[Salon] Macron signals a shift on Western Sahara - Arab Digest.org guest post

Macron signals a shift on Western Sahara Summary: a decision by France over Western Sahara represents a shift and one that has infuriated Algeria. We thank Francis Ghilès for today’s article. A regular contributor to Arab Digest, Francis is a specialist on security, energy, and political trends in North Africa and the Western Mediterranean. He is a senior associate research fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and a visiting fellow at King’s College, London. From 1981 to 1995 Francis was the North Africa correspondent for the Financial Times and has written for numerous publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and El Pais. You can find his most recent Arab Digest podcast “The Maghreb at a moment of opportunity” here. In a letter to king Mohamed VI of Morocco 30 July President Emmanuel Macron shifted France’s position on the Western Sahara dispute by saying his country favoured the Moroccan plan which gives the territory limited autonomy but keeps it under Moroccan control. France thus follows Spain’s change of tack which occurred two and a half years ago when the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in a private letter to King Mohammed VI, described Morocco’s 2007 proposal for Sahrawi autonomy as “the most serious, realistic and credible” basis for resolving the conflict in a territory it relinquished in 1975. The Spanish move followed the German government which had described Morocco’s plan as “an important contribution” to solving what is now a half century old dispute. The shift in the position of European countries followed the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory by Washington announced on the eve of Christmas 2020, in the dying days of the Trump administration. Algeria’s reaction to Macron's move was hardly surprising. The Algerians have backed the Sahwari independence struggle since Spain's withdrawal which saw Morocco seize 70% of the territory and the Sahwaris hanging on to the rest. As happened with Spain in March 2022, Algiers withdrew its ambassador, this time from Paris. No doubt French companies will be less favoured than hitherto in the attribution of major contracts, as Spanish ones were. These shifts in the position of the US and leading EU countries suggest Morocco is tightening its grip on Western Sahara. The French move will be welcome news to King Mohamed VI at a time when the huge bloodletting in Gaza has made Morocco’s decision, back in 2020, to normalise with Israel, as a quid pro quo for the recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, increasingly untenable vis a vis Moroccan public opinion. Over 80% of Moroccans disapprove of their country’s normalising its relations with Israel. Such disapproval has in no way, however, hindered Morocco’s deepening security ties with Israel which go back to the reign of the king’s father, Hassan II. That said the real question is whether France’s diplomatic shift represents a sea change in the evolution of the conflict. After all, the United Nations process remains based on the principle of self-determination. As Aboubakr Jamai pointed out in a recent RFI article “it would have been a meaningful evolution if France championed a UN Security Council resolution rejecting the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination” but that is not the case. He rightly points out that France’s change of position on the issue is the result of a cost-benefit analysis mostly related to major economic projects (the extension of the TGV railway line to Marrakesh etc) and security (it is better to have good relations with Rabat when terrorists of Moroccan origin are a threat to you.) Relations between France and Morocco have been strained in recent years but Morocco remains an attractive destination for private Western investments, notably French and Spanish. On 30 July President Emmanuel Macron shifted France’s position on the Western Sahara in favour of Morocco's plan The kingdom has also played a smart game over decades to increase its soft power in the Western media not least by hosting major music festivals and international conferences in Marrakesh. Algeria on the other hand has cut its people off from the West by making the country virtually inaccessible to Western media and not very welcome to foreign investment outside the hydrocarbons sector. Its leaders increasingly favour contracts with China, Gulf countries and Turkey, the terms of which are seldom made public. The Western Sahara issue plays out in legal terms but in the court of public opinion and diplomacy it has for half a century been very low down the list of Western priorities. That remains even more true at a time when the world is focussed on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The mistrust between Algeria and Morocco goes back nearly six decades. Competition to be the leading regional power is at the heart of a bitter rivalry which has prevented broader economic cooperation between North African countries from Mauritania to Tunisia. That mistrust lead to the closing, on November 1 2021 of the Pedro Duran Farrell pipeline, otherwise known as the Maghreb Europe (GME) gas pipeline which had been up and running since 1996 and carried Algerian gas to Spain and Portugal via Morocco. Its closure has not stopped Algeria respecting its gas delivery contracts to both Iberian countries, nor has its badly affected the Moroccan economy which benefitted from the 7% transit fee the kingdom enjoyed on the throughput of gas. Morocco has meanwhile made a big effort to diversify its economic partners in Africa, Brazil and Asia. But its hopes, upon re-joining the African Union a few years ago that the latter would expel the Sahrawi Republic have been dashed. Algeria for its part retains many allies on this issue across the continent, not least among heavyweights such as South Africa. France’s shift of position does not represent a major sea change in a conflict which remains, in diplomatic terms, frozen. When he relinquished his job as head of the UN mission on Western Sahara in 2005, the former US Secretary of State James Baker III bluntly acknowledged that “the UN can only be as effective as its member states…the member states don’t want to solve it, so it is not going to be solved.” In 2020 he blasted President Trump’s decision to recognise Morocco’s claim calling it “a serious blow to diplomacy and international law”. Nothing much has changed since James Baker’s conclusions of 2004. The international status of the former Spanish colony remains in limbo but Morocco is unlikely to relinquish its claim especially now that international support is trending its way.