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In Brief - The Forgotten Plight of an Independent Western Sahara

Omar Alansari-Kreger

Despite all of the other tumultuous calamities unfolding in the news, it is generally
forgotten that the plight for the independence of Western Sahara has been ongoing for
decades. When an occupying power barges in and enforces martial law on the local
population only to murder any dissent will inevitably create an armed rebellion against
its rule. When the ethos of inhumanity overtakes an occupation it becomes entirely
illegitimate irrespective of the political pretenses involved. Does every inhabitant of
Western Sahara desire complete independence from Moroccan rule? Rhetorically that
may not be the case; desires that support the sentimentality of independence arent
always one hundred percent, but there is always a concentrated majority that fits into
that category.
It must be realized that an overwhelming majority of the Western Saharan people
live as second class citizens in the sparsely populated nation while another proportional
fraction lives in refugee camps alongside the Western Saharan/Algerian borderlands.
After the Spaniards withdrew from Western Sahara, they divided the nation between
Mauritanians and the Moroccan rule negating the plight of the Western Saharan people
by arbitrarily assuming that they could neatly fit into the national identities of both of the
previously stated nations. Mauritania abandoned its claims over Western Sahara
because it realized that the prospect of war with Morocco would spell out eventual
disaster. Opportunistically, the late King Hassan of Morocco dispatched two invasion
forces, one military and civilian, to effectively bring the whole of Western Sahara under
Moroccan control.
To date, the Moroccan military occupation continues, prison camp facilities
continue to dot the national landscape, and the people of Western Sahara struggle for
the simplest of resources. A much needed referendum is needed so that the people of
Western Sahara can determine their fate and the constructs of international law will
demand Moroccan compliance to that result; failure to do so will depicts its belligerency
as a nation. Initially, that was an idea that had been proposed by the United Nations, but
has been abandoned largely because the international community does not consider
Western Sahara to be a major priority worth addressing with any immediacy. If a nation
like South Sudan gained independence from Khartoum why cant the international
community grant Western Sahara the same right with Rabat?
Economic advantages are to be gained in the region, but surely that isnt the only
motivation for the plight of a depraved population. In the event of independence, the
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people of Western Sahara must take an interactive role with the development of their
nation. It wouldnt be wise to trade a foreign military occupation with a local one; in that
respect it must be wondered, what measures are the Polisario willing to take to ensure
that an independent Western Sahara doesnt transform into a jingoistic dictatorship?
Fascists that are overly eager to flaunt their national colors do so out of fabricated
necessity because that describes a medium that cedes tremendous power and control
into their elite corners.
Nonetheless, that doesnt change the overarching fact which states the following:
the people of Western Sahara have every right to pursue an independence destiny as
an equal opportunity player within the realm of the international community. It really
doesnt get any simpler than that. Plights made in the name of national independence
deserve nothing but the full consideration of the international community because that
spells out the difference between life and death for a depraved population living in the
chains of militarized occupation.