Polisario rejects political negotiations and clings to its arms
At a time when the international community, the European Union and the United Nations, as well as the Western Sahara Support Group, which brings together the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and Spain, and the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, are pinning their hopes on the appointment of the new special envoy for the Sahara, the Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura, to seek a "realistic, just and consensual political solution" to the problem of Western Sahara, Polisario has opted to refuse to sit down at the negotiating table in any format.
"We will not accept any peace process as long as Moroccan terrorism and the inexplicable silence of the UN persist", the pro-independence Front's secretary general Brahim Ghali declared in a letter to Antonio Guterres. "We should not expect the Polisario to join any peace process, as long as the Moroccan terrorist practices imposed on the occupied territories persist", says the Saharawi leader, apparently recovered from his COVID-19 ailment which brought him to Spain clandestinely, under the guidance of the former foreign minister Arancha González Laya.
Brahim Ghali spares no epithets against Morocco, which he accuses of "cruel crimes against Saharawi civilians". However, when it comes to specifying what "crimes", "torture", "terrorist acts" and "acts of barbarism" are involved, the Polisario's number one only mentions the case of "the militant Sultana Khaya and her family". She, together with her sister and her mother, have not been able to leave their house for a year, to which no one has access, not even her relatives. During the first months of "forced confinement", Sultana Khaya received journalists, activists and members of Sahrawi associations. But for six months now, the control system around the family home has not allowed any access.
However, the Saharawi political activist continues to have mobile phones, which have not been deactivated or blocked by the Moroccan authorities, and with which she maintains communications with the outside world and sends videos of denunciations.
The Polisario calls on the UN to "guarantee the protection of Saharawi human rights activists, and to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of Saharawi political detainees, including the Gdeim Izik group, imprisoned in Moroccan prisons".
Contrary to the "arguments" that Ghali brandishes to justify shying away from political negotiations, Saharawi sources from the Saharawi Movement for Peace, recall that "on the same day that the events of Gdeim Izik took place in November 2010 - in which thousands of Saharawis from Laayoune held a camp with tents and vehicles - in protest against the socio-economic conditions of the Saharawi people in Laayoune, in protest at the socio-economic conditions in which the Saharawi population living in the capital of the former Spanish colony was living - a new round of talks was to begin in New York". "The negotiating team, recalls the MSP, composed of Ahmed Bukhari and Mohamed Hadad, pressed for the meeting to be held", sponsored at the time by the UN special envoy, Christopher Ross. Even later, Saharawi sources recall, "after the conviction of those involved in the Gdeim Izik uprising, the negotiations were not suspended either".
Brahim Ghali's rejection of the latest Security Council Resolution advocating "political negotiation between the parties" according to models that have already proven their plausibility, in particular the Swiss quadripartite between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario Front, and the current refusal to sit down at the negotiating table of any peace process, is due to other reasons, more in line with the current political crisis between Algeria and Morocco, which has entered a dangerous phase of militarisation of diplomacy.