At the world’s oldest think tank, Hassan Hami discussed the British position on the Sahara dispute and the potential for change in the region.

Last Friday, June 14, 2024, the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI), a prestigious think tank in the United Kingdom, hosted a round table on the Saharan dispute, specifically on the UK’s position. Why is the UK still hesitant to endorse Morocco’s Autonomy Plan?  Some decision-makers appear to close their eyes to the shifting sands in geopolitics with respect to this artificial regional conflict. Dr. Hassan Hami, a career diplomat, former ambassador to Azerbaijan and Iran, scholar, writer, and novelist, took part in the above-mentioned round table. Given the importance of the topic, MWN was curious to find out about his insights on the matter. 

MWN: On Friday, June 14, 2024, the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) hosted a round table on the regional conflict in the Western Sahara region. You have participated on the Moroccan side alongside. Mbarka Bouaida, President of the Guelmim Oued-Noun region and former minister delegate of foreign affairs and cooperation. What are your impressions after this high-level academic and policy-planning exercise?

 

H.H: It was a very successful meeting in that the participants did not fall from the last rain in the sphere of geopolitics and prospective analysis, more commonly known as political and strategic planning. Professor Marc Weller, Chair of international Law and constitutional Studies at Cambridge University, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former UK Security Adviser and former UK representative to UK, shared their insights, which gave Mbarka Bouaida and I room to be more prolific on the subject.   

MWN: You used astrology in your remarks to highlight the presence of the number 3 in the geostrategic equation applied to Morocco. What was the purpose? Why did you associate the persistence of a regional conflict over Western Sahara with a mathematical equation?

H.H: It was a metaphor to better explain how numbers could impact geopolitics. But my rationale makes sense. Indeed, if you take a look at what I call geopolitics rooted in history, you will find out that on many occasions, Morocco has been subject to the number three impact. I first mention “The Battle of the Three Kings” (Oued El Makhazen in 1580), which ended in a Moroccan victory against Portugal supported by a strong alliance including fighters from Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Flanders, and the Papal States. 

If Morocco had lost this battle, its geopolitical future would have had a tragic destiny. Secondly, the establishment of the French and Spanish protectorate in 1912 led to the division of the country into three zones: France occupied the center, Spain took over the north and south, and Tangier was set up as an international neutral zone.

MWN: This looks like a coincidence….Nothing to do with geopolitics.

H.H.: Fair enough. But let me finish. How about the following? Besides being divided into three zones, Morocco recovered its southern provinces in three steps: Tarfaya (1957), Sidi Ifni (1969), and Spanish Sahara (1975); Madrid agreement was signed by Morocco, Mauritania, and Spain. And Morocco is part of the new paradigm called “The Triangular Partnership,” not to mention the Euro-Mediterranean, African, and Middle Eastern dimensions Morocco is characterized by. 

History records that Morocco managed to gain influence even if, at some point, the transition from one dynasty to another pushed the rulers to keep a low profile with respect to their engagement abroad. Morocco remained the only country in the Western part of the Arab and Islamic worlds not swallowed by the Ottomans and was able to resist the first assaults of European powers before the establishment of the protectorate. 

Even more convincing, the Saadi’s invasion of the Sudan in 1596, which some historians describe as an isolated incident, was meant to stop the Ottomans, via the Dey of Algiers and Portugal on the Atlantic Ocean, from cutting Morocco from its African roots. Here again, you find three actors involved. 

MWN: During the debates, you were asked two fundamental questions: first, what would Algeria’s reaction be if the United Kingdom recognized the Moroccan Autonomy Plan as the only realistic and feasible solution to resolve the conflict over the Sahara? And secondly,  whether Morocco has been disappointed with the British position to date. Your answers to both of these questions were rather diplomatic. Can you be more prolific now that you are more relaxed, so to speak?

H.H: Indeed, Dr. Johnathan Eyal, smartly teased me in order to find out what Morocco would exactly expect from the UK. Algeria was just a diversion. Indeed, in my remarks, I emphasized what I called missing diplomatic opportunities to resolve the conflict. Let me remind them here. First, the meeting between the late King Hassan II and President Houari Boumediene was scheduled for 1978 in Geneva but did not take place following the death of the latter. 

Secondly, the welcome King Hassan II gave to a Polisario delegation (received as Moroccan citizens having different perception of the conflict) on the eve of the Marrakech Summit that led to the creation of the Arab Maghreb Union in 1989. The Marrakesh summit was linked to developments in the Sahara issue at a time when the United Nations was seeking a breakthrough to speed up the process of its management. Morocco was surrounded by four countries whose leaders—all military or security-minded— who aspired to strike a deal for domestic political purposes.

Thirdly, the assassination of President Mohamed Boudiaf, who was called to the rescue by the Algerian military institution in 1992, following the cancellation of the results of the general elections won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Apart from Boudiaf’s willingness to introduce bold reforms on the domestic chessboard, one of the reasons for his assassination is believed to have been his determination to negotiate with Morocco to find a solution to the Sahara issue without clinging to the idea of a referendum. 

MWN: So, what would be Algeria’s reaction if the United Kingdom at least acknowledged that the Autonomy Plan was the only feasible option?

H.H.: I would say with all due respect to the Algerians that their reaction would be like a Pavlovian reflex. Algeria has invested billions of dollars to advance her agenda in North Africa; it would be hard, if not impossible, to accept the reality on the ground. Algeria would showcase the same diplomatic behavior to nurture the rhetoric, but at the end, she would calm down. Given the circumstances, Algeria would not do as she did with respect to Spain or any other European country when they changed their position on the Southern provinces of Morocco. 

A reactive, aggressive behavior that would sound like that Algeria had lost the war against Morocco both militarily and diplomatically. One example that shows that Algeria is losing her temper was her behavior before C24 of the United Nations. She brought petitioners, allegedly political activists, to insult Morocco’s institutions and call for rebellion in this country. Morocco would never resort to Algeria’s opponents in order to harm Algeria. One has to have a little ethics in politics and diplomacy and not insult the future.

MWN: Do you think that someday, at some point, the Algerian hermetic decision-making system will come to some sort of a pragmatic perception of the new reality on the ground?

HH: As a matter of fact, the diplomatic and geopolitical balance of power in North Africa has shifted in favor of Morocco. Yet, Morocco is in favor of peace and stability in the region. To me, the Western Sahara issue is an Algeria-Polisario problem. Algeria has to think twice about what to do with people taken as hostages in the Tindouf camps. A handful of them are authentically Sahrawi. The others hail from Algeria, Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, and Mauritania. 

MWN: Does this explain why Algeria refuses that the UNHCR conducts a census in Tindouf as requested by several UNSC resolutions?

H.H: Algeria is in trouble. She doesn’t know what to do with people in Tindouf Camp. The show that the Algerian military remotely orchestrated in El Guerguerat in the Oued Eddahab region on the border with Mauritania in 2020 was part of plans for Polisario to take over northern Mauritania and, by the same token, allow Algeria to finally have access to the Atlantic Ocean. For the record, this was a plan the French colonial power intended to implement. Marshal Louis-Hubert Lyauty, Resident-General in Morocco (1912–1925), opposed it, arguing that borders with Morocco and Tunisia, as protectorates, should not be affected for that purpose. He was removed from his position under the pressure of hardliners (the political left) in Paris, who seized this opportunity to get rid of him.

MWN: How about Morocco’s supposed disappointment with respect to the UK’s position so far? 

H.H: I understand that some decision-makers fear that any step forward in favor of Morocco would steer the UK comfort zone based on the neutrality principle. In fact, some policymakers are more concerned with the status of the fourteen British overseas territories and with the accuracy of the right to self-determination principle that should nowadays be flexible. They adopt the same position as France with respect to its thirteen overseas territories. 

The self-determination principle has been used because it serves the country’s national interest with respect to Gibraltar, a disputed territory with Spain since 1704. It also serves the country’s geopolitical agenda in the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claims sovereignty over.

Whenever a referendum about the future of these territories is held, the participants, mostly Britons, vote to remain under the United Kingdom’s sovereignty. Professor Marc Weller brilliantly argued that the Falkland Islands case and the Western Sahara case are different, and that if the UK did as most countries did (107 countries so far have recognized the pertinence and feasibility of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan), this would have no impact on the British overseas’ territories.

MWN: Would Morocco be disappointed then? 

H.H.: Morocco shares the view that, given what I described above, there’s no alibi whatsoever to prevent the United Kingdom from taking a step forward. Unlike in France, Western Sahara is not a British issue. Morocco expects even more, and the UK government will do as the United States did in December 2020.

Unless some decision-makers in the UK seek to punish Morocco for being the first country in the world to recognize the United States independence in 1777. They might be tempted to duplicate France’s behavior to punish Morocco for supporting Algeria’s fight for independence starting in 1954. For the record, when Sultan Mohammed V refused to give up the support for Algeria’s right to independence and accept that France conducted nuclear tests in the Eastern Sahara, France annexed the latter and kept it as part of Algeria in 1962, the date this country was first established. 

Morocco expects that the United Kingdom will be more creative in interpreting the right to self-determination. This would be consistent with the real interpretation of UNGA resolution 1514, 1541 (adopted in 1960) and 2625 (adopted in 1970). I would not use the expression “take it or leave it.” I would refer to King Mohammed VI’s speech on August 20, 2022. His Majesty clearly said that “the Sahara issue is the lens through which Morocco looks at the world. It is the clear, simple benchmark whereby my country measures the sincerity of friendship and the efficiency of partnerships.” Hence, this is neither an ultimatum nor a challenge. 

This is what RUSI’s introductive paper to the abovementioned round table called “pragmatic diplomacy” that should take into account the contemporary geopolitical dynamics that question the rigidity of principles of international law and serve peace and stability in the region.

MWN: Do you think that the time has really come for the United Kingdom to take a bold decision to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, or at least to perceive the magnitude of the recent shift in the position of key European and Western allies, strengthening and comforting Morocco’s position? 

H.H.: Morocco has been clear so far. No double standard is accepted henceforth. It is time to jump on the bandwagon before it is too late. As far as Morocco is concerned, we will keep explaining that peace and stability in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East depend on resolving the Moroccan-Western Sahara. Last year, on March 21, 2023, I published an article titled ‘’Sahara Dispute: the Ping-Pong Game is Over”, where I stated that the time has come for Morocco’s friends to get out of their comfort zone and speak out either way. 

I take this opportunity to commend the excellent article Dr. Samir Bennis published on May 28^th, 2024 in Manara Magazine. He urged the UK’s decision-makers to take a bold step and endorse Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara. Dr. Samir Bennis is familiar with Moroccan-Western Sahara issue. If I am not mistaken, he is due to publish a book on the Sahara Dispute titled: “The Self-Determination Delusion: How Activist Scholars and Journalists Have Hijacked the Western Sahara Case”. 

 And if I may, I could say that one of the bright sides ahead is that everybody is aware of the fact that Moroccan Western Sahara is a conflict that opposes Algeria to Morocco. Polisario is a proxy which is doomed to disappear sooner or later. And at best, it will be listed as a terrorist movement given links that some of its leaders have with the networks of organized crime.

MWN: Could you be more specific? 

H.H: Algeria lives with the borders’ syndrome. In the aftermath of Morocco’s proposal to hold a referendum in Western Sahara in Nairobi in 1981, Algeria imposed the signing of agreements on the borders with Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia in 1983. The only country that has so far refused to recognize the borders inherited from colonization is Libya. You have to watch carefully what is happening on the borders between Libya and Algeria, where Marshal Abdelfattah Haftar is challenging the Algerian military forces and even daring to occupy parts of disputed territory. 

Professor Abdellah Laroui is famous for inventing two expressions with respect to Moroccan and Algerian relationships. He depicted Algeria as performing a permanent ‘’schizophrenic behavior’’ and Morocco as being ‘’an island’’. I might add that Algeria is a periphery surrounded by Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, three countries that have a long tradition of being nation-states that go back in history. With all due respect, all credible historians, including Algerians, agree that Algeria was only established in 1962.

MWN: Thank you. We will be following the dynamics taking place in our neighborhood. Optimism will always be our guide. 

H.H: Thank you. But let me take this opportunity to thank Ambassador Hakim Hajoui and Mouaad Ibriz, the DCM, for their hard work to make this event successful. I wouldn’t finish without thanking Mrs. Mbarka Bouaida for her insightful remarks on the advanced regionalization that Morocco is implementing and its link with the Autonomy Plan. 

A special mention goes to RUSI’s behind the scenes contributors, Dr. Jonathan Eyal, Associate Director, Urban Conigham, Research Fellow and Course Lead and Sabrina Downey for helping out the round table be successful. Guess what the number 3 was my lucky number. Don‎’t you think (smooth laughter).