Sahara Conflict - Where is Spain?

To paraphrase Richard II's Shakespeare, in international politics, wasting time only ends up wearing you out. Having allowed a few days to pass in order to view the situation in Western Sahara following the events of Guerguerat with some perspective, and observing the banality of the short-sighted sector of Spanish opinion makers, we cannot but praise the wisdom of the English bard, noting the lightness of the reactions of the Spanish political class, which persists in making readings in terms of national policy of matters with such international repercussions as the one we are dealing with.  And this, even though Spain continues to be "de iure", as stipulated by the UN and ratified by the Audiencia Nacional, the administrative power of Western Sahara, is a responsibility that we exercise wearily and without conviction, as if what is happening 55 nautical miles from Fuerteventura were not with us.

And yet the importance of what is happening in the Sahara has not gone unnoticed by the international players who maintain the will to be decisive on the world stage. Such is the case of the USA, a country which, mutatis mutandis, has shifted the focus of US policy from the North African countries to the Sahel area, though it has remained constant since the time of the Reagan Doctrine: the stability of the Alawite monarchy is a geostrategic priority for the USA, above other considerations, including the Saharawi people's aspirations for self-determination. The recent opening of diplomatic missions in Western Sahara by the Emirates and Jordan in the area controlled by Morocco leaves little doubt about the extent of the Department of State's commitment to King Mohammed VI, while partly explaining the "timing" of the Polisario Front's apparent over-reaction to the movement of Moroccan troops at the Guergarat buffer, located between the Moroccan and Mauritanian borders, to unblock the border crossing and restore public order. 

It is to be hoped that Rabat will join Amman and Abu Dhabi sooner rather than later in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, possibly in exchange for recognition by the USA of its full sovereignty over the territories of Western Sahara. This tune is not new, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates publicly supported Rabat when Morocco ceased to maintain diplomatic relations with Iran in 2018, accusing the country of the ayatollahs of facilitating the delivery of weapons and providing logistic and technical support to Polisario through the Iranian embassy in Algiers via Hezbollah. These diplomatic movements, which seek to give a green light to the "status quo" in Western Sahara, clash head-on with the interest of some sectors in Algeria in obtaining an outlet to the Atlantic, creating a strip that separates Morocco from Mauritania. The planned Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, which must pass through the Western Sahara to reach Morocco before reaching Europe, is an incentive for Russia to mediate in Saharan and sub-Saharan affairs through Algerian interpositions-an attractive option for protecting the interests of Algerian and Russian gas exports to the EU, and for Iran's aspirations of substantially increasing oil sales to Europe once the international agreement on Iran's nuclear programme with Biden is resuscitated at the White House.   

In practice, the situation is not very favourable to the success of the Polisario gambit in its flight forward, even though relations between Algeria and Morocco will continue to be marked by friction in the foreseeable future. On paper, the Algerian army could play a direct role in supporting Polisario thanks to the recent constitutional reform allowing military interventions in other countries, which plausibly entered into the calculations of Polisario by attempting to force the situation by ending the ceasefire and declaring a state of war against Morocco.  

However, in practice, and despite the Saharan issue, the channels of communication between Rabat and Algiers remain open, and mutual dependence on energy supplies, together with the weight of socio-cultural ties, make it unlikely that the crisis will be openly militarised in the short term. It is therefore doubtful that the rivalry between the two nations, which is focused on the Sahara, will have any other consequences than to exhaust Morocco's resources, prevent the geopolitical unity of the Maghreb countries and make the humanitarian crisis in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria chronic.  

The balance of power between Algeria and Morocco means that Mauritania, halfway between the Maghreb and West Africa, is playing a major role in fitting together the pieces of the Sahel puzzle, a space that Algeria sees as its "chasse gardée". The importance of both the Guerguerat trade corridor and the protection of the maritime section of the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline for the economic development of the sub-Saharan region suggests that the underlying interests of those who, with greater or lesser transparency, support the Polisario Front, will seek to gain a strategic advantage by destabilising Mauritania, a country with which Spain has much deeper historical ties than is usually admitted, but which toponymy reminds us of, and which offers Spanish diplomacy an opportunity to carry out differential diplomatic initiatives, in relation to the problem of the Sahara.

Mauritania's relations with its Maghreb neighbours, Morocco and Algeria, have not been easy. When Spain abandoned the Sahara in 1975, Mauritania accepted Morocco's offer to occupy the southern third of the Western Sahara, with which it has a long border. However, the hostility of the Polisario Front forced Mauritania to sign a peace agreement with the armed group and withdraw its occupation in 1979, eventually recognising the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic of the Polisario Front in 1981. This recognition was ineffective, as Morocco proceeded to immediately occupy the area Mauritania had vacated, preventing Algerian expectations from materialising. 

Possibly as a result of the country's relatively lower specific weight in the Maghreb as a whole, Mauritania is perceived as a secondary actor; almost marginal. However, Mauritania's is a (fragile) success story in the face of the growing and complex threat of the Islamist militant groups operating in the Sahel since the Algerian Salafism of the GSPC was baptised in Mauritania in 2005. It is doubtful, however, whether the country can contain in the long term the pressures stemming from the interrelated and cross-cutting interests at local, national and international levels in the Sahel without external support, despite the fruits of the military reforms that took place after the massacre perpetrated by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, The GSPC's "spin-off" in Tourine in 2009, and of the successful strategy of improving the security and living conditions of populations in remote areas of the desert in order to generate loyalty to the government led by Mauritanian Colonel El Khalil. 

This is precisely one of the areas in which enhanced Spanish foreign cooperation, together with a vigorous policy of direct investment in infrastructures, accompanied by private initiative, can play a distinctive role in multilateralism, projecting soft power while offering training in antiterrorist matters and advice on political and economic governance. Ensuring that Mauritania does not lose control of its territory as a result of external interference should become a priority objective of our foreign policy. Spain has a historic obligation to find its own voice in an issue for which it has been assigned direct responsibility, and whose answer is not only in El Aaiún.