Negotiated autonomy
The Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP) has taken up the challenge of putting forward a concrete negotiation initiative to tackle the process that will allow a serious, credible and lasting solution to the Sahara conflict to be glimpsed. It is making its way through the noise and insults of those who favour confrontation and tension and who, without scruples or compassion, exploit the suffering of thousands of people in the refugee camps in Tindouf for their own benefit.
There are many conflicting interests, unacceptable selfishness, obvious geo-strategic realities, a struggle for hegemony in the region, the embers of a Cold War that is now living a new era after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its operations in the Sahel region where the terrorist threat of destabilisation demands a clear and forceful response from those most directly involved, such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, and from the international community, led by the European Union and NATO.
In this strategy and for many other political, social and economic-commercial reasons, it is imperative to restore bilateral relations between Rabat and Algiers, as King Mohammed VI has offered, and to reach a negotiated solution to the Sahara conflict within the framework of the UN. The step forward taken by the MSP with the Manifesto of the Canary Islands, the result of the 1st International Conference for Peace and Security in the Sahara, represents a bold and risky gamble, but one that is necessary and timely because it raises concrete questions for negotiating with Morocco the content of an autonomy under its sovereignty. Concrete questions of powers, representation, taxation, infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, health, education, security, assistance to the most disadvantaged and compensation. In other words, we are moving from literature to mathematics, as the Italian politician Gulio Andreotti would say. The challenge is to break the blockade that has lasted almost 50 years and face negotiations in which Sahrawi interests are represented by those who have won the support of a large part of their fellow citizens, such as the MSP or the tribal notables, and to put an end to the exclusivity of a Polisario Front anchored in the past.
They must recognise the current reality, as former President Rodríguez Zapatero insisted in his speech, in order to move towards autonomous self-government, as former minister José Bono stated, and to be capable of achieving coexistence, as Juan Fernando López Aguilar, MEP, called for. The European Union and its Parliament must play an important role in this process, in which the participation of the Partido Popular is essential through consensus with the Socialist government. Overcoming clichés is one of the challenges in Spain, along with the role of the media. Morocco must value and answer the MSP's proposal, but above all Algeria must do so.