A History of the Western Sahara Conflict: The Paper Desert (original) (raw)

Towards a Counterhistory of the Western Sahara

Tifariti No. 1 - Year 2024 50 años de descolonización: el proceso del Sáhara Occidental, 2024

This article is the product of research in co-labor between Saharawi and Spanish researchers. It proposes a first approach to the construction of a counter-history of Western Sahara, dating from 1884, the date of the arrival and installation of the first Spaniards on the coast of the territory, until the “pacification” of 1934. This counter-history Demands a post-colonial and decolonized look to review the hegemonic stories about the region. This revision is, on the other hand, the necessary condition to undertake in parallel a counter-history of twentieth-century Europe.

Western Sahara: Meltdown of a Frozen Conflict

Centre for Geopolitics and Security in Realism Studies (CGSRS), 2016

On 19th April 2016 the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon submitted his report on Western Sahara to the Security Council. He asked the UN restricted body to re-establish and support the mandate of the Mission des Nations Unies pour l’Organisation d’un referendum au Sahara Occidental (MINURSO). The report was issued during a time of tensions between the Secretary General and Morocco, following the visit of Ban Ki-moon in the region. The present analysis will outline the historical roots of what is commonly known as ‘Africa’s last colony’, explaining new developments. Moreover, it will try to suggest recommendations to defuse the crisis, which is affecting the entire region. In effect, while the Western Sahara issue has always been interpreted has a local, limited struggle involving two or three main actors, it could have enduring and dire consequences for the North and West Africa.

Delayed Peace and Tranquillity in Africa’s ‘Last Colony’: What Next for Western Sahara?

The Journal of Social Sciences Research

The conflicts in Western Sahara have not been resolved conclusively for 43 years now with some referring to them as ‘frozen’ conflicts in Africa’s last colony. A clear case of decolonisation turned out to be a genesis of displacement and protracted suffering of the Saharawi people from the former coloniser to another handler arguably backed by some invisible external hegemons. This study is a qualitative research using secondary data and thematic analysis to investigate Western Sahara’s unending conflicts and the way forward. Located in the conflict theory, findings indicate that the past failed interventions by the United Nations have been a result of the influence of superpowers wielding levers of power in the United Nations Security Council with vested interests in the country. Morocco the new coloniser is a neighbouring country reluctant to cede power while taping the mineral and water resources which Western Sahara is abundantly endowed with. As the Saharawi people are not obli...

Imagined territories and histories in conflict during the struggles for Western Sahara, 1956-1979

2017

Political conflicts in the western fringe of the Saharan desert since the second half of the 1950s have involved actors using competing territorial imaginaries, which disagree on the question of sovereignty and who should hold it. As soon as newly independent Morocco claimed the then Spanish Sahara as part of a 'Greater Morocco', other nationalist projects such as the 'Ensamble Mauritanien', the 'Spanish nation' and the 'Saharawi people', incorporated the colony into their own imagined territories in incompatible ways. All of these geographical visions were justified by different interpretations of the history of the Atlantic Sahara. This article shows the role played by alternative conceptions of this space, and the histories that supported them, during the end of Spanish colonial rule and the beginning of Moroccan control. It also shows how new ideas of state sovereignty and political legitimacy within the regional and international context conditioned the competing territorial conceptions and discouraged any attempt to develop a non-nationalist imagination.

The Unresolved Western Sahara Conflict and Its Repercussions

Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies ( …, 2010

Abstract: Western Sahara conflicts have yet to be definitively resolved. It now belongs to the category of “forgotten” or “frozen” conflicts. The conflict itself is not the only issue to have been forgotten. Power politics have overridden questions of international legality despite the ...

The Unspoken Conflict of Western Sahara

Western Sahara is the most populous and largest non-self-governing territories since 1963. The Western Sahara conflict remains one of the oldest conflicts in the world which is yet to be resolved. The conflict started between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, who later formed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The two disputants entered into the conflict in 1975 until the ceasefire was signed in 1991. Since then no peace process has entailed in Western Sahara. The aim of the paper is to analyse the unheard rights of Sahrawis including their right to self-determination incorporating different role players at regional and international levels. The paper further reflects on the efforts made by the UN in containing the conflict. The conflict has never been fully resolved due to disagreements on their political and social will. This paper offers the possible solutions to resolve the conflict keeping in mind the best interests of both the disputants.