Morocco Drives A War In Western Sahara For Its Phosphates – OpEd

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In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.

In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its Personal Envoy for Western Sahara Staffan de Mistura to Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue “toward a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara.” De Mistura was previously deputed to solve the crises of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; none of his missions have ended well and have mostly been lost causes. The UN has appointed five personal envoys for Western Sahara so far—including Mistura—beginning with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served from 1997 to 2004. De Mistura, meanwhile, succeeded former German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019. Köhler’s main achievement was to bring the four main parties—Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria, and Mauritania—to a first roundtable discussion in Geneva in December 2018: this roundtable process resulted in a few gains, where all participants agreed on “cooperation and regional integration,” but no further progress seems to have been made to resolve the issues in the region since then. When the UN initially put forward De Mistura’s nomination to this post, Morocco had initially resisted his appointment, but under pressure from the West, Morocco finally accepted his appointment in October 2021, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita welcoming him to Rabat on January 14. De Mistura also met the Polisario Front representative to the UN in New York on November 6, 2021, before meeting other representatives in Tindouf, Algeria, at Sahrawi refugee camps in January. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in any productive solution in the region.

Abraham Accords

In August 2020, the United States government engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. The U.S. secured a deal with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to agree to a rapprochement with Israel in return for the U.S. making arms sales to these countries as well as for the United States legitimizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts—$23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States—breaking decades of precedent—decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear during his meeting with Bourita in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The U.S., meanwhile, has continued with its arms sales to Morocco but has suspended weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates.

Phosphates

By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.

In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”

Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).

Human Rights

After the 1991 ceasefire, the UN set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have a mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to appease the Kingdom of Morocco. The Moroccan government has tried to intervene several times when the UN team in Western Sahara attempted to make the slightest noise about the human rights violations in the region. In March 2016, the kingdom expelledMINURSO staff because the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation.”

Pressure from the United States is going to ensure that the only realistic outcome of negotiations is for continued Moroccan control of Western Sahara. All parties involved in the conflict are readying for battle. Far from peace, the Abraham Accords are going to accelerate a return to war in this part of Africa.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

9 thoughts on “Morocco Drives A War In Western Sahara For Its Phosphates – OpEd

  • January 22, 2022 at 9:27 pm
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    Morocco considers Western Sahara an integral part of its territory. But, you seem to have an issue with Morocco’s Phosphate mining.
    It is ok for the USA and other western countries where per capita is $50000+, to go 1000s of miles to other continents to loot resources, BUT Morocco whose per capita income is approx $3,083, mining phosphate in what it considers its southern territory is a big problem, and we can’t have that.
    Then you said:
    “a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).”
    Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic? I looked at the Arab League website and couldn’t find it. Then I looked at the UN member countries list and couldn’t find it.
    But, and it is a BIG BUT, when I looked at the Algerian Press Agency I found it full of news about the imaginary SADR, which nothing more than an Algerian creation out of spite and hatred.
    You are an academic, I don’t need to remind you of the need for objectivity.

    Reply
    • January 24, 2022 at 3:32 pm
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      You may want to check the African Union list of countries instead of lurking at the Algeria’s position. Besides, if you wear the right lenses, you will see that at the UN, status of Western Sahara is NOT a morrocan territory but a land to be decolonized.

      84 nations recognize RASD.

      Practice what you preach.

      Reply
      • January 26, 2022 at 6:17 am
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        Only 41 nations recognize the RASD, buddy. Get it right. That’s out of 193, and constantly shrinking.

        Reply
  • January 23, 2022 at 2:36 am
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    War? What war? I am from the region and this is news to me. There has been tension between Morocco and Algeria over the territory for a log time. Sworn enemies since the 60’s. I encourage the author to pay a visit to the region before spreading unfounded claims about war. This is big talk Vijay.

    Reply
    • January 23, 2022 at 4:06 am
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      First of all, Morocco sent it’s forces into Guergerat because Polisario forces were harassing civilian vehicles crossing the buffer zone into Mauritania. It wasn’t until after MULTIPLE complaints submitted to the UN, which the UN did nothing about other than verbally reprimanding the Polisario, that Morocco secured the area. Secondly, Morocco’s claim on the Western Sahara has nothing to do with it’s phosphates, which you point out yourself are minor compared to what Morocco already has. This is a matter of principle, of not letting a Euro-centric view colored by colonialism dictate the real borders of Africa’s nations.

      Do your research, Vijay, instead of laying us a hack job article.

      Reply
  • January 24, 2022 at 12:58 am
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    And this is exactly what happens when you write an answer before you read the question…
    In all seriousness though, doing a bit of homework and a minimum effort can show you that what this article is claiming is utterly ridiculous.

    Reply
  • January 24, 2022 at 1:50 pm
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    Either ignorance or Pro-Algerian propaganda but I think it’s both at the same time. What are your references? what are your sources? You are concentrating on Phosphate while Morocco has built roads, universities, water treatment plants,… (which even an oil and gas exporting country which is Algeria does not supply to its population). To show you that your article is nothing but a bunch of lies, I challenge you to release an article from the United Nations which says that Morocco is an occupier of Western Sahara. For your knowledge, Algeria has just arrested 4 Sahraouis who are trying to flee the hell of the Tindouf camps

    Reply
  • February 11, 2022 at 10:08 pm
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    This article ignores the basic facts : the vast majority of moroccan phosphates reserves are located in central morocco, near towns like khouribga and bengurir, far away from western sahara and the contested borders.

    The western sahara contains between 2 and 3% of the world’s phosphates reserves, and Morocco (within its international borders, not counting western sahara) had at least 66% of the world’s proven reserves.

    So of all the possible reasons why Morocco is holding firm on his position of keeping western sahara, the phosphates argument is may be the ONLY one that make no sense.

    Reply

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