IN November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the El Guerguerat area, a buzzer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (the area claimed by the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi people). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. This is the first time a ceasefire agreed upon between Morocco and Polisario in 1991 has been violated. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades. Now, a generation later, the situation in this part of the western Maghreb region seems to be in a new crisis.

In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its special envoy to Western Sahara – Staffan de Mistura – to Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue about the situation. De Mistura might as well be given the position of special envoy to lost causes, since he had previously been deputed to solve the crises of US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; none of his missions ended well. The UN has had five previous special envoys for Western Sahara, beginning with former US Secretary of State James Baker (started in 1997) and ending with former German president Horst Köhler (resigned in 2019). Köhler’s achievement was to bring the four main parties (Morocco, Polisario, Algeria, Mauritania) to a round-table discussion in Geneva; this round-table process resulted in few gains and then ceased. When the UN-appointed De Mistura to this post in October 2021, Morocco initially turned its back on him. Under pressure from the West, Morocco accepted his role, so foreign minister Nasser Bourita welcomed him to Rabat. De Mistura met Polisario officials in New York, before meeting them in Tindouf (Algeria) at a Sahrawi refugee camp. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in anything productive.

ABRAHAM ACCORDS

In August 2020, the United States government of president Donald Trump engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. It secured from Morocco and the United Arab Emirates a deal to recognise Israel in return for arms sales to these countries as well as for the United States to legitimise Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts - $23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States – breaking decades of precedent – decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only country in the world to back Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

When president Joe Biden took over the US government, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, US secretary of state, Antony Blinken made it clear to Morocco’s foreign minister Nasser Bourita that the US government would maintain its position that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. That would not change. Nor would the arms deal with Morocco be altered; the US did suspend the arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, however.

PHOSPHATES

By the end of 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 per cent of the phosphates in the world (the next highest percentage of these reserves is in China, where you will find six per cent of world phosphate). Morocco’s kingdom currently controls the world phosphate market. Phosphate, with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertiliser, a key element in modern food production; whereas nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip on world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources – especially phosphates – in the territory.

In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that ‘eventually the territory will be among one of the largest exporters of phosphate in the world’. While Western Sahara’s reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP-SA has mined the phosphate in Western Sahara for great profit. The most spectacular mine is at BouCraa (Western Sahara), from where 10 per cent of OCP-SA’s profits come; the world’s largest industrial conveyor belt carries the phosphate rock over a hundred kilometres to the port at El Aaiún. An international campaign to prevent the removal of the ‘conflict phosphate’ led many firms around the world to stop buying the rock from OCP-SA. In 2002, the UN’s legal counsel noted that the purchase of this ‘conflict phosphate’ violated international law. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the US that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports in 2018 to its facility in New Orleans (USA) and Canada. That same year, the South African high court challenged the right of ships to dock in their ports carrying ‘conflict phosphate’.

Only three companies continue to buy ‘conflict phosphate’ mined in Western Sahara: two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited). Paradeep, located in Odisha, is a major producer of Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and non-urea fertiliser and has an annual turnover of Rs 5,000 crores (over $1 billion). Paradeep is owned by Zuari Maroc Phosphates, which is a joint venture of ZuariAgro-Chemicals (a firm founded by KK Birla now owned by Adventz, a part of the Saroj Poddar Group) and OCP-SA, the Moroccan government’s phosphate company. The fertilizer produced here is sold across India (under the Navratan and Jai Kisan brands) and globally. In other words, the Moroccan government ‘launders’ its ‘conflict phosphate’ in India through the Saroj Poddar group.

HUMAN RIGHTS

After the 1991 ceasefire, the United Nations set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have the mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to the Moroccan kingdom. The Moroccan government has several times intervened when the UN team in Western Sahara attempts to make even the softest noises about human rights. In March 2016, the kingdom expelled MINURSO staff because the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an ‘occupation’.

The Moroccan state’s attitude to human rights in Western Sahara would not surprise people within Morocco itself. Throughout the past few years, Morocco’s government has tried to strangle Morocco’s main party of the Left, Democratic Way (DW). It has repressed DW activists who try to organise in public, defamed its activists, and it is preventing DW from using public premises to hold its 5th Congress this year. Despite the obstacles and

preventions, DW activists have started the new year by a call for a united struggle of popular forces on the platform of human rights and freedom as well as for the release of political prisoners (including those associated with the Rif movement of 2016-2017). The DW opposes the repressive monarchy and the annexation of Western Sahara. The party attacked the Abraham Accords, a courageous stand that earned it increased repression from the Moroccan monarchy.