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The Fading Dream to Liberate Africa’s Last Colony
- caf 10y ago"facts on the ground" - that anodyne term that whitewashes over occupation, dispossession and suppression the world over.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoThis particular international dispute is news to me, but based on this article I hope the Saharawi people will have their land returned to them without having to rely on force. It's sad that diplomacy can result in stalemate for so long and that conflict is the means by which we seem to have to fall back on to inject some urgency into finding a resolution.
- saiya-jin 10y agobasically this is a single-hand decision of Moroccan royalty, they do it because they can, and maybe also they don't want to lose their face while losing half of Morocco territory. If you travel there, you'll clearly see even people look completely different in those regions - Moroccans are arabs, these people are africans. their cultures are worlds apart and they really have little in common. one were conquered by the other, recently, and the world just stood and didn't care (at least it didn't end up in usual african civil war with hundreds of thousands dead and millions driven out). this place is so far not worth any fight for anybody in the west and morocco is playing nice & easy with europe/us.
- SRSposter 10y ago>Moroccans are arabs Thats a wide generalisation. There are Moroccans who speak arabic and Moroccans who speak berber, just because they speak arabic doesnt mean that they are Arabs.
- IkmoIkmo 10y ago> Moroccans are arabs Moroccans are not arabs. I can hardly believe you travelled there but not know this...
- ommunist 10y agoThis agenda is supported by the US because of thorium in that part of Sahara, I suppose. uPD: I was wrong. Its plain old good oil! http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/us-oil-company-set-violate-international-law-western-sahara-883955500 http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/us-oil-compan... . So the US has stinky agenda there as always. Found oil in Antarctics? Its time to kill penguin terrorists, oh, by the way we have got Educated English speaking penguin appeared in Washington to form pro American government there!
- caf 10y agoYou have entirely misunderstood the article you are quoting there - its allegation is that the US and UK oil companies in question are improperly relying on a deal with the Moroccan occupying authorities to operate in Western Saharan waters. The article that is the subject of this thread, on the other hand, is supporting the Saharawi side, which is in opposition to the oil companies in your linked article.
- ommunist 10y agoThis is a game. Of course underdeveloped nations are always wrong. And when developed nations get the resources, this is just a coincidence.
- 8note 10y agothorium is not in short supply. It's very easy to find more
- cantcopy 10y agoThis article is really one sided. First, it doesn't cite Algeria's role in this conflict. Second, Mohamed Abdelaziz, current Secretary General of the Polisario Front is Morroccan. Most of his family lives in Morocco. Third, it doesn't talk about the terrible living conditions in Tindouf and the embezzlement of international aid by Polisarian Leaders. Final example, it doesn't show the great progress made in Laayoune or Dakhla since Spain left under Morroccan governance.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoWhat was Algeria's role in the conflict? As for the other arguments, you don't get to claim a territory just because you think you can run it better. It doesn't matter if Morocco has made improvements in the region if they're illegally occupying the territory, which is certainly what is being suggested by the article.
- smcl 10y ago"Last colony" in Africa is a strange way to describe it. what about Reunion and Mayotte?
- newjersey 10y agoDon't know about these so this is an outsider's view: With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France, Mayotte sounds less like a colony of France than Scotland is a colony of England. The much larger Reunion with no native population doesn't seem to have much of an independence movement looking at the Wikipedia page. If they're colonies, maybe they'd be worse off independent? I mean who'd really benefit from independence? I'm sure as soon as they become independent, they'd get kicked out of the euro zone...
- smcl 10y agoExactly - I'm an outsider too so maybe there's something I am missing (though I am from Scotland). They mentioned the Falklands as another example of colonialism - which IMO is exactly the same situation as Reunion/Mayotte (no native population, significantly worse off independent), so why not mention those? Note that I'm no defender of the British colonial legacy - I'm actually pretty critical of the whole thing, but weird contradictions like that frustrate me :)
- ekianjo 10y ago> With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France The only reason they are voting to stay in France is to get access to French subsidies for DOM/TOM (free flowing cash with no questions asked) and social benefits.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- saiya-jin 10y agoas my french friends told me, these places get tons of subsidies from France for free (whatever reason there might be), they can come to work in France/EU anytime. yet they live in their tiny little paradises, far from stressful mainland. best of both worlds. why the hell would anybody want to leave? :)
- pearjuice 10y agoThe Sahara belongs to Morocco just as much as "Israel" belongs to Palestine (which, according to the UN, is an actual occupied territory). Besides, speaking of "Africa's Last Colony", when is Spain giving Ceuta and Melilla back to Morocco?
- merkozy 10y agoCeuta and Melilla were under Berber rule a very short time but they never were Moroccan, which is an Arab state. In fact Europeans (Greeks, Romans, Vandals, etc) were in the coast of North Africa much earlier than the Arabs were.
- gorkamorka 10y agoCeuta and Melilla were part of Spain lomg before Morocco even existed, so no. There is nothing to return to Morocco.
- IkmoIkmo 10y agoWrong, these towns existed before Spain was even formed as a nation. i.e. it's not Spanish by origin. Take Ceuta, it was settled essentially by a power from what is now Tunisia, which itself was a colony of a middle-eastern power (mostly what is now Lebanon), this was hundreds of years before christ. Spain was formally formed more than two thousand years later. Since then, it's changed hands many times. Fact is, it sits in a region that for thousands of years prior to the concept of the nation state was inhabited by berbers, the Moroccan people. To consider it somehow morally 'theirs' isn't unreasonable, to consider it a remnant of European imperialism is also not unreasonable. But to consider it, politically, Spanish today, is also fully reasonable. Just like North America isn't the land of native americans anymore, and as sad as that history may be, it's something that must be accepted today and moved on from. I see Ceuta and Melilla similarly, they were once part of Moroccan territories but have been in Spanish hands for the last four hundred years, and developed by Spain for so long, inhabited by Spaniards for so long, it's simply Spain. That won't change anytime soon. But to say it was Spanish long before Morocco existed is silly, because Morocco predates Spain (depending on your definitions of states) by a thousand years, and it wasn't Spaniards that first settled Ceuta either. That's Ceuta, as for Melilla, it was a berber (read: north-african, in this case moroccan) village by origin, not an Iberian or Spanish or Andalusian village or w/e. Just prior to Spain taking Melilla, it was part of the kingdom of fez. Which is a Moroccan kingdom.
- ommunist 10y agoA pile of hypocricy. Why on Earth if you are so much about self-determination of Saharawi, you force them to learn English in a soft game of neocolonialism, instead of putting money into development of their local industry and culture? Because you want these people to convert to mobile workforce, seduce them to leave and get resources from their land.
- etangent 10y agoYou think it'd be better if Saharawi learned Chinese instead?
- ommunist 10y agoHonest position and the noble one would be to learn Berberian and develop Berberian curriculum. This is what Russians did in the 17th century with themselves, this is what the Soviet Union did for Ukrainians, Lettons, Chukchi and lots of other nations.
- jpatokal 10y ago"Their local industry and culture"? Most Sahrawis live in refugee camps in the desert behind the Moroccan Wall [1], an extraordinarily poor location for any sort of industry or trade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Wall
- AtlasLion 10y agowhere did you get this "most" claim from? Western Saharan for a big part live in big cities inside the Moroccan zone, only ~100k live in camps such as tindouf.
- walrus01 10y agoForce them to learn English? It is the defacto language of science and technology. For a population of less than 500,000 they're not going to develop locally created curriculum for, for example, masters degrees in electrical engineering and medical sciences in the Berber language.
- tiatia 10y agoBullshit article. How about Cabinda? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinda_Province#Ethnic_grounds_for_self-determination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinda_Province#Ethnic_ground...
- AtlasLion 10y agoPeople really need to read up about the alternative, The polisario Militia is not exactly a step forward for the Saharan population. Mohamed Abdelaziz their Secretary General, is in power since 1976 (when Gerald Ford was US president). Pilsario has been sending kids for indoctrination to Cuba for decades.
- IkmoIkmo 10y agoThis is a decent article but it's flawed in some ways. Some of it is simply outright wrong: > The narrative of return and independence also presents many practical challenges. In 1976, the Moroccan “Green March” sent 350,000 Moroccans into the Western Sahara to settle, massively altering the demographics in the sparsely populated region. The Green March was a peaceful march of 350k unarmed Moroccans into the region, that pushed out the Spaniards who had colonised it. Not a single bullet was fired, and these 350k people didn't settle there at all, they went straight back home. On the other hand, in the past 40 years people have come to settle in the region, mostly driven by business opportunities as it's being invested in by Morocco. This is changing the demographics, but very much unrelated to the Green March. It's these quite clear errors that show the author isn't doing the proper research. Anyway what bothers me the most is that it's so one-sided. I don't mind when authors take up a position at all, and I too am empathetic with the plight of the Sahrawi's, but it's a deeply complex issue with many facets left unspoken. Like the role of Algeria, which has financed the military rebellion for decades. And not for moral reasons, because they think it's the 'right thing to do'. Morocco and Algeria had been in a cold war, one was allied to the west/us, the other to the soviet union. Algeria also had no direct access to the ocean outside of the med. sea, and wants to build a road through the western sahara to get to a free standing port. None of this is mentioned at all, we only hear of the poor human interest story of a refugee girl who's described as a perfect western hollywood story: poor but desperate to go to school etc, read it yourself it's a bit corny. Fact is, Morocco's various dynasties have ruled over these lands a long time. The Sahrawi's are berbers, just like Moroccans (and Algerians and Tunisians btw, they're all very similar peoples). Morocco is willing to invest heavily into the region, and is looking to give large degrees of autonomy, like has been ongoing in Morocco itself (a country which has many different berber groups, who've been getting increased autonomy, respect, special educational programmes, cultural recognition etc). But Morocco is not looking to lose territory to a few hundred thousand people under the influence of Algeria. The notion that this vast piece of land, if left alone by Morocco, will be independently and without other influences (e.g. Algeria) be ruled by a few hundred thousand people, and run as a successful nation, more so than as a part of Morocco, is I think naive. So I fully support their right to self determination, but I'm also cognisant that it's paired with a complex geopolitical story that's left unsaid in this article, and honestly I think the best and most sensible outcome is an autonomous region within Morocco.
- BurningFrog 10y agoYou can think of eastern Ethiopia as the last African colonies, since the Ethiopian Empire grabbed a lot of it during the "Scramble for Africa".