French ships control the waters of Western Sahara | Porunsaharalibre | @x1saharalibre
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Mediapart – 18 SEPTEMBER 2019 BY RACHIDA EL AZZOUZI, YANN PHILIPPIN AND ANTTON ROUGET
To control the rich waters of Western Sahara, the Royal Armed Forces of Morocco use fighter planes and patrol boats delivered by France. This situation illustrates the incestuous relations between Paris and Rabat, which helps to block the resolution of this interminable conflict.
An unwavering ally of the kingdom, France is one of the historical arms suppliers to the Royal Armed Forces of Morocco. Including to help them in their military occupation of Western Sahara. Several ships and fighter planes delivered by France operate in this “non-autonomous territory on which Morocco has no recognized sovereignty”, according to the UN.
This is shown in the second part of our “French Arms” survey, a project initiated by the Dutch media Lighthouse Reports in cooperation with Disclose and with the support of Bellingcat, Mediapart, Arte and Radio France.
The analysis of several videos and satellite images show three Mirage F1 (manufactured by Dassault company) stationing several times during 2017 on the tarmac of El Aaiun airport, the “capital” of Western Sahara.
Similarly, three ships from Piriou shipyards and sold to the Moroccan Navy were located in 2018 and 2019 in Dakhla and El Aaiun, two of the main Saharawi ports from which sardines, octopus, squid and other cuttlefish and fishing boats leave. The French patrol boats have the mission to monitor the maritime traffic and control the fishing areas for the benefit of Morocco.
Asked by Mediapart, the companies concerned did not wish to answer our specific questions. In a global response the Council of French Defense Industries (CIDEF), which represents the professionals of the sector, said that the equipment is not sold without “prior authorization issued by an Inter ministerial Commission placed with the Prime Minister “.
The government indicates that it exercises a “strict, transparent and accountable control of the export of war materials”, notably after a “thorough interdepartmental examination” prior to authorizations.
However, the conditions for the use by the Moroccan army of fighter jets and French ships for the control of the Western Sahara seaboard is questioned, even as the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) challenged several times, including one last time in January 2018, the validity of the trade agreements between the European Union and Morocco.
On that occasion, the Court found that the Kingdom appropriated “unilaterally” the territory of Western Sahara and its immense natural resources (including those derived from fishing). The stakes are high: according to the separatists, more than 90% of Moroccan fishing is done in Saharawi waters.
But this appropriation, which many Spanish or French manufacturers profit from, is done without the consent of the local population. “The Saharawi people did not freely dispose of their natural resources, as the right to self-determination does,” said CJEU General Counsel Melchior Wathelet in January 2018.
Did the naval builder Piriou and the French government know that the ships delivered to the Moroccan navy would be used to control Saharawi fishing zones? The issue is not only moral but also legal, since the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), ratified by France in 2014, prohibits the transfer of material that would allow “attacks directed against civilians or property or “could be used to commit them”.
“Morocco has no sovereignty recognized in the Sahrawi territories,” said again in February 2019 the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), joining the European Parliament, on the basis of the decision of the European Court of Justice, to reject the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement.
In its 2019 Global Report, HRW also notes that “Moroccan authorities have consistently prevented rallies for self-determination, and have obstructed the work of some local human rights NGOs, including by blocking their legal registration.” Security forces are also accused of “beating activists and journalists, in detention or on the streets”.
Despite the protests of human rights activists, in February 2019 the European Parliament adopted the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement including the blessed waters of Western Sahara. This is further evidence that the European Union, in the wheel of French diplomacy, does not care much about respect for the rights of the Saharawi people, who have been waiting since the beginning of the occupation in 1975 after the Spanish decolonization to exercise their right to self-determination.
In 1991, agreements were signed between the Moroccan authorities and the Polisario Front for the organization of a referendum on self-determination. But the prospect of such a deadline has moved inexorably away. Today, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Saharawi refugees live in camps.
Morocco, which fears the outcome of a referendum vote, rejects any solution other than autonomy under its sovereignty. From 1980 to 1987, Morocco built the “Wall of Sands”, a “wall of defense” that Saharawi call “wall of shame”, one of the longest walls (2720 kilometers) and the most secured in the world, which goes from the Algerian border to the north-east to Mauritania in the south, surrounded by the military and riddled with antipersonnel mines.
This political blockage, embodied by an over-militarization of the region, is notably the result of the incestuous relations between France and Morocco, which contribute to prevent the resolution of this interminable conflict. Abscess that has rotted for decades the links between Morocco and its enemy brother, Algeria, support and supplier of Polisario weapons in the name of the right of peoples to self-determination.
“Algeria blames us for our lack of a neutral position on the Sahara. It’s true. The problem in France is that we do not assume our foreign policy. We have to say that we are for a Moroccan Sahara for obvious reasons of national interests and security” told a French diplomat to Mediapart, an old acquaintance of this folder, in November 2018 during the inauguration of LGV Tangier-Casablanca, the last showcase of the Paris-Rabat axis.
Behind neutrality of facade, France supports Morocco seamlessly behind the scenes, whatever the changes at the Elysee and Matignon. A magical bond has always attached the French presidents to the Shereefian monarchy, whether right or left, and Emmanuel Macron has not departed from this old tradition.
Forced to the UN to negotiate directly with the Saharawi independentist, Morocco has always found in France a faithful ally. In November 2017, during the visit to Paris of Saâdeddine el-Othmani, the head of the Moroccan government, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe declared that France “supported the plan of autonomy [of Morocco] which is serious and credible “.
When King Mohammed VI surprised the chancelleries by inviting the Algerian government to a “frank and direct dialogue” during his speech to the nation last year, on the anniversary of the 1975 annexation of the territory and the Great Green March, summit of nationalist propaganda, it is once again the French Republic who applauded his initiative, yet shunned by Algiers.
France strongly supports Morocco in the discussions and the corridors of the United Nations as in Brussels, where the Moroccan lobby is very powerful. France has also campaigned in the front line for the signing of the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement.
To this great Moroccan diplomatic victory, we must add another, not without the French diplomacy: the support of the Americans, finally flawless.
When he was appointed in 2018, John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, who recently resigned, had given Rabat cold sweats. This former right-hand man of James Baker in the Western Sahara issue, when he was sent to the UN from 1997 to 2000 to organize a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara, was pro-Polisario.
He advocated the application of a referendum by coercion. Morocco found itself even more under pressure at the UN, where the resumption of a dialogue frozen for six years between the four major players in the conflict: Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania.
The discussions finally resumed in December 2018. Which in itself is a success, because Morocco refused to return to the negotiating table if Algeria was not present, which Algiers swept away, believing that the Sahara is a business between Moroccans and Saharawi.
In the lead of this advance: Horst Köhler, the former German president, became the UN mediator on this issue. Last May, he had to resign for health reasons. If his departure offers a respite to Moroccans who would be satisfied with the status quo, the anxiety remains of the appointment of a successor, this time African, and sensitive to the fate of Saharawi.
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