international community in formally recognizing Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Morocco has occupied much of its southern neighbor since 1975, when it invaded and annexed the former Spanish colony in defiance of the United Nations Security Council and a landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice.
Biden's failure to rescind Trump's recognition of the Moroccan conquest will not only prolong the bitter conflict in Western Sahara, but will also contribute to undermining the liberal international order in place since the end of World War II.
Most observers believed that, as with some of Trump's other impetuous foreign policy decisions, President Joe Biden would reverse it soon after coming to office. However, much to the disappointment of bipartisan congressional leaders, career State Department officials, major U.S. allies, North Africa scholars, and the human rights community, he has refused to do so.
The Biden administration has not explicitly reconfirmed Trump's recognition, either. However, unlike maps from the United Nations, National Geographic, Rand McNally, Google, or pretty much anywhere else, official U.S. government maps under the Biden administration all show Western Sahara as part of Morocco with no delineation between the two. U.S. embassy officials travel to the occupied territory and treat it as part of the kingdom. State Department reports referencing the territory no longer list it as a separate entity.
Biden administration officials have repeatedly refused to answer press queries regarding the U.S. recognition. In response to direct questions from reporters, they pivot to vague statements in support of the "peace process." For example, Secretary of State Antony Blinken dodged a series of questions from a BBC reporter by saying that the United States is focused on supporting the efforts of United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura to work with "all the parties involved... to find a durable and dignified solution" so that "process can move forward."
The problem is that the process has not actually been going forward.
For the Moroccans, the U.S. recognition has only solidified their insistence that self-determination is out of the question. If the world's number one superpower insists that Western Sahara is part of Morocco and blocks the United Nations from enforcing its resolutions, why should they even consider compromising? To the Moroccans, U.S. recognition means the issue has been resolved in their favor and they have no incentive to adhere to their international legal obligations.
As with Israel and Palestine, the United States insists that the two parties work it out between themselves even as the occupying power categorically rules out the option of a viable independent state. Furthermore, it ignores the great asymmetry in power between the occupier and those under occupation as well as the moral and legal responsibility of occupying powers to allow the people of the conquered lands the right of self-determination.
Tragic U.S. Hypocrisy
This contrasts with the U.S. reaction to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in which the Iraqis--like the Moroccans--put forward the dubious historical claim that their small southern neighbor was historically part of their country that had been severed by colonial machinations and that they were only correcting a historical injustice. The United States did not insist that the Kuwaitis engage in an endless "peace process" with the Iraqis, but insisted that Iraq end their occupation, even going to war less than six months later to reverse it.
The Biden administration, however, in refusing to rescind Trump's recognition, is taking the position that the expansion of territory by force--notwithstanding such prohibitions in the UN Charter--is not necessarily illegal after all and can be an acceptable form of statecraft.
As a result, the White House's opposition to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and more recent threats against Ukraine's territorial integrity is insincere. If the administration really believed that "any use of force to change borders is strictly prohibited under international law," it would have annulled Trump's recognition. Indeed, the Biden administration's hypocrisy only serves to strengthen Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin, who can correctly argue that U.S. opposition to his aggressive moves towards Ukraine is more political than principled.
On an even grander scale than the Israelis in their occupied territories, the Moroccans have been colonizing Western Sahara with many tens of thousands of settlers. As with their ally Israel, successive U.S. administrations have been facilitating the occupying power's creation of facts on the ground by dragging out the negotiation process indefinitely, thereby making a reversal of the occupation increasingly difficult.
Biden's support for the Moroccan occupation is even more controversial than his support for the Israeli occupation. In addition to the outspoken opposition by leading congressional liberals like Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), and others, U.S. recognition of the Moroccan conquest has upset some prominent conservatives, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and former National Security Advisor John Bolton, as well as prominent State Department veterans.
On the one hand, Biden's opposition to long-standing international legal principles is not new. He was an outspoken supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he has defended successive right-wing Israeli governments when they have violated international law, and he has criticized the United Nations, the World Court, and other institutions when they've raised concerns about violations of international law by the United States and its allies.
At the same time, recognizing the takeover of one entire independent country by another is a virtually unprecedented action by a major power in modern times. Even the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, notorious for their violations of international legal norms, refused to go as far as Trump--and now Biden--when it came to the Moroccan occupation.
Out of Step With International Law
Western Sahara--formally known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)--has at one time or another been recognized by 84 countries and is a full member state of the African Union. The Biden administration is effectively recognizing the invasion, occupation, and annexation of one recognized African state by another, thereby harming U.S. relations with much of the continent.
The AU has long held that colonial boundaries, as arbitrary as some of them may be, must not be altered unilaterally. The SADR currently governs roughly one-quarter of Western Saharan territory and about 40 percent of the population, mostly in Polisario-administered refugee camps in western Algeria.
Western Sahara is recognized by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union, and a broad consensus of international legal scholars as a non-self-governing territory. As a case of incomplete decolonization, Western Sahara must therefore be allowed to engage in an act of genuine self-determination. That is why no major country had recognized Morocco's control over Western Sahara until Trump's announcement a little over a year ago.
There would be no problem if the Sahrawis chose incorporation into Morocco in an internationally supervised referendum. However, as a non-self-governing territory, they must also have the opportunity to choose independence, which Morocco has categorically ruled out. The United States is effectively agreeing with the Moroccan monarchy that the indigenous population of Western Sahara--known as Sahrawis, and who embrace a distinct history, dialect, and culture from their northern neighbor--should not even be given that chance.
Instead, the United States and France have endorsed a Moroccan "autonomy" plan for Western Sahara that is quite limited in scope and would fail to meet the international standard for autonomy. It does not allow the Sahrawis the option of independence--to which they are entitled as a U.N.-recognized non-self-governing territory according to international law, a series of U.N. resolutions, and a landmark World Court ruling.
A Human Rights Nightmare
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other reputable investigative groups have documented widespread arrests, the torture of dissidents, and violent suppression of peaceful protests by Moroccan authorities in Western Sahara.
Freedom House, in its survey of 210 countries, has ranked Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara as having the worst record on political rights in the world save for Syria. This raises serious questions regarding how much "autonomy" would mean in practice as well as whether the Biden administration's rhetoric in support of human rights and democracy is at all sincere.
Traditionally, Sahrawi women have had more rights than their Moroccan counterparts, having equal rights to inheritance and divorce, keeping their maiden names, and being trusted in positions of leadership. They are particularly visible in the leadership of the nonviolent resistance movement in the occupied territories and have been specifically targeted for sexual abuse by Moroccan occupation forces.
Indeed, the Biden administration's apparent belief that Western Sahara should be governed by a foreign, autocratic, right-wing monarchy instead of a relatively progressive and secular republic says a lot about its priorities.
The Polisario Front, the leading nationalist movement which initially emerged in the anti-colonial struggle against Spain, engaged in an armed struggle against Moroccan occupation forces until agreeing to a 1991 cease fire in return for a referendum on independence. Morocco never followed through, however. After 29 years of broken promises, continued occupation, and a series of Moroccan violations of the cease fire, the Polisario resumed the war in the fall of 2020.
Morocco's allies in Congress keep insisting without evidence that the Polisario has links to Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups even though the Polisario has never engaged in terrorism and is decidedly secular in orientation. Regardless, the Biden administration's failure to support the right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination is contributing to the destabilization of the region.
Bigger Stakes for the 21st Century
The implications of the Biden administration's policies go well beyond the fate of the half million Sahrawis living in exile or under repressive military rule. Biden's failure to rescind Trump's recognition of the Moroccan conquest will not only prolong the bitter conflict in Western Sahara, but will also contribute to undermining the liberal international order in place since the end of World War II.
As a result, the stakes are not simply about the future of one small country, but the question as to which principle will prevail in the 21st century: the right of self-determination, or the right of conquest?
The answer could determine the fate not just of the Western Sahara, but that of the entire international legal order for many decades to come.
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'A Blatant Violation': Sahrawis Dismiss Pompeo's Announcement of US Consulate in Moroccan-Occupied Western Sahara
The move comes two weeks after the U.S. became the first country to recognize Morocco's claim of sovereignty in the illegally occupied territory.
Dec 24, 2020
Sahrawi independence advocates defiantly dismissed an announcement Thursday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the United States would open a "virtual" diplomatic mission in Western Sahara as a first step toward establishing a permanent consulate in the Moroccan-occupied territory.
"We the Saharawis are fighting [for] our complete sovereignty over our Western Sahara; we don't need your permission to do that."
--Minetu Larabas Sueidat,
National Union of Sahrawi Women
Pompeo said in a statement that the U.S. was "inaugurating a virtual presence post for Western Sahara, with a focus on promoting economic and social development, to be followed soon by a fully functioning consulate."
The State Department said that the virtual post--which will allow U.S. officials to conduct consular and other business remotely--will be managed by the American Embassy in Rabat, the Moroccan capital.
The development came nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump announced an agreement in which the U.S. recognized as legitimate Morocco's illegal occupation in exchange for the North African kingdom's establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel. This made the U.S. the first country to recognize Morocco's claim of sovereignty in Western Sahara.
While Morocco's monarch, King Mohammed VI, hailed U.S. recognition of his country's claim to Western Sahara as an "historic turning point," advocates for Sahrawi independence roundly condemned the move.
The Polisario Front--the United Nations-recognized, Algerian-backed Sahrawi national liberation movement--blasted the U.S. declaration as "a blatant violation of the United Nations charter and the resolutions of international legitimacy."
Additionally, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (pdf) states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies," a proscription violated by both Israel in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories and by Morocco in Western Sahara.
There was widespread indignation following Pompeo's announcement, as Sahrawis and international human rights defenders condemned the move.
Known as "Africa's last colony," Western Sahara was invaded by Moroccan and Mauritanian troops in 1975 as Spanish colonial troops withdrew from their former territory. In order to solidify Moroccan control over the phosphate- and fishery-rich land, former king Hassan II ordered a "Green March" of hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians into Western Sahara to colonize the vast desert territory.
Meanwhile, Moroccan forces committed horrific atrocities (pdf) while driving nearly half the Sahrawi population into neighboring Algeria.
Moroccan occupation forces built a 1,700-mile mostly sand wall to keep Algerian-backed Sahrawi militants out of Western Sahara, while denying Sahrawis inside their occupied homeland the U.N.-backed referendum they've been promised--and awaiting--for decades.
The Polisario Front has resisted the occupation for 45 years and today controls up to a quarter of Western Sahara as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which scores of United Nations member states have recognized since it was proclaimed in 1976. However, more than half of these countries have since either withdrawn or suspended their recognition.
Moroccan settlers today comprise over two-thirds of the territory's population of approximately 600,000.
A fragile U.N.-backed 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario rebels lasted until last month, when SADR President Brahim Ghali declared it over after he said that Moroccan troops opened fire on peaceful protesters.
Inside occupied Western Sahara, Moroccan forces brutally repress all forms of resistance, severely restricting free expression, movement, association, and press.
According to a 2015 Amnesty International report (pdf), as well as documentation by local and international human rights groups, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, forced disappearances, and torture are some of the tactics employed by the occupation forces to control the territory and its people.
Polisario forces are also accused of serious human rights violations, and some Sahrawis oppose their rule.
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Trump Deal to Trade Occupied Western Sahara for Morocco Normalizing Ties With Israel Denounced Worldwide
"Only the people of Western Sahara can decide their own future as they have an inalienable right to self-determination recognized by the U.N.," said one Sahrawi official.
Dec 10, 2020
The Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, Palestinians, and human rights defenders around the world expressed outrage Thursday after President Donald Trump announced an agreement in which the U.S. will recognize as legitimate the illegal occupation of that territory by Morocco in exchange for the North African kingdom's establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel.
"The U.S. administration can 'recognize' occupiers' sovereignty all they want. Doesn't change the facts. The Golan is Syrian. The West Bank is Palestinian. And Western Sahara is Sahrawi."
--Dr. Yara Hawari, Palestinian academic
Trump's announcement--which came on Human Rights Day--means the United States now officially recognizes as legitimate the occupations of both Palestine and Western Sahara. Such acts are illegal under the Hague Regulations, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
The agreement did not come as a surprise to many observers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly been lobbying the U.S. for months to recognize Morocco's claim to Western Sahara in exchange for the regime of King Mohammed VI establishing official diplomatic relations with Israel. Morocco and Israel have for decades closely--but secretly--cooperated on issues ranging from intelligence sharing, antiterrorism operations, and the emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel.
Morocco now joins Bahrain, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates in normalizing relations with Israel via U.S.-brokered deals in recent months. Numerous international relations experts, however, say the agreements between Israel and the dynastic dictatorships in Bahrain and the UAE look less like peace pacts and more like unofficial military alliances targeting Iran.
In late 1975, Moroccan troops entered Western Sahara after Spanish forces withdrew from their former colony in what were literally the dying days of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his fascist regime. Moroccan warplanes bombed the indigenous Sahrawi people with weapons including napalm and white phosphorus (pdf), fueling a mass exodus of about half the population into neighboring Algeria as the government under King Hassan II orchestrated a "Green March" of hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians into the phosphate- and fishery-rich territory in order to gain control over it.
Morocco has occupied the vast desert territory ever since, annexing what it calls Moroccan Sahara in 1976, with additional land annexed after forces from neighboring Mauritania withdrew in 1979. Moroccan occupation forces built a 1,700-mile mostly sand wall to keep Algerian-backed Sahrawi militants out of the territory, while denying Sahrawis inside their occupied homeland the U.N.-backed referendum they've been awaiting for decades.
Western Sahara is today known among locals and human rights advocates as "Africa's last colony."
Sahrawi militants--known as the Polisario Front--have resisted Morrocan occupation for 45 years, and today control some 20-25% of Western Sahara. They call the territory under their control the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which scores of United Nations member states have recognized since it was proclaimed in 1976. However, more than half of these countries have since either withdrawn or suspended their recognition.
Until Trump's announcement virtually no country had officially accepted Morocco's claim to Western Sahara.
Relations between the U.S. and Morocco--which in 1777 was the first nation to recognize the nascent United States--have been close throughout the decades of occupation in Western Sahara. In 1975 Secretrary of State Henry Kissinger told President Gerald Ford that he hoped for "a rigged U.N. vote" (pdf) affirming Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. Successive administrations of both parties have supported the royal regime, which has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American weapons to use against the Sahrawis.
Today, Moroccan settlers make up more than two-thirds of Western Sahara's population of approximately 600,000. A shaky U.N.-backed ceasefire between the government and the Polisario front lasted from 1991 until last month, when SADR President Brahim Ghali declared it over after he said that Moroccan troops opened fire on peaceful protesters.
As renewed hostilities erupt between the government and the resistance, at least 173,600 Sahrawi refugees still reside in five camps in Algeria's western Tindouf province in one of the world's most protracted--yet least noticed--refugee crises.
Inside occupied Western Sahara, Moroccan forces have brutally oppressed the Sahrawi people under their rule, severely restricting freedom of expression, movement, association, and the press, and utilizing arbitrary arrest and torture as tools of repression, according to a 2015 report (pdf) byAmnesty International, as well as documentation by other human rights groups.
Sahrawis--men, women, young, and old--who peacefully protest the occupation are often brutally beaten and arrested by Moroccan occupation forces. Former prisoners, some of whom have been forcibly disappeared for years or even decades, have described torture by electrocution, waterboarding, caustic chemicals, and attack dogs.
One Sahrawi woman, Sultana Khaya, described to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman--who was incessantly surveilled and sometimes harassed when she reported from the territory without Moroccan authorization in 2018--how she lost an eye when she was brutally attacked by state security forces while peacefully protesting in 2007.
[An officer] recognized me. And he jabbed right at my eye with his baton. When he did that, I bent over, and I could feel my eyeball in my hand. I was yelling at him, "Hey, you Moroccan! You pulled out my eye!"
Khaya told Goodman she knows Sahrawis will one day be free.
"The determination of the people is invincible," she defiantly declared.
In the fall of 2010, a peaceful Sahrawi protest camp at Gdeim Izik was violently dispersed by Moroccan security forces, with local activists claiming dozens of deaths. American academic Noam Chomsky has argued that the Arab Spring revolutions--widely credited as starting when Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself to death on December 17, 2010--actually began at Gdeim Izik.
Pro-independence Sahrawis and their international allies reacted with disappointment and defiance to the news of Thursday's agreement, with many accusing the U.S. of trading away their freedom. In a statement, the Polisario Front condemned the deal "in the strongest terms," adding that "Trump's decision does not change the legal nature of the Sahara issue because the international community does not recognise Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara."
"Only the people of Western Sahara can decide their own future as they have an inalienable right to self-determination recognized by the U.N. since 1963," tweeted Kamal Fadel, the Polisario representative to Australia and New Zealand. "Let's remind President Trump that this is a decolonization issue and cannot be used as a bargaining chip in other deals."
"We were shocked when we saw Trump's tweet," Ahmed Ettanji, a journalist and activist in the Western Saharan capital city of Laayoune, told Middle East Eye. "At the same time, it's not something new. As a Sahrawi, I've seen the U.S. back Morocco for many decades."
"But there is some hope that the next administration will be different," Ettanji added, referring to President-elect Joe Biden.
Palestinian leaders also condemned the agreement.
"Any Arab retreat from the [2002] Arab Peace Initiative, which stipulates that normalization comes only after Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, is unacceptable and increases Israel's belligerence and its denial of the Palestinian people's rights," Bassam al-Salhi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, told Al Jazeera.
Palestinian diplomat and scholar Hanan Ashrawi told Democracy Now! on Friday that the "Trump administration... has been acting as the errand boy for Israel in order to try to get as many victories, as many benefits, as many privileges for Israel."
"And right now it's rushing like mad in a race against time before [leaving] office, in order to reposition Israel, to normalize relations with the Arab world, and to deliver Palestine to Israel and to legalize or legitimize the occupation of Palestine and the land theft of Palestine."
Very few elected U.S. officials have spoken out against the Trump administration's endorsement of the crimes of occupation and population transfer in either Palestine or Western Sahara.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.)--one of the rare outspoken critics of U.S. foreign policy in both Palestine and Western Sahara--condemned Trump's move.
Perhaps the harshest criticism of Trump's move came from a close Republican ally not normally known for championing human rights. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime vocal advocate for Sahrawi independence, called the president's decision "shocking and deeply disappointing."
"I am saddened that the rights of the Western Saharan people have been traded away," Inhofe said in a statement. "The president has been poorly advised by his team; he could have made this deal without trading the rights of a voiceless people."
Vowing he "won't stop fighting" for the Sahrawis, Inhofe added that "today's announcement does not change the United Nations or [European Union] positions, nor the charter of the African Union, nor the opinion of the [International Court of Justice]--a referendum must still happen."
"I urge these organizations to stand strong to support Western Sahara's right to self-determination and am confident the U.S. will be able to return to the policy we've held since 1966," he said.
Inhofe's advocacy of Sahrawi independence stands in stark contrast with his unwaveringly staunch support for Israeli policies and actions condemned by international human rights officials and organizations as apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide (pdf).
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US Must Halt Renewed War Between Morocco and Polisario
We must act swiftly to prevent war and further conflict, end the occupation, and allow Sahrawis to make their decision on union with Morocco or independence.
Nov 22, 2020
The United States needs to end its support for Moroccan human rights abuses and its occupation of Western Sahara. Last month, Sahrawis who were wearied with the Moroccan occupation, nonviolently blocked traffic in a narrow 5 km demilitarized area (buffer zone) between Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and Mauritania. The Sahrawis rightly claimed that the demilitarized area was being exploited to the benefit of Morocco and not to the Sahrawis. Morocco broke the cease-fire by entering the buffer zone, attacking the nonviolent protesters, and re-opened the illegal border trade route. In response, the Polisario Front of Western Sahara ended the cease-fire and declared renewed war on Morocco. War is not the answer...and yet un-ending occupation is not the answer either. We do not want to see a single Moroccan or Sahrawi killed when the entire world agrees on how to resolve this issue nonviolently.
Sadly, the U.S. government has provided vast economic and military support to the Moroccan government. Last year Morocco purchased $10.3 billion in weapons from the US, totalling more than Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE combined.
The Moroccan government invaded and has occupied the Western Sahara since Spain withdrew in 1975. From then until 1991, there was a war between the Moroccan Government and the Polisario Front, which fought and campaigned for independence. In 1991, under the auspices of the UN, a cease-fire agreement was announced with Morocco controlling about 80% of the country. The cease-fire and occupation have continued for 29 years causing more damage to the land and suffering to the people of Western Sahara.
There is widespread nonviolent resistance to Moroccan rule, led in large part by women such as RFK Human Rights Laureate Aminatou Haidar. Sahrawis have protested, boycotted and at one point in 2010 even deserted the capitol to create a tent-city in the desert. Many have been tortured, imprisoned and killed. Sahrawi allies in Africa and Europe have launched solidarity boycotts and seized Moroccan contraband. Since 2012, international funds, including the National Employment Savings Trust in the UK, the Netherlands' APG, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, AP Funds in Sweden, and FDC (Luxembourg) have divested from companies that extract resources from Western Sahara for ethical reasons.
Tensions have risen since the nonviolent road block and Morocco's attack. Many young urban Sahrarwis were abducted this week by the police, tortured and then dumped in the outskirts of cities. Some other Saharawi activists have been jailed and await trial for crimes they did not commit.
The plunder of natural resources continues despite all UN resolutions, European court rulings, and its special UN status as a non-self governing territory. The people of Western Sahara living under occupation are impoverished and marginalized while more numerous settlers are benefitting from the resources of Western Sahara with the blessing of the Moroccan government.
Sadly, the U.S. government has provided vast economic and military support to the Moroccan government. Last year Morocco purchased $10.3 billion in weapons from the US, totalling more than Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE combined.
There is much a Biden/Harris administration can do to help Morocco end its occupation of Western Sahara. The US government, corporations and civil society should:
- Halt arms sales to Morocco;
- Ban any purchase of stolen resources (e.g. phosphates) from Western Sahara and sanction any company that does so;
- Support and enforce a UN administered referendum;
- Work with Europeans and Africans to limit economic cooperation that supports the occupation;
- Build multi-lateral pressure to resolve this conflict nonviolently.
The world has known how to nonviolently resolve this issue since 1963, when the United Nations called for a referendum on its future status. Morocco has refused to cooperate. We must act swiftly to prevent war and further conflict, end the occupation, and allow Sahrawis to make their decision on union with Morocco or independence.
There is potentially bi-partisan support for this approach. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Leahy have spoken out strongly for the rights of the Sahrawi for self-determination. However, we also need Democrats and other Republicans to stand up and speak up for international law and to condemn attacks on nonviolent protesters and the occupation. Their silence is deafening.
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