The truth is that the Polisario is a hugely popular, grass-root, mass-based, representative, democratic, and secular organisation, which, in Zunes’ words, is a “moderately left-leaning liberation movement governing a Sunni Muslim population… Not only is it ludicrous on face value, but the U.S. State Department has found no indication that Polisario has adopted such extremist ideologies.”
Colonialists and slave masters designate African liberation movements as terrorist groups. So was it with the Mau Mau of Kenya, Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FNL), Guinea Bissau’s African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), Mozambique’s Frente de Libertacao Mocambique (FRELIMO), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), Namibia’s South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), and South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). So, the campaign to designate Western Sahara’s Popular Front of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro, popularly known as the Polisario Front, as a terrorist organisation, is not surprising.
Robert Clark, a former British soldier, who currently parades himself as “Research Fellow” at the Yorktown Institute, in Washington DC, in The Telegraph of 1 July, called on Western governments to designate Polisario as “a terrorist organisation.”
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The major reason advanced by Clark is that some American “legislators from both sides of the House acted to prescribed the group (Polisario) as a terrorist organisation.”
Indeed, a United States (US) Republican far-right legislator, Joe Wilson, is sponsoring the initiative, while Representative Jimmy Panetta of the Democratic Party is supporting it.
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But, are they not aware of the verdicts and lessons of history that no power or force has successfully proscribed the ideals, and aspirations of a people determined to free themselves from foreign occupation, colonisation, and plundering of their natural resources?
Have they forgotten that as powerful and divisive as Great Britain was, it could not stop US European settlers from securing their independence?
Have they not read how France and US were disgracefully defeated by Vietnamese peasants, who were determined to liberate themselves from foreign occupation?
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Have they not read how Portugal was roundly defeated by the poor ‘illiterate’ and lightly armed peasants of Guinean Bissau, Mozambique and Angola?
European settlers, backed by blood-thirsty and far-right racist warmongers in the West, could not militarily defeat the ragtag Zimbabwean, Namibian, and South African liberation movements nor stop their independence.
Insults, blackmail, suppression of human, civil and democratic rights, shrinking political spaces, and name-calling like “terrorists”, “savages”, “blood-thirsty rebels” and outlawing the liberation movements only succeeded in radicalising them and internationalising their struggle for independence.
But the Western governments know that declaring Polisario “a terrorist organisation” will not sell politically with their critical and politically conscious populace. The latter knows or will later know that the Sharawi, led by Polisario, have never been part of Morocco.
The ACHPR, CJEU and the UNGA have repeatedly ruled or resolved that Morocco is illegally occupying Western Sahara. So, Morocco cannot plunder Western Sahara’s resources, tyrannise its people, nor co-opt the country into its childish and stupid dream of a “Greater Morocco” – a dream ignited by Morocco’s unquenchable greed to plunder, fuelled by the insatiable appetite of transnational companies for super-monopoly profits, and shamefully fired by many Western Governments.
The Western European public will realise that Polisario has, for fifty years – politically, diplomatically, and legally – led the Sharawi resistance against Moroccan occupation, and that when the Polisario fights militarily, it is compelled to do so by fascist Morocco.
Stephen Zunes, rightly stated that, “Polisario has never engaged in acts of terrorism. Not once. Indeed, they have formally ratified the Geneva Conventions and their protocols and they are a party to the African Union’s Convention on Counter-Terrorism.”
The African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) consider Polisario as the authentic, legitimate, and sole representative of the Sahrawi people. It is a full member of AU.
Besides, its cases have been repeatedly tabled, debated, and favourably ruled upon at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPRs), and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
The ACHPR, CJEU and the UNGA have repeatedly ruled or resolved that Morocco is illegally occupying Western Sahara. So, Morocco cannot plunder Western Sahara’s resources, tyrannise its people, nor co-opt the country into its childish and stupid dream of a “Greater Morocco” – a dream ignited by Morocco’s unquenchable greed to plunder, fuelled by the insatiable appetite of transnational companies for super-monopoly profits, and shamefully fired by many Western Governments.
The ACHPR, for instance, ruled that, “Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara is a violation of the right to self-determination and independence, and that all States have an obligation to assist the people of Western Sahara in their struggle for self-determination”.
It also ruled that African States are legally compelled, “under international law, to find a permanent solution to the occupation and to ensure the enjoyment of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people and not to do anything that would give recognition to such occupation as lawful or impede their enjoyment of this right.”
Therefore, Clark’s allegation that the UN mandated Morocco to administer occupied Western Sahara in 1991 is a blatant and nake lie. Rather, the UN ordered a referendum for the Sharawi to determine their own future.
If Clark and a handful Washington legislators are so ignorant of the verdict of history, the Western European governments are not.
If US, led by “cow-boys” and Western Europe by ‘liberals’ decide to follow far-right US politicians in their degeneration, European citizens definitely have the capacity to call them to order.
Another excuse given by Clark why Polisario should be baptised as “a terrorist organisation” is that the latter is a “Marxist militia backed by Iran, Hezbollah… that launches attacks against Morocco in the name of freedom for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.”
Clark’s spurious reasons expose him as a warmonger, an ignoramus, a propagandist of the Joseph Goebbels’ type, and an obedient servant of the fascist Moroccan monarchy, which is notorious for committing crimes against humanity, undertaking genocidal activities, and crushing the human, civil and democratic rights of the Sharawi people.
Also, that Iran in its war with Israel will increasingly come to rely, “more on its unconventional capabilities: namely, proxies across the wider Middle East and north Africa region.” Polisario, wrote Clark, is one of such groups that are “emerging at speed to sow instability and terror in north Africa.”
Clark added that, “Make no mistake: the UK is firmly in the Iranian ayatollahs’ crosshairs for revenge, despite the UK Government being forced to sit on (the) sidelines of this war by an increasingly distrustful America and Israel.”
But John Bolton, former US National Security Advisor and a leading hardline critic of Iran disagreed, adding that the “allegations” have no evidence whatsoever.
Bolton, who has for more than thirty years been actively involved in diplomatic efforts to find lasting solutions to the Western Sahara crisis, said: “I didn’t see any sign of Marxist or jihadist or Iranian or anything else and I have been there many times.”
The truth is that the Polisario is a hugely popular, grass-root, mass-based, representative, democratic, and secular organisation, which, in Zunes’ words, is a “moderately left-leaning liberation movement governing a Sunni Muslim population… Not only is it ludicrous on face value, but the U.S. State Department has found no indication that Polisario has adopted such extremist ideologies.”
A further reason advanced by Clark is that Morocco enjoys US, France and UK support, and that the latter should support “Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara.” He added that it is in the security interests of the West to proscribe Polisario.
Clark’s spurious reasons expose him as a warmonger, an ignoramus, a propagandist of the Joseph Goebbels’ type, and an obedient servant of the fascist Moroccan monarchy, which is notorious for committing crimes against humanity, undertaking genocidal activities, and crushing the human, civil and democratic rights of the Sharawi people.
In Nigeria, we call characters like Clark “follow-follow” or “Dundee.” The first meaning a psychologically slavish and uncritical character; and the second, a highly overrated but extremely unintelligent, unskilful, and unproductive nonentity. His aim is to trigger and prolong a bloody war, and, if possible, deny the Sharawi their fundamental human right to complete independence.
Morocco’s retrograde, anti-democratic, and fascist monarchy stands to gain the most from a false tagging of the Polisario as a “terrorist organisation.”
Conscientious humanity, therefore, has the duty to stand by Polisario and the Sharawi.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: [email protected]
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