Seen as a paradigm of the impotence of the international community in the face of a forgotten conflict, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) was extinguished at midnight on Saturday, at the end of its last annual mandate without having fulfilled the task of organizing the self-determination consultation for which it was created in 1991. The UN has ordered this Sunday the immediate dismantling of the mission after the crossed veto on Friday between the United States and Russia in the Security Council vote on the renewal of their mission.
“The mission liquidation period begins, during which a small team will supervise the orderly withdrawal of its resources and troops,” reads the official announcement contained in a statement published on the organization's website. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the parties to the conflict to cooperate fully to ensure that the withdrawal process takes place in an orderly manner and in the shortest possible time.
In an outcome outside the routine UN script, as at the height of the Cold War, MINURSO received the death sentence issued by the Security Council, despite the 11 votes in favor and three abstentions obtained by the resolution promoted by Washington. The departure of its observers from the former Spanish colony, which Rabat intends to see consummated in the coming days and for which it has offered all the facilities, threatens to trigger the escalation of war between Morocco, which effectively controls 80% of the territory, and the Polisario Front, which defends its independence. The ceasefire signed by both parties 35 years ago was blown up in 2020, shortly before the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara and upended the international status quo.
In recent years, after admitting that the organization of the referendum was an impossible mission given the blockade of the opposing parties and no longer being able to act as a guarantor of a cessation of hostilities, Minurso had become a mere mission of observers of a low-intensity war, fought on both sides of the wall of earth and sand that has divided Western Sahara for four decades.
A senior UN official explained three years ago to EL PAÍS at the Minurso headquarters in El Aaiún that, like the canary in the mine, the mission was still necessary to sound an early warning to the rest of the world, before regional stability in the Maghreb is put in check. But if it does not experience a last-minute revival, the white vehicles with the UN acronym are destined to soon disappear from that facility, an old school in the center of the Sahrawi capital.
“We are in a low-intensity conflict situation, with incidents on the wall and drone attacks after the collapse of the ceasefire in November 2020. Only we can see what happens,” said the diplomat consulted. No other UN agencies that can report, nor NGOs or international media operate permanently in the territory of Western Sahara.
Following Friday's double veto in the Security Council, which entails the extinction of Minurso's mandate, Morocco has rushed to proclaim that the UN mission must quickly leave the territory. Moroccan media estimate that the departure, prescribed in a statement from the Royal Cabinet released on Friday night, must be concluded within a maximum period of one month. Rabat also insists that the Sahara issue must be removed from the agenda of the Security Council and other United Nations bodies, to divert the dispute towards bilateral and regional agreements.
"Thus closes a page of 35 years. Inherited from an anachronistic and outdated context, this mission has for a long time constituted an instrument of internationalization of a regional dispute," stated the statement from the Royal Palace, on which Morocco's foreign policy directly depends. At the same time, it declared the “firm commitment” of the Maghreb country to the ceasefire [of 1991] “in strict respect for its territorial integrity and national security.”
The senior official consulted at the Minurso headquarters defined his task as a “political trip wire,” not only between Morocco and Polisario, but between Algeria and Morocco. “Without our presence the situation risks being much worse, with real regional implications for stability,” he pointed out. The mission has about 500 members: 300 civilians and 200 soldiers, who patrol unarmed.
Sidi Mohamed Omar, delegate of the Polisario Front to the United Nations, has assured that the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination is “a red line that is not negotiated.” After the Russian veto of the US proposal to bury the option of a referendum as a solution to the conflict and establish the autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty as the only negotiating framework, the Polisario representative warns that, if approved, Washington's resolution would have "reversed the entire Western Sahara process" in the UN. Western Sahara appears on the United Nations list of “non-autonomous” territories or territories pending decolonization.
Rabat Parliament convened
Rabat is preparing to give a political response to the termination of the Minurso mandate in a session of both chambers of Parliament scheduled for this Monday, according to the Moroccan press. Parliamentarian Lahcen Haddad anticipates in his account in X that Morocco is going to end the presence of Minurso and withdraw the issue of the Sahara from the United Nations. “The successive postponements have prevented reaching a solution for 35 years,” emphasizes Haddad, an academic and political analyst.
