Morocco consolidates its sovereignty in the Sahara: from military control to strategic development
This area had previously been reserved by Morocco as a protected space for MINURSO patrols, the mission responsible for monitoring the ceasefire.
Today, Morocco is acting decisively to extend its road network towards the Mauritanian border, in a silent and gradual victory over the logic of stagnation established by the 1991 agreement. And this is not simply a matter of technical works or isolated infrastructure, but a forceful political translation of the equation of effective sovereignty and a firm message to those who still believe in the mirage of ‘liberated territories’, as the Polisario Front's propaganda falsely calls them.
The paving of roads in these key points on the geopolitical map of the Sahara, especially near the border with Mauritania, is part of a Moroccan strategy that has accumulated tools in recent years, focused on integrating the buffer zones into the orbit of national development and turning them into a link to the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, rather than leaving them as isolated areas, exposed to infiltration, terrorist groups, smuggling and all kinds of organised crime. Morocco is no longer content with managing an artificial conflict, but is moving determinedly towards a reconfiguration of its territorial and logistical architecture based on the logic of ‘starting with connection rather than deterrence, and empowerment rather than dismantling’.
In this context, field data points to what has been described as Operation Tibendira, which appears to be an intelligence operation or specialised intervention, the nature of which is currently under investigation. Sources describe it as serious and dangerous. If it is an attempt at armed infiltration or hostile activity, it would reflect the magnitude of the fragility on the other side of the wall, where Polisario elements live in a state of confusion and fear in the face of precise intelligence strikes and the loss of logistical depth, especially following the tightening of the security cordon by Morocco and its involvement in broad regional military alliances with its southern partners.
These developments have strategic dimensions that transcend the current situation, as they reopen the question of the usefulness of maintaining certain frozen provisions of the ceasefire agreement, especially given MINURSO's inability to monitor violations or guarantee neutrality in areas that are considered fully sovereign by the Kingdom of Morocco. This change sends a strong message to the international community, paving the way for a new approach that combines international legality with legitimacy on the ground and reaffirms the principle that ‘whoever connects the land, governs it’.
In the short term, these moves lay a solid foundation for broader regional political transformation, as Morocco seeks to turn its southern border with Mauritania into an economic and continental hub extending into West Africa, in contrast to a Polisario entrenched in a geographical vacuum threatened by the dissolution of its camps and progressive disarmament.
Today, Morocco is not only defending its Sahara, but is also reconfiguring the balance of power in the Sahel, securing strategic points and neutralising threats through intelligent positioning.
In conclusion, this is how silent victories are built: with foresight, with caravans without fanfare, with bulldozers levelling the ground, with highly trained special cyber defence units tracking mercenaries and terrorists, and with a state that knows how to transform sand into corridors of sovereignty, anticipating confrontations with realistic maps that disrupt all of its enemies' calculations.
Lahoucine Bekkar Sbaai, lawyer at the Bar Association before the Courts of Appeal of Agadir and Laayoune, researcher on migration and human rights, and expert on the Moroccan Sahara conflict.
Translation from Arabic by: Abdessamad Benyaich