International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
Western Sahara ceasefire in force since 1991 blew to smithereens on 13 November, after the Moroccan monarchy launched a military attack against Sahrawi demonstrators who were blocking Guerguerat road running across five kilometres in the buffer zone.
This area is covered by the truce agreements and connects the Moroccan-occupied Sahara with Mauritania. Since 21 October the demonstrators have been protesting against the illegal use of the border crossing, a Moroccan violation of the ceasefire, through which goods from the plundering of Western Sahara’s resources such as phosphates and fishing products are also circulating on the maritime platform. Pillage involving multinational companies from Spanish State, the US, France and other nations.
Through attacking civilian protesters, the repressive forces of the Moroccan monarchic regime opened up three new breaches in the Buffer Strip. The Polisario Front, the national liberation movement of the Sahrawi people founded in 1973, repelled the Moroccan attack, pounding with artillery four bases and two checkpoints, and declared the renewal of hostilities. “The war of independence of the people has started”, announced the Polisario Front while the general mobilisation in the liberated territories and the refugee camps in Algeria was activated. There were demonstrations in El-Ayoun and other Sahrawi cities occupied by Morocco, heavily repressed by the monarchy.
Western Sahara is the last territory recognised by the UN pending decolonisation in the African continent. In 2019, the dictatorial Moroccan regime insisted on rejecting a referendum that contains independence as an option. They just allow a relative autonomy within the Moroccan state.
The Sahrawi authorities asked the UN mission, MINURSO, to leave. The purpose of its presence was to guarantee the observation of the truce terms and to organise a self-determination referendum, but in both issues, it has failed. The mission never had the mandate to protect Sahrawi human rights under Moroccan occupation, a limitation permanently denounced by the Sahrawi organisations. In fact, the UN had monitored the completion by way of facts of an extremely oppressive colonial regime of the Kingdom of Morocco. It has the support of the French and American imperialism, the ultra-reactionary regimes of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the Spanish State collusion as it is still formally the administering power of the territory. Since Felipe Gonzalez and PSOE’s betrayal in the post-Franco period, all governments stood by the status quo of the Moroccan colonial occupation, including the current pseudo-progressive government of PSOE and Podemos.
The border between Western Sahara and Mauritania has been a hot zone for decades. Between 2016 and 2017, Morocco tried to asphalt the five kilometres of road through Guerguerat between the Moroccan military wall and the Mauritanian border, but the Polisario Front mobilised its troops and prevented the work from being completed.
8 November marked the tenth anniversary of the Gdeim Izik Massacre, the eviction and destruction of a protest camp attended by some 20,000 Sahrawis on the outskirts of El Ayoun, followed by a wild repressive raid by the Moroccan dictatorship throughout the occupied territory. At that time, the IWU-FI pronounced itself repudiating the Moroccan repression and supporting the cause of the liberation of the Sahrawi people: «The struggle for the independence of Western Sahara, the last African colony, is part of an international fight for the expulsion of the transnationals that are plundering Africa, producing internal wars and genocides to take possession of its minerals and oil… in a process of semi-colonisation of the whole continent».
Today, we, the revolutionary socialists, once again call upon the workers’ and popular organisations, which claim to be revolutionary, democratic or anti-imperialist, to support the Sahrawi people in their struggle for self-determination and for the end of the Moroccan colonial occupation. And we are in solidarity with the Amazigh and other oppressed minorities within the Moroccan state. Let us demand the governments of countries like Argentina and Brazil, or most of the European countries, which still do not recognise the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, to do so immediately, and to cease all economic exchanges involving the resources illegally plundered from the occupied Sahara by the transnationals and the Moroccan regime. With the support of the peoples of the world, the Sahrawis will win.
All support to the Sahrawi people in their struggle for freedom and self-determination! Recognition to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic!
Down with the Moroccan monarchy! Freedom for the Sahrawi political prisoners and all oppressed nationalities in Morocco
Stop the imperialist support of the Moroccan dictatorship! Out with imperialism in North Africa!
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
14 November 2020.
