Sahara: The collapse of Swedish hope in the face of the autonomy proposal

On Monday 19 January 2026, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced its formal support for Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara. This was not a simple change of position, but rather the inevitable culmination of a European repositioning that has been taking place over the last few years, through a country that had traditionally been particularly close to the Polisario's postulates.

The story of a failed expectation

Sweden was not a pioneer in this shift. It was the last piece of a domino that was already in motion when other members of the European Union were adopting successive positions in support of the Moroccan autonomy project. With Sweden's accession, a large majority of European Union members now support the Moroccan autonomy project as a ‘serious and credible basis’ for resolving a dispute that has been unnecessarily prolonged.

But Sweden, the social democratic Sweden of Olof Palme, had for decades been the European champion of African self-determination. Palme's words were not empty rhetoric: he financed liberation movements, criticised South African apartheid with moral ferocity, and placed Sweden on the side of those who believed that history was made from the barricades of justice. In that context – that world of principled mobilisation – Western Sahara was not a distant conflict for them, it was the symbol of the last decolonisation battle on a continent they believed had been plundered.

It is therefore necessary to retrace the path of hopes that the Polisario Front had placed in Stockholm. For decades, Sweden was perceived as a potential bastion of support for Sahrawi independence. Not because it formalised any recognition—it never did—but because it maintained a critical stance towards Morocco that no other European country of weight allowed itself to take.

Thus, we arrive at 2012, when the Swedish parliament passed a motion urging the government to recognise the SADR ‘as soon as possible’, something unprecedented in Europe. The left promoted it and the far right supported it for different reasons, with its votes proving decisive. That moment in 2012 was probably the peak of that historical Nordic consistency.

Between 2015 and 2016, commercial reality prevailed decisively. When Morocco vetoed IKEA's expansion into its territory in response to Sweden's pro-Polisario stance, Stockholm understood that principles came at a price they were not willing to pay. Foreign Minister Margot Wallström then justified the abandonment of any recognition by arguing that the SADR lacked the attributes of a consolidated state under international law. In this, she was technically flawless.

The Polisario Front was naive in trusting that Sweden's political support would translate into institutional action. Between 2012 and 2016, when left-wing governments came to power in Sweden, the expectation was that Stockholm would be the first European country to formally recognise the SADR. This never happened; political realism led Sweden to choose pragmatism over principles.

The collapse of the working consensus was

From then on, for a decade, Stockholm maintained a comfortable ambiguity: it criticised from a distance, but did not commit itself. It was the stance of someone who wants to have principles without assuming the costs. As other European governments gradually aligned themselves with the Moroccan proposal, Sweden's ambiguity became increasingly unsustainable. It was capitulation to the inevitable.

Between 2024 and 2025, something happened that had long seemed impossible. The defensive ‘Nordic bloc’ that the Polisario had hoped would be its stronghold no longer existed. When countries such as Finland and Denmark successively announced their alignment with Moroccan autonomy, it became clear that the structure that had seemed solid was a house of cards.

Sweden was the last Nordic piece to fall. It is the overwhelming victory of reality over utopia and the false hopes of those who want to perpetuate an insane status quo through an endless journey to nowhere, from which only the population condemned to life in the camps of Tindouf emerges worse off.

The resolution as an accelerator, not a catalyst

In October 2025, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2797, describing the autonomy plan as ‘the most viable solution’. That resolution did not create consensus, it crystallised it. It allowed governments that had been hesitant to feel more comfortable, finding greater international legitimacy to formalise positions that were already more than obvious.

Sweden arrived in January 2026 in a context where resistance had completely crumbled. European governments had reconfigured their positions over several years. The Polisario's classic tactic of betting on left-wing governments had been exhausted. There was no Nordic bloc. There was no European alternative. There was, simply, a geometry of power. The combined weight of North African stability, the interest of European governments recalibrating their strategies, and a Europe that opted for coherence and stability rather than fragmentation in an increasingly turbulent world.

The significance that transcends Sweden

Swedish recognition matters less for what it represents in numerical terms — in that respect, it is just one more country, adding to the total — than for what it symbolises with regard to the disappearance of one of the last and historic international supports of any standing that the Polisario hoped to maintain.

When so many members of the European Union—and, of course, outside it—recognise the framework proposed by Rabat, the solution ceases to be ‘controversial’ and becomes consensual. There is no place for the expression U-turn; it has become obsolete. And the states that still stand firm in their position are exceptions that prove the rule, not viable alternatives. It is only a matter of time before that changes. The Polisario has no one to play against, nor alliances to build.

Simultaneously, in the Security Council, the parameters for a solution have changed definitively. It is no coincidence that multiple aligned powers are converging towards the recognition of the Moroccan plan as viable. It is the recognition that fifty years of conflict are more than enough and will not produce a better alternative for the population.

Sweden's decision confirms the end of a parenthesis that opened in 1975, when the Green March transformed the political coordinates of a corner of the planet. Fifty years later, the international community has chosen to resolve what arms and Algerian obstructionism could not: the integration of Western Sahara under a framework that preserves rights and identities under Moroccan sovereignty.

Conclusion: when the circle closes

Sweden was late to this reality. But its arrival confirms that the international architecture has reconfigured its fundamental pieces. The narrative of the last African colony has given way to the pragmatism of the most viable solution.

For the Polisario, the message is clear: there are no illusions to cultivate, no allies to recover, no strategy to reverse this international architecture that has decided to converge. The Nordic mirage has disappeared.

And that makes the Swedish shift significant.