With the Middle East in chaos, it is understandable that few in Washington have time for the Western Sahara. After all, Syria has become the world’s largest generator of refugees. Iraq continues to teeter on the brink of chaos, and both Yemen and Libya are mired in civil war. Iran is resurgent. Afghanistan’s stability likely will not last long beyond the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Islamic State has re-introduced a twisted, reactionary version of the Caliphate, replete with plunder, rape, and slavery, and Boko Haram, which has now taken over vast swathes of northern Nigeria and moved into Cameroon as well, isn’t far behind in its brutality. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, meanwhile, operates across the Sahel from Algeria to Sudan.
So why is the fate of the Western Sahara important? It is home to barely 500,000 people—equivalent to the city of Fresno, California—spread over a 100,000-square-mile patch of desert, an area the size of Colorado. It boasts only one town with over 100,000 people, and just five over 10,000 people. In other words, if the Western Sahara were ever to become independent, then it would be the least densely populated country on earth.
Increasingly, however, Morocco and the Western Sahara are the only oases of security and stability across a region teetering on the brink of failure. If there are two lessons of the post-9/11 era, the first is that governed spaces trump ungoverned spaces, and the second is that reform-minded regimes make better allies than autocracies which flirt with terrorism. Given the choice between a strengthened partnership with Morocco and empowering the Polisario Front, an authoritarian group which has declared itself the head of a self-styled Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the choice should be clear. Not only does Moroccan control over the Western Sahara best deny that territory to the terrorists, Islamists, and criminal gangs which increasingly plague North Africa and the Maghreb, but it also provides the best hope for the Sahrawi to flourish both culturally and economically.
The United States has, for more than two decades, stayed on the fence with regard to the Western Sahara, and continues to pay heed to the United Nations-promoted idea that the status of the Western Sahara should be determined by referendum. Algerian and Polisario filibustering, however, has undercut any census to determine eligibility, condemning the remaining Sahrawi refugees stuck in Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria to a festering limbo which now threatens to metathesize into an engine for terror and instability. Embracing Sahrawi autonomy under Moroccan rule not only recognizes the status quo, but represents the only responsible policy, from both a humanitarian and security perspective.
This article originally appeared in the Journal of International Security Affairs Spring/Summer 2015 issue “Hotspots and Flashpoints.”
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